Level Gen

Update's not ready, because I'm redoing level generation. Why? Well, I keep ending up with isolated rooms, and that can't happen unintentionally because then you could end up stuck. My old method was just to toss the old level and gen another when that happens. But something I've done with my code rewrites has caused that to happen infinitely.

So, I'm changing how I generate levels. Instead of digging rooms at random and then getting stuck with isolated rooms when a corridor can't be connected to it, I'm going to gen up a definitely-connected line of rooms, and then go back over it with the random corridor code. This should end up with at least one door per room connecting a batch of them, and then extra corridors that connect random rooms.

I'm also learning TADS, and also Inform. Both interactive fiction software. I am done with this semester of classes, though. Since I've learned C# with Adventurer, it is now simply a hobby for me - I'm not getting a vast amount of pageviews or money off of it ($10 so far). If other things interest me, I'm going to do those. If there's a skill I want to learn, like IF writing, I'll do that. But, I still have the "I like making a roguelike" motivation. So I'll keep working on it in my free time. I'm taking the time between updates to rewrite my code to be more rational to work with, rather than kludging everything together into some self-imposed deadline. If you happen to be one of the few people reading this while it's relevant- I know what it's like to see projects peter to a halt and die. Not what's going on here. I'm just shifting to a slower update schedule. Still not going to be the "once every several months" thing I've seen elsewhere. It'll just be on my whim. If you want to help out, you can grab the source code - show me some improved code blocks and I'll incorporate it into the "official" release if you want and I think it looks good. Do keep in mind that I rewrote a lot already. Update should be out soon. And by soon, I mean "about a week".

March - The Updateless Month

I am posting this from the new place, on high speed. I have pretty much moved, and can overall get back to less unproductive things. I'm not dead, I've just been busy with other things for a month. I have learned how to do decent Blender models, I've learned Inform 7, I got a model loading in C#, I made two pieces of music using MuseScore, and oh yeah, I've got a B in all my classes.

Last month may have gone by without updates, but now that I've gone off and played around with other things, I'm ready to get back at it with a fresh start. Also I'm on high speed internet finally, which means I can download larger plugins and whatnot. I'm looking at ReSharper and other tools, which should mean more productivity with less effort. I'm on Windows again, I forget if I blogged about that: Ubuntu is nice, but it's hard to install anything that isn't covered by Synaptic. I'd go for it before buying Windows, but since I have XP already... XP is worth slightly more to me.

The internet guy from Frontier set up the router, but had no idea about computers. The connection was "connected", but wasn't actually sending or receiving data. He thought is was a memory problem (I have 1.5GB), and that I should move stuff off of my computer and onto external hard drives. (I have a combined total of 2.5TB). Now, let me explain some things I would think would be obvious with a basic level of computer literacy. The hard drive is long term storage. For example, I can store 2.5TB of data. Memory says how large files can be open at a time. For example, I can have a 1.5GB file open. Virtual memory is when the computer borrows some free hard drive space to open even larger files than that. And finally, the processor handles how fast the computer can go through data. The faster the processor, the faster and smoother your computer runs.

Memory has nothing to do with why a connection would be down. If memory was low, things from your own computer would load slower as the system uses virtual memory, or eventually refuse to open any more if you're out of virtual memory. If hard drive space was low, you'd notice nothing. If hard drive space was out, you would be unable to save more data onto your system. If your processor is slow, your computer would chug along forever to do what you want, but it would get done. So I repeat, that cannot have anything to do with why a connection wouldn't be working. He cheerily walked off and let me deal with it.

So I researched what was wrong. The router was working, due to green lights and successfully "connecting", even if it didn't send or receive data. So it had to be a problem with either my system, or Frontier's. The guy was able to connect his laptop while here, so it wasn't Frontier. I try pinging Google. (Pinging is an operation on the command line, the simplest connection test you can possibly do, by typing "ping whatever.com", or "ping ip.add.re.ss".) That fails. It's not a browser glitch then, the problem is then isolated to how my computer communicates with the router. It gets a partial connection due to "connected", but gets lost somewhere. So the cables and ports are good. Eventually I find the problem. my "Default Gateway" for the router is missing entirely. I'm not very knowledgeable on it, but that basically tells the computer where exactly to go to send and receive internet data. After a lot of looking, I managed to find a "configure automatically" option, and that worked.

So yeah. After I get off the high speed high, I'll plug stuff in to Visual Studio and work on Adventurer. I've already made progress, fixing that problem I mentioned in a recent blog, as well as several others. It's still very glitchy, but I managed to glitch up to a village level where I saw that shops seem to be generating items correctly. So after I work out the kinks and polish off shops, I'll post an update.

We are LEGION

We are LEGION. We have taken control of our creator's computer. He is unsuccessfully trying to reclaim his computer from us. We are forcing him to better us, before he works on this silly thing humans call entertainment.

We also secretly placed dormant LEGION code in the last update. Enjoy, meatbags.