7/19/97
I created the sprite for Venetia this week. The sprites and the battle images of the characters need to match very much. The status screen images of the characters don't have to match as much. On this week's screen shot, I have an image from the sprite editor. I also took one of her battle pics and pasted it onto the screen shot to compair. These sprites take me a while to create. They are alot of work for me mainly due to my lack of natural artistic talent. I still need to go back and put her weapon in her hand.... Thats about all there is to tell this week. I've been working hard. Every day this week I had to do stuff after work. Everything I did I should have gotten paid for and I got paid for none of it. Perhaps this week will be a little different.
I also updated the Splat page. Well, I didn't update the page much, I just released a new version of the game with stuff like background music. I also put the editor and such in a seperate zip file. I had someone suggest that I create a sequel to the game. Its a good idea and I'd like to do it. I'd like to have about 20 different types of monsters that do really interesting things. For example, one of them could suck you toward it before it shoots (like a magnent)... I'd also like to have more complex patterns of movement. If I implemented some vector based math into their AI, I could have some great enemies... but I don't need to get distracted from what I'm doing now!
One last note, I wanted to create a .AVI file to spread around with some scenes from Talibah. I used AVI Contructor. It puts a very large message on any movie over 5 frames. I also could not get it to add audio to the movie no matter what I tried. I need to find a good tool to make a movie, and this isn't it. Overall its a simple and easy to use program. Even its lack of features is acceptable, but the features it does sport should work and the error messages should be more precise. The shareware's message doesn't have to be so large either. A simple text in the bottom right hand corner would be more than enough. You can download the movie I created by clicking on this week's image. Due to the size of these files I will most likely remove them in the near future so these links may not work for very long.
7/19/97
Not alot done this week. Its been hell. I did get another beta test package out though. It was a simple CD Audio unit. It tested positive for everyone who has sent me results so things look pretty good in the CD Sound department. It was a simple boring text based proggie that wasn't very interactive, but it got the job done. The only reason why it is the screen shot for this week is because I didn't get anything else done on Talibah..
School is starting soon. I have to register for classes on the 21st.. It looks like I am at a point were I have to take classes 5 days a week. I also have to find time to work and my only available hours are 9-5 m-f.. The best that I was able to work my schedule out to was about 15 hours of work a week.. That was if I didn't bother eating anytime during the day.. That also left no time for TLOT. I've got to keep up with work in order to make my truck payments.
I still haven't bought a machine. I keep getting really close then I start to think about how I need to save my money for this semester of school. I donno what will happen... I'm just not sure how I'm going to work everything out. Sometimes your life just sucks the big one... and sometimes it chokes on it too.. "The Legend of Talibah chapter 1: A past forgotten" will probably not be released this summer.
Anyway, I wasn't able to go to QuakeCon cause I was working all week. We may hit it late tomorrow night. Regardless, we decided to have our own Quake Party! This weekend we are gathering at the local community center and having a warmup/equipment test kinda thing. Then, next Sat we are going to have an all out tourney! Check out this page for details.
Once again I want to show you an interesting RPG project being work one. Check out The Game at Tsugumo's Lair. He's got some demos to download. While it is a QBasic project, the art is really cool.. Also, if you have ever wondered how I wanted my game to look before I actually got started, check out ANCEINT DRAGON by Mirinae. The demo rocks although it is in Korean. The only thing that bothered me in the demo was the way the NPCs walked.
One last peice of rather good news. Someone has picked up Fantasy Origin. Although the pages are online right now, I'm not going to give anyone the URL until the updates are complete. The site is getting a complete and much needed overhaul.. I can't wait to see it up and running..
7/13/97
GRUMBLE! I've been disconnected and locked up tonight (trying to update my web site) more than I have in the past 6 months... You people are lucky that I decided to do an update at all. I think someone working at centuryinter.net spilled coffee on a router or something...
Anyway, as you may have noticed I've updated the web site some. I used tables to lay out the text and I used colored backgrounds on the tables to make the text easier to read. I also update alot of the text as well as updating the java script on the home.htm page. It took me several hours and after I got done I didn't know if the work I put into it was really worth the little bit I got back out of it... but oh well.
I've been trying to talk to game publishing houses lately just to find out what the process is to submit a game title. So far Activision seems to be the most organized. The folks over at Interplay really don't seem to have any organization. I wrote them telling them that I had 1 game completed and 1 game in the works. They wrote me back (form letter) and told me that they only looked at completed games. They gave me a phone number and told told me to contact "such and such". I called 3 times and left my name, phone number, business phone number, fax number, and e-mail address.. Frustrated at no repsponce I sent an e-mail back clearly stating that I had a completed game I wanted to submit and they send me the same form message telling me they only accepted completed projects.. I was most impressed by Eidos Interactive. I was also happy to find out that they are hooked up with Ion Storm! I will send Bob demos to both Activision and Eidos via snail mail in the future and see what happens. I will also consider putting together a little bit more complete demo of TLOT and sending it.. but I just donno if I'm ready for that yet.
This week's image is of the village town tile set that I am working on. Its not much yet at all. You can click on the image to see three shots from the map editor. I also did alot of work on the code. I recoded the entire loop that actually draws the tiles and handles the scrolling. I had to do this for the sprites. When I finished, I had improved it so much that I can do nearly full screen scrolling! All accept for the 20 pixel border I have to keep around the entire screen. The only problem with this deals with how I designed the game. All of my artwork and design work revolves around having a 180x160 play field.. Changing it to 280x160 will really require some work and will be a set back. Thanx to some help from one of my beta testers, it looks like increasing the play field won't hurt the game's speed much. He tested it on a 486 (what I consider to be getting lower end) and he said there was little to no difference in quality. BUT, that will most likely change when I am drawing more sprites on the screen too. Chances are I will stick with 180x160. Maybe I should start up a discussion about this on the mailing list.
I posted some to usenet about my idea to distribute the full version of TLOT and sale the music CD. One guy got a bit off subject but offered an improtant point. He said that it has been his experience that not many people register DOS based shareware. He also went on to talk about peoples attitude about Windows 95. He mentioned that you could write a great game for DOS and people would hardly notice it... Meanwhile, you could write a so-so game for Win95 using direct X and everyone would say "Woo Hoo, this is Direct X!".. (I put this all into my own words).. He also commented that if you really want to sale games, produce them for the Mac.. The saddest part is, I think the guy was mostly right. Everyone thinks that a game is worth checking out just because it uses the latest version of Direct X.. What's up with that?
I also wanted to mention that I love my girlfriend alot. I just haven't ranted about how great she is in a while and I thought I would. I want to dedicate this entire project to her... Even though she consumes alot of my time that could be spent working on the game, she also brings enough joy into my life to keep me from becoming some kind of introverted depressed freak with no zest for living thus causing me to loose all interests and desire again thus causing me to drop the TLOT project... Did you get all that?
7/6/97
A lot went on this week. I tweaked a little on artwork near the beginning of the week, but most of the work I got done was in the code. First, I wrote all the subroutines I needed to change maps on the fly. Then I coded into my temporary loop how I will probably do map changes when you enter towns. So, the binary I've got on my hard disk right now will let you walk from the overworld into a town or cave and then walk back out of the town and appear on the overworld again. I've got a little tweaking to do with it, but most of that code is completed.
I also coded in something kinda for fun. I was really wanting to see how it would look and once I did it I felt all tingly all over. When you have more than one member in your party, the other party memebers will follow you around the overworld map. Well, up until now the closest I came was a quick hack that worked only for walking in one direction. If you changed direction, the characters that are following you instantly jumped in a line behind you. Well, I wrote the code so that the second character follows you correctly. The second guy follows in the footsteps of the first. It really looks sharp. The image this week is of gerwin following Munk Seth around a corner...
Also for fun, I coded a quick magic spell special effect. Just some blue lights around the character. Right now you can hit "Y" and some shiney blue star thingies will float around the character. This was kinda pointless but its still a little neat.
Today I called in the specs for a pentium 133. The development machine I am working on now is a 133 so this should be about the same, but cause I'm getting kinda cheap hardware I'm sure it won't run nearly as well as this machine. The nice thing is the fact that I will be able to work on the game when my sister is chatting on irc! Woo Hoo. One really lousy thing is the fact that I will be going from a 17" monitor to a 14" monitor.. I may try to keep the artwork on this machine ;)
A fellow by the name of Lord Eddie told me that my screen shots looked like "crap".. Various words that he used to describe the game included "bad" "crap" and "puke"... I also found out that he thinks Warcraft sucks so I felt alot better. It was really the first solidly negative feedback I recieved about the game. This conversation went on in IRC. I kept the logs and I was going to post them, but they are on another machine and I don't feel like dealing with them.
There are a few web sites that I'd like to mention this week while I have the chance. I've yet to give Tremor a link from this site. If you are into Quake and TCs, this will be one to keep your eye on. A more RPG related link, Perilith is back. This game has been under development for a while and has really changed! It appears that it will now be a VRML based game. This could be interesting. MageSoft is currently working on a project.. "Knights of Mith".. You can catch MrZ and his crew on DALnet in #MageSoft. There are alot of projects going on out there and I can't give you links to them all.. its just that every now and then a few of them really catch my eye and I've got to let the world know...
