8/31/97
Its 2:20 am, so its really 9/1, but I'm going to cheat so that I don't have to create a whole new page for this week's update. I'm feeling kinda lazy. Anyway, the screen shot this week has a new feature, roads. This is on the overworld map. The idea is pretty simple, if you stay on the highly traveled paths, you will see fewer/weaker monsters. The idea was developed on the mailing list and seems like a pretty good one.
This week I did a little coding. I changed the character animation, making the characters walk much smoother. Other than that, I haven't done much. School is right around the corner (it starts Tuesday) and everything has been a mess. Its going to be a long winter, I've got to keep up with insurance and truck payments. Going to school cuts into my work week more this semester than any previously so I won't be making all that much money. Its going to be tight.
I was reading the progress page for The Game and I read about a stunt NeoZones had pulled. It looks like they swiped artwork from The Game and claimed it as their own. Both of these games are QBasic projects so you know they will be limited. I was particularly interested in The Game because of its graphics. I invite everyone to check it out and give NeoZones lots of greif for stooping sooo low. The only related problem I've had was when the little jerk at G Realms used my graphics in his logo and refused to credit my artist (Brian Crews) for the work. It took contacting Geocities about using copyrighted material to get him to remove the graphic. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what Tsugumo can do with The Game, and I don't like seeing people take advantage of his hard work.
I was checking out some of the RPGs listed on Fantasy Origin and I came across Verge. I downloaded the demo and was fairly impressed. Its not really an RPG, its an engine. If anyone is considering writing an RPG and hey don't want to start from scratch, this is something to check out. Aparently it is very popular as there are many Verge related web sites popping up all over the net.
I followed a link from Deltaman's page to Gamma Flare Games. They have an RPG demo there that is really worth checking out! It definately falls into the "cute" catagory. Check out the file size on this puppy, I was impressed.
Well, thats enough ranting about other people's projects. I guess I'll go try to cut down on my backlog of e-mail thats building up. BTW, I think Aphrodite has a new midi file up for people to guess... if you send her an e-mail mention the fact that I love her for me, ok?
8/24/97
Ok, I started running into my first memory problems this week. I ran out of both heap and stack space while running under Windows in a DOS box. I normally (without the network loaded) have 512k of base memory in this situation.. (yeah yeah, I know, its all because of those damn PNP drivers for my AWE) Anyway, there's nothing more annoying that running a DOS app and having it cuss at you cause you don't have enough base memory. For anyone who doesn't know, TLOT will run almost exclusively in base memory. So were am I going to get the memory? Well, currently I have huge lookup tables that are taking up space. For example, in my map editor I define sprites as a byte. In my source code I have a look up table that is basically an array of string(8) that is 256 units big. Pascal puts an extra byte in a string, so 256x9=2304 bytes of wasted space. I plan on getting rid of the table and making an external file that contains the information. That means levels will load slightly slower. Perhaps before the final release, I can build a master file of sprites (one single file) and remove the need for all of the before mentioned overhead. The problem with doing that now is the fact that I don't even have all the sprites made up much less know what they are going to be. I digress.... anyway, I have the same problem with my map files. I have a look up table for that as well. Once I dispose of some of that overhead, I should have plenty of memory. Also, if you are worried that I am going to run out of memory for battle scenes, don't be. Before you enter a battle, some data will be dumped and reloaded after the battle. For example, all the tiles for the current map (as well as the map) will be dumped. Thats over 167k right there. One last and finally memory note, the sound effects will use some XMS..
Ok, on a slightly simular note, all of the text in the game will be stored in external files as well. I considered using plain basic text files, but they are cumbersome and messy. I opted to write a simple text editor specifically designed around the data structures I use for text in the game. I started on the editor tonight and thought I was going to die. It kept crashing for no reason. It would compile and run fine one moment and then the next it would lock up.. without changing a single line of code! I was running under an MS-Dos prompt then as well, so I blamed Windows. I continued to edit it at DOS and it finally crashed there as well. I did notice that it was locking just as I was going into graphics mode. I am using a .BGI file for the graphics so I thought perhaps it might be corrupted. I had turned the BGI file into an object file and linked it, so I went ahead and left the BGI file external and copied a new one over. It seems to have stopped crashing but now I'm half scared. I find myself hitting F2 5 to 10 times before each compile. Anyway, this new editor has kept me up until.. lets see.. its .. gosh, its 5:21am right now. I think I'm about halfway through with the editor. I've got file I/O completed and most of the display routines. I still can't actually add any text yet.
Anyway, all in all it hasn't been a real good week. Thursday night was great, but I won't go into details. Other than that, I've been slightly sick all week long, I got to re-stack/re-tarp hay in the rain before work, I shelled out hundreds of dollars for school books and lots of other sucky stuff. I can't remember what I got done on TLOT during the first part of this week. I think I'm too tired to remember.
Some people may have noticed that I haven't answered alot of mail. I sorta got like 30 messages in my inbox (most of them personal) that I haven't gotten back with yet. I'll get to them eventually. I just haven't been feeling well enough to keep up with everything. This text editor could have normally been completed in one night. You're lucky I was able to make a weekly update! Pffft.
Oh yeah, one more thing. I might have found a slight bug in Bob. I was stealing code from the map editor when I saw that I referenced the BGI files in the C:\TP\BGI directory. Most people aren't going to have this directory. Now I have to go back and see if the map editor will run on a machine without that directory structure. What fun.
8/17/97
I networked my DOS based PC with my Win95 based PC. The networking was easy, setting up file shareing was easy. BUT, my Dos/Win3.11 system has become much more unstable. I can't do much in a MS-DOS prompt under Windoze anymore. I used to be able to run War2 under Windows! I will have to set up a menu when rebooting for a network/non-network configuration. Also, netscape seems to want to crash when reading .html files off of my hard drive. That makes doing weekly updates a bit more difficult. I may move all my html over to the Win95 based PC to make use of the long file names.
Anyway, I worked some more on the Temple Tile set. In this week's screen shot you can see some shadows and such. If you click on the image you can see inside the temple as well as another shot of a different tile set. The other tile set is the start of a snow/ice set. In the north, there will be an abandonded castle. The screen shot shows the floor of the castle with patches of snow and ice on them.
I had hoped to do more with the NPCs this week, but I didn't. I went to court over my speeding ticket on Wed and I didn't get out of it. I was upset most of this week so I figured I best not try coding. The ticket will cost me about as much as the toolbox I was planning on putting on my new truck. There goes my toolbox. Do you know how hard it is to find a place to put your stuff in a s-10 short cab pick up truck? Where am I suppose to put my cooler full of beer!
Anyway, a friend of mine went to work for Xatrix. They are the folks who brought us Redneck Rampage. (funny as hell) Is it just by chance that Xatrix hired a level designer that lives out in the country AND they wrote Redneck Rampage? Anyway, I'd like to wish him well.
I am eager to upload my update and get back to work on my game today. I decided to change all references of "Munk" to "Monk", but I'm not going to take the time to edit the entire web site today.
8/8/97
Ok, first I'd like to mention the fact that the mailing list is pretty much dead.... I donno what happened and I e-mailed Nathan to see what was going on and I didn't get a responce.. I'll give it one more week and if it isn't back up I'll remove all reference to it from the site.
Second, Fantasy Origin is back online at (http://www.perilith.com/fantasyorigin)!! Check it out right now, make links to it, worship it, be one with it... while you are at it, give Vito a big thanks.
Third, the screen shot this week. Its kinda ugly, but it has a few important things to show off. You'll notice right away that there is a map on the right. On this map, one pixel represents one 20x20 tile. This will not be in the final release. Its kinda slow and it doesn't fit with game play very well. I may not even include a map in the final release. The function will be in there for various beta tests and such though. More importantly, you see lots of characters on the screen... That isn't normally a very big deal, BUT it is. You see, those characters are NPCs that were stored in the .MAP file. All the routines to blit NCPs are written and the data structures to store them are as well. None of the movement routines or AI are done yet though. Also, the map editor can only add one kind of NPC at the moment. You'll also notice a fence in the screen shot. While not as significant as the other features, it is part of the village town tile set. I put alot of work into that .SET file this week as well.
Next topic, the game engine. As I may have mentioned in the past, once TLOT is complete, there may be more games created (by myself as well as others) with the TLOT graphics/game engine. Aurin Wildfire pointed out that the engine should have a bit more definition to it.. perhaps a name other than "The Tlot engine".. While talking in #Quake, Chochi used a word that I felt would be a perfect name. So, from now on, the TLOT graphics/game engine will be called "The Snazzy Engine".. yes, Snazzy!
I have been doing alot of coding this week. I had to improve alot of error messages in the map editor. I spend about 3 hours tracking down bugs. I also decided to drop an ASM routine in there for speed. Once I had added the routine, I thought about adding code to slow it back down! But, I quickly adjusted to the increased speed.
I don't know if anyone has been watching this game develop, but Neophyte appears to be moving along very well. I haven't downloaded a demo recently, but I did notice some really nice screen shots. I remember when I first visited the page, the screen shots were very low quality .JPG files. The ones they have now are rather stunning. I will probably D/L a more recent demo in the near future and check it out...
Well, I submitted Bob to Eidos.. I think I mentioned that before... and then I contacted Apogee about Bob.. I have yet to hear from Eidos, but I found out something rather interesting about Apogee.. here is the message I got from Scott Miller:
Hi Scott. We don't publish puzzle games anymore--we're focused on action games only. So we wouldn't be the right company for you.That was somewhat of a surprise to me... but so goes life! I know there are a few other things I wanted to mention in this update, but I've forgotten them.. Oh well.. Until next week.......Best of luck. :)
Scott Miller
Head of Apogee Software, Ltd.
www.apogee1.com
8/3/97
This week's image is just like last weeks only with a different character. This is the sprite for Seth once he has become a full Shadonian Mage. Once again, I stuck the battle screen image of Shadonian Seth on the screen shot just for comparison.
We held our first Quake Tourney this weekend, Country Carnage! Not as many people showed as I would have liked, but it was fun none the less. We learned a few important rules to inforce at the next tourney... one of wich is "suicide means instant disqualification!" The final round, the frag limit is at 25. Robert has 24 frags and his enemy starts to suicide spastically until he his frag count is around -250. Then, every time Robert was about to nail that last frag, *POOF*, his enemy commits suicide before the rocket even reaches the target. This streched the match out for an extra 15 minutes as Robert shot off tons of ammo trying to pin the guy down, but in the end he walked away with the diamon stealth 3D video card. Next time we will have more publicity, a better location, and maybe even more prizes! Who knows, maybe we'll make more than half our invested money back this time!
School looms around the corner and that means bad things for the TLOT project. The project will not stop while I'm at school but it may very well move slow. I was hoping to be much further along this summer, but life has slowed me down. If I finish the game next summer it will truely be a laugh. I mean, currently 640x480 is becomming a standard and 320x200 is frowned apon. One year from now it will be laughed at. Who knows what the future will bring, but rest assured I'll keep plugging away at it.
One last note, Aphrodite wants people to try to figure out the .MID file embeded on her web site. I know what it is, its one of my favorite 80's tunes. If you think you know what it is, send her an e-mail..
