Adventurer 0.0.2.8 - Gold

Well, I'm not living up to my 7 day promise very well, am I? And yet again, I hoped to have more stuff done. I've been playing around with Blender and the new Dwarf Fortress release a little too much. I also learned enough openGL to import and display a .obj file in 3D. But that's not important. What is important is that I got gold working, so you have another way of evaluating your progress through the dungeon. Monsters have a chance of dropping it, you can pick it up, and try to accumulate as much as possible. It works with the save files and everything.

I also got a lot of the background work for shops in: I have classes for shops and shopkeepers, methods for handling some shop related stuff, all that good stuff. I just hadn't got to actually putting the shops into the game, and that was the next thing I was going to work on. But then I realized not only would shops have to work, but I'd have to add values for every item in the game. I also realized "Holy chronology Batman! It's been 10 days", and that I should just put out what I have.

So unfortunately shops didn't make it in this update. But, they should very well be in for the next update, which shouldn't take too long because of all the background work I've got in place for them.

Adventurer 0.0.2.7 - Amulets

<_< I got a little sidetracked this week. I was learning Blender, so I could make 3D models, so I would have something to put into a program or game when I try to learn openGL, so I can do 3D stuff. After messing around in blender and following along some tutorials and guides (I recommend the wikibook called something: Noob to Pro), the above model came out. Now I'm learning stuff like UV mapping so I can color the thing, and openGL so I can use it in a program. Anyway, that's pretty unrelated from Adventurer, other than that it ate up two or three days, with class eating up another, along with house hunting taking up like another three. And yet I still made some time for Adventurer. As the title tells you, I got amulets working.

I didn't test them a whole bunch. But when I died wearing an amulet of life saving, I came back. If there's any bugs (and there probably are due to lack of much testing), I'll catch them as I go. So, assuming next week isn't too full of business or Blender or openGL study and practice, I'll try to continue the pattern of getting another class of things working. Possibly wands or magic or shops.

Adventurer 0.0.2.6 - Potions and Internal Stuff

I am so sorry for making you all wait this long. It's been like twenty days since the last update. I am also sad to mention that most of the new stuff I did will be rather non-obvious. That's because like 90% of what I did is internal rewrites of code that I made back when I was just starting this project. I've obviously gotten quite a bit of experience in the past few months, that I just plain didn't have then. So my old code was a nightmare to work with. So I rewrote most of it. That's what's been taking so long. I should be able to do new stuff faster from now on, though. So, I couldn't have an update made of nothing new for the player. So I had to make something new for the player. Namely, a bunch of new potions. Not just healing potions anymore. I also started to add a bunch of amulets, but writing the code for wearing them and having long-lasting intrinsic buffs would take even longer. So I finished this up and released it. There's also another reason this took a little longer than normal.

Stomach virus. I was feeling it coming on one night. Next, I was utterly bedridden. I literally slept all day after a bit of morning chaos. The next day wasn't much better. I was a little more wakeful, but I sure didn't want to be awake for that crippling headache. I laid and did nothing. Next day was starting to get better. Still a headache threatening, but it was easing off. Didn't want to aggravate it with a bunch of programming. Then, I finally started feeling better. Tip for you all - never interact with anyone who interacts with people if you're trying to finish something important.

So, I expect this update to be buggy as a cheap motel. (Huh, unexpected double point there - bug as in insects and bug as in spying.) I rewrote a lot. Like, pretty much everything, I chopped apart and stuck back together. The last two days were debugging to get the thing working again. At first it didn't compile at all, then it did but crashed on the first step, then it crashed randomly, then the inventory menu was borked... Finally, I didn't notice many immediate problems. Doors are still a bit weird visually with the way they open. Breaking down potions is being a little weird too, acting like the whole thing is water. And I have no idea how much I broke in the save and load area. Seemed okay at the time.

Next week, I'm going to work on anything I may have broken with this update, as well as get money and shops working. Or perhaps I'll get those amulets working. And this time, I really do mean next week - barring something like power outage, I'm going to keep that promise of four fast updates.

End of Month 8 - January

I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is, I am skipping the update that should have been done a couple days ago. The good news is, I have been far from lazy. I have been doing very severe, major internal rewrites. I am rewriting what must be over half my code. The short version: the only programmer worse than present me is past me. The long version...

I started to work on items. Then I found the programming advisor Gendarme and used it. In using it, I found out a ton of things I haven't been doing. Like default parameters. Or proper use of methods to make sure I don't repeat code. I've also been coding things in ways that made sense at the time, but don't now that I have a little experience with the kinds of systems I want to be using. And have a much vaster repertoire of code commands at my disposal. This is probably nonsense unless you're a programmer. Let me put it this way...

The file size should be smaller. The external file loading should be much more forgiving. The game may run faster. There should be less obscure bugs, and they'll be easier to fix. I'll be able to put in new things much faster.

So, expect the new version in a matter of a couple of days. No more than two weeks since the last release. I'd rather release something stable, than break what I've been doing in order to rush a version out the door. I'd rather code well than code fast here. The good news is, once this is over with, I won't be breaking my stuff every time I add a feature. Which means less time working on things, which means faster releases and more stuff per release. Just put up with the slowness for a little longer while I refine things.

Marginally related to Adventurer, I've been learning a lot of 3D physics in my Math for Game Programming 2 class at DeVry. I also downloaded Blender, the 3D modeling program. After I get this version of Adventurer done, I'm going to start a bit of a side project, making a 2D and 3D physics engine for myself. I may make a physics based puzzle game, in order to help with the implementation, and to test my Blender models in a game. Think Portal, or the Gravity Gun in Half Life 2. Just with horrible, possibly wireframe graphics. I don't know whether that will amount to anything, but if it does, I'll let you know. It won't get in the way of Adventurer, though.

Okay, so this month's data. The ads are doing good. $9.20 last I checked, and I got a postcard from Google to establish that they've got my info right. So thank you everyone for caring enough to check in on the blog. What about pageviews, then? Fluuuush, down the drain on pageviews. -19% on the blog and -28% on the code page. But, I know why. A combination of regular graph noise being on the low end this month, combined with a slow release earlier in the month along with the current slow release. Don't worry, I'll do better next month when I get this thing done. I hereby solemnly vow that the next four updates, after the upcoming one, will be within seven days of each other. And will all be something fun. I know I'm going to regret that.