Elderlore

Closer and Closer to 0.6

doy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:47:10 +0000

Hi! As some of you may already know, I’m the release manager for the 0.6 release, and I’m here to announce that the 0.6.0 release is coming very soon! I’ve just uploaded the first release candidate version (0.6.0-rc1) to the CDO server and to the Windows Builds page. What this means is that 0.6 is [...] Related posts:

Notes

Krice — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:35:00 +0000

Source: Kaduria

I may have talked about this earlier, but I have special comments in the source code starting with word "note:". Those parts of source contain a problem I have left to solve later. There are now 74 notes. Most of them are hard to fix and today I pretty much fixed one of them, which involved adding stuff to Score class (which I was talking about in 2008 blog entry). Fixing "note:" problems is as important as anything else in the source code, but they have been difficult to handle, because of generic difficulty or that something is still missing, like serialization which I now can handle, thanks to important experience from Teemu's serialization.

Bringing cmake to libtcod – First Successes

donblas — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:01:00 +0000

I just checked in cmake files that will build libtcod and libtcod-gui under both visual studio and msys/mingw. I still have a laundry list of things to do left including: Build the example programs Add back opengl support Test linux (and mac if I can get ahold of one) builds. Seperate C and CPP libraries for linux. Install build stuff to root directory A list of nice to have. Related posts:

7DRL – Day 4

Nicholas "Numeron" Ross — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:44:00 +0000

Source: Numeron Reactor

Working at home on that laptop was so unproductive. My mouse kept screwing up too, so I dug around for the warranty papers (lucky to find them really) and replaced both my keyboard and mouse :D

I didnt get much done at home, but came in to work around 6 when almost everyone has left and remained here until 1am. The player can now teleport, build buildings (well schedule them to be built atleast), capture areas, win, lose(cant be tested until the AI is in). I have all but 2 of the building types done, and all but 2 spells done (both of these tasks shouldnt take long).

Tomorrow I plan to do the strategy screen, and fix up as absolutely many small loose ends as I can so that the AI can be done all in one hit on thursday and Ill have friday to bughunt and polish. If I have time I will also do the low priority things like the help screen, and the scoreboard. Since Ill be on a wine tour on saturday all day I wont have saturday morning to do any work, and Ill probably end up posting the result on sunday if the wine tour turns into clubbing saturday night :)

Im seriously going all out here - I dont just want to finish a game in 7 days, I completed that task twice before in the previous two challenges. This time I want to push myself as far as I can go and get a really really awesome result. So far its looking that way, I just have to not burn out...

User registrations re-enabled

Mingos — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:43:01 +0000

OK, I installed some additional stuff that keeps an eye on all forms that are filled on UR site and also some additional magic that is supposed to sift users from bots. Result? The database log is now filled with failed account creation attempt notifications and not a single rubbish user account has been registered over the night.

Since the new modules seem to work correctly, I re-enabled user registrations using only an email verification.

XIOTANK 7DRL Compo Entry, Day 1 results

David O'Toole — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:04:00 +0000

Source: Lisp Games Development Et Cetera

The first day's productions, summed up in 30 seconds.

2010 7DRL Challenge – Day 2, the real start

Slash — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:16:01 +0000

Source: Slashware Interactive - Development Log

Onward!

Run around creating settlements

The Ruler project is now set up using Serf, and basic unit groups, units, civilizations and map are all set up. Calendar is also running, using a passive actor. You can walk in the (randomly generated) map and create settlements using your pioneer caravans.

Next: Barbarians and Creating Units

Aprox Work Time: 7:00 (4:00 + 3:00)

Bidden day #3

georgek — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:15:17 +0000

Source: Kooneiform » roguelike

time so far: 26 hours

The mockup slowly wrenches its way toward a real game. Believe it or not, up to this point in my programming self-education I had never touched procedural map generation — always working with hardcoded maps while doing other things. Luckily libtcod makes all of this fairly painless. I can’t imagine doing all of this from the ground up as some entrants are doing!

The above is a simple binary-space partition, with the borders of the rooms walled in, and then tunnels dug from room to room (somewhat randomly). I’m quite relieved to have made this milestone actually, as I was worried it was going to be a major stumbling block. I think I’ll be able to produce a rougher ruin map, and a twisting labyrinth map, in similar fashion. Of course it’s an open question if I’ll have any content to fill those maps with!

Basic movement and collision is in of course, and along with that and the level generation a proper code structure for the map as well.

I spent a bit of time with generating a template for title creation — if you look in the header you’ll see a partial example of that. In the story of this world there are many groups and factions, forming in every which way, and I hope with the titles to add some of that flavor.

Wrangled more with the json saving and loading — found since everything is unicode in json I need to convert symbols to str before printing with libtcod. It’s turning into more of a cost than a benefit, but one of my goals with this project was to give json a go, and I’m certainly doing that!

My long weekend is over, and it’s back to the dayjob Tuesday-Friday. Hopefully I’ll have some extra free time during the day this week, otherwise I see some long evenings ahead. My goal now that I have the basic structures is to get a playable run from start to finish, even if this just means the bare minimum of content required.

Almost double the number of entries this year compared to last year by the way — incredible!

A truckload full of random updates…

donblas — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:08:00 +0000

So it's been more than a week since my last post, which is more than twice what I strive for (1.75/week). A variety of reasons are to blame for this, so I figured I'd comment on the relevant ones. Illness - Have to love the times of year when everyone in the office seems to get sick. Dragon Age - I just finished this game this weekend. I'm in the weird position of really really enjoying the Related posts:

7DRL Development

Legend of Angband — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:44:00 +0000

Source: Legend of Angband

To save time I decided to develop my roguelike entry this year in the C++ programming language. I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Normally this software costs around $600, especially since I got the professional version. Luckily I am a student at a community college. Microsoft gives the software for free to poor students like me.

I know Visual Studio can target a "console application". To me that means you get text output on an old DOS box style window. I got an app to come up and display the DOS box. However I can't get the thing to display text where I want it on the screen. I am calling the WriteConsoleOutput function. You would think that would be simple. But the darn thing keeps throwing an error.

The optimal development environment would be one where I could concentrate on the mechanics of the game. I feel like I am wasting time trying to figure out the mundane programming tasks now like just drawing anything on the screen. If this keeps up, I am going to be doomed and fail in producing anything that looks like a game. I need luck. If you know how to do ASCII output with Visual Studio easily, let me know.