[Tokugawa]

All right... you're doing like... TOO good. Awesome though... do you have like a % complete estimate?

[Exophase]

Tokugawa, on Jul 1 2004, 11:07 AM, said:

All right... you're doing like... TOO good. Awesome though... do you have like a % complete estimate?

It depends on how important you think various things are, like the editor.. and music..

- Exo

[RoSS]

If you finish it by July 10th at 3pm EST, I'll add an extra $.50!!!!! to my donation.

[Exophase]

RoSS, on Jul 1 2004, 01:34 PM, said:

If you finish it by July 10th at 3pm EST, I'll add an extra $.50!!!!! to my donation.

..... no.

World saving is working. I haven't tried game saving yet, but hopefully it won't be as much of a headache as world saving was.

- Exo

[Pyro1588]

wow exo. this whole project continues to amaze me. you rock!

[Dr Lancer-X]

If you finish it by July 10 I'll add $50 to my donation, which I'm happy to pledge since it won't happen.

Anyway, good going Exo.. I'm sure people would like it if a version of MZX was released (like, without sound and editor) early, providing a version with all the stuff is released eventually. Of course, a version with sound but without the editor would be nice too.

EDIT: Typos.

This post has been edited by Lancer-X: 02 July 2004 - 02:25 AM

[Revvy]

I'd personally say editor but no sound. It wouldn't be any different than my mzx right now. =\

[Exophase]

Lancer-X, on Jul 1 2004, 09:23 PM, said:

If you finish it by July 10 I'll add $50 to my donation, which I'm happy to pledge since it won't happen.

Anyway, good going Exo.. I'm sure people would like it if a version of MZX was released (like, without sound and editor) early, providing a version with all the stuff is released eventually. Of course, a version with sound but without the editor would be nice too.

EDIT: Typos.

How much has to be done to be considered "finished"? :o

- Exo

[Frobozz]

Lancer-X, on Jul 1 2004, 09:23 PM, said:

Of course, a version with sound but without the editor would be nice too.

Why? No memory problems would mean no need for separating the stuff. Unless you are thinking about distributing it with your games. But even then that'd be silly because with the editor included you might get more people interested in MegaZeux.

[Koji]

I think he ment as a temporary release to tide us over, frobozz... not an official release.

[T-Bone]

I hope this will work on my Compaq Armada M700 Laptop.

This post has been edited by T-bone6: 02 July 2004 - 07:58 PM

[Frobozz]

Not another "I hope this will work" topic.

If I remember correctly it uses DirectX 5. So if your computer does not support DirectX then it won't run. Correct me anybody if I am wrong on this.

Now hopefully everybody will stop asking this.

This post has been edited by Frobozz: 02 July 2004 - 08:28 PM

[Exophase]

Frobozz, on Jul 2 2004, 03:27 PM, said:

Not another "I hope this will work" topic.

If I remember correctly it uses DirectX 5. So if your computer does not support DirectX then it won't run. Correct me anybody if I am wrong on this.

Now hopefully everybody will stop asking this.

It uses SDL. I would never program for DirectX directly. SDL can utilize DirectX but can also use GDI if DirectX is not installed. Outside of Windows the targets are obviously different.

- Exo

[Tokugawa]

Exophase, on Jul 1 2004, 02:09 PM, said:

Tokugawa, on Jul 1 2004, 11:07 AM, said:

All right... you're doing like... TOO good. Awesome though... do you have like a % complete estimate?

It depends on how important you think various things are, like the editor.. and music..

- Exo

Well, I mainly want to edit, sound isn't too important... that WOULD be awesome if you could release an "unfinished" version though... I'm bored.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Sound will probably come out before the editor does, so sorry :(

[Frobozz]

Exophase, on Jul 2 2004, 03:51 PM, said:

It uses SDL. I would never program for DirectX directly. SDL can utilize DirectX but can also use GDI if DirectX is not installed. Outside of Windows the targets are obviously different.

- Exo

Actually I meant SDL uses DirectX. I got the 5.0 part from reading the source stuff. I'll clarify things better next time.

I wasn't aware of the GDI part though.

This post has been edited by Frobozz: 04 July 2004 - 02:35 AM

[Exophase]

I've finally sent some builds out for testing. The sheer number of bugs reported has been overwhelming. In the past 48 hours I must have fixed well over 20 bugs. Some still remain, for instance one in Demon Earth that is not only not behaving the same across multiple machines (in fact, other testers aren't experiencing this problem at all - I can only consider myself lucky to be afflicted with it) but looks very difficult to isolate and diagnose. I'm sure I can get these out of the way with a few hours of intense debugging, like usual... I'm determined to make things as bug free as possible.

On a more positive note, I can confirm that at least a few games are playable, from beginning to end. It's impossible to tell right now, but that number is probably higher than we think, since we've been focusing on the games that have immediate problems rather than the ones that don't (and at this point I think there are only two or three or so KNOWN bugs). With further elimination of bugs, we'll probably eventually hit a thinning out point where it feels less like getting each individual game to work on its own.

In addition to bug fixing, I'll also be starting the audio code soon. First will be mod playing, followed by sample playing and PC speaker emulation. As I've mentioned before, GDM files will not be playable; however MZX will most likely load an S3M equivilent to a GDM if it exists, and perhaps invoke wizdom's converter transparently (when it's available). Chances are SAM files will also not be playable; sound effects will be stored as WAV, and similar treatment will be given to playing SAMs as GDMs. I'd like to give thanks to MadBrain for the SAM to WAV converter he recently wrote; it should prove useful...

The editor is still quite a ways off. Hopefully it will be somewhat straightforward. For now, it's probably better for me not to think about it :\

The DoZ's coming up soon, so development might slow down a bit until it's over. We'll have to see. With all the energy I've been putting into MZX I might not have much left over to DoZ at all...

- Exo

[Koji]

Hoorj, some other people might have a chance to win the DOZ this time around!!!

Exo, since we're using wavs now, I think something should be added to the sam command that would play the wav's at the frequency designated in the header. Only a suggestion, which I know you said you weren't taking, but I figured I say anyway.

EDIT: I said "we" again implying that I actually had a say in the port, sorry Exo.

This post has been edited by Koji: 05 July 2004 - 11:52 AM

[Exophase]

I don't want to change Robotic, but in a future language revision (which I've been urged not to talk about!) that may be possible.

An alternative is to play the WAV as a module. Of course, that will cut off any already playing module..

- Exo

[Exophase]

Does everyone remember MagiCow's earlier suggestion to use the global robot to transport bots across boards? Well, it won't be possible now, because I've disabled copying into the global robot due to technical complications. I doubt any games actually use this, and it probably won't be missed... if anyone has a problem with it they should speak up though.

- Exo

[Exophase]

Fixed a lot more bugs. Also, despite having told Lancer that I wouldn't support writing to $stringX.Y I ended up supporting it afterall; I tucked it inside a level of abstraction that was really called for anyway. Demon Earth does use it (although a 2.69c bug prevents the area its around from working anyway; going to try to fix that in the port). Hopefully I'll actually have a chance to start on the audio soon, but chances are more and more bugs will keep surfacing.. sigh..

- Exo

[djtiesto]

I forget, does MZX now have the ability to make standalone games, not requiring someone to d/l the editor to play? This would be a real useful feature...

[Koji]

You could use the No editor version of mzx. It's just the game playing functions.

However, I don't think a no editor version of 2.7 is available or is going to be available for the port since it was created simply to save memory. And after the port memory wont be an issue.

[Frobozz]

What you could do is take a no editor version and attach the world onto the end of the executable. Naturally you'd have to modify Mzx to load from itself instead of another file. Oh and you'd have to start loading at the spot the world starts.

This post has been edited by Frobozz: 08 July 2004 - 05:33 PM

[Koji]

Yeah... but why no just use C++ and make a game with better graphics?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Enh, you could make a shitty little packager that selfextracts everything to a temp directory (the game and MZX), runs MZX, then removes that temp directory and it's contents... though I don't see why you'd bother.

[Pyro1588]

eh, the only reason you'd want a standalone would be for distribution on other non-mzx sites.

[Koji]

yeah and they'd only ask why you used a weird graphic shell and not sdl or DX or something else.

[Frobozz]

Lancer-X, on Jul 9 2004, 10:19 PM, said:

Enh, you could make a shitty little packager that selfextracts everything to a temp directory (the game and MZX), runs MZX, then removes that temp directory and it's contents... though I don't see why you'd bother.

Now that I think about it I think Winzip can do that. You can have it generate a self extractor and run a file when opened (typically it is used to start a file like setup.exe). And if I remember correctly it deletes the stuff when it is done (but can be told not to by the user).

[Koji]

Naw... winzip only makes self extractors and that's it. No execution, and no deletion... if my mind serves me right...