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.

Adjusting to MonoDevelop

I was thinking that I should add some more posts between the main game-update posts, particularly if they might be useful to others out there. Well, I think this might be one of those. Last week, I switched to Ubuntu and MonoDevelop. MonoDevelop is to any platform what Visual Studio is to Windows. Overall, it's very similar and I'm getting along pretty well with it. But then I hit a problem of the sort I've encountered before - something I've done is causing every creature except to player to hit with a damage of 1. My normal process is to run up to a point where creatures exist, pause, and check what's in currentLevel.creatureList, which is of type List, and holds all the creatures in the level.

So I do that in Mono. I set a breakpoint, and stop it in a good spot to check what's going on with creatures. I hover over "currentLevel", that comes up with some info on the level, and a plus sign. I hit the plus sign, and expand it open. In there is a lot of information about the level - including creatureList. There's a plus next to it, so I push it to expand and... nothing. The plus just disappears, nothing changes. I use Expression Evaluator on it - "Expression not supported". So apparently the MonoDevelop version I have doesn't handle Lists too well. I did, however, learn that I'm a little old on the version I have, and that newer versions have done some work on debugging and tools, even specifically mentioning that the "Expression not supported" shouldn't be appearing anymore. So I'm updating to the new version at the moment, where hopefully I'll be able to check what's in a List.

I also learned about this program called Gendarme. Apparently, it can analyze a .NET/Mono program and help ensure you're following best practices, by pointing out common inefficiencies and usually poor practices. Of course, you're free to disregard any of the advice it gives. But I think it is a good second opinion that I'll be running through my code once it gets downloaded.

Overall, I'm focusing my efforts elsewhere while that all downloads. I'm adding items to the item library, and updating the code that loads in items. I'll be adding in new capabilities, new branches of code logic to handle all the new effects and quirks the new items are bringing in. I probably won't finish all of their special abilities in one go - I'm focusing more on just getting them in. But I will get all of them, and I will try to get as many specials in for the items as possible. I'm also building on and refining things like the material system; when I work more on things like crafting, magic, chemistry, and physics arcs, it will become quite important. Things like letting acidic creatures corrode iron items, or having things rust over time, or self-perpetuating fire reactions. Making innovative things like chlorine gas traps - which would of course interact with the H2O part of most living things, turning into an acid coating. But for now, just improving on the bare bones items that were in before.

Adventurer 0.0.2.5 - Cross-Platform with Mono

At long, long last, I can honestly call Adventurer cross-platform. It definitely runs on Windows and Ubuntu (Linux), and should run on Macintosh. Someone tell me if it does, if you've got a Mac. So if you've been following me the past week, I got almost nothing done with items. I did, however, go through a major operating system shift that took up most of my time. I am now primarily a Ubuntu user. Yay! I like it.

I am now using MonoDevelop to work on Adventurer, rather than Visual Studio. It seems largely the same, and it shouldn't be much of a leap for me. It also helps ensure that anything I do will be compatible with Mono, and so Adventurer should remain from now on fully cross-platform. Realize that I'm still doing this in C#: I've had a lot of debate in my web classes (which primarily use C++) about whether C++ or C# is better. While C++ has been around longer, I've found that I can get to anything C++ can do whenever I like, but usual programming is much more intuitive and faster. The main complaint is that C# isn't cross-platform. To that I say: Look at this right here. You may not have believed me, but right here is proof. I have run a C# program on something other than Windows.

Okay, so I didn't get much done with items. Like, frankly anything. Well, I got sidetracked on last week's bit of awesomeness. By the time I finished, it was already seven days, and time for an update. So here you all are. Windows users are going to be a little disappointed, but Linux and Mac users should at long last be able to play this thing without having to go to extreme emulation measures.

Next week will be back to work on items and other ideas I've had building up. Also an interesting note: It is 1/21/11 as of me posting this. Next week exactly, 1/28, is my birthday. I'll be 20. Wow, that feels really major when I write it like that. So what do I want? Well, I'm hoping that I would get a donation. Any donation. I've been working on Adventurer for several months, and I have almost $7 built up from ads. And if you aren't able or feeling up to giving me a monetary vote of confidence, then how about a textual one? Comment, tell me what you think, offer constructive criticism and suggestions. You may not think it, but seeing a new comment in my inbox really does lift my spirits.

Adventurer 0.0.2.4 - Lowercase Creatures and Timing System

The bestiary file was what, 2 kb before? 82kb now. I spent a good deal of time for this update on filling out the bestiary, referencing Nethack data. I got all the lowercase creatures. If I'd done the rest, it would be well into next week before the update would be out.

I also worked on the timing system. Before, it progressed by having the player move, then all the other creatures would move, then the world would update. IT was very quirky and I ended up breaking a lot of things that way. Doing any sort of nonstandard timing was near impossible. So I just rewrote all that to be a tick/energy based system. Basically, it simulates the flow of time and only then does it start assigning who's turn it is, based on said flow of time.

This did and enables many things. First and foremost, creatures have varying speeds and it all seems to be working perfectly. If you're a jelly, you're not going to be moving very quickly. If you're a warhorse, you're going to be racing circles around opponents. Another thing this enabled is the easy resolution of the tripwire issue - yes, tripwires finally work. I also reduced the number of them on any given level. There were really just way too many, especially since there isn't variety in traps yet.

Next week, I'm working on some new features, rather than just filling out the ones that are already there. Mostly, I'm going to try to add new types, and more items of types that are already in. Items with different uses, more items to implement in crafting, more varieties of potions, scrolls for one-use effects... heck, I may even get some magic working. Creatures got their week of targeted development, now I'm going to give items theirs.

Adventurer 0.0.2.3 - Fan Fixes and More Creatures

So I promised a full library of creatures in yesterday's post. Well, that was stupid of me. Two problems kept me from keeping that promise. The first, is that there is a lot of reference material for creatures I'm using. A loooot of creatures. I only finished 'd' before I noticed the second problem. The creature select menu can't handle them all quite yet. You run out of letters.

So, I'm just going to finish that up and get a multi-page system working. I'm also going to add Effects, so that creatures can have special attacks, there can be more potions, and scrolls as well. Also, finishing up some fan suggestions I didn't quite get implemented yet.

What I did do is the aforementioned ton of fan-found bug fixes. Many, many of the bugs in the game have been fixed. Or at least I think they've been. Further research is always appreciated.I've also implemented creatures 'a' through most of 'd'. Okay, that's not that much. But it's still like triple of what was in already, and I'm going to be finishing filling it out next week.

So there's really not much to say that I didn't yesterday. Enjoy.

End of Year One

I was going to post an update tonight. I really was. But there's a little more to do left before it's ready. I'd rather post the complete thing tomorrow, than leave you for a week with a bestiary disproportionately full of insects and blobs, but lacking in everything else. My resolution this year? Lose some weight. Write something. Make Adventurer popular enough to get Google to pay me something for the ad space. And I know I've just jinxed all three.

So it's 2011. Okay, only half a year of Adventurer. But it's a big milestone. So what have we accomplished so far? Well, Adventurer has gone from a small hobby project using the restrictive but simple XNA, to what is becoming a truly playable or even enjoyable roguelike using more sophisticated, easier to run techniques such as SDL. When I started, I had no idea what a List was. Now, I know how to do A* pathfinding with binary search.

I've learned a lot through the process, and I'm still learning more. Looking back, I can almost kick myself on some of the ways I stumbled through the process. But I was learning, I gave it my best, and darn it if I didn't just power through all the problems and turn out a working roguelike. Now that I know better, I'm going back and upgrading some of my old code. As well as developing more.

What am I doing for tomorrow's update? Well, a good deal of what I've done is fan-found fixes (fanciful alliteration there) and suggestions. Don't groan: it's part of establishing Dev Team Thinks Of Everything. More appropriately Anonymous Thinks of Everything and Dev Guy Makes it Happen. This week's major contributor towards making bug fixes happen was the forum-goer known as Archenon, who broke the game in ways I didn't even know were possible. I'm also adding a lot of creatures, so that next week I can focus on making them unique with status effects and such. You know, spiders that can web things up, wizards that can confuse you, gels that can hold you in place, poisons, etc. Also I'll be working on potions and possibly scrolls to do the same things. I'm afraid tripwires are going to be broken still until I next week add an effect to stun/paralyze you for a short duration.

The blog stats: December - 803 views +40% All time - 2292
The main page stats: December - 862 views +29% All time - 2462
Ads/Donations: December - $1.69; $0 All time - $6.32, $0

What does this tell me? Well, there's a linear growth rate of 30-40% on views, it's always seemed to be that way. Which still means the absolute increase in views is exponential. Notice that though Adventurer has been going for seven months, December had a third of the views. Exactly. Ad revenue has also been on the rise. Maybe if it keeps increasing, I'll be able to get some actual web hosting. If you think that is a good use of the money. Really, what do you think I should do with it? Also, it makes me a sad Kala that no one out of 2000+ people has donated anything. I thought I would get a rate more like 1%. Or 0.1%.

Some other interesting stats are from the scary amount of data Google Analytics offers. For example, I know most of you are browsing this blog with Firefox on a Windows operating system running in 24/32-bit color at 1280x1024 screen resolution, and you live in the United States in either Washington, California, Tennessee, Texas, or New York. Whoever that is near Bellavue, Washington: I'm on to you and your 48 visits. Admit it, you're obsessed. >:D Also, ha ha, I get it Finland: one of your towns is named Kalasen. Although I don't get YOU, Russia at third place. China still remains sadly unaware Adventurer exists.

So happy new year everybody. And remember: Both I and Google know what you did. Yes you.

Adventurer 0.0.2.2 - Unified Tileset and De-dragoned Rats

So I've got this uploaded to Google Code. I pretty much just took a fan suggestion and went with it. Basically, someone needs to be able to edit a tileset. I'm a horrible sprite artist myself. Not that I didn't try: I had to draw 253 ASCII tiles, which took up a good chunk of my time. Then there was actually getting SDL to properly load and display from this file, which took some time. But that all works, and should be easy to edit for anyone that would like something to look different. I'll improve it even more later on so that colors are properly preserved with the internal recoloring that happens right now to ASCII tiles.

Anyway, the edit also saw me having to work on rewriting the way grids of tiles are handled. I had to make a constant, which I really should have done to begin with, and then fix all the damage that caused everywhere. Eventually, I got it working fine. You should see some aesthetic differences, as in the picture above. Another slowdown is family holiday festivities including seeing a synchronized music/light show, and my monitor going down. The replacement also didn't seem to want to work on my computer. Third time was the charm though, borrowed my console monitor that was rigged up as a TV.

I also corrected some other bugs, most importantly the bug in the way DNotation was stored, causing rats to end up with dragon claws. Also, attempting to load a bad save file shouldn't crash the game now. Amongst other little things I worked on.

Next week I'm going to again try to work on adding a lot of creatures to flesh out the bestiary, if I don't get sidetracked by something else that needs to be done. And remember to check out the new forum, we need more members there.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, everyone.

Adventurer Forum

I am again suprised to find that adventurer.freeforums.org is not taken. WELL IT IS NOW MINE! But seriously, it's a good way to get discussion going amongst users, as opposed to what we have here which is targeted primarily towards myself. I have never been an admin or mod or even a very participating user before, but I've been a lurker on various forums for a long time. I promise to be a very lenient admin. I really only have one rule: Don't disrupt usage of the site. It's a broad rule and the host probably has rules that you also need to adhere to like not posting gore images everywhere. Which also would happen to follow under my rule because angering the host would pretty directly to disruption of the use of the site.

I've seen too many sites get trigger-happy admins and mods, that ignore the rules on people they like and take action on people not breaking any. Myself, I'm all for freedom of expression. Go ahead and flame war as long as you don't break the primary rule. As long as it doesn't result in pages of spam obstructing view of the good stuff, have at it. I do reserve the right to take this back since, you know, I'm the admin. But I want to watch how things go like this.

So have fun.

Adventurer 0.0.2.1 - Classic Update

Well my usual time of update has come and gone without an update, but I have good reason. I could complain about college eating up a lot of my time and then suddenly quit on the project altogether. But nah, I'm not like that. Seriously though, last week was the next-to-final week and had some of the hardest, most time consuming stuff. Never, ever try to do a "combo matrix" by hand. And then there was a lot of studying for both final exams, which I took today.

But that was only half of what is taking up my time. The other half is Adventurer. I'm working hard on 0.0.2.1, but it's not quite ready yet. ...actually, you know what? I just think I fixed it enough to give it to you all. I started to write this blog post before I finished it, but yeah. Here you go.

The major change here is one that may not be perfectly agreed upon. I switched to a more classic roguelike style health and damage system. There are a few reasons why I did this. The first is that it was hard to tell how close you were to death before. The second is that it was extremely unbalanced. The third is that I have much more source material to borrow data off of in this format. Hopefully, the increase in fun will outdo the temporary loss of an uncommon combat system. I do intend to either switch back to a realistic style or to continue using the current system, but with a lot of improvements that will go hand in hand with it while increasing the detail level of combat.

The other major change, the one that suddenly increases this game's longevity by a lot, is an experience system. Yes, you can finally gain levels and grow stronger. I even rigged up save files with it and improved those. You can save and pick up exactly where you left off, current hit points and all.

A more personal change is that I totally redid how the game internally handles input from the player. I shifted everything over to use the WaitForKey method instead of weaving my logic in with my SDL. I started on this because rats spontaneously decided they could save their moves up, then use them in one burst. Dealing with it in the SDL mire was a no go. So now it is MUCH more simple on my end. It's just what ate up most of my time this week.

And finally, I fixed a bug where kicking down a door would leave a permanent shadow spot where it was. I'd forgotten to set the tile back to transparent when a door is kicked down. The other bug that was pointed out was the duplicate body parts. I have no idea what's causing that yet. It shouldn't affect much, I'll see if I can spot what's causing it next week.

So next week. The bestiary is looking pretty thin. Now that I've got this classic-style update done, it will be easy to add in a ton of creatures and some more items. So I'm going to do that.

0.0.2.0 Graveyard Files

I'm almost back on track with this update. I'm a day late, so sue me. Actually, don't sue me, I haven't even made five dollars yet. This was never meant to be a major update, so don't expect a ton of new features.

What I did do, first off, is fixed some of the bugs from the last update. Yeah, that was a major update. You had items multiplying on reload, and sometimes when a level would try to save, it would hit a null item, give up, and cry. No more, I fixed that. As far as what I added instead of just fixed, two things. The first is graveyard files. Whenever you die, a file is buried in the graveyard preserving some stats on your run. Also I fixed potions to where shattering against a foe causes their effect. This opens up the options for things like poison and acid later.

I also sped up pathfinding considerably by having it return a path in a stack of moves, instead of a single move that has to be calculated each time. What this means is that the processing can be used elsewhere. Specifically, what I'm going to work on next week, temperature and its effects.

Yes, next week will have temperature and ways to affect it, as well as things it affects. Set things on fire, freeze water, etcetera.

End of Month 5 - November; Full Persistence and Save Files

I'm not dead. I'd just locked myself away in a white room, with only a television, a bed, and a computer to fulfill my needs. And guess what? I only watch TV out of utter boredom or to get a laugh out of the ads. As in, laugh at some of the cheap marketing techniques that no one should really fall for, but do. But mostly, I spent my time working on this update.

I cannot begin to describe the complexity of what went on here. Wait, I think I can: I can perfectly (presumably, there may be bugs) recreate a session's universe based on what I've saved in text files. They are relatively small. A universe in which I dived down fifty levels was less than 300 kb saved. Basically, I crammed a universe into 2 million on/off switches, and can recreate it all from those files. It wasn't easy, either; there is no command to write what's in memory to the hard drive that I know of. I had to write it all in legible text based on what is in memory, and save it to a plain text file. What all this means for you? Truly persistent levels and save files. When you drop an item and come back, it will still be there.

I had some hilarious bugs while I was working on this, too. At one point, I was randomly switching bodies with random wildlife. Dragon on a rampage through the forest, while I was suddenly a wolf. We had whole inventories shuffling from one creature to another. I was suddenly a quest giver. And I can't even near promise all the bugs are out. But it seemed to work well enough after a fair amount of play testing.

As for the statistics so far. 1308 downloads grand total. 549 blog views this month, up 27.38%. 636 code page views, up 36.77%. $4.63 in ads grand total, $0.66 this month. No donations. So it seems that views are definitely on the rise, and downloads are either maintaining or growing in their rate. While the money is lackluster, I don't mind. I've learned a lot on the way and maybe I've given a few people a few minutes of fun. And I will continue to work diligently.

Next week... wow. Let's see if I can't get something simple done to get back on track, and submit Monday. Perhaps the things I've been saying the past three weeks. Maybe graveyard entries. That would be partially on the road to bones files.

0.0.1.8 - Hunger, Engraving, and Post Mortems

You know how I said I was going to work on status effects? Went off on a tangent. Take my mspaint crud as apology, along with that update.

So I'd started with adding status effect definitions to creatures. You know, confusion timeouts and stuff. Well, I added a hunger level too, and then I found myself working on that more. So I got that working good. Then I thought, hmm, let's stop having sudden death restarts and instead do something with it. So, I built it to give appropriate messages related to how you died. And then, while I was figuring one more thing to throw in before I upload, I added engravings.

I also have more blog comments I'm going to go back and respond to. Also, I noticed I have an Issues tab on the Google Code site, I already replied to the two things there. And I have hit a milestone: my first spam comment on the blog. Something about pricey glasses. Just so you know, if I ever do dump a comment off in spam wrongly, let me know and I'll move it back in. If there's ever a bit of drama about that, I'm likely to move it back in, I like free speech. In the meantime, if I spot obvious junk accumulating, I'll move it over to spam.

So thank you all for what is becoming more than monthly responses. I will try to keep up my average weekly rate of uploads, and I'll try to keep up with comments and such as much as I can.

Next week, I may just get around to actually adding items and stuff like I said I'd do last time. I've got some of the structures in place from the bit I dabbled with it this week, so it shouldn't be too hard to do. See you then.

0.0.17 - Creature Select

Yup, the new version's up. You can play as any creature in the bestiary. Also, I fixed an AI crash bug, and added some appropriate features about what should and should not be able to do things like open doors.

I am also cripplingly tired for some reason, so I won't take long with this post. I may edit and extend it in the morning.

Next week, I'm going to try to add things like status effects, scrolls, wands, and perhaps magic.

I sleep now.

0.0.1.6 - Towns and Trading

You all have no idea what I've been through this week. I have literally hauled 3 tons of cinderblocks. I did the math. I've fought with all sorts of weirdness and problems in my web classes. I even aced a trigonometry quiz, and I knew next to nothing of trigonometry until last week. But that's all irrelevant. Because the most important thing here to this blog, is the next update. I kinda sorta did miss a day, but mainly because it also happened to be the end of the web class week, so I was dealing with that. After singlehandedly finishing the block hauling job, your hero got right back to work on Adventurer, and turned the half-done job of mindless humans standing about in their houses into some decently proper quest givers.

If you go to see one, they'll want an item, and in exchange for it, they'll give you another item. They're persistent like levels are; which is to say, only semi. They won't know if you've completed a quest before when you come back, but you don't have to worry about them wanting a stick one time and wanting a flail when you come back. Later, when truly persistent levels are in, I'll do that kind of thing. Also, I fixed a few small things. Including the whole infinite rope thing as Anonymous so kindly pointed out.

Also of note, I got a FormSpring account. If you're shy about comments here or just want to ask a question there, go right ahead. I increased the number of 'gadgets' here on Blogspot, I didn't just willy nilly add all, just the stuff I thought wouldn't be a total waste of bandwidth. I'm on dial-up, I know these things. Also, no one has edited the wiki at all. :/ Link comin' at you whoa.

And finally, plans for next week. I actually had a conversation with one of my cousins where I basically rattle off huge walls of text, and then suddenly inspiration strikes. "I think I'll let the player be any creature. I wonder if I should balance it, like having new dragon adventurers be totally wimpy and rat adventurers be totally awesome. Or not. I could leave it natural, but then all the powergamers would pick dragon and go on a rampage, kill everyone in town, or at least until... ...the other adventurers hear about you and come after you." Yeah, maybe not all of that latter part will be in, but I'm totally going to work at letting the player be an adventurer of any race in the book.

The long term implications of this, when Adventurer is more developed, is that the creatures with a higher difficulty class are also going to have a higher natural level of fame. Dragons are sorta a big deal for fame-seeking adventurers. Rats? Not so much. New and wimpy adventurers just starting out. I do see that balancing in the long run; you can be tougher but hassled more often, or you can be weaker with less glory-seekers trying to kill you, letting you work in more subtle and secret ways. So I think this will be the first step of something good.

End of Month 4 - October

Well, I've got a lot done this month. I set up a donation button, got the overworld forest in, and fixed the 64-bit problem. I've made $4.04 in ads, and the only donation was from my mother to test the thing out. I have a fair amount of downloads now, going from 20 to 100 each week. And according to the analytics, still growing. Things have really picked up this and last month, and I hope it does continue that trend.

So, um, I really don't know much else to say about the month. I've started college back, which may or may not slow down progress. Front porch roof is removed, so that's ready to be moved out so the trailer can be moved out, and a doublewide can be moved in. My days now, instead of porch deconstruction, are going to be occupied by cinderblock siding removal and other packing. And still, I'm going to keep on updating.

As far as the progress goes on the next update, I've got a few things done in level generation and creature data. Still a bit early on to tell if a town should really be ready.

0.0.1.5 Forest Overworld and 64-Bit Fix

And then, vast stretches of untamed wilderness. The green forest stretches endlessly in all directions. Dungeons are hidden around the world, waiting for an adventurer to find them.

Yes you all, I have made an overworld. Although unlike I said before, towns are not yet part of it. I pretty quickly figured that before I start putting in more individual one-map-tile locations, I need a backdrop for it. Namely, an immense forest. That's the biggest thing I worked on the past week, along with web classes and work getting ready for moving. However, there is one more big thing about this update. Something so important it requires a new line and a special formatting:

****************************************
*ADVENTURER NOW WORKS ON 64-BIT SYSTEMS*
****************************************

Or at least, as far as I can tell. I found that a person I know has a 64-bit system, had them test old Adventurer and tell me what the crash log put out. It seemed to be to do with the Sdl.dll not being 64-bit. But I couldn't find one, so stumped, I went on #RGRD. There, a person (goes by nihilanth) said they thought a simple tweak to the .csproj file may fix the actual problem. I did it, sent it off to 64-bit guy, and it ran perfectly. So I assume the 64-bit problem is now fixed for everyone. Tell me if it isn't. And yes, you have #RGRD to thank again for helping a new developer put out better stuff faster.

As for next week, I'll see about getting towns in proper, and maybe some other stuff.

0.0.1.4 - Traps and Ludicrous Gibs

Good news everyone! I got around to updating. I didn't realize how fast the days were going by. But what's going on in this update is mostly that I added traps. Namely tripwires. If you or a monster walks on one unaware, you trip and are stunned for a couple turns. Related to that, you can build a trap by [u]sing the proper items. And also, you can dismantle a trap by [k]ick/dismantling it. De-limbed monsters drop said body part as an item on the ground, and dead monsters leave behind corpses. Also, I added a couple more items like flails.

I also had a lot of "almost-happened"s. I was going to make it to where pathfinding accounts for the attributes of a monster and its capability of working on the environment. Mostly, being able to path through closed doors if they can open them. Well, they increased the processing required for pathfinding to the point that it got laggy. So while it totally worked, I had to undo it until I can get that working more efficiently. Also, I started to improve the pathfinding so that instead of checking every single step, it checks once and all steps go into a monster's memory as a queue. That I can totally do. I was just burnt out in the brain on pathfinding after the doors fiasco, and I had more important things to work on. Maybe next update.

And now... my plans for next update. I don't care how much work it takes, but I am going to work on the things that will make Adventurer different from other roguelikes. I am going to work on the overworld - at the very least a town. Let's get out of that dreary dungeon.

0.0.1.3 - Semi-Persistent Levels

You can get the most recent update at Google Code, as always. Two big things I did for this update. The first is semi-persistent levels. They'll keep the same floor layout when you return to them. Items and creatures will still shuffle. This, at least, will have nil effects on memory.

The second thing is that I fixed some combat bugs. Like in the quick MSPaint crud above, I think it's pretty obvious why rats were still hardcore. They were wielding daggers. It happened because in the creature loading code, I never set the default item back to null. So since rats came after goblins and rats have no weapon data, the goblin data never got overwritten in that regard. I fixed that. Also, I added something else that will help combat make more sense.

Weapons now, instead of replacing natural damage, add to it. So I went through and reworked the item damage data and natural creature damage data to compensate. In the bit of testing I did, it seemed much better. Rats are just annoying, a single goblin can seriously hurt you, but you probably won't die in an encounter unless you have terrible luck with RNG and just keep fighting. I didn't encounter any ogres or minotaurs or dragons yet, but I wanted to get the update out faster than making sure those are balanced.

So next week, I'll work more on that. I'll also see about getting more interesting interactions going on. Such as a creature not having arms and being unable to wield a weapon or open doors normally, but still able to bash down doors if they're large and strong enough (aka dragon). Also things that can get through doors should path through doors, while things that can't don't. See you then.