[CJA]

splendid

[Exophase]

Looks fantastic.

[Bramble]

You've got a serious talent, Lachesis.

[Hoof]

Wow, these look so great. I think I need some kind of Dummies-esque step-by-step guide to smzx modes..

[Lachesis]

i made a bunch of sprite sheets and some music for my game over the past couple of weeks and it still feels like i'm about 33% done with the entire game

i'm hopeful for a release this year tho

[Lachesis]

tfw you realize you need to redo every file format in your game because you limited yourself too much

[GetDizzy]

Ouch

Reminds me of how many times I overhauled the battle engine in Autumn before I gave up

Still looking forward to a release! What you showed last MZXCon was excellent work.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Insidious, on 08 February 2017 - 05:43 PM, said:

Reminds me of how many times I overhauled the battle engine in Autumn before I gave up

what, autumn is cancelled? i was looking forward to it

[Lachesis]

finished the file format work : ]

[Dr Lancer-X]

looks pretty good!

[Lachesis]

The idea was basically that having a hard limit of one palette per tile has become more and more awful over time, and I end up using the same colors a lot. e.g. this test map



so now each tileset has a shared palette space which can be assigned to any char—probably similar to red— which is what I should have done in the first place



the downside is every time I go into GIMP I stare at the screen and have no clue what to do with my tiles now : (

[Dr Lancer-X]

well, red just took the input tileset and optimised a palette to fit it, which did mean sometimes you needed to do fiddly and unintuitive things when drawing tiles in order to squeeze more room out of the palettes (it was often daunting looking at a tileset that consumed 600 colours and trying to work out how to cut it down) but for the most part it worked pretty well

[Lachesis]

my tileset palettes have several requirements for various reasons (e.g. compatibility with obtuse background collision code, only 64 colors available, color 3 in each palette is always 63,63,63), so the "hardest" part of this was figuring out the optimization rules. I'm pretty satisfied with how it's working out, except now I'm paranoid that even slight tweaks will consume my limited palettes

[Lachesis]

Working on a moderate-sized update to xx̊y. I'll update this as I make progress, but it should only take a couple more days idk lol before I hand it out for testing.

• Adding a much smaller alternate soundtrack. (done)
  
• Switch to 2.9X features. (done)
  
  • Unbound sprites + extended charsets (done)
    
  • Code/script optimization (done)
    
  • Optimized original sprite drawing code as fallback (done)
    
  • Asset reorganization/cleanup. (done)
    
  • Board charsets/palettes. (done)
  
  
• Options
  
  • Soundtrack toggle (done)
    
  • PC Speaker sfx toggle (done, though I only bothered to implement a few PCS sound effects)
    
  • Slider puzzle alternative (done)
  
  
• New content.
  
  • New rooms (done)
    
  • New charsets (done)
    
  • New scripts (1 left to finish)
    
  • Script edits (done)
  
  
• Other
  
  • Reorganized + updated map diagram (done)

----------------------------------

Changelog:

• Gameplay:
  
  • An alternative method for unlocking doors has been added. This option only takes effect when starting a new game.
    
  • An optional chiptune .IT version of the soundtrack has been added.
    
  • An optional set of PC speaker sound effects have been added. Only a handful of sound effects are currently implemented. This really only exists so this game can play on the 3DS without crashing.
    
  • Dialogue scenes now display color-coded dialogue to help clarify which character is speaking.
    
  • Some unused reactions have been merged into the Drifter reactions.
    
  • Added reactions to some objects that were previously missing them.
    
  • Timing for Cultist and Drifter special actions has been altered to make them easier to use.
    
  • Rocks no longer lock the player when pushed.
    
  • Relevant forms automatically trigger their respective lighting effects when switched to.
    
  • Lighting in Dark Wasteland and Hospital now affects the brightness of their respective palettes.
    
  • Lighting palette effects in areas that use them now affect some area-specific colors that were previously ignored.
    
  • The final area's magenta palette has been replaced and the rock placement there has been slightly modified.
    
  • The map distributed as an optional download with the game has been cleaned up and updated.
    
  • Other misc. additions.
  
  
• Technical:
  
  • Script execution and drawing have been optimized using 2.9X features. The new drawing method uses unbound sprites and the extended character set.
    
  • A further optimized version of the original drawing code still exists as a fallback for platforms without unbound sprite support. It can be activated by testing the game from a particular board in the editor, which generates a file that also speeds up script loading quite a bit via LOAD_COUNTERS.
    
  • Character sets and palettes for each area are now loaded with the new 2.90 board charset/palette features.
    
  • Due to extended charset use, the loose object char files are no longer necessary and have been removed.
    
  • Game assets have been reorganized into a single subfolder.

This post has been edited by Lachesis: 25 October 2019 - 03:38 AM
Reason for edit: (finish scripts have been revised)

[Galladin]

This looks insanely good and 69 boards sounds like this will be, ahem, Game of the Year material.

[Lachesis]

It's actually 72 now with the new boards. The original 69 playable boards from 2013 were never planned to be that way, it just kind of happened...

Most of the changes to this game should hopefully be invisible. I'm still trying to work out a decent slider puzzle alternative since no one liked those in the original release (and apparently they got the game actually unrecommended shortly after an endorsement in at least once case). I'm also still fighting my own impulses over what the scope of certain new things should be.

[Lachesis]

i swear this will be ready any time now i only have a couple things left to do

[Galladin]

Lachesis, on 20 October 2019 - 03:14 AM, said:

i swear this will be ready any time now i only have a couple things left to do

Tomorrow. Make it happen. >:C

[Lachesis]

Galladin, on 24 October 2019 - 03:07 PM, said:

Tomorrow. Make it happen. >:C

That's the hope (to get it to my tester(s) tomorrow-ish) but it always seems to take longer than I hope