Stu's Rusty Bucket

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

On highlighting and not

So I hacked in some code to unhighlight words that you already had in the dictionary and ran through some tests, so after waisting an hour I decided to do a bzr revert. Id much rather see the words always highlighted than not.

So much for that idea!

Im done on NPC talking for a while, its time to move onto the shop code so I can buy/sell weapons/armour/food and then progress into the inventory screens.

Monday, July 23, 2007

This is how life should be

Life, it should be like this!

Keywords Highlights

Did some minor work last night and added highlighting to some keywords in NPC transactions, so when you see these highlights you know new words have been added to your dictionary (if they hadn’t already).

Just sitting writing this entry I’ve nutted out a lua routine that will handle only highlighting the keywords only if you dont have them in your dictionary… Too busy with family life lately to do much beyond minor work

Monday, July 16, 2007

Fixing Rounds

I spent yesterday ripping out all the attribute and ‘round’ code and rewriting it.  There were some serious deficiencies (aka bugs) in the previous code that handled moves/rounds.

Its now smaller, more efficient and much easier to follow than the old code.

The new timer attribute code also works much better, the only side effect in the new timer code is that it ties itself to a particular item which is inconsistent for things that are oneshot (potions, mushrooms, gems etc), since these are a single special case its easy to handle, I’m debating if I will make the used item hang around like a phantom until all of its affects are worn off.

The 0.4 release is shaping up very nicely, I’ve put in a ‘win state’ which is not the true end game but its enough to keep to the game winnable for the time being and give players a goal for early releases.

Monday, July 09, 2007

SDLRL Cracks and Crevices 0.3 Release

Fixed a nice showstopper bug in key handling

Downloads;
cracks_n_crevices-0.3-win32.zip (now includes SDL.dll in download)
cracks-n-crevices-0.3.tar.bz2

Changelog;
0.3 20070709
- Removed dependancy on SDL_Image
- Removed win32 debug console
- Brilhasti will boost new characters mana first time only
- Fixed bug in passing cooked keys back to gkey loop

Sunday, July 08, 2007

SDLRL : Release 0.2

Did some work on Cracks and Crevices 0.2, enough to fix some showstopper bugs and get another basic release out there…

Tested on Ubuntu 7.10/AMD64 + WinXP Pro/sp2

Downloads;

• cracks_n_crevices-0.2-win32.zip
• cracks_n_crevices-0.2-src.zip

0.2 20070708

• Fixed resolution selection and printing its error message
• Maps now have a userdata section for extra info pertaining to that map only
• Removed vs8 project for disuse
• Added lua to aid in debugging (only built for debug version)
• Added debug console
• Reduced the flicker + Screen Redraw
• Fixed Load/Save bug
• Stopped SDL initialising modes greater than current desktop mode (win32)
• Stripped encoding from messages
• Screen will now update even when player does not move, so now monsters animate toward the player
• experimental facing LOS
• Fixed bug where los can capture things outside drawing portal which caused crash
• Added a few extra debug commands

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Fishguts I : More Game For Your Money

We now have food implemented with variable step eatage (inside uses less food than outside, outside on a horse is less than on foot, etc), which also means you get some start food and even some start cash now!

We also have a ‘Game Over’ screen which is nothing more than a script that prints game over, but at least we have a start on it. Did a lot more tidy up for the tv out display, altered some borders.

When talking to chars in the first location they all default to the greet request right away

Cleaned up the stats screen and calling global script functions

Friday, July 06, 2007

Colic

So we went to the doctors yesterday and he pronounced Alexander as having colic! AAAAARrgh. That means he cries a lot for no reason, he isnt sick or anything he just.. cries…

sleeping is unbearable. feeding is unbearable.

hopefully he will grow out of it very quickly, its quite upsetting to see his frowny face and little tears and his little ‘dad-make-it-all-better’ cry.

The bets are coming in that he will have red hair, tho I am very for blonde and against ginger but we will see…

Fishguts I : TV Out

Played with the TV out tonight since my tiny svideo to rca composite plug arrived.

First I want to put my foot through the tv.

My code works fine… the problem is that TV’s have overscan dont they… so my tops/bottoms/sides are all cut off (mostly its the tops/bottoms).
You can size the resolution up but the hardware scales it so it either is blurred or poorly scaled that text becomes unreadable. bah.
and doing the nice scale size (double the screen to 720x480) makes things too small to be worth while on a tv…

which makes ntsc look pants since I have to take a certain % into account as overscan so my effective resolution becomes 320x200 which becomes 312x192 so this magical extra stuff I get doesnt pay off (screen becomes 360x240 -> 312x192, pal becomse 360x288->312x240)… PAL wins 1 extra row of tiles… sarcastic whoop…

Here I was thinking I’d get extra resolution for free but I guess not…

And you know all TV’s are not made alike so who knows if my overscan percentages that work for me will work for others…

On a good note, all my double buffering and SDL timing paid off since its smoooooth as silk on the animation, which is nice because when the GP2X blits it waits for vsync, but when its running in tv out mode, there is no vsync so unless you do your own buffering and timing it ‘snows’ like crazy (remember the old CGA days?) by sending too many updates to the TV at once…

Oh and the new tree icon looks cool too.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Fishguts I : Transact thoughts and TV cables

So I’ve tweaked the transaction stuff a bit more, but one thing that struck me is I really hate that it gives you the dictionary right there. I loved on the C64 + Apple playing Ultima III you had to remember and take notes of who said what and to ask what of whom, here its all just given. I had fleeting thoughts of popup keyboards but that would be a hellish nightmare considering how much you need to talk to NPC’s and so forth.

One thing I forgot to add to my fallback was a random “i dont know what your talking about jack!” response when an NPC didnt have that keyword in his repertoire.

On another note I got a GP2X tv-out cable yesterday.. its an integrated svideo with L+R feeds, the stero l+r jacks are fine.. only our poor little tv has an old composite plug… of course I have a composite to svideo adapter but not an svideo to composite!!! Aaaaargggh. I really wanted to see my game running on the TV just for grins and giggles.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Fishguts I : Transact and Screenshots

Did a little work on the transaction code yesterday for an hour when my ‘real work’ hit unavailable data.

Right now you can walk up to a NPC in town and trigger transaction and do keyword questions.

Here is a couple of extra screen shots

LOS code in action

Here is the menu in action

Yeah my tree/forest icon sucks I know.