[Graham]

This is a funny time to start this journal. I haven't worked on the game in about two weeks. I've been busy making tutorial videos for megazeux. I've been having a lot of fun but I really miss working on the game and need to get back to it soon.

I've just got so many ideas. Not like in the past, when I would be stalled on a project because I had no where to go with it. My only set back is time. I've never been busier, it figures that the perfect idea would come along at a time in my life when I have almost no time to devote to it. Oh well, as long as it progresses I'm happy.

I'm being very tight lipped about what I'm working on because I'm afraid of getting anyone's hopes up and then stopping work and getting the demo curse. Given my past record, that's likely. I tend to not finish games because of lack of ideas and making it overly complicated. This ones different though. Tons of ideas and I'm making it more and more simple to produce all the time. Now if I could just stop finding things I want to add.

I would like to have this game done in a year. Fortunately Megazeux has been made easier to produce the kind of game I want to make than ever before. More to come, I gotta focus on my son now.

[Graham]

For the hell of it, here's a rundown of the games I've made, in roughly the order I've made them

ZZT games I've made:
Journey 6/08/1996 (Complete)My first game, a side scrolling action/adventure game
Commander 3/10/1993 (test)
Moronic 7/09/1995 (test)
Morons ? (test)
Commander/Levels 8/21/1995 (complete)A side-scrolling Puzzle Game
Gemhunt 11/08/1997 (complete)A side-scrolling treasure collecting action game
Sonic 11/08/1997 (Test)
Traseel 12/07/2001 (Complete) An action/RPG

Megazeux Games I've made:
Undead 5/09/1999 (partial)
Survive 09/11/2001 (idea)
Traseel (reboot) 6/16/2002 (partial)
Necromorphosis 4/02/2003 (idea)
Servo 4/21/2003 (complete)
Amnesia 11/19/1993 (partial)
Amnesia (reboot) 1/29/2011 (partial)
Servo (reboot) current (in progress)

[Graham]

I didn't get to do squat tonight. I just tried to move photo's from my phone to my computer to free up space. Now I can't find some videos I transferred. Are they lost? They're not in recycle bin, or anywhere that I can tell. Have spent five hours on this when I could have done something productive. stupid iPhone and crappy iTunes software. Sometimes I hate you Apple. I'm pissed.

[asgromo]

Admittedly you made better progress on your game than i did tonight

[Graham]

I'm going to make some YouTube videos of minecraft. I think since minecraft videos are very popular it may help my channel get some more traffic, which in turn may get my Megazeux tutorial videos some more exposure.

I'm going to do one where I set fire to my house. It's a large mansion with 2 block thick walls and 3 blocks between floor and ceiling. I left space between them to run redstone wire for lights. That space made it easy to add channels of water in the tops and bottoms of the walls. I was hoping it would be a good fire preventative measure. I haven't tested it and I thought recording it would be fun. I'll back up my world of course.

The other video will be a small tutorial on moving contents of one world to a another one. I haven't seen this done by anyone yet, but I discovered how to do it by trial and error. I've moved my home base to new worlds several times as I've used up all local resources and upgraded to newer versions and added mods. It's fairly easy once you know how and just involves knowing which files to transfer within your world save. Any body interested in this?

I'm itching to work on my megazeux game too, I'm spreading myself too thin I think, at this rate I'm never gonna make any progress, too much going on as usual. I'll try and make another level within the next few days.

Also I will make a video or two in the coming weeks displaying what the game is for anyone interested.

[Graham]

It always takes me a couple of days to get into the mind set of game creation. Once I'm in that mind set, it takes a couple of days to leave it.

An example, I'm thinking about what I want to do in my game right now, but if I sat down and tried to focus on it, I'd get no where. I'm still planning the tutorial videos right now, so my head's not really in game making mode.

It'll take a few more days of thinking to actually begin creating, or at least switch gears enough to be done with the tutorial vids. Once I'm creating the game, it'll be all I think about. My wife hates how focused I get on my hobbies. I really do struggle to pay attention to anything besides that sometimes. I feel like I have mild Asperger's syndrome sometimes.

[Graham]

Progress!! and that is significant considering my computer took a dump Saturday and wouldn't wake from sleep mode. My wife and I had to go buy a new computer, this is what we ended up with:
http://h20000.www2.h...eriesId=5330773

It's pretty nice so far, I'm getting used to windows 8. I didn't like it at first, but it actually has a lot of improvements. What's interesting is that since it was designed for tablets that run on batteries, it has very low ram and processor consumption. Any apps in the background are almost completely idle when not used.

I'm looking forward to playing some current games. The last computer was a little old to play most current ones. I'm thinking about sticking with Steam and PC next console cycle instead of buying the next Xbox or PlayStation. Anyone else leaning that way?

It was nice to get back to designing my game, although I found a few bugs that didn't make me happy. I was too tired to look into the causes. I'm not sure if I should stay on top of bugs, or if its better to tackle them all towards the end of the game production.

[Graham]

Carpel tunnel syndrome is no bueno. How am I supposed to press these keys with my fingers and wrists feeling like this?

On the up side, the worsening carpel tunnel means that I'm making a lot of progress on my game. I just need to get a wrist rest or something.

[Graham]

Here is a brief demonstration of my current project, enjoy!
http://youtu.be/VLTv3En2kBw

[Dr Lancer-X]

This looks awesome! I love the variety of the abilities and the animations and stuff.

The wipe-in animation for the default textbox is something invigorating I haven't seen before.

[Graham]

Thank you. There is a whole lot more i haven't shown yet. I thought about demoing more but I thought it might be too much of a spoiler.

[smilymzx]

About Amnesia (1993): Ain't MZX made to the public (v1.00g) in 1994?

If so, does that mean part of it was made in ZZT, and then imported to MZX v1.x?

[Graham]

I started with MegaZeux in 1995, (version 2.51) I probably started on Amnesia in 1996. If you see a different date listed, it's probably a typo.

[smilymzx]

Graham, on 09 July 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

I started with MegaZeux in 1995, (version 2.51) I probably started on Amnesia in 1996. If you see a different date listed, it's probably a typo.

Okay.

[Seventh Shade]

Hey, that looks great!

[Graham]

thank you. :-)

[Exophase]

Looks very good. That's an impressive amount of gameplay variation. Definitely has the potential to be added to the list of MZX games that are easily competitive with high quality games off the platform.

.. having said all that, while watching the video I can't help but shake something that's bothering me (that doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the game itself). Maybe I'm just showing how out of touch I've become with MZX, but when I see this I feel like we should have done some basic enhancements to MZX's graphics a long time ago. I don't mean going with a full on 2D system of expected quality or even three colors per char! or anything like that, just some little tweaks that are easy for existing games to implement. Like per-pixel background scrolling, per-pixel sprite offsets, and real transparency for sprites, all purely as add-ons to the current engine of course. It'd mean a totally different rendering engine and some updates to the sprite collision code but the games themselves would only need very minor changes to take advantage of it. Plenty of MZX games are just fine without stuff like this but I think this game would greatly benefit from it. I know that's removing some of the feel and style of MZX and maybe something no one wants anyway, I guess I'm just throwing it out there. It'd need some activity in the MZX scene itself but really just one very good game like this one would easily justify it, and it could probably trickle down to special-edition releases of some older games.

[Graham]

Hmm, yeah those are some cool ideas you've suggested Exo, and I would totally try to use them if they were to be implemented. But I've also grown to love the blocky nature of MegaZeux (like Minecraft) and the cantankerousness of the graphics. But I am aware that those attributes may be a turn off for some users/players who've not grown up seeing games like this.

If these were features that were optional, that you could choose to use, it couldn't hurt accept for the time it took to implement them. But will it draw more people in? I dunno.

The two things that have allowed me to make this game come together are file loading of programs into robots and the copy block repeatedly function. Without those I'd still be on level one. I'd like to see energy focused on making more stuff like that in MegaZeux, to make it easier and faster to complete games. The reason I'm doing the tutorials is to try and get to a point where I'm showing people how to make stuff efficiently. I'd like to see the community grow, but I'll keep using/playing MagaZeux games if I'm the last person doing so, that's just me.

[djtiesto]

Damn, that looks really nice! It reminds me of oldskool Euro-PC games for some reason (i.e. Amiga/Commodore) with its look. Only suggestion would be to speed it up, it looks a bit slow-paced.

[A-Guymzx]

Holy hell, This barely looks like a mzx game on first glance. It definitely looks really interesting and well-made. Looking forward to this one for sure.

On another note,

Exophase, on 10 July 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

..., just some little tweaks that are easy for existing games to implement. Like per-pixel background scrolling, per-pixel sprite offsets, and real transparency for sprites, all purely as add-ons to the current engine of course.

That would be an incredibly helpful thing to have. It's been bothering me for quite a while how my sprites always have this box showing around them covering up what's underneath. Just this little tweak could greatly enhance the look of a lot of Mzx games that make use of sprites.

[Graham]

djtiesto, on 13 July 2013 - 09:12 AM, said:

Damn, that looks really nice! It reminds me of oldskool Euro-PC games for some reason (i.e. Amiga/Commodore) with its look. Only suggestion would be to speed it up, it looks a bit slow-paced.

Thanks. I actually realized it was a little slow to and added the ability to change speed in the options menu. Normal is speed 4 and Fast is speed 3. I like it at normal but I understand it does play better on fast.

[Graham]

A-Guymzx, on 13 July 2013 - 12:13 PM, said:

Holy hell, This barely looks like a mzx game on first glance. It definitely looks really interesting and well-made. Looking forward to this one for sure.

Thanks a lot! I'll keep ya posted on progress here. Though I won't give away too much. It's going to have quite a bit of depth in terms of places to explore. I don't want to give those away.

[Graham]

Lotsa progress! I have just reached my 100th backup, I don't why but that excited me. 17 levels complete so far, I've created a bunch of neat puzzle mechanic stuff but Agh! I don't want to spoil all the goodies. It's a lot of fun to play though. I'm going to need some opinions real soon though, before I get too much further, so maybe I'll have to have a few people play it. Maybe during west coast (Portland Con) if I get a chance I'll ask some people. I really need to watch some people play it, to gauge their responses to some of the puzzles to know if I'm on the right track difficulty and fun wise. It will be nice meeting some of you in person.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Graham]

Changed explosions tonight. They went from a single sprite to four. They are a red and white pixelated circle burst and are staged to go off one after the other. It gives the explosion a lot of depth and by varying the x/y slightly of each sprite, it has some variation. It looks neato.

Shown in the video is my messy testing board where I fart around with stuff.

http://youtu.be/SXIMA_wMFz4

This post has been edited by Graham: 16 July 2013 - 05:58 AM

[Padz]

Great to see someone new who's been in the MZX zone so long! I've checked out your Youube and the game looks fantastic, keep up the good work.

[Graham]

Thank you man.

[Graham]

I've been stuck at level 18 for a few days. Having a plethora of strange bugs I've not seen before. A sprite randomly dissapears. Another one's robot stops controlling it, so no collision detection, and it doesn't turn the sprite off when it should. I think it's related to saving the game during the level, but I'm not sure what's going on yet. I know the robots are changing ID numbers because of saving but it shouldn't matter. The sprites number is initially assigned based on robot_id. Local is set to robot_id, after that the robot uses 'local' whenever it refers to the sprite. Not sure why it's acting so oddly. I may have to have someone else look at it if I can't figure it out in the next couple of days.

This post has been edited by Graham: 23 July 2013 - 06:55 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

I could probably work out what it is for you if you get stuck.

[Graham]

Cool, thank you. I changed a couple of things, let me see if the problem persists and I'll let you know.

[Graham]

So I just figured out what's happening. it's basically related to the reordering of sprite_id's upon saving. the way my game is set up, after a robot is generated it goes to X position 0, Y position "robot_id". The robot's ID changes upon saving but it's position on the board does not. Other robot's are then being created with the ID that the robot used to have, so they are basically being deleted by new robots occupying their spot.

I guess the fix is to send all robots a subroutine label that initiates them moving to their current robot_id after saving occurs. if this happens in one cycle, will any robots be deleted by them moving around? for instance if robot 45 is in y position 56 and moves to y position 45, will it delete the robot in that spot before it has a chance to move? since I will use the command 'send all "reorder"' will they all move at the same time or will some delete others? I'm not sure if it happens instantly or if there is some leeway during the cycle. too tired to find out tonight, goodnight all.