We Have Established Control
Progress is continuing! This update includes some new features, a video about the new escape menu, programmer talk, and a little mood music.
This phase took more time than expected, but alas, it is up and running now. I’ll let the video explain the new “escape” menu or options menu:
The video doesn’t do justice to many other fixes/discovers.
- Escape Menu — The above “escape” menu is fairly customizable so when new additions are added, it’ll be fairly easy to add.
- Collision detection — The Windows version had a problem with colliding with walls. Or, more importantly, sliding against walls. Before, if a player touched a wall, they would immediately stop instead of sliding. Sliding is now working again.
- Shaky walls — One of the more interesting problems that the Look Mode introduced is a slight mathematically error when drawing calls. Strangely, this problem would NEVER appear when turning and looking up/down using the keyboard controls. BUT, when the Look Mode was enabled the textures on the walls would shift just slightly.
- Flowing Down a Stream — I fixed the water flow rates. Come to find out they were never setup to work properly on high speed computers. The faster your computer, the faster the water (or even lava) pushed you around. Ooops. So, some 15 years laters on computers a zillion times faster, poor characters were being pushed to the limits and getting stuck. And the Windows version made this even worse. Get stuck down stream on the first level and you can never get out! Yeah, I nipped that one.
- Buttons with text — I have to give my partner programmer credit for creating the user interface system in the game. I did not realize how much work he did until I had to go make changes to it. One of the features we ended up starting but never using or finishing was buttons with text on it. In the end, it was decided that using pictures on buttons was enough. With the Keyboard Configuration user interface, I either needed to creature over 100 pictures for all the possible keystrokes that an action can be assigned, or finish the unfinished text on button code. I’m glad to say that after some learning of the code, I got it working. Text on buttons now works and may be useful in other ways down the road.
Warning! Programmer Speak
And now a bit of programmer speak (as if the above was not programmer speak). The conversion of all the #include files from the one-big-header-file into speaker header includes is done. Compiling the code is now roughly 2-10 times faster (depending on which files are modified), so it is much more enjoyable to make changes — as can be seen in the above game options menu.
A second group of (programmer) changes also took place. One of my biggest peeves was I could not turn on warnings in the compiler without generating a ton of warnings and errors. Not even level 1 warnings, the most tame of them. I cannot believe we developed the whole game without more checks on the code! I’m proud to announce that after some, I don’t know, 1000 edits, the code now compiles at Level 3 warnings. I’ll hold off on Level 4 warnings as it generated more mind numbing warnings that weren’t that useful, but I’ll get to them. Maybe.
Now, I know you may be asking “why is fixing warnings important” and the answer is merely, “because I want a professional release of the source code”. Oh, and “let’s catch as many bugs as possible” is on the list.
Blah! Blah! Blah! Where’s the Game, Lysle?
Good news. Legal paper has passed. A release is now imminent!
So here’s the question of the day: Wait for Lysle to get the networking code in place in the Windows version or go ahead and release it now? Release it only in DOS form? Wait for a Launcher to track the version of the game and get easy updates? A think I have a strong idea what people are going to say. ::smile::
Music?
Oh, thought I forgot about the music thing? Thought some of you would like to know what I’ve been listening to lately when working on Amulets & Armor. Came across the group “Swallow the Sun” and their album “Emerald Forest and The Blackbird” and like their sound. It’s on Spotify at Swallow The Sun – Emerald Forest and The Blackbird . Enjoy!
Amulets & Armor Developer 
Nice updates. The options menu looks quite good.
As for releasing the game/source: I suppose you could release the DOS version for now and then release the Windows version after the networking changes are done and you’ve finished polishing it? I think a lot of the reason people play AA is for the coop mode, so the Windows version wouldn’t really do all that much without it. It’s up to you though.
I’ll personally be waiting for the full Windows version either way. But that said, here’s how I’d do it if I were in charge. Release the DOS Game with bugfixes, but otherwise unchanged. Then, when the Windows version is ready, release that and the source-code for both the DOS and Windows versions at that time.
That way, there won’t be as many problems with forking between the DOS and Windows versions, and changes’ll be able to be made to both simultaneously.