Stu's Rusty Bucket

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Uni-directional

Added four lines of code and now its all directional. Which is good (and was on my hitlist to add). I have a town that straddles a river (its like two towns), now you can correctly enter/leave from one of the four different gates.

It might seem like a small thing but its nice to not enter every town in the same position. Its also nice to enter town on one side of the river, cross over the bridge and out one of the other exits and appear on the other side of the river on the world map. The little bit of continuity just adds to the game.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Getting the little things done

In 10 minutes last night I knocked out the birds eye ‘map view’. It needs some refinement to work properly on maps that dont really wrap around (like town maps).

Right now it doesn’t adjust itself resolution wise. its a 32x32 grid blown up 7x and centered. Same on PSP.

I’m debating if I’ll keep it as a window (32x32 grid) or make it bigger for the outside world map (only say 3x increase) and bigger for town maps (say 5x increase).

I have also been debating a couple of new titles. I’m still in the hunt for a single word title (easier to cram on the title screen), checking mobygames to see if its been used

The next ‘small things’ that need to be done

* Re-ordering of the party
* Configuration of gp2x buttons

edit
After some more work work last night, I tidied the birds eye map from 32x32 to 48x48.

I just need to wrap it into couple of lines of lua like so, and its done

354:function UseGem()
355:    local maxi
356:    local i
357:
358:    maxi = GetMaxInventoryItems()
359:
360:    for i=0, maxi-1 do
361:        local idx = GetItemIndexFromSlot(i)
362:
363:        if idx >= 0 then
364:            if GetItemName(idx) == "GEM" then
365:                if GetInvQty(i) > 0 then
366:                
367:                    -- remove one from inventory
368:                    RemoveItemFromInventory(i, 1)
369:                    
370:                    -- down clock processor to save battery
371:                    ClockLow()
372:                    BirdEyeView()
373:                    ClockHigh()
374:                    
375:                    -- dont process any more inventory items
376:                    return
377:                end
378:            end
379:        end
380:    end
381:end

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Shaving an overripe peach

AKA Adventures in good of fashioned cut throat razor shaving. Also known as Wet Shaving… or Shaving the old fashioned way. This is part of my effort to add some refinement to my hectic life! Turn shaving into a hobby.

Multi-blade cartridges are expensive and the foamy/gel cans do nothing but dehydrate and create a really poor lather… So I now own a 1940 gillette three piece razor called a Tech. Some artisan soap from Mama Bear and a swath of different brand of blades. (Walmart sell some high-quality blades in a 10pack for $1.54… Yeah thats 15 cents a blade. A blade should last about 10 shaves. Thats 0.015 cents a shave. Mach3 blades charge $10 for a 4 pack. Thats 2.50 per cartridge vs 0.15 for a safety blade. I dont know how many ‘good’ shaves you can get out of a mach3 cartridge but I’m doubting you could get the equivalent of 10 good shaves.

OK, so I didn’t use a peach, and it wasn’t invisible peach fuzz. Earlier this evening I had, caveman like, an inch long beard and 4 inch goatee.

No, no goats were sacrificed at the sink.

I did however sacrifice my inch long beard. My shiny semi-new 1940 gillette tech showed up, so I gave it a sanitize, unwrapped an Israeli crystal and broke out the mama bear Tuscan soap…

First was the hair clippers run all over head + face to remove extraneous beard and get down to it, with a hot shower to open up the pores like windows in summer.

My nicer brush hasnt shown up yet, and it was hard work with the good old burma shave brush from walmart (I couldn’t wait any longer...). I seemed to get a better lather doing it on my face than trying to make it in the bowl. I really think it was down to the brush more so than anything elses fault. Also feel I needed to make it ‘thicker’ but it did the trick.

Well I never!

I didn’t think anything was happening but I looked at the razor and there was all dirty particles on the soap. Something was coming off. Granted it wasnt baby butt smooth and I did go over the same space a couple of times.

My problem area is going to be my jaw line / jaw curve from cheek to underside jaw…

Defiantly pressed too hard in spots but the tech was nice and forgiving thankfully. No burn. One ‘bump’ showed up on my neck but no bleeding or irritation (maybe thats due to the nice nivea balm I put on. imo Nivea make great balm).

So, lessons learned (but maybe not heeded)

- Don’t go over same spot without any lather, this aint no joe sixpack triple blade cartridge with lubricating strip and child proof lock

- Don’t be impatient and think the burma shave brush ‘will do’ (maybe I am being a bit harsh on it).

- When you think nothing is coming off, something really is coming off so don’t press any harder!

- Gillette made really good products long before I was born. They don’t seem to any more.

- I’m tempted to keep touching my face like a kid in the candy store (Apparently this is called facerbating… )

- Will stick with Israeli Crystal blades for the next month until I can get my lathering + basic technique down pat so I know what to expect when I change blades.

- When you take the razor compartment out of its cardboard sale package, they tend not to tell you what they are on the outside! (well for crystal blades anyway).

- I actually remembered to take a before and after shot for posterity (but I wont bother you guys with them here) since removing beard is not a common occurance Cool

- I violated the no-shave-November rule at work! 

- Holding to the angle on the top of the handle is not as easy as it seems and trying to overcome holding it near vertical is hard

- Will have to see how it is in the morning (since I am a night shaver)…

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Combat thoughts

Now that I have switched to a party mode, combat is no longer one-on-one icon bashing on the main screen, with that I’ve removed my enemy sprites from the main tilset, and instead taken a leaf from Magic Candle I and replaced them with a skull and crossbones.  If you are close enough to an enemy, the skull and cross bones will appear on the map and depending on what you do, it may wander while your within vicinity or it may track toward you, when combat happens, maybe they are at a certain range and are archers etc.. it should open to a new combat screen.

I’m aiming here for a gold box like combat option. The mechanics wont be the same, since we dont have all the same stats, I’m not dealing with encumberance and such. The amount of movement points you get is rated against the percentage of hit points you have vs your max. The idea is, the lower your hitpoints the more wounded you are, the less able to move you are. To make an attack or cast a spell you need at least half of your movement points available.

For example;

Everyone has 10 movement points as a generic starting average.

You have 10/10 hit points. You can move 5 spaces (move costs 1 pt), and make an attack. If you moved 6 spaces, you have only 4 left, which is less than half so cant attack.

You have 10/20 hit points. Thats 50% of your points, so you have 5 movement points. You can move 2 spaces and attack, but if you move 3 spaces, you have only 2 points left, not enough for an attack..

Now, things like haste spells and rings of speed etc can boost you over 10 points. 10 is just the starting average based on your speed (speed is the only attribute you really have in the game).

If you attack, it will use all your points, but some speed bonuses and other things will allow multiple attacks, that reduces the point cost. ie: normally you need at least half your points for an attack. If you can attack twice in a round that cost reduces to needing one quarter of your points for an attack. make sense?

It will need some refinements and I’m borrowing a lot from my roguelike code here, but it shouldn’t be too complicated to implement.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

A poor mans title screen

I added a poor mans title screen today, all it is, is some tiles and some wandering NPC’s who bounce around the map. Its not a scripted intro like the Ultima III intro is.

The one intro map also hides the mini maps for the three main platform sizes (GP2X, PSP, PC) that have slightly different screen sizes. Each is the same map but separated by walls, and when the map loads I adjust the “player” co-ordinates so he is centered on the correct mini map.

Nothing fancy but it lets me re-use all existing code without needing anything extra just to have an intro.

As you can see the intro screen for the PSP is adjusted for the wider physical screen dimensions (These shots are 2x resolution). (screens below the cut)

GP32/GP2X Intro

PSP Intro

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Wandering Jesters

Yes, the stock jesters now roam around the kings chamber. Very Ultima-ish, its a staple. OK Its a cliché but its acknowledging its parentage.

Any NPC icon can wander the map, so its nice to have some ‘action’ in the towns that are not just static NPC’s.

There are only four types monster AI right now.

* Wander
* Guard
* Merchant
* Attack Player

Attack Player and Merchant are basically the same thing, but attacking monsters wont respond to talking where merchants will. Plus it lets merchants run across the counter to track the player. If they were free they would be-line to the player, around obstacles trying to get to him.

The change from single player to party mode seems to have worked fine. I can now get a status of the party and each individual character and all script changes went very well.