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.