tunginobi.uplink();

News

July 05, 2006 - Wednesday

Okay, it's been too long of a while, so I'm going to say it straight.

Development of After Dark in FreeBASIC has halted.

It will continue as a project running under the Sphere RPG engine. That's what Sphere was made for, after all. All I need is the creative spark to get the gears moving again, so I can work on this.

Check back in a couple of months, maybe there'll be something new. The older FB versions will be available for general interest's sake.

April 15, 2006 - Saturday

So I finally made some progress with After Dark. Not much progress, mind you, but some, and that's what matters. Specifically, I wrote another cutscene, the one immediately following the first one.

My aim with the dialogue has been to make it that much better than the fare you normally get from indie RPGs. But considering the awful quality of that dialogue you find in general, that shouldn't be too hard. You might have to put up with a bit of verbal diarrhea in the game, because I'm making the conversations sound like they're taking place between people, not game elements with arms and legs. There's the occasional witty quip here and there to keep it all interesting.

Anyway, I'm looking to write a couple more sequences of dialogue, because I feel I'm on a roll. Even with three assignments looming over my head.

March 28, 2006 - Tuesday

Little to no work done on After Dark over the past few weeks. University aside, I suppose I owe everybody an explanation.

I dislike Windows XP. Not because it's made by the big-bad-empire M$, or because everybody else who has an opinion about it feels that way. It's just that it doesn't have that same awesome feel of Linux. I'm using Linux right now to type this, and it feels not only productive, but stylish as well. WinXP feels like neither, even with the Classic GUI style instead of those awful baby blue curves and edges.

But Linux has its shortcomings. For starters, I haven't gotten around to reinstalling the FreeBASIC compiler yet. And though my favourite IDE has been made to compile under Linux (FBIde), there's no package file or source code I can simply download and compile/install yet. And finally, I haven't found a single lightweight pixel graphics editor for Linux. The Gimp doesn't cut the mustard, because it has a ten second load overhead, which I just can't stand.

So I don't like working in Windows, and I can't do much work in Linux. Those being the only two systems on my box, that understandably causes a little bit of deadlock in the development.

But things may well change in the near future. For you see, I've got an information systems assignment nearing its due date. That will push me towards a lot of diagram doodling on paper with a pencil and/or pen. Of course, this is the same place where I sketch out my maps and concept art. Since info bores me so, I figure I can fill in the time by drawing how maps come together, and what things should and would look like. And since this needs to be prototyped in Microsoft Access, I'll likely be logged into WinXP, thus allowing me the opportunity to be near enough to FBIde and my image editor, GraphicsGale.

Just on my maps, I was originally going to have a whole grid layout of maps. That was, until I realised that even a small square/rectangle of maps would result in my having to make lots and lots of maps for the game, many of which would be redundant except to put distance between points A and B. So instead, I'm going to put down maps as required, branching out like streams from the centre of the city. Of course, I'll keep track of where they all are on a pencil-drawn grid, but otherwise, the player's path should be linear enough to minimise work on my end, while introducing the requisite variety on the other.

Slow progress, but I'm getting onto it.

March 17, 2006 - Friday

I reorganised the downloads page a little. The download location needs some reorganisation too, now that I think about it. Anyway, not too much progress, but I'm going to go ahead and release the in-between version anyway. Version 0.0.5 contains the rudiments of a battle system, half constructed, in which the only enemy hits itself until it dies. Key handling between the map and the battle still needs a bit of work.

Porting The Secret of Cooey 2 isn't going to be as simple as I first imagined. Things are complicated by a roundabout method of implementing assembly routines inside the game's source. They're done as strings of characters, directly representing the machine code data of graphical drawing routines. In addition, MIDI support will be non-existent at best.

Maybe I'll find a simpler game of DarkDread's to port to the 32-bit realm. SOC2 looks to be a hard job for poor pay.

March 05, 2006 - Sunday

As a consolation gift, another downloadable has been made available. It's not After Dark, but it's better than twiddling thumbs.

March 02, 2006 - Thursday

I see no possibility of an early March demo, with university starting up all over again.

That said, I do have a little treat in store for you all that will be available in that time, so come back every so often!

February 24, 2006 - Friday

I'll repeat what I said on the news page:

For the hangers-on, After Dark has seen more progress in the past few days than in the past few weeks combined. I'm diving head-first into the battle engine, most of it should be functional. The turn sorting is already operational. I don't want to go all interactive just yet. I need to write the level-up code, and dying code, the skill learning notification code... I think that's all, before I go into the nitty-gritty, like damage equations, the menu items, and other such things. The only thing that's still up in the air at the moment is the flags for choosing what enemy animations are chosen, what pseudo-strategy is used, and how I implement special boss attacks. Everything else is actually already written down in docs, in black and white. Fret you not.

Only other obstacle is the graphics for the battles. Having crappy graphics doesn't concern me. Having crappy graphics that take up a lot of time in creation does.

Finally, I'd like to point out that just because new versions haven't popped up every week or so, doesn't mean that development has ceased. A lot of people make that mistake when looking at the seemingly static GearHead homepage, while underneath the surface the game is undergoing improvement all the time. So it is with After Dark. Just because you can't download the version with a faint vestige of a battle system yet, doesn't mean one isn't in the works. Australian summers are made of evil. They've always been bad, but this year's has been one of the worst on record. Average temperatures have been rising, and just this month, I found out that we've only received a fraction of the usual rainfall for this month, February. Something like 12 millimetres, out of the usual 120. Just general figures, but it bodes ill. Such conditions don't help in a room which seems to have a permanently elevated temperature and humidity levels. It's an upstairs room, so it's really bad for development. The only progress I've honestly made was during the dead of night, and I need that time reserved for sleep soon, because my university time happens to be during the day.

I am, however, working on the battle engine. I've made more progress over the past few days than over the equivalent amount of weeks combined.

At this point, an end-of-month release looks grim, but I may possibly have something in store for early- to mid-March. If work hasn't gotten me down too much. My minimum intentions is to have some extra dialogue, bringing the player up to a part where they can travel out of the home base, fight some stuff, and heal when needed.

And I've also polished off the existing dialogue to flow more smoothly, and made it so that NPCs can move while dialogue is showing. How's that for shiny? At this point, I'd like to thank my supporters: Ryan, Mr. P, Notveidt, and MrBadBox. You guys give me strength.

February 12, 2006 - Sunday

I admit. I've been unfaithful. I've been devoting my efforts to the growth of GearHead 2. Specifically, I've been debugging the 3D OpenGL version of the game on my Linux box, something Joseph Hewitt doesn't seem to have on hand. Also, did plenty of work on a concept known as QuickFire, which makes firing a weapon a matter of pressing a key, synonymous to pulling the trigger of a gun, and just as easy.

What's changed?

• Fixed Timer call numeric overflows under Linux, game works identically on Windows and Linux now
• Made the battle screen layout mockup, so a battle system is now in reach
• Adjusted some of the existing dialogue to make it flow more smoothly
• The chapter title routine has a two-second black screen buffer, to look shinier

None of those features are available for checking out yet. Things aren't looking good for a mid-month demo, so I'm pushing it back to the end of the month. I need me a Fruity Oaty Bar.

January 31, 2006 - Tuesday

Whoa. Like, whoa. Version 0.0.4 of After Dark is available now! Grab it now!

New features:

• 1000% more maps (11, up from 1)
• 500% more tile graphics (around 30, from 6)
• At least 3 interactive NPCs (talk to 'em... multiple times!)
• Rather shiney intro sequence
• A proper title screen, with an equally proper menu
• Lots of ad-lib dialogue
• Weapon and armour now have graphics
• Now worth playing for a few minutes
• Crapeola machine gun firing effect
• Did I mention it's shiney?

In your face, space cayote!

January 27, 2006 - Friday

I've lost a precious few days. I visited a good friend of mine the other day, which took up most of the day. Then I embarked on updating my system, and now Windows XP doesn't like my speakers for some reason.

Excuses aside, once this month is over and I've released a smallish demo, I'll probably be moving my work onto openSUSE Linux. There's something really shiny about this operating system. Probably the way I've configured GNOME and used the Crystal Sphere theme. I'm actually working on a syntax scheme for gedit to use. It's not going very well, but the basic syntax works out okay.

Though I've made virtually no inroads, the demo for the end of this month will have some moving around, some interaction, and some dialogue to read. Note that there won't be any battles. I don't have the time to implement that before the end of the month... well, implement and test it, that is.

RPGDX is slow... After Dark is still the most recently updated game on the site. Naturally, all eyes are on me, and I'm going to bringing out that demo, even if it's only a few minutes of untested dialogue, a menu system, and random interaction lines between characters.

Despite the lack of battling goodness, there will still be a demo at the end of this month. Mark my words.

January 22, 2006 - Sunday

I was almost stopped in my tracks when the heat hit. And the keyboard's space bar broke. And I didn't know the specifics of how I was going to write a battle engine for After Dark.

My very own Problem-Be-Gone solution has worked quite well. I've written a complete specification as to how the battle system is going to operate. Everything from usable items, skills, the layout of menu systems, enemy AI, animations, damage and hit equations, the works. And with this news, I bring to you a very dangerous announcement.

There will be a playable After Dark demo available by the end of this month!

Really, all that stands between me and a playable demo is some graphics, the layout of battles themselves, some sprites, code, and three to five minutes of script. It might not be the official release demo, but it will be playable.

My intention for the actual demo is to have the near-complete first chapter, up to and including the first boss fight. Game balance issues will be addressed then. Or I could just play the game myself extensively.

January 16 2006 - Monday

Development is being stifled, but I press on nonetheless. Humid weather is bad for concentration, and a dysfunctional space bar is really bad for coding.

Despite these obstacles, I've prepared a palette swapping function for image drawing for this game. That's basically the cheap thing that allows games to use the same sprites with different colours; you may have seen it before in other games. I think the technique fits nicely with the el cheapo spirit of the game.

Next stop: battle engine.

January 13 2006 - Friday

Here are all the features that were in before today:

• 320 * 240 screen resolution
• 20 * 14 tile map
• Pixel by tile scrolling
• Info indicator along the top, showing HP, SP (skill points), ammo, location
• Main menu system, fully operational
• Text box engine
• Dialog box engine
• Map editor
• Finished up to halfway through chapter 2 in plot outline

And here are the features I added today:

• More tile graphics
• Items are now fully operational, in the main menu
• NPCs can be positioned and moved
• Game now yields timeslice; uses 90% less CPU time on my system!
• Added some extra details in plot outline

Progress! Oh how I love that word! I've been programming for years, and (sadly) this has been the most progress I've ever seen in my attempts to create an RPG. I hope this trend continues.

I added an About page for this game. Check it!

A public tech demo is available! You can download v0.0.2 here.

January 12 2006 - Thursday

It's almost hard to believe that there's no actual game behind that complex-looking main menu.

Over the course of a few days working with FreeBASIC, I've made something that feels more like an RPG than any of my previous projects ever did. I must be riding a wave of some sort, because I've made so much progress in so little time. Why, earlier today, that menu didn't exist at all! Work your way to last night, and the completed map editor I wrote for myself didn't even have a filename!

I was working on getting a decent storyline into After Dark, when I realised that what I've planned so far, that is, the intro and the first chapter, would make an excellent demo. So, if you're reading this, there may be a demo of this game by the end of the month!