Stu's Rusty Bucket

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Hosing Open2x

I managed hose my open2x install so I had to start a rebuild of it all last night. Then I get 64bit errors in compiling sdl 1.2.11, so its hacking some makefiles to force it touse 1.2.9

I’m doing a serious thought to switching from 24x24 icons down to 16x16… I don’t really want to do it, but it would let me to from 13x10 to 20x15.. Ive already switched down to an 8x8 font which I’m also still debating (I have a 9x10 which is nice, but an 8x8 gives me that little more. It just looks ‘thin’. Screenshots to come later).

Lots of minor changes have been going on, the shop code is getting there.

Basically it will start at a screen that will ask if you want to buy or sell (not all shops will offer this option, some will go straight into the buy mode).

You will then be given an inventory of items to scroll through and select + quantity you want (Yeah no Final Fantasy 1 single item at a time treachery).

I’m debating if I will show in shop inventory items you cant afford or not. I can see pro’s and cons of both sides. I my roguelikes I favour not showing what you cant afford, but in a CRPG I’d rather see what I cant afford to know what kinda cash I need to save up…

I’ve redrawn a couple more icons and tweaked the map a bit. I’ve also picked out my teleport portal locations.

Managed to flesh out the big start game point, mid game point and end game story point. I just need to fill in the gaps between the start to mid and mid to end points with side quests, NPC’s and find a use for the dungeons I’ve dropped into the game.

(I don’t want to give too much of that away in my blog! Gotta leave something for the player to discover!)

Monday, August 27, 2007

Digging out an old assembly routine

This is an old assembly x86 routine for printing a number from 0-65535.
Translated from funky old a86 to Nasm syntax.

   1:;; call with number in ax, output buffer in di
   2:;; clobbers ax+di
   3:;; di points to end of string
   4:
   5:PrintNumber:
   6:    push bx
   7:    push cx
   8:    push dx
   9:    
  10:    mov bx,10
  11:    xor cx,cx
  12:    push cx
  13:    inc cx
  14:
  15:.l1:
  16:    xor dx,dx       ;; clear high order part of number (where x greater than  65535)
  17:    div bx
  18:    or dl,0x30      ;; add '0' to the remainder
  19:    push dx
  20:    inc cx          ;; increment digit count
  21:    or ax,ax        ;; loop until no numbers left
  22:    jnz .l1
  23:
  24:.l2:
  25:    pop ax          ;; drop it in the buffer
  26:    stosb
  27:    loop .l2
  28:
  29:    pop dx
  30:    pop cx
  31:    pop bx
  32:
  33:    ret
  34:

and if you dont care about clobbering registers when you call the routine, cut out the push/pops.

   1:;; call with number in ax, buffer in di
   2:;; clobbers ax+bx+cx+dx+di
   3:
   4:PrintNumber:
   5:    mov bx,10
   6:    xor cx,cx
   7:    push cx
   8:    inc cx
   9:
  10:.l1:
  11:    xor dx,dx       ;; clear high order part of number (where x greater than 65535)
  12:    div bx
  13:    or dl,0x30      ;; add '0' to the remainder
  14:    push dx
  15:    inc cx          ;; increment digit count
  16:    or ax,ax        ;; loop until no numbers left
  17:    jnz .l1
  18:
  19:.l2:
  20:    pop ax          ;; drop it in the buffer
  21:    stosb
  22:    loop .l2
  23:
  24:    ret
  25:

This wont deal with signed, it just prints a raw number. Printing a number over 65535 reuquires a slight modification but nothing major (an xchg ax,dx and an extra division)..

Saturday, August 25, 2007

My New shotgun

Picked up my new shotgun this morning after doing the paperwork. Its heavy! heavier than I expected 7lbs to weigh but the weight feels nice on the swing. I would rather feel the weight more in the fore end than the back end but its ok.

Cleaned off the packing grease,which wasnt too bad. A little synthetic grease where barrel breaks open, light oil on the choke tubes, seems we are good to go..

except…

I didnt heed the warning of all the other new Lanber owners… holy mistletoe batman is the action STIFF! erk. Everyone suggests you sit on the couch and break it open/close a couple of hundered times and I can see why.

I am going to need to get a limbsaver or kickeeze to increase the LOP by half an inch and save my shoulder

Friday, August 24, 2007

Books I need to read

I’ve got 4 books on my must read list, aka my nightstand right now just begging to be read, Three on Tibet/Buddhism and one on game world design.

TheHeart of the World : A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise
by Ian Baker

How to Practice : The way to a meaningful life
By Dalai Lama

Ethics for a new Millenium
by Dalai Lama

Swords and Circuitry
by Neal Hallford

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Some new screenshots

Here are some new screenshots in the PSP resolution.

World map, near starting position

Entering Castle Lexington. Also shows some of the LOS code.

Talking to a guard, note keywords in highlight

Learning the Hunting skill

Friday, August 17, 2007

Shotguns

Ordered my lanber 2087 yesterday. Its a Over/Under shotgun with 28inch barrels, 3inch chamber on 12gauge weighing 7 pounds. Its about 45 inches long, so will fit nicely into my new shotgun cabinet.

Ive no intention of going hunting, just sporting clays and some skeet/trap etc.

The below are stock photos. I’m pretty sure mine has ribbing between the two stack barrels (photo has a gap).

Fishguts I : Minor cleanups

Been doing only minor code cleanups and changes lately. Placed all my town maps on my worldmap, and started editing another town on the worldmap. Redrew my ‘grass’ tile, nothing huge but it looks better.

Some initial questage has been done, you can now be offered clues and an outright quest at the start to help you get going. You can also complete it without being asked to do it, and characters will respond differently (ie: You get response A if you were offered it and completed it, and response B if you just completed it without being offered it, etc).

Fixed a few bugs, but nothing major as I’ve had no time to really sit down and work on it.

Some of the things I really want to implement soon

- Shops
- Inventory screens / management