The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20000817094437/http://members.allegro.cc:80/fenixblade/progress.htm
The world of FENIX BLADE
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Update : August 15
Today was another highly satisfying day, filled with very substantial progress, some major bug elimination, more artwork, and a grievous amount of paperwork. I finally fixed the little shadows under objects, which weren't being masked properly. I also finished three more partially constructed rooms, rewrote several large events, added in a ton of little features to the scenario I'm working on, and did a fair bit of testing. If I keep up this pace all day (until 2 or 3 A.M. I guess) I should be able to finish this scenario completely. Right now it has 13 'rooms', (although I'll add another two later) and it should take upwards of an hour to complete... give or take a little depending on how thorough you are.

Ummm...I was bitten by the inspiration bug (or pixel muse, or whatever you want to call it) and decided to try my hand once again at a decent enemy sprite. The few I actually kept were rather old and shoddy...heh. The result is the new screenshot on the front page. As you can see, I can actually do half decent artwork when I have both the time and the proper inspiration :)



Update : August 14
I almost had a great day...so close *sob!* Things were moving swiftly in the proper direction, and I was tossing out objects, events, and rooms like never before. Lo, I was in the zone, and it was good. Unfortunately, a huge bug in my drop-in code, followed by an equally large bug in the shadowing code brought my progress to a screeching halt. I was about to go completely insane -- beyond off-kilter, beyond having malfunctioning mojo, beyond nucking futs.

This is why I don't keep weapons in the house, okay?

The voices in my head told me to consult my trusty Magic 8-ball (if you don't know what I'm talking about you're sorely deprived...) which I keep on top of my box for easy reference. The "all knowing, all seeing, mighty darn powerful, and only occasionally slightly erroneous" Magic 8-ball told me that I would be back on track before tomorrow, so my sanity was preserved for yet another evening. If there's ONE thing I've learned, it's to TRUST THE 8-BALL. Of course, this is the same 8-ball that insisted it was my destiny to buy Pakistan. Whenever that happens, I hope I remember to keep the receipt :)

Ahhh....that's life I guess. One big kick in the nuts after another. Fortunately, I've smooshed the first bug, but the second one eludes me...for the moment. I'll put it in my to-do list, and let it ride for a while. Well, hopefully tomorrow will prove to be as productive as today was. Oh and for the record, I finished up 2 brand new rooms, finished linking together 19 rooms, added 20 new scripts and world mods, and finished building 9 partially constructed rooms.



Update : August 11
Ahhh....finally a decent page update. Six or so new screenshots (on the shots page, duh), a few long overdue link updates, a full week of progress reports I'd been hoarding, and the site has finally passed the 50k hit mark. Whoa...

Any ways, as you can see from the new screen shots the engine is at a level where I can do anything with it that I can imagine, one way or another. I'm going to *try* to finish up a medium sized scenario Saturday, and that will knock a huge chunk off my "to do" list for the second demo. I have no idea what I'll be working on tonight...but it'll be something else on the list :P

Some people have asked, so the old progress reports can be found in two parts... here (part 1) and here (part 2). I think that's everything....maybe I missed a bit but I can't remember off hand.



Update : August 10
First on my list of stuff was to create more tiles, and add in a few things I had totally forgotten about. You can rearrange and sort items, but I somehow forgot to add that in to the spell lists. I quickly rewrote a couple of old script commands, and updated them so they could take advantage of the new timing features. I tested the commands by rewriting several old demo scripts, and the results were very pleasing. The scripts ran smoother and felt relatively seamless, unlike their jerky and stilted predecessors.


Update : August 09
Well, I *thought* I was going to get some good work done last night, but a power outage stopped me in my tracks around 8 P.M. I also missed the third Lexx movie because of it, and that, quick frankly, really chorked my evening :(


Update : August 08
There has always been something bothering me with the shadowing. And, as you should know by know, when something bothers me -- it's gonna get fixed. So, after a day of tinkering with the code, the renderer is more efficient, and so is the shadowing code. There were a few redundant checks I overlooked, and I came up with a more efficient way of drawing shadows. With shadowing turned on, my k6/2-333 drops about 3-4 frames per second...and since my current average frame rate on this system is around 200-210, I think that's pretty acceptable :)

In battle, an icon will briefly pop up over an enemy when it decides what action to take. Since there is a small delay between deciding and acting, you can have at least some idea of what's fixing to happen. I upped the change of missing, since it seemed unreasonably low. There is now a generic sound effect that goes off when you kill an enemy.



Update : August 07
I fixed a ton of small mistakes in the combat code; mostly stuff dealing with damage calculations. There was a small problem that was letting the user select a single target more than once. I modified the game_error routine, which now covers missing files, corrupted data and scripts, and several possible overflow errors (mostly caused by missing or corrupt data...heh). The quick stats menu now displays your level of stamina relative to your health, and I added in a few minor bits of data to the save file format. Before going to bed I whipped up two new battle backgrounds, and tweaked the color maps a bit to compensate for some of the stranger things I'm using them for :) I created 8 new items, and partially rewrote the code to handle poisoned characters.


Update : August 04
I accidentally broke the spell script code while I was making a minor addition to the combat GUI. Division by zero is an ugly thing to witness :( I noticed a small oversight in the movement handler, which was disabling left/right movement when traversing stairs. Both of those are now fixed.


Update : August 03
There are a TON of things in the battle code that I still have yet to properly test. I'm keeping a small list and checking things out as I go along. One of my goals is to release demo #2 with absolutely no bugs in it. The more stuff I test now, the less headaches I'll have later.


Update : August 02
I reworked the battle slash effects a tad, making them faster and giving them a smooth fade. The overall effect is much more satisfying, I'm happy to say :) The slashes randomly generate their own angle of attack, with a sweep of up to +/- 60 degrees. Poisoned characters show damage, but there isn't any frame (or frames) of animation to suggest something is wrong other than seeing green damage points pop up occasionally. I hope to remedy that situation over the weekend. It could also serve to indicate things such as fatigue (i.e. seriously low stamina), low health, and perhaps other things as well. If everything goes as planned, I should be able to code the frame(s) in later tonight after I finish everything else on my list. Of course, the way my life is lately, nothing is guaranteed :(


Update : August 01
Pretty sad when it's only Tuesday and you're already looking toward the weekend. My plan for the weekend (assuming I'm actually at home) is to work on the game material, and put aside the debugging and testing for later. Although I already have a pleasantly robust selection of graphics to work with, it's just not enough. So, I'll most likely be working on tiles and NPC graphics as time allows. Until then, I'll use the rest of the week to check out some quirks in the engine, and finish up a little gap in the GUI that has been bothering me for some time.

I rewrote one of the original behaviors for objects, and reduced the code from 124 lines down to 4. Not only that, but it uses less memory, and quite obviously executes much faster, and with greater precision. That's not bragging by any means, but a funny realization that my work has finally come full-circle -- behaviors that normally would occupy pages of code are now usually down to a few choice lines here and there. The huge amount of code I (thankfully) insulated myself from is finally beginning to pay off.

My bug list is currently empty, but I figure that won't last very long :)



Update : July 27
Looks like I'll be working all this weekend; no surprise there. It's been over a month since I've spent more than a few minutes at the office, and it's driving me absolutely nucking futs. As it turns out, I made a rather massive miscalculation waaaaaaaaaay back when I first started creating behaviors to move objects around the screen. Path values (a convenient way of working with angles while avoiding floats and fixed point junk) are not being interpreted correctly. I've gone ahead and rewritten the bits of code to correct my stupidity, but testing out all the various behaviors will be a royal pain.

This is definitely another one of those "If I had it to do over again" moments. I hardly ever have those like I used to, but every now and then I do something totally inept and it comes back to haunt me months later :P I've rigged up a neat routine that will immediately save me several days of work with combat effects. It also opens up some more avenues for incorporating the effects I already have at my disposal.



Update : July 26
Okay, I'm finally starting to get back on track. Fortunately, my body appears to be getting used to only 3-4 hours of sleep each night. It was definitely rough moving back into the routine, but so far I've felt great all week :)

First off, many of you are aware that mode 13h has a skewed aspect ratio, which really doesn't become very apparent until you start playing around with polygons. Fortunately, it's extremely easy to compensate for that with a bit of math. I made a severe error while writing the code to clean up after a battle, and it ended up randomly hosing memory locations throughout the engine :( It might have taken me a while to notice it, but it's pretty obvious something's spooky when the name of every character in the game suddenly gets wiped ^.^ That had me worried for an hour or so.

Since I have only a few fleeting moments in front of a real computer each day (sorry, but laptops just don't count...most of them suck) I've been keeping my updates stored in a file on my laptop, which has temporarily been set up as my FB workstation :) This summer has been very weird, very hectic, and very unpleasant -- so I have to make do with whatever my current situation will accommodate. Heh, enough complaining for now -- it's just a small fraction of relief since I've been slipping back into familiar habits :)



Update : July 24
Well, as usual I didn't have much time to devote to the project, but I did manage to fix some serious issues. Apparently the sound card in my laptop (a generic SB Pro compatible) couldn't handle the default digital sampling rate, and although it DID manage to play sounds, it choked on them and gave a play rate of about 1/4 normal speed. Dropping the sampling rate eliminated the problem, and since the samples in the game are of rather modest quality no sound degradation was noticed. While I was feeling inspired to 'fix' stuff, I rewrote the data loading routines, and now the room files used by the engine are all approximately 50% smaller. I'll need to thoroughly test everything to make sure I didn't accidentally hose some of the data :)

I quickly whipped up a new object behavior to help get a new script up and running. Combat sequences can now be properly called within scripts (fixed a memory leak...ick!) and sound effects now work in all parts of the GUI. Yay.



Update : July 21
In my haste to complete the GUI, I totally forgot about equipping skills, so I had to fit that into the menu. I created a few more icons to go with the GUI, and a several additional sound effects to help round things out. In order to get some of the more recent cut-scenes and effects to work properly, I had to create a new script command to handle on-screen text. I put in a little hack to get the stats screen up and running properly while in the world map.

Although I still have a lot of things to tie together inside the scripts and more npcs to create, things are coming together in a very nice fashion. The engine is (still) running perfectly on my old P-133, which is a good sign :) Once I have all the raw materials I need (in terms of graphics and objects), I should be able to complete the demo in a week. Of course, we're talking one solid week of nothing but my job during the day, and work on FB at night. The trouble is... I'm having terrible difficulty finding time AT HOME. Keeping my fingers crossed, I might have a day or two this weekend at home and relatively undisturbed, so let's see what happens? Who knows, maybe I'll even skip a few hours of sleep and finish that page update I've been promising for months :P Regardless, don't look for the demo this month :(



Update : July 19
This summer has been (so far) pretty terrible. I don't see it getting any better until September, which is bad news all around :( I have, however, been able to keep my pace up a little bit. This week I've been fixing bugs and making minor changes to late additions in the engine.

My plan for the game works like this : As you progress through the game, you will view numerous cut-scenes that either advance the plot, or offer you insight to the personalities of the characters themselves. Since the game will feature a vast amount of these, you might not want to see them all -- and as such you can skip most of the cut-scenes in the game if you so desire. Although I don't really see why you would WANT to skip any of them, at least not initially...people have asked for it, so I put it in. Anything that might get annoying after being seen once (like a huge conversation right before a tough boss battle) can be skipped.

Doing it that way, people can delve into the personalities and quirks of the players as much as they wish, or choose to ignore the minor details and play the game strictly by the plot. Some people prefer involved scenes with rich dialogue and character interaction, and others find it annoying. With this approach, I hope to satisfy both camps. Please note that events vital to the plot cannot be skipped.



Update : July 16
Okay, for the first time in quite a while I've had a good stretch of 'quality time' at home, so naturally that involved a lot of work on FB :) I rewrote the texture mapper entirely in ASM, (that was NOT fun) and it boosted the performance by about 25-30%. I was hoping for a lot more but I already had the c/asm code fairly optimized; however, I'll gladly take what I can get. It seems to make a big difference on slower CPUs. Sound effects inside the gui were already fully supported, but until yesterday I hadn't felt inspired to actually do something about it. So, after some line input, messing with the mic, and massive tweaking inside a couple of sample editors I now have a much larger amount of sound effects for the game :)

No, I never got around to that 'decent' page update I mentioned earlier -- you know, a batch of recent screenshots, updated links, news, faster email response, etc etc. I try to keep up with things as best I can, but as you can imagine it's not gettings any easier. But hey, I still update regularly compared to most projects, I still answer all my email, (I just don't always do it in a reasonable amount of time...or I lose the mail, ugh...) and I work on the project every day, so I guess I'm not that bad YET. Heh... :)

I'm still running around at work, and things look like they won't change for another month or so, so I've altered my home schedule to fit in adequate time to work on FB. This, of course, means my already insubstantial social life and sleep patterns will suffer greatly, but in the end I'll achieve my goals faster. I went through another bug check and everything turned out fine so far...but who knows how long that will last? ^.^



Update : July 12
I implemented a rather crude hack to get the GUI working on the main map once again :( There were still plenty of tiny bugs floating around in the combat code -- mostly stuff like hit/miss percentage errors, critical hit miscalculations, etc etc. I think I have all of them taken care of, at least until something else pops up! I tweaked the GUI yet again, animated ALL of the battle menus/boxes, and fixed a bug where music wasn't being turned off in a timely manner after a big battle. I'm hoping to spend a little time tonight optimizing the texture mapper just a bit more. Some of the combat effects can become a bit taxing on the cpu when you have five spells going off simultaneously :) Fortunately, since the screen doen't scroll during battles I can drop frames like crazy and no one will notice. It's one of the few luxuries I can indulge in ^.^


Update : July 11
I've been working on a very nice addition to the combat code, and so far everything works well; but I need the rest of tonight to get everything tweaked to my satisfaction. It adds another small tactical aspect to battles without bogging the action down or making things needlessly complicated. And, as you might expect, it'll be fully implemented in demo 2. Since I've added a massive amount of new features to the game, I'm going to add in a couple of extra training centers to help introduce players to the various combat and non-combat features that have found their way into the engine. There are also a plethora of scripts that explain the uses of skills and abilities as you come across them in the game. So, in typical Zelda-esque fashion, you'll never find yourself wondering "Okay, now that I have the [insert useful thing here], what can I do with it?"

I had to fix a major bug in the mentoring system, which was allowing me to set player 01 as a mentor to more than one character :( I also fixed another nasty bug in the combat GUI. And, because I'm picky, NPCs (in case you haven't guessed by now, that stands for Non Player Characters) wander around in a much less neurotic fashion.



Update : July 09
Jeez, I've got so much to say I can't even think of where to start; which is probably a fair sign I need to go to bed :) Although my job is currently making work on FB almost unbearable (and highly inconvenient at best...heh) I'm still plodding along. I've done a lot of new artwork, a ton of tweaking to the GUI and combat stuff, nuked an embarassingly large amount of bugs, and did more work on the world map. I got an old roommate back, so this weekend was thrown into a small vat of chaos as things such as moving furniture and trips across town were in order. But, renting out the extra room means more money for me -- and that's nothing to complain about :) I'll probably be gone all this week (same as the last two weeks...ugh) and I just noticed my email provider suddenly stopped supporting POP3; which might explain why I just checked my email from the site and had like 8 zillion new messages. And here I thought I had my email backlog caught up...heh. I need a vacation :P

Hopefully this start-up I'm on will be over shortly and I can get my life back in order. Until then, I will continue to work like mad on FB, but I won't be in a position to say (or show) much about it :(



Update : July 04
Crapola. I'm having a stupidly difficult time working on FB lately. I've been at this idiotic start-up where we drive there and back every day. So, instead of having some time to work peacefully in a nice hotel room, I come home and immediately fall asleep. I'm so pissed :O

In my (meager) defense, I've done a lot lately, but not nearly enough to keep me satisfied. I'm also lacking a good page update (which I still plan to do when I have some time off) and a bunch of other stuff. Stay tuned for more news as it happens....erm.... something like that :)



Update : June 26
Sorry to spew this all at once, but I actually got to come home today, so I've been a very busy little coder! I didn't get to any email, though.

I tweaked the engine to allow for better chances of critical hits when weapon proficiencies are higher. I also changed the animation just a little. The demo 1 material as you probably know (if you bothered to read the supplied txt file) is horribly linear to help make up for the lack of combat. That has been remedied in the upcoming demo. Not that I consider combat a replacement for actual plot events, but it does help space things out so you don't feel like you're being lead around by the nose :) Most of Montag's actions in the Inn are now optional, and completing them will open up new or existing events later on in the scenario (like the base).

A simple scoring system has been implemented, for what it's worth. As you complete various events and actions, you may receive a couple of points for it. This is mainly useful in determining how much of the content of the game you've covered. I won't bother going into any more detail since it's pretty self-explanatory. I added more stuff to the config menu, and tweaked the gui a bit to get rid of some bugs.

I finished working on support for bound weapons. Although they are covered in the weapons section of the site, there is one other part I left out concerning these special weapons. Let's just say it's very big and I don't want to spoil it...but you'll get to mess with it in demo 2. I still need to complete the effects to go along with the bound stuff, though...

I got lucky, so I got to whip up this little update. I gotta get back to work! Keep chanting the FB mantra... "sleep is for the weak..."



Update : June 25
Sorry for the lack of updates (and not being able to answer email, either...heh) but I've been away from home all this week, and some of last week, and I'll still be gone this next week. Fortunately, I can work on FB while I'm away, and although various things have slowed me down a tad, the pace is still brisk. When I finally get some real time at home I'll do a proper page update with more new screenshots, progress stuff, info, etc etc.

I took a half hour this evening to write a truly useful bit of code. It allows me to specify points of interest with the mouse, and then the code examines the points, determines their relation, fills in the gaps, and properly edges the whole thing. In other words... instead of laboriously dropping tile after tile to create patches of grass or roads or whatever, I can punch a key, issue some points with the mouse, and let the world builder do all the work for me :) Needless to say, this will shave hours off the time required to make large open areas with a lot of ground detail. The town in the demo is a prime example of what I'm referring to :)

There is a nasty bug in the battle script code that I just noticed this morning, so I guess I'll have to look into that tomorrow when I have some free time. I'm mostly busy working on new graphics, and I'm almost finished redoing all the demo 1 material (there was more there than I remembered...heheh). Oooh...I need to sleep now. Hopefully I'll be back soon!



Update : June 15
Well, so far today has been a pleasantly productive day. I fished out a bug inside the renderer that was causing double shadows to appear when characters were immersed in environmental stuff; I also added full volume control for sound and music...something people have been asking for since day one. Of course, I've felt lazy about it until today :) The music being played in the background pauses when combat starts (because the battle music begins...duh) and is restored where it left off once battle has been completed. This way you don't end up hearing the beginning of a piece of music 30 zillion times while zipping through an area fighting baddies :)

I also did a ton of graphic work, especially on domestic tiles. You know, boxes, walls, floors, furniture, etc etc. Check out the screenshot on the front page... As you can see the project is coming along very well. I did a bit more work on the configuration screen, mostly because I forgot to add some stuff.



Update : June 13
I discovered some little bugs in the npc handling code, so I need to whack those before I crash tonight. I started some hard-core work on the game (and demo) itself, restructuring most of the game data to make things easier on myself farther down the road. I finished drawing Juno's new frames of animation... and another npc as well. I just might post a new pic tomorrow if things go well. There also remains a need to clean some stuff inside the world builder; tomorrow would probably be a good day for that. Plenty of little bugs and oversights corrected, a nice addition to the renderer, another big script complete, and I even redid all the work on the configuration menu that I had previously lost.


Update : June 12
Oops, looks like I've been lax in my progress reports. I've spend the past week fixing little bugs, tweaking the GUI a bit (the configuration menu is totally different now), removed the .INI file, scripted some rather funky special effects, redesigned a bunch of characters, filled in the world map a bit more, created another script command, revised several previous commands, optimized the engine to load faster, optimized the gui to run a bit smoother... and some other stuff I've already forgotten about :)

Also, in the game there is a crazy little guy who will turn up and sell you hints if you find yourself hopelessly stuck. The catch (and it's a big one) is that most hints cost quite a lot of money, and... you're gonna hate me for this... you can't cheat and get hints for free. When you buy a hint your game is automatically saved (you'll be warned before it happens, in case you're not keen on saving your progress). So, you can't do what I do all the time; buy some advice, then hit the reset button and continue with the knowledge AND your money :)

A big *swoo* goes out to Tom Beaumont (I knew that name sounded familiar...heh) for pointing out a rather evil translation error on the main page (you've probably noticed something missing, no?), and providing me with a fix for it. I'll do something about it in a day or two when I feel sufficiently inspired to... erm... fix stuff.

I messed up and lost about 5 hours of work, and that makes me a rather unpleasant person to be around today :( Once again, I'd just like to say that our local ISP is a huge, slow, and worthless piece of crap. I'd use something else, but there IS nothing else around here. Oh well...funny thing is you can replace the words "our local ISP" with "Windows" and the above statements seem to work as well...heh. Thank God I get to use Linux at work :P Flame me if you want, but I've never crashed a Linux app ^.^

Okay, enough ranting for now. I obviously need more sleep.



Update : June 08
The next person who uses the word 'innovate' is gonna get shot.

I changed the page around a bit to decrease load time. The page logo looks a bit blurrier, but that's the price you pay for using jpegs :) Not very noticeable, fortunately. Hopefully this won't screw up everything on the site ^.^

And yes, I'm still drawing stuff like mad.



Update : June 07
[..WARNING -- POINTLESS RANT APPROACHING..]
They say all good things must come to an end. And so, after a decade of giving us truly kick-ass games, Looking Glass (lglass.com) is going under. Apparently Eidos spent so much liquid pumping up Daikatana they couldn't buy out LG and keep them afloat. What a waste! Well, I bought Underworld 1+2 as well as System Shock 1+2, Thief 1, Terra Nova, and Flight Unlimited 1. So, I can't say I didn't support the company in my own small way :) This is a prime example of one of the most prevalent flaws in the whole game industry -- the companies that try to push the edges of the envelope end up losing out to companies that push clones and mindless franchises out the door as fast as they possibly can.

As production costs rise astronomically ($2-4 mil is average anymore) the 'break even' point continues to grow as well. How long will this pace continue when 90+% of all games fail to break even? Actually, now that I stop and consider it; do I really care? Probably not...

Oh well, in other (less important) news, I'm just finishing up the first of the redesigned NPCs, and if everything comes out satisfactory I'll immediately start reworking the rest. And yes, the characters will now feature shading, as opposed to the 'flat' people who inhabit the current demo. I also just noticed a small flaw in the walking animation for ALL characters. Apparently when walking up the arms move in the wrong direction, so.... *sigh* I need to spend more time fixing that problem. Gad...at least I caught it before I finished all the people in the game :)



Update : June 06
Funny thing -- I was sitting here working on the animation frames for a generic NPC when I suddenly realized it had been a long time since I gave any serious thought to giving up the project. Back when I restarted FB in '98 I was pretty tired of programming in general, and thinking of all the good times I had missed working into the wee hours of the night was really beginning to take their toll.

Since then I've seen better days, and now that the engine is complete things are rolling smoothly. I've shrugged off plenty of needlessly harsh criticism, even more lavish praise that I probably don't entirely deserve, (I have an inferiority complex, so don't fret...hehe) and never let myself lose perspective. Giving up would just be utterly pointless, so it's not even a possibility.

So, looking back at the 1.94 megs of C++ and ASM code I have sitting on my HD, realizing that the programming is finally over was quite an eye-opening experience. Sure, I'll be making tiny tweaks and minor additions as I continue constructing the game itself, but the long nights spent with my nose in the compiler and oh-so-familiar copy of Rhide are at an end. It's truly a strange feeling. I actually never expected to get this far. And to think I do all this in my spare time -- good God I must be crazy :)

Well, you're probably here just to see what I did today, so here it is : I'm drawing stuff. Lots of stuff. I'll tell you more tomorrow :)



Update : June 05
Well, today was Kim's birthday (my wife, for those who don't already know...heh) and it was a rather blah day for both of us. We felt pretty bad all day. Hopefully tomorrow will prove to be a much more productive day. I spent today making some more signs for the towns, and totally redesigning the npcs found in cities, towns, etc. So far they look much better, but I need to spend a lot of time working on them before all the drawing will be complete. So far everything is coming along well on that end of things. I've also been working on the world map. I'm adding in more forests, and some desert regions as well. Tomorrow I'll most likely still be working on the npc graphics since I seem to be on a roll :)

Yes, I'm back home now, so expect the usual number of updates, new screenshots, etc, etc :P



Update : May 31
Augh....life has been so crappy lately. I'll be gone ONCE AGAIN starting tomorrow, but this time I'll bring my laptop with me. If I can manage to stay home for more than 2 days at a time I might actually get something done :(

Any ways, to help make up for all the crap I've been through over the last month, I tweaked the real-time shadowing to be much more accurate (and a little faster, if you can believe that...heh) and added in shadows under characters. I used light mapped sprites....none of that cheap "big black circle under the player" junk you see in so many games. I figure since I've made such huge leaps in engine performance since the last demo, I may as well put some of those extra cpu cycles to good use :)

Support for breakable objects is complete inside the scripts, and a special item is required to take advantage of the feature. You'll be able to find it in the demo, since I was feeling nice at the time :)

I've been running around like a chicken with its head lopped off, and I've been having a sorry time getting any work done. Mostly graphic work and character redesigning, along with scripts and revising the old demo 1 material. Heh, I just need a couple of solid days back to back where I can work undisturbed....something I used to take for granted, but now I can barely find time to even eat, much less everything else :P

So, work slows down, the email backlog continues to proliferate, and the really funny thing is I'm starting to get a bunch of emails complaining about the lack of update(s). C'mon folks, it's not like I go for 6 months without any peep. Don't forget I'm one of the many people who helped start the trend of frequent progress updates :P Hehhehhheh....heheheh....ahem. Yep. Whatever. No big deal. I'll pick up the pace this weekend if everything goes well. We'll see what happens!



Update : May 19
Today I'm working on a few simple "destructable" items in the game. This is purely a script addition and nothing that requires any code :) I'm beginning to truly appreciate all the extra effort I put into this engine while I was designing it ^.^

I haven't decided if I'll require a special item to destroy objects, but I'm toying with the idea. I made a simple script hack that will abort a script if the player doesn't possess a certain item. That'll come in handy in the future :) Before I leave on Monday I'll try to post new links as well as a series of "before and after" screenshots showing how the old demo material stacks up against the current stuff I'm fixing to release. Oddly enough, I'm still just as excited about all this as I was 2 years ago when I restarted the project. Kinda cool -- it's like a having a toy where the 'new' never wears off :)

Gotta go. The voices in my head are telling me to order pizza!



Update : May 18
My ISP is woefully inadequate. Whenever someone tries to upload data after 12:30 in the morning, it automatically boots them after about 30-35k. Since I never do updates BEFORE 1 A.M. .... this is obviously making me rather irritable. No one likes to reconnect 10 times to do a simple page update :( Hence...the sudden rash of updates being posted all at once :P

So far I've accomplished quite a lot over the past two days. I've made big upgrades in the world builder, added and improved hundreds of tiles, and made significant progress in reworking the old demo 1 material. Demo 2 will take place before demo 1 starts, but once you've gotten that far you should go ahead and continue into the material covered in demo 1....you might be surprised :) All that is beside the point that you MUST go through everything to get to the ending of the demo.

I'm adding a lot of small stuff to the underground base, especially changing events, more side actions, and definitely some save points so you can check your progress before you get into something...erm...a little dangerous :)

I have also cut down on the lagging pace of the demo, as it was beefed up with extra cut-scenes to compensate for the lack of combat and a functional GUI. You will have much more freedom (just like the actual game will be) and can often skip past events in the game, or backtrack if you so desire.



Update : May 15
Wow, I have so much work to do, and so little time. Worse yet, I'll be leaving next Monday for a business trip to Michigan...so you can guess what that does for the project schedule. This is really starting to piss me off. I just can't seem to get a good stretch of working time lately.

Fortunately, the reconstruction of demo 1 material is under way, and everything looks, feels, and works much better. I'm hoping to work on more important things while I'm here, and leave the tedious stuff for when I'm stuck in a hotel room in Michigan. Maybe before I leave I'll post some shots from the 'new' parts of demo 1....a bit of food for thought while I'm gone :)



Update : May 12
There were several bugs lurking within the combat stuff, so I had to take care of them before I could make any progress. I fixed the death animation, and also corrected an error on my part that was keeping the battle from recognizing that the party had been wiped out. I made a ton of little tweaks and additions inside the GUI, and started completely reworking the game intro from scratch. I'll only keep the final part from the intro -- the rest is going bye-bye. Although kinda nifty, I never liked it much. It also generated a ton of little burps in the palette, and stuff like that aggravates the bejeezus outta me.


Update : May 10
Yes, I'm still waaaay behind on my email again. Please don't hate me too much :P

Well, Panzer's frames are finally complete (well, mostly) and along with it a ton of additions to the various objects in the game. I fixed a big bug in the combat engine that was executing combat scripts and never waiting for them to finish -- something that was wrecking havoc with my spells :) I also did a lot of other things...most of which I've already forgotten about. I fixed the problems with the mentoring system, so players can actually learn skills. There were plenty of additions to the GUI, and some small bug fixes across the board. Hopefully tomorrow will prove to be another productive day just like today was.



Update : May 09
There's a new screenshot on the main page (although you probably noticed)

Well, I had high hopes of putting out the demo around this time, but as usual things became complicated -- I had road trips out the wazoo, little time at home (my fault on that part) and technical problems cropped up at the last moment. I also delayed things endlessly adding stuff to the engine, but after seeing some of the finished product in action I have absolutely no doubt in my mind I made the right choice in upgrading the engine.

I just started working on Panzer's frames of animation, although I won't have him finished tonight. Well, maybe if I'm really inspired I'll have him mostly complete. But I'll never finish it if I do my daily email run :P I finished up a brand new location with about 50 new tiles, and yesterday I drew approximately 85 new tiles.



Update : May 08
Okay, today was a particular unpleasant day. But, I got a lot accomplished, so I guess I can't complain too much. Now...here's something you won't hear me say very often: I need some help!

Yep. You read that right. I'm strapped for time and I can use a hand with a rather dodgy situation. So, all you Allegro users sound off...here's your homework assignment :) The build I'm using (v3.12) does not support the use of the polygon() function along with BOTH transparency AND a bitmap pattern. You can have one or the other, but not both. So, basically I want to draw a 2d polygon that has a transparent pattern in one pass. I can do it in two passes (first drawing the polygon with a pattern in a separate buffer, then doing a trans_sprite or whatever) but that wastes a lot of time -- and I hate that. Doing it using two passes drops my average frame rate by about.... way too much :(

Naturally I implemented a nasty hack to get by for now because I'm running on a tight schedule, but for reasons of speed and my nagging sense of completion I'd like someone to fix this for me. Normally I don't use Allegro's blitting functions (even though they are quite nice), but this is definitely a special case.

Skip this part if you're NOT interested, otherwise listen up. In the file gfx8.s you will find the _linear_hline8 function (or something like that...I forget exactly) and that's where the change/additions need to be made. Email me the snippet of code you produced (it won't be but a few lines), and you'll earn mucho gratitude on my part as well as something nifty to give back to the Allegro community :)

Sorry, but I'm feeling very lazy right now since I'm placing 100% of my time into designing the game world and artwork rather than coding. And no, I don't need anything other than that :P



Update : May 07
Heh, 40000 hits! And I wasn't even around to notice :(

Whoa, time passes when you're operating under a deadline. I posted a 'before and after' segment on the screenshots page to demonstrate the direction the game is taking. As you may have guessed, the entire contents of the first demo are being redone to conform to the standards of the rest of the game. Yes, this means about an extra 2 day delay in my schedule, but I assure you it has to happen eventually, so why not now?

There are still a lot of little quirks in the engine that I need to address, as well as monsters to finish, more battle backgrounds to complete, scripts to revise, etc etc. I can easily see myself losing a lot of sleep this week and possibly the next as well.

On a happier note, my trip went well, and it allowed me to relax a bit and look at the game from a fresh perspective. I picked up a copy of Star Ocean 2 over the weekend, and I'm desperate to find some time to play it. I dug into it a little last night and was very happy with what I saw :)



Update : May 02
Okay, I'm leaving tomorrow for a business trip and I won't be back until Monday. I won't have net access so don't expect any email replies until after I get back. I'll bring the laptop with me, but I probably won't get much done. Have fun until then :)


Update : April 30
I have managed to eliminate ALL the bugs in the scripting, and now I am a very happy person...not to mention relieved :) I spent most of the day killing bugs, making improvements, and steamlining the combat GUI. As I probably mentioned earlier, the combat system is completely non-interrupted. In other words, at no point is control ever taken from you...unless of course none of your characters are capable of taking action. This means you're free to choose your actions even in the midst of spells being cast, enemy attacks being thrown, etc etc. It takes a lot more effort to get it to work right, but I like it :)

I'm tired, so this will be a short update to cover the entire weekend. I did a ton of new artwork, and completed Montag's new frames of animation. I made several small additions to the buy/sell stuff, fixed some things in the GUI, and tweaked the item list.



Update : April 26
Yes, I'm *way* behind on my email, but I'm working on it as time allows.

I spent about 30 minutes going bonkers after the game suddenly started locking up the computer. The problem (get ready to laugh) was that there was a missing graphic file, and it was one of the very few that the engine loads without checking to see if it actually exists. I hate it when I do that.

There were a lot of little bugs lurking inside the battle script code, so I had to turn my attention to that. Once I get everything out of the way in the spell scripts I can concentrate on the game itself a bit more. I figured out why the screen rumble command wasn't working (which was starting to worry me...the 8 line script routine just didn't have much that could go wrong) but stumbled on to a huge nest of bugs that will probably take quite a while to fix.

I'm working on a TON of things right now, working feverishly to get the demo out the door, although I'll readily admit there's a lot left to do. I just completed a new spell script, which ended up looking much better than I had imagined it would. So...once I get all the bugs cleaned out I'll have a smooth, efficient combat engine to work with.

Ugh...let's see what else is new. I'm rewriting parts of the old demo to help it fit into the framework of the actual game world. Montag's scenario with the Inn is now optional, as is the other big scenario included with demo #2. There will be two manditory scenarios to keep the story flowing properly, and numerous cut scenes sprinkled about. Egad, I really need to stop and get a grip. I'm feeling totally overwhelmed right now. I should feel better tomorrow after I'm rested...that'll give me time to check my priorities and put things into proper perspective. I just have soooooooo many thing floating through my mind right now, I'm beginning to lose my concentration.

Oh, hey...is that a pillow over............. *thud*



Update : April 25
Joy! The new Allegro Games Depot site has been opened (which is now called Allegro.cc, which happens to be the address as well!) If you use Allegro, or have an Allegro project, you should go there NOW. Full address is www.allegro.cc.

Today was a rough day. For months I've been putting off several major fixes inside the engine. Things that other (more sane) coders might dismiss as "not broken, so don't mess with it." But, being stupid, I waded into the code once more and rounded up one massive headache after another. Fortunately, with all the dust (and aspirin) settled, the textbox draws to the screen at more than double its current speed, which will help slower computers. Particles now behave like their fellow objects do, and commit suicide (heh...such a cute term) when their actions are complete. Game scripts can run concurrently; up to ten at a time. I'm still working on increasing the maximum number of objects the engine can handle. I had to fix a small bug in the player sprites, and I fixed several nasty bugs in the object handler.

Other than all that, I worked on the player animation a bit, tweaked some GUI stuff, fixed some bugs in the combat menus, and fixed a small mistake in one of my spell scripts. Ohhh....my poor head. And I still have to do a page update. Ack! There's a new screenshot on the front page...no surprise there.



Update : April 24
Okay, I didn't get to do a page update this weekend due to....things beyond my control. I finished redrawing the legion troops, tweaked Lira's sprites, added more commands to the battle scripts (that last bit will occur frequently), fixed a few bugs, tweaked combat icons, created a weird set of floor tiles that could come in handy relatively soon, and completed an entry-level spell script. The spells are actually somewhat easier to create than I had expected.

Ahhh...another obstacle to face. I could've taken the easy way out, but that's just not my style. I needed to work out a way to run up to 10 different scripts concurrently, and after a few hours tinkering with some ideas, I sat down and added it to the engine. There are still some things that don't work perfectly, but I'll have them hammered out pretty soon.



Update : April 21
The particle editor is finished, and works well -- not that I'll have to use it much. I finally got around to finishing up Rhyss' frames of animation, and his new uniform is a big improvement over what he had. I also finished all frames for Tessa (completely redesigned), as well as Minx (minor tweaks), and I have the basic frames complete for Panzer, Lira, Angelia, and Garette. Not all of them will appear in demo #2, but you'll see at least 5 of the main characters. I fixed some small quirks in the particle renderer, and made another addition to it that expands its functionality even more. It's already playing a big part in combat, and is becoming more important in the rest of the game as well. Hmmm...I still need to do some work with Montag's sprites, but it shouldn't take more than an hour to finish. Perhaps tomorrow will be a good day for that? We'll see what happens. I have a feeling tomorrow will end up being an artwork/spell design kinda day. Should be fun :)


Update : April 20
I finally finished the work I started last week, and so far it's performing well beyond my expectations. I'm extremely pleased with the results, and it's going to improve the quality of the game immensely.

I'm working on three spells at the moment, as well as the more technical aspects of the spell scripts, and what I really need to do is take an entire day and use it to construct my more advanced spells. I had to pause to make a particle editor since my simple particle system suddenly turned out to be not-so-simple after all :) Now I'll be able to make complex particle objects in minutes rather than hours. I should have that complete early Friday after I leave work. I added a bunch of stuff to the GUI, fixed some combat quirks and menus, and added a ton of extra flexibility to the particle and vector portions of the engine. The equipment menu also got a few nifty additions, and I knocked out a bad bug in the Player Stats menu. Not too bad for a day's work.



Update : April 19
The list of "to do" thingies is starting to rapidly dwindle, and I'm setting aside even more time to work on the game -- so we should see something very nice in the near future -- but don't ask when because I'm not exactly sure when I'll be done ^.^

Well, for some reason this project has been receiving a rather large amount of attention lately, and so far it's all been good. Weird. I'm not used to this. Any ways, all things aside I'm working hard on the game, and a recent email brought something to mind that I never considered. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm actually working on the GAME itself right now, and that the demo that's being produced is a....well...how do I put this? It's sort of a slice of the whole work. So, don't worry about me putting the game aside just to make a demo -- because the demo IS the game....just not all of it :)

Okay, enough about that. I've been listening all this time...and have no fear, because I've taken all requests to heart (more or less)

You said "The demo is groovy, but I want to see more!" And I said "Sure, I can dig that."

Then you said "How about some combat, bone daddy?" And I said, "Sho 'nuff."

And who could forget the ever present "Can we get it to run a little faster?" Naturally I replied, "Uh huh. Smoother, too!"

And what about "Let's see some save/load features!" To which I replied "It's a done deal!"

Finally...you said "It'll be bigger, better, and groovier than ever before, yes?"


"Hell yes."



Update : April 16
Aside from tonight, I took the entire weekend off from the project to rest. I'll most likely be up quite late tonight working out the last few details of the stuff I've been working on for the past week. All in all, I'm extremely pleased with the new character designs and animation, and this whole system will eliminate a huge chunk of artwork that I'd have to draw in the near future.

Well, as far as I'm concerned....it's officially summer. The moment I'm actually tempted to turn on my air conditioner (which remains off until I can't stand it anymore...heh, saves a ton of money) signals the end of comfortable days. The game is coming along better than I could have hoped, and a majority of the graphics for the entire game are complete.



Update : April 14
I'm doing an early update today since I'm taking the rest of the day 'off'. I've totally redone the character designs, and they are a huge improvement over what's in the current demo. I had to do it sometime, and I had an artistic itch to scratch, so....


Update : April 13
Yesterday I finished upgrading the renderer to utilize the extra stuff, and I also added a bit more flexibility and speed to it. Wading through all the C/ASM code that I was trying so hard to insulate myself from (heh...works both ways, doesn't it?) was definitely unpleasant, but I didn't introduce any new bugs so I'd call it a success. I'll spend the rest of tonight redrawing some of the graphics to come up to spec with the new design standards, and coding in the last bit of stuff for the new script support. Things are turning out much better than I had anticipated, which is always nice :)


Update : April 11
So, I'm sitting here listening to Sasha's Xpander EP while working on the demo, and grinning like a junkie on little yellow pills because I just know I'm fixing to have some serious fun.

And about that update below...that was not a typo. I really do mean I have 400+ frames of animation for characters and npcs. I'm having way too much fun with that :) This is crazy as hell, but at least I'm still having FUN ^.^

Sometimes, I truly surprise myself. This is probably one of those days....heh. [ dodges brick from Stover ]



Update : April 09
Wow, no updates for a long time, eh? Well, I've taken a small break from the project (and not by choice, mind you) and now it's time to get back into things full-steam. I've made two VERY important modifications to the engine: one that allows for shadowing without layers or slowdown, and a little technique that now gives me over 400 unique frames of animation for each character. Best of all, it requires no additional drawing beyond what I already have. Ahhh... life is good :)

Naturally I'll need to spend a while working with this new stuff to get the hang of how it all flows, but I strongly suspect I'll have everything back in order by late Thursday. It's a delay for sure, but well worth it! Once I have everything in order, I'll have an enormous level of flexibility while scripting, and I'll be able to breathe more life into the game world.

I'm still working on combat, too -- looks very solid and runs perfectly so far. Spell effects are starting to come together quite nicely. I also managed to spiff up the GUI a good bit in my spare time.



Update : March 30
Okay, I'll be leaving tomorrow for a short start-up in Hoboken (and just what, pray tell, is a town doing with a name like THAT?) Anyways, I won't be able to continue my work on the game until I return. Hopefully we'll come back Sunday. Maybe if I'm really lucky it'll be Saturday. I just finished working on that addition I mentioned in the last report, and so far everything works better than I expected. I'll take care of my pile of email when I come back. I've been so busy lately it's hard to stop and do stuff like email and page updates :)


Update : March 29
Typically, progress reports become somewhat sporadic when I'm either not working on the game much, or I'm on the road, sick, etc etc. In in weird twist of events, I haven't been updating much lately because I actually HAVE been working on the game a lot. Heh, I'm strange that way, I guess.

Well, I just finished up the location I've been working on. So, things are definitely getting much better. Back when I first started, this would've taken me over a month to complete; now I've managed it one week. In a little bit, I might have it down to two or three days. That will make progress on the game much more bearable. I've spent a lot of time working on the world builder and scripts, and now I can finally see it all paying off.

I'm working on a very small addition to the engine (hey...hey! Stop throwing things at me, okay?) that should have negligable impact on game performance and might possibly make things look (and feel) much better. I'll tinker with it some tonight if time allows, but my schedule is very tight and it's not a big priority, so we'll see what happens. Fortunately, if I can make it work without any performance drop it'll *definitely* go into demo #2 because I've been keen on doing something like this for quite some time.



Update : March 27
Ugh, I felt pretty sick this afternoon so I didn't accomplish much today. I added more animation to the GUI, created about 30 or so new tiles, and finished designing the scripts for the area I'm working on. I should have it all sewn up by the end of tomorrow unless my luck runs out. I'll provide a better update (and some new shots) tomorrow. I've got a long day ahead of me at work.


Update : March 25
I added another tweak to the GUI to smooth it out a bit. I've been working on the new location for the last couple of days, and implementing fixes and additions as I encounter new situations. It's been a little slow since I've never done some of the things I'm working on now, and occasionally I need to stop and add stuff to the world builder so I can be more productive. All in all this location is shaping up very well, and I'm looking forward to completing it so I can give it a good run-through and see how everything turned out :)

I'm working on a little musical piece in my spare time that's been floating around in my head for the last year. I just need to find the time to get it sounding right. It'll be used in demo 2, since it fits the theme of this new location pretty well. I might post a new screenshot tomorrow.



Update : March 22
Well, over the past two days I've whipped up over 100 new tiles, and also started work on a completely new area that you'll get to explore in the upcoming demo. I needed to pause for a moment and make some badly-needed additions to my world builder. No new bugs have made an appearance recently, which is a good sign considering all the coding I've done recently. I should be able to finish this new area within a few days, although the scripting for it might be a bit tricky since it involves a few things I haven't used in quite a while :) I'm finding it a lot easier to draw the graphics for the game, and the quality has definitely improved since the last demo went out. Wow, I look back at that first demo and gag when I think about how sparse everything was. Oh well, I had to start somewhere :)


Update : March 20
Okay, first off, I no longer use any IM software (like icq). It was fun for a while but I have to face reality -- I'm just too busy with this project to spend time yakking.

Heh, what a rotten weekend it was. I had a thoroughly miserable time, in case you were wondering. Saturday was certainly a good day for FB. I finished the stats screen (and all the icons that go with it), added basic support for ambient sounds, and fixed a bug that was crashing the engine after the game was reset. Sunday found me working on the various evil bugs that have eluded me for quite a while...all the little ones I had forgotten about.

I fixed a problem that was keeping items from being used in the stats menu. On a cool note, Mist just informed me that they are back to work on Lantal, Execute's current rpg project. This is definitely good since they have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to seeing more of their work. Perhaps in the near future Red Karma will have another double release. Yes, that could be something to look forward to :)

Let's see, what else? Ah yes, I added more stuff to the GUI, fixed some minor details, and laid out a plan to make a huge improvement in the ambient sound support. I might get to that tomorrow if I'm lucky. Hmmm...time for some sleep. Oh, one last thing, (and not a very important bit at that, but...) I smoothed out some of the combat animation since player attacks were looking too rough.



Update : March 16
Okay, the save/load stuff is finally out of the way (whew!) and with it came the realization that the engine is complete, more or less. I just have to finish the enemy AI and tweak the mechanics a tiny bit. Also, it's reassuring to note that I seem to have eliminated all the bugs/quirks in the engine. Tomorrow I plan to finish off a few minor details such as the last part of the stats menu, volume controls, etc etc. Then it's back to the AI. This should be interesting, to say the least :)


Update : March 15
I noticed a huge chunk of redundant code that was increasing load time by about a third. That was taken care of, naturally. Well, back around the days of demo 1.2 I created a status screen at load time that displayed the progress of the engine as it set itself up. Now, it loads so fast the screen basically flickers on and then off in under half a second, so I guess it's not of much use anymore :) Oh well, that's the story of my life : I do something useful, then months later I (unintentionally) make it obsolete. Let's see...I have sound and volume controls inside the GUI, but nothing that makes them actually work (heh...oops) so I guess I need to work on that soon. I just put in the code to handle status changes, and I'm working on status effects right now. It isn't in my schedule for this week, but...I can make it fit :) I royally screwed myself when I set up the stuff to handle combat damage, but fortunately I rewrote it before things got too messy. I finally fixed a little bug in the combat animation code that has been annoying me ever since I first wrote it. Hmmm...what else did I do today....oh yeah, I finished the spell selection menu inside combat.


Update : March 14
Whoops! Sorry if the site loads slower now...I kinda forgot about that logo sucking up a good bit of K. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the work ahead of me, but nonetheless I keep hacking away at it. The save/load stuff is pretty much complete, with the exception of redoing the script calls and adding some code to make sure the data doesn't get screwed up somewhere down the line. The engine now starts up in the selection screen, where you can start a new game or resume a previously saved game. The magic section of the status menu is now complete, and I tweaked the input part of the GUI to run a little smoother.


Update : March 13
It's late, I need a weekend and it's only Monday, I'm short of everything but stress, I've got a box of pizza, and half a glass of tea. It isn't 108 miles to Chicago, but it's dark, and I'm wearing sunglasses.

Hit it.



Update : March 11
Okay, whew! The new site is up. That took me most of today, but I did manage to set up the scripting for spells and abilities. That'll save me a ton of code in the very near future. A big SWOO goes out to Frozen Emu for helping me fix my page tables :)


Update : March 08
Right now I'm working on finishing up the save/load stuff. My goal for tonight was to have the game loading and running from saved games, but I got side tracked by an interesting idea. I'm almost finished with it (been working on it for an hour now) and it promises to spice things up quite a bit. I forgot about a few things involving the vehicles, so I decided to take care of that stuff first. A few minor mistakes and bugs surfaced in the GUI (which I've been tinkering with a lot recently) so those were taken care of as well.


Update : March 07
NOTE : This is a rather lengthy update, so you've been warned :)

Mentoring is complete except for the learning rates, which I have yet to solidify. I'll probably establish the rules for that a little later, after I've spent some time thinking about it. I tweaked the GUI to make it look spiffier, and whacked a huge bug that was crashing the engine inside the equipment menu. I also drew up 20 new tiles, and created something that's pretty nifty. You'll end up seeing that later, of course.

Next, some of you may remember that in the past I often let this be a forum for my personal experiences and feelings, and I have endeavored to return this to what it is supposed to be, just a progress report. I know I sometimes go off into left field and spaz out on you guys, but I'm trying to keep this as professional as possible..well, considering I write most of these updates at 2-3 in the morning I suppose I'm not doing THAT bad of a job ;)

I'm going to break my rule right off the bat...damn....his 3-4-hours-of-sleep-each-night thing is starting to get really old. I need to move to Scotland and let them clone me a few hundred times. That would be pretty sweet, but would I actually be able to have a decent conversation with MYSELF?! Probably not :(

I guess it's time to reveal some stuff people have been asking about. Please note that none of this is new (all of this dates back to my original design layouts from...like...years ago, so it's not something I've whipped up off the top of my head...heh) In retrospect, I probably should have put all this on the FAQ page, but it's late and I'm tired, so tough :P

For the record, (and this is stuff you'll discover in the next demo, so I'm not spoiling anything) characters can learn skills from another character who is in the party through a process called mentoring (probably should call it mentorship, or something like that...). A character picks another character (both of whom MUST be in the party) to be a mentor, and chooses a skill to learn. Obviously mentors can only teach what they know, and learning takes time. Characters can swap mentors at any time without penalty, and only one skill may be actively learned at any given time.

Weapons are handled in a special manner, unlike most console rpgs. Any character can use any weapon in the game (except bound weapons, see the weapons page for a little info on that), but there is a catch. Each style of weapon (of which there are 12) requires a fair level of proficiency to use effectively, and as you can probably guess lack of proficiency leads to slower attacks, less damage, weaker defense, and less accuracy. On the upshot, higher levels of proficiency lead to bonuses in all those categories, and gaining proficiency in a weapon class is relatively easy -- just use the weapon in combat and eventually your proficiency level will improve. As you can imagine, it's prudent to keep characters who can effectively wield a wide range of weaponry, because weapon selection often makes a BIG difference in battles. It's also good to remember that diversity works both ways...a jack of all trades is a master of NONE.

Armor is not handled in that manner. Characters all have a type of armor that they are familiar and/or comfortable with, and they will not wear other types of armor. This is due to the fact that armor often dictates effective combat styles -- i.e. weapons requiring speed and agility don't favor usage of heavy and restrictive plate armor. Some armor restrictions may be overcome with the use of certain skills, so don't fret. Basically, it comes down to this: if you've been working with a certain type of armor most of your life, you'll generally want to stick with it.

No need to worry, the goal of this game is not to burden the player with excess/needless statistics and requirements -- quite the opposite! Although the above was a bit of a mouthful, it's really easy to work with, and adequately explained within the game.

The engine is now all but complete...and that's good news indeed! I'm really dying to release a better demo than the one that's available...gad...how shoddy it is right now :( But, there's a time for all things, and now just isn't the time....aCK!

Okay, I'm done now. Really. Honest. See you tomorrow :)



Update : March 05
Skills and abilities are accounted for, but the learning process hasn't been coded yet, so I'll get to that tomorrow. I'll also put skill/ability selection into the combat menu. I'm planning on a large page update very soon, especially the screenshots; all of which are extremely old. I should be able to return to the AI tomorrow or Tuesday, I hope. I did a lot of tweaking inside the combat code today, and I'm sure I'll be doing that tomorrow, too :)


Update : March 04
Ooh...I suffered a major case of burnout yesterday...and it put a massive dent in my progress. Fortunately, the voices in my head told me all I needed to do was meditate and shift focus -- and that I did :) I'm now working on the GUI heavily, especially the parts dealing with skills, abilities, mentors, and weapon proficiencies. I'll be able to resume my work on the AI shortly, but for now I have other areas to concentrate on. I forced myself to work up several more formulas for handling character growth, percentages, etc etc.

Fear not -- I won't slow down any time soon, and the voices tell me that's a good thing. Of course, they also tell me to order pizza, listen to old Anthrax albums in reverse, watch Soul Train, and start my own religious cult. Fortunately, I'm good at ignoring them :)

Last week they told me to unscrew my shower head and fill it with Easy Cheese. Scary.



Update : March 03
Working with all the stats and numbers can be a real pain. It took me a little while, but I think I have managed to work up a fair and balanced formula for calculating battle damage. Not something you tend to think about when you start a project like this, but the numbers are just awful :) Montag's battle frames are now complete, and I'm working on some of the more subtle aspects of combat. I had to stop development of the AI until I establish some more stats. There are just too many things "floating" that need to be solidified before I can finish up the AI.


Update : March 02
Oops...I accidentally created a bug that caused enemies to attack without pause. That gave me a little headache, but it's gone. I'm still working on the basic structure of the AI, but it covers a lot of area so I don't expect to finish it today -- probably not until Sunday if I'm lucky. I just realized my monster definitions were too slim; not enough information to handle everything. Which means I had to update my monster editor; no big deal there. I'm doing a ton of work inside the combat code, strengthening the GUI, smoothing things out, fixing flaws and bugs, and of course working with the AI. Heh, this is kinda fun :)

Note : The screenshot on the front page is still *VERY* rough, although it did come straight from the engine with a screen capture...so don't expect the final stuff to look that bad ;)



Update : March 01
I started today by setting up the basic structure of the enemy AI, which will henceforth be referred to as "AI" because I'm feeling lazy :) My initial design was pretty sweeping, and I quickly decided to downsize things so I wouldn't be coding it for the next year :) Heh...amazing how things can increase in complexity geometrically...ack! I think I have things at a manageable level, but please don't ask for any details just yet since I can't provide them. I will say this much, however, enemies can (and will) make mistakes just as you do. They will obey all rules your characters will be held to -- something to think about when you tackle a dangerous adversary. In other words, enemies won't 'cheat.'

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