Unifying Theory

I’m putting some time on this project again and came to a few realizations.

First, it sucks to return to a project and forget what state you left everything in.

Second, just bumping up the resolution isn’t a solution for putting a high resolution version.  Why?  The math keeps breaking on some of the textures.  I have not dug into it closely yet, but textures are doing some weird things.  I could probably fix it or …

Third, going OpenGL was still my goal.  This is still the best plan for a version.  I got fairly far with it, so I should just finish it out.  Sure, I played around some other aspects (namely high resolution color), but OpenGL fixes much of the above math problems and still gives fixes other problems (such as looking up/down, color resolution, hardware acceleration, etc.).

But there is still one other option — port to Unity.  Originally I had dismissed doing so, but recently I played around with it and see now that that might actually be more of an option than I thought.  I don’t have a real idea if converting between C and C# is really all that feasible, not to mention the possibly weird requirements of Unity, but who knows, maybe it would lead to a version for your Android tablet or iPhone?  But at some level, it may just be effectively rewriting the game, and one might as well make A&A 2.  A sequel to the game that never was?

Song of the Day:  Pilgrimage from Conjure One

 

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Community Edition? Lua Lua! Hey Lua!

If you have not already been watching the forums lately, you’ll see that there a couple of interested members who want to improve Amulets & Armor.  I think this is great and would like to encourage more people to also pitch in.  The help has been so inspiring, I’ve officially started making the Community Edition of A&A (as previously promised) and with Lua scripting support.   Working the last days on adding Lua has been eye opening … wow … I wish we had this back in 1994 when the project got started.

I Want to See Less Walls!

It has been way too long for an update.  I started this update in October and got sidetracked.  Let me finish up and give you what I was doing then.  Life has gotten in the way including my wive’s cancer returning, deciding to write a book for NaNoWriMo (there went November), general work life, and the usual holiday craziness.  But work on A&A has been continuing and I’ve returned efforts to working on it again.

When we last talked, I was trying to decide what to do about high resolution graphics.  I had my doubts, but since then I’ve been working on the OpenGL port of the game.  Overall, this looks good, real good.  The following is a discussion of my work on it.  When I get irritated with the graphics, I go over and work on A&A Classic bugs.  And when the bugs irritate me, I return to the OpenGL port.  Generally, I stay irritated.

Questioning High Res and 3D Acceleration

Questioning High Res — Is it Worth It?

I’ve been fiddling around with the A&A code and making a High Resolution graphics version of the game.  The way I’m doing this code is wrong for the long term, but I’m just evaluating how tough this change is and will something like OpenGL be required or can just software rendering be used?  But as I played with this, a question has emerged: Is high resolution graphics even worth it?

Party of Four? Your Windows Game is Ready, WiX is Evil, and a Three Pronged Plan for the Community Edition

Party of Four Now Being Served

Alas!  Amulets & Armor v1.02 has been released for DOS and Windows.  And you were wondering, did network play get updated and is it working properly?  The answer is a resounding YES!  And it is stable enough that I could play it with my kids in a 3 player game for several hours without a hitch (excluding the death of my youngest child’s character, pouring of tears, and convincing her to keep playing in god mode). But in this last round I was able to pull out a few stoppers and surprise myself.

Less is More, the Magic Number, and Three Up

Progress progress progress.  Never enough, but more than before.  Time for an update.

Programmer Debt and Minecraft Mods and GitHub

Programmer Debt

When you think about debt, you usually think about money.  But its more generic meaning is simply “what you owe”.  I’ve picked up the concept in the programming community that if you don’t keep your code in a tidy state, you will have to go back and clean it up … paying a kind of “time debt”.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing.  I’ve found so much dead code in A&A.  I’ve probably deleted 10 whole sub-systems with code related to the old MMO design.  And I have not even started with the resource files that include unused items and screens.

But I’m learning there is a ton of “debt” in the form of confusing extra code that is no longer needed.  So, I’m cleaning it out.  Like a messy desk, I’m going through and getting rid of it all the junk and clearing everything off.  By doing this, I really have learned/remembered that there are TWO networking systems in the game.  One sits on the other.  There is the old Client/Server network packet system that we try to use for the chat room and starting a game, and then we have the Synchronized Communications system (called SyncPack) that sits on top of that.  The old Client/Server system really now only provides a few functions that SyncPack does not provide.  As I cut out everything dead, I’m finding the networking code is getting simpler and simpler.

I still have a monster of a problem with the chat/guild rooms and more than 2 players, but I have narrowed it down.

Minecraft Mods

My son is a big fan of Minecraft.  Being like me, he’s learned a few things about programming using YoYo’s Game Maker Studio.  He’s going to be good at programming — I can see it.  Now he wants to make mods for Minecraft and he wants me to help him.  Luckily, there are plenty of resources out there, so we’re stepping (slowly) through some tutorials and learning how it is done.  Personally, I had not done much modding in my life, so I was curious how they were going to get around many of the problems of directly affecting the game’s logic code.  The general answer is — hooks.  Minecraft Forge has modified the Minecraft source code with plenty of hooks to allow people to create mods without having to change the base code.

This got me to thinking.  How easy would it be to do this for A&A?  Certainly there has to be some ways to do it?  But A&A wasn’t written in C++, just plain C.  Hmmmm….

So, I’ve been mulling over some simple concepts.  How would a person add one new item?  a weapon?  a new creature and AI?  Sure, there is still the map making, but what about adding new textures, environment objects, and animations?

This is leading me to think that it might be time to convert A&A’s files into a new format.  Into a bunch of text or XML files.  Graphics would be PNG files.  .ZIP or directories can then be used to group resources.  Scripts would be simple text compiled at load time.  etc.  In other words, make it so the community can edit everything.

If Minecraft can do it, so can we.

GitHub

I also need help.  For example, if we want to use PNG files, someone else may be able to pull in a library and make that work.  Or make the maps load from text files and have their BSPs loaded at boot time.  etc.  I’m not picky.  That’s why I’m going to jump the gun from my previous plans and put the source code out at GitHub.

But be warned!  I’m still making huge changes to the code.  Make a fork and watch out!

I’m choosing GitHub because I like the way it handles branches/forks of versions.  I would like people to propose an idea, make a branch, prove it works, and then we’ll merge it back into the master.  All are welcome to try.

Source code is released here:  https://github.com/ExiguusEntertainment/AmuletsArmor

This is just a start, but we’ll see how it goes.

BTW, I was working on a utility to change all the code comment blocks into something that works well with Doxygen.  Unfortunately, I had a computer crash that took out most of my work last night, so I couldn’t run the script yet.  When this occurs, all the files will be changed and checked in.  So you might want to just review it a bit first.  Hopefully I can quickly rebuild and run the script this weekend.

Side Note: I also looked at the modding of Legend of Grimrock and found that to be another key example of modding — maybe even closer to A&A.

And for the music lovers out there, I found this nice piece by Solar Fields called “Phase 09 – Sombrero”.  Spotify link:  Solar Fields – Phase 09 – Sombrero on the album Solar Fields – Until We Meet the Sky.  Enjoy!