[Graham]

KKairos- I'm using the 'set "servosavegame#.sav" to "save_game"' and '....."load_game"' commands but instead of .sav I changed it to .sgs so saves have to be loaded using the in game load menu I created, and not just press F4 to restore a save.

Lachesis- it's good to hear from you. Been a while since you've posted anything. You've been busy with school I'd imagine? Anyway, thanks for the tips. I will check out Labryinth of Zeux, I love to see how other people solve problems in MegaZeux. To be honest though I had system working reasonably well and I scrapped it because there wasn't much need for it. I wanted to use it just to define what the select button on a controller would be. I'm still using MegaZeux's dialog boxes and you have no choice there but to use the Enter key for selecting options. So obviously it's best to always have whatever key is used as select on the controller be mapped to the Enter key. In practice I found that button 1 on a controller is usually the bottom button, closest to the thumb (Button A on an Xbox 360 and Steam Controller). So it was easiest to just make that the default select button. It can't be changed but I've found it doesn't need to be, that button is sufficient to meet the need. And I still have a system to easily remap the jump button or run button or any other game button to whatever Controller button I want.

On another note, I set up Steam Controller support for Servo's Adventure yesterday. If you add 'MegaZeux' as a non steam game to your library from the games menu, then right click it and choose 'edit steam controller' you can add a binding for my game that I shared to the community. Pretty cool, actually.

[KKairos]

graham if you want someone to try and work out an xb360 scheme let me know

[Lachesis]

Graham, on 09 January 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

Lachesis- it's good to hear from you. Been a while since you've posted anything. You've been busy with school I'd imagine? Anyway, thanks for the tips. I will check out Labryinth of Zeux, I love to see how other people solve problems in MegaZeux. To be honest though I had system working reasonably well and I scrapped it because there wasn't much need for it. I wanted to use it just to define what the select button on a controller would be. I'm still using MegaZeux's dialog boxes and you have no choice there but to use the Enter key for selecting options. So obviously it's best to always have whatever key is used as select on the controller be mapped to the Enter key. In practice I found that button 1 on a controller is usually the bottom button, closest to the thumb (Button A on an Xbox 360 and Steam Controller). So it was easiest to just make that the default select button. It can't be changed but I've found it doesn't need to be, that button is sufficient to meet the need. And I still have a system to easily remap the jump button or run button or any other game button to whatever Controller button I want.

I think pretty much every controller you'd actually use with a computer these days is xinput compatible (or can be made to be), so going with whatever works on those is pretty safe.

[Graham]

KKairos, on 11 January 2017 - 02:09 AM, said:

graham if you want someone to try and work out an xb360 scheme let me know

I worked out an Xbox 360 schema long time ago. Only problem is through MegaZeux's joy pad config set up there's no way to set up support for the D pad. Also the trigger buttons have to be used one at a time or they will cancel each other out, unless you use some third-party app like Xpadder or something.

[Graham]

It never ceases to amaze me how I can be stuck on a problem one day, put the computer away and go to sleep and wake up the next morning and almost immediately have the solution without needing to think about it too much. The human brain is incredible! The way it rewires itself while you sleep to solve problems, I love that.

[Graham]

I discovered the best bug the other day. It actually had me laughing because it looked so silly and seemed such an unlikely thing to happen. Watch it here. It looks as though some fish jump up from the water below and tackle Servo, knocking him off the small platform he's standing on. Something they were definitely not designed to do.

What's actually going on is a little complicated but I will attempt to explain it. There are two systems that are interfering with each other here. One is the ability downloading system, (the tablet). The other is the status menu. I didn't anticipate their being any reason to pause the tablets, so I hadn't included a pause subroutine in them. When you open the status menu and are standing in the vicinity of a tablet, both systems run simultaneously. Both pause and unpause everything else on the board. so when you leave the tablet and the status menu closes, everything is sent the label : "unpause" which jumps all programs out of the subroutine #pause. Since this happens twice, the second one fails and continues running at whatever is after the failed goto "#return". For the fish, it was loading a carrying program. If there was just one fish servo would just be standing there, but because three are attempting to be carried, collision detection kicks in and backs servo up, very quickly, to attempt to free him of whatever sprites are in front of him colliding while he is carrying something.

[KKairos]

That's fantastic.

[Graham]

Progress, progress, progress....then, nothing. I haven't been able to focus on Servo in the last week. Too much on my mind right now I think. I was offered a position in the maintenance and engineering department at the hospital I work at. This is an exciting new opportunity for me and comes with room for growth and a chance to forge an actual career, not just have a job. It comes with a raise and a lot of other attractive new advancements. I've begun to be interested in dating again and I've been talking to and getting to know a girl here at work a little more. We plan to do a "coffee date" together at some point but are just friends right now. I'm not even divorced yet so that is for the best. The divorce process is chugging along. Man, I just want it to be behind me now so I can move on with life. My soon-to-be-ex is not paying the accounts she agreed to that are in both our names so she's basically trashing both our credit standings for years to come. I'm paying my share of bills and debts and don't have any extra money at the end of the month to pay for her responsibilities. I'm stressed about that and just generally have a ton on my mind. Normally, working on my game is very cathartic but I haven't felt any ability to lately, though there is still desire to. I guess I just need to free some mental capacity up first.

[T-Bone]

wow that is a lot to deal with, none of which of anything I could possibly relate to. Glad to hear there are some positives.

I also found MegaZeux to be my crutch during the bad times. Really helps take my mind off things when I need that. but it also requires a lot of time and commitment.

[Graham]

It occured to me the other night that a couple of the last few barriers that I thought MegaZeux still had have now been removed by the recent updates. with new offset sprites with color transparency and 3840 characters at your disposal, you can now alter every single pixel on screen individually by lining up sprites of 32x8 characters side by side. you could have fmv that looks sorta decent, albeit at a very low resolution, but still! also, with the whole sprite transparency thing, you can overlay characters of different sprites and manipulate the char sets in such a way that you could have a different color in every pixel of a character if you were so inclined. So that 4 color per character limit is gone too. The last thing I was thinking about last night before I fell asleep is that if you wanted to have a smooth scrolling game, all you would need to do is have your player sprite remain stationary and generate the level (or board) as a sprite and scroll it the opposite direction that the player is supposed to be moving. if you had a main set of counters to track movement that every enemy or object sprite used to generate its position off of, it would all move together seamlessly. I thought about how cool that would look for a 2D side scroller using speed 2 to achieve 60fps smooth scrolling. WOW!

[Galladin]

Graham, on 25 March 2018 - 09:35 AM, said:

It occured to me the other night that a couple of the last few barriers that I thought MegaZeux still had have now been removed by the recent updates. with new offset sprites with color transparency and 3840 characters at your disposal, you can now alter every single pixel on screen individually by lining up sprites of 32x8 characters side by side. you could have fmv that looks sorta decent, albeit at a very low resolution, but still! also, with the whole sprite transparency thing, you can overlay characters of different sprites and manipulate the char sets in such a way that you could have a different color in every pixel of a character if you were so inclined. So that 4 color per character limit is gone too. The last thing I was thinking about last night before I fell asleep is that if you wanted to have a smooth scrolling game, all you would need to do is have your player sprite remain stationary and generate the level (or board) as a sprite and scroll it the opposite direction that the player is supposed to be moving. if you had a main set of counters to track movement that every enemy or object sprite used to generate its position off of, it would all move together seamlessly. I thought about how cool that would look for a 2D side scroller using speed 2 to achieve 60fps smooth scrolling. WOW!

True, it almost feels like it's not Megazeux anymore! =D

Now fire up that editor and get to work, sir! =)