[Risu2112]

Lancer-X, on Oct 10 2004, 02:19 PM, said:

Ken you do realise that with the "commands" counter 25 robots is probably going to be the same speed, or slower than 1 robot, don't you? Army-of-robot programming is mainly obsolete now

using the commands counter greatly reduces the stability of SFmzx, mostly because of my sloppy coding (a lot of which predates the commands counter.), needless to say to prevent a nasty headache, I don't use "commands" in the game.

Dividing up robots like this still has value though, if for no other reason than to keep oneself organized.

Realisticly speed is not an issue here, the code isn't so thick that cycle speed is reduced or anything.

[Koji]

KenOhki2112, on Oct 10 2004, 10:05 PM, said:

Revvy, on Oct 10 2004, 05:20 AM, said:

Quote

Changes will likely reduce the total estimated size of the game to less than 1/4th of what it would be.

WHY WHY WHY

No, I mean file size will be ~1/4 of what it was going to be, the content will still be the same.

And Koji: it's not as tricky as it looks, the planet is rendered from a large rectangle image at the bottom of the screen, all it does is look at colors and duplicate them into sectors that are drawn at the top (which were defined manualy by hand -.-)

The whole thing is split into about 25 robots, thats why it's able to draw the whole frame in 1 cycle. It's just a lot of leg work, nothing too tricky or advanced and of course due to the limitations of text mode, the perspective is not by any means perfect. =\

Ewwww.... hard coded... XP

[Risu2112]

I have enlisted some help to assist me in the making of this game. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit.

[Revvy]

GIVE US NAMES

[Dr Lancer-X]

does 'joe' ring a bell?

no? oh

[Risu2112]

Massive reformating of the game underway: all content has been removed.

No work on the project can possibly be done untill I've been able to sort out this mess of a program. This is a good thing though, aside from drasticly decreasing the file size of the game, future bug testing and modifications will be VASTLY easyer to do.

Oh, by the way, scratch that earlyer post, the person who was helping me out turned out to actualy be of very little help and lost intrest very quickly.

Any one here have lots of free time on their hands? I think I'm ready to have a partner on this project. I need some one who would be able to contribute to all aspects of the game, coding, testing, story writing, enemy design, general graphics, sound, the whole bit. Also keep in mind there is still a LARGE amount of work to be done on the game. No joke.

Make sure you are able to use the 2.69 versions of megazeux, while the game will be made for 2.8+, it currently is still unplayable in them.

This post has been edited by KenOhki2112: 08 November 2004 - 08:47 PM

[asgromo]

=/

No comment.

[Exophase]

Why is it unplayable in them?

- Exo

[Risu2112]

Exophase, on Nov 8 2004, 02:58 PM, said:

Why is it unplayable in them?

- Exo

Remember the planet board I sent you? I've yet to find out exactly what is causing the problem on it, or found a creative way bypass the problem. The rest of the game was playable in 2.8+ (I say was, because I'm moving stuff around right now and it currently doesn't run at all). However, since in the begining, mining planets is just about the only efficent way to earn money or advance the plot, there's not much that can be done. I have every intention of having it eventualy run in 2.8.

We came to the conclusion that the problem of that robot duplicating out of control is not the fault of mzx2.8+ but rather some combination of my sloppy coding and perhaps some oversight in earlyer versions of megazeux.

[Exophase]

KenOhki2112, on Nov 8 2004, 09:57 PM, said:

Exophase, on Nov 8 2004, 02:58 PM, said:

Why is it unplayable in them?

- Exo

Remember the planet board I sent you? I've yet to find out exactly what is causing the problem on it, or found a creative way bypass the problem. The rest of the game was playable in 2.8+ (I say was, because I'm moving stuff around right now and it currently doesn't run at all). However, since in the begining, mining planets is just about the only efficent way to earn money or advance the plot, there's not much that can be done. I have every intention of having it eventualy run in 2.8.

We came to the conclusion that the problem of that robot duplicating out of control is not the fault of mzx2.8+ but rather some combination of my sloppy coding and perhaps some oversight in earlyer versions of megazeux.

I'm pretty sure you found a way around that that involved removing one line of code...

- Exo

[Risu2112]

That didn't solve the problem, that just bypassed it for one set of conditions. To make it work all the time I have to re swap the world at times when I previously did not have to, unfortunately doing so resets several things that I did not want to be reset, so tons of counters have to be stored beforehand to return the world to it's previous condition, this part is an ugly mess due to some fairly sloppy coding, and is one of the main reasons I've decided to drastically change how I use swapworlds and how I link certain boards. Hopefully I can arrange the game in a more organized fashion this way.

[Exophase]

Okay. o_O

Tell me if you can figure out what it is exactly..... it's possibly some kinda timing thing.

- Exo

[Risu2112]

Still looking for some one interested in joining the project. A second person would likely speed the game up quite a bit. -.-

Also I am confident that I will be able to solve the problem with the said board, Since I am changing the method by which the player goes to and revisits the board, I can likely remove the need for several commands that are some how causing this bizare problem.

[Micah]

I'd help you, but I don't know that I'd really be the best person for the job.

I'm unreliable. =(

[Risu2112]

Starting to ease back into mzx after the intial WoW rush.



I lied, the planet board is still REALLY broken.

Balance changes.. (planned)

---------------------------------------------
FUEL
---------------------------------------------
Fuel will be consumed about 10 times faster than currently while traveling in space.

Previously, Running out of fuel (and subsequently energy ) in space left your ship completely vulnerable, if you were aproched by a hostile ship, it would simply blow you up while you sat there helpless. The only way to recover from running out of fuel was to launch a distress beacon and wait for rescue, this had a very high price tag. That system sucked so here's the new one.

Fuel will no longer be consumed in combat (except in one condition described at bottom), if you are out of fuel and enter combat you will start with all of your systems off, and your energy at zero making you slightly more vulnerable (depending mostly on how close the enemy ship starts to you) You will be able to use all of your systems as if you had fuel, and your engines will produce energy as if they had fuel. Your emergancy escape thrusters will not work if you have insufficent fuel. At the end of combat, all of your systems will be disabled and your energy will be returned to Zero. In addition, enemy ships that you can salvage fuel from at the end of combat will have the amount of fuel availble for salvage greatly reduced, from previously 4-8 units down to 0-2 units (average). This means that in the event you run out of fuel, you can obtain more by fighting off attacking ships, of course since they yeild so little fuel it will be a very long trek back to refuel, Also because of your increased vulnerablilty, your ship will likely take quite a beating. This will also encourage you to carry more repair materials on your ship so that you can survive the trip back.

Distress beacons will be removed from the game.

Fuel will no longer be consumed while in a star system (except for one condition described below)

Fuel will still be required to land on a planet, how ever with the rewrite comming, you will have an option to unload your lander and leave the ship again with out launching and landing, meaning you do not, unless you wish to change landing site, have to pay multiple times to land.

The planet lander will continue to not use fuel, it's probably solar powered or something.

The condition that fuel will be used in system or in combat is as follows: If you enter a system or combat instance, FROM Hyper space, with out a full charge on your battery (this happens if you are drawing power in space faster than your engines are producing it) you will be deducted fuel in the amount it would require to charge the battery back to full. This is to prevent an exploit where you get a free charge by entering a star system, Keep in mind that the amount of fuel involved in such a transaction is a fraction of a unit.


---------------------------------------------
MONEY
---------------------------------------------
The costs of every item upgrade and repair will be increased to take advantage of the new higher counter limits

In addition, the sell value of all minerals have been increased as well to counter the increased cost of everything else. Keep in mind selling minerals whether mined from planets, salvaged from wreckage, or obtained in some other way represents virtualy all of your income in the game.

---------------------------------------------
ENEMYS
---------------------------------------------
Most hostile's in the game will have their statistics tweaked.

---------------------------------------------
SPACE
---------------------------------------------
You can expect the game to take place over a much larger area of space, about 200x200 sectors, this means you the map will be about 50 times larger, As for the number of stars represented, you can expect that to stay around 100ish


How long for all this to be taken care of? Dunno, most of these changes are easy, the big problem will likely be the rewrite of the planet board WHICH IS STILL BROKEN FOR SOME REASON $!@#%$$!@)$@%&(^ end transmission

[Risu2112]

The new planet board will also be taking advantage of increased board size, The map won't be any larger (it's plenty large right now) How ever I will GREATLY increase the number of tiles that can be used to make ground. Currently I could have 7 active at a time, This will probably be changed to at least 16 so that I won't have to swap tiles in and out. I MAY possibly try to work out some sort of tile blender, my last atempt at that failed miserably.. but it failed to robot memory issues, speed issues and board size issues, At this point I could have like 50 buffers all generated for blending when you enter the planet.

The re write will probably also adress the slow down that under certain brief circumstances happened.

[Risu2112]

Then it occurs to me, Why not just have the ENTIRE surface of the planet generated right when you start? There's absoultly no reason for me to draw only a 3x3 section of the map any more, The only reason I EVER did that was to fit inside 100x100.

Use the small map to generate the entire surface when landing, this might take about 100 cycles or so. But I figure 5-10 seconds of load time is worth the fact that ALL of the problems associated with the old system will no longer be issues =DDD

[djtiesto]

KenOhki2112, on Dec 23 2004, 10:58 PM, said:

Then it occurs to me, Why not just have the ENTIRE surface of the planet generated right when you start? There's absoultly no reason for me to draw only a 3x3 section of the map any more, The only reason I EVER did that was to fit inside 100x100.

Use the small map to generate the entire surface when landing, this might take about 100 cycles or so. But I figure 5-10 seconds of load time is worth the fact that ALL of the problems associated with the old system will no longer be issues =DDD

Yo, is that Myau in your icon??

[Risu2112]

djtiesto, on Dec 24 2004, 11:36 AM, said:

KenOhki2112, on Dec 23 2004, 10:58 PM, said:

Then it occurs to me, Why not just have the ENTIRE surface of the planet generated  right when you start? There's absoultly no reason for me to draw only a 3x3 section of the map any more, The only reason I EVER did that was to fit inside 100x100.

Use the small map to generate the entire surface when landing, this might take about 100 cycles or so. But I figure 5-10 seconds of load time is worth the fact that ALL of the problems associated with the old system will no longer be issues =DDD

Yo, is that Myau in your icon??

Yep, Myau, the origional Nei.

[apage43]

I'd help but only because vacation is really boring and I need something to do and I'm weird and think debugging is fun

[Risu2112]

Rewrite is coming along nicely, The map generator is FAR superior to the old one.

Sectors are no longer rigidly divided into squares
There is no longer a 1 cycle delay when moving between sectors
New features will be included such as departing multiple times with out taking off.

What's left to do on this board:

Mini map, landing animation, launching, resource generation, environmental effects. misc other stuff

[Superfunk]

What are environmental effects? If you tell me, I think I might be able to help.

[Bramble]

Er, effects of the environment? The environment is the surroundings of something. So maybe he's talking about the animation of water flow, etc. I dunno.

[Koji]

Perhaps he's talking about something a bit more dynamic like erosion, rain etc.

[Risu2112]

I'm talking about earthquakes, hotspots, and sucky weather.

I've already made them, I just need to set them up to run on the new engine.

[Bramble]

I see.

[Dr_Dos]

dead people.

[Bramble]

[[If anyone wants to, you can pick this up at the Word Associations... say something like "the sixth sense"!]]

Yeah so anyway this game sounds pretty nice...

[Superfunk]

Here's some code for an earthquake!

: "loop"
wind 255
scrollview west for 2
wait 1
scrollview east for 2
wait 1
goto "loop"

Looks like that stupid wind thingy came i handy after all!

This post has been edited by funkbrat: 25 December 2004 - 12:42 PM

[apage43]

wonderful....
but no.
Ken has some weird as crap system, and the player object certainly isn't controlling the player enough for "wind" to be useful.