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.

0.0.1.2 - Range Examination and Throwing

I've finally managed to get an update ready. What with the short vacation last week missing an update and all the work this week on getting ready to move another house in, it's been hard to find a time to work on it when I'm not totally tired and zoned out. But, I did, so no worries. We should be back on track now, with another update coming on the 14th-ish.

So let me explain what I did for 0.0.1.2. First, I made it to where all items can be used as weapons. Non-weapon weapons are gonna suck, but what the heck, no reason to prevent you from wielding a cork. Second, I attempted MonoDevelop so the non-Windows people could use Adventurer. For some reason it crashed on me. I'll have to look into fixing that. I also put a lot of work into the "WaitForPosition()" method. Basically, it allows the user to use a cursor to select a tile. A lot can be done with that position. Including what I've done now, which is the ability to look at things at a distance, and the ability to throw items.

And crud, I just remembered that I didn't remember to update the menus with the info that those things are available. It's e[x]amine (Main Game) and [f]ire (Inventory Menu), for those reading the blog that haven't figured it out themselves yet. Anyway, it seemed to work pretty well when I was testing it.

So next week's thing is to figure out why the heck the rats are still hardcore on me (lost several body parts to the first rat I met). I thought I nerfed them, the data says I nerfed them. It's like they have the combat data of a goblin. I need to check that to see where it's going wrong, if it is. Or if I'm just very unlucky. And more general improvements I'll work on as they come to me. Again, I'm probably going to be busy with work packing, but I'll see what I can do.

End of Month 3 - September

Sorry, no update yet. My parents had a week to themselves for their anniversary, so I went on a little vacation with a relative. I couldn't do much with Adventurer. But now I'm back, and I'm back to work.

The goals this time are a lot like I had before. I've already fixed it to where every item is now wieldable as a weapon. I also tried to get Mono working, but for some reason MonoDevelop wouldn't run for me. I'll look into that some more. Another big thing will be examining things - and particularly, examination at range. If you see a red !, there will be a simple tool much like Nethack's ';' command to send a cursor around, gathering info about what is on that tile. That system will also prove useful in developing things like range combat.

Overall, this month has been pretty good, other than the missed update. I got the SDL overhaul done and fixed some of the worst crash bugs, which means that if you're on a 32-bit system using some kind of Windows, you should be able to run this. I attempted Mono but that's giving me problems running, so until I get that sorted out, non-Windows users are out of luck for now unless they have some tricks of their own. 64-bit users will presumably still have problems unless that somehow disappeared, I need to look more into that, I just haven't yet.

But most astounding is the increase in downloads I've seen. Over 50 downloads of 0.0.1.1. That makes me feel a whole lot better. Maybe this will start to get a few players, then. I'll just keep on going, as always. Also, I didn't see any more ad revenue last I checked, but ah well, I don't expect any until I can do something more with this.

So yeah, expect an update in the next couple days, one that will allow you to look at things at a distance, wield any item, and probably some other things too.