Gruedorf: Verge-rpg 3.0 cometh
Created: 2008-05-11 20:22:50
Gruedorf: Verge-rpg 3.0 cometh
It's both Something New
and Something Blue.
The new system is built upon cakePHP on the backend, providing a pleasant MVC framework for me to focus on actual controlling and display logic instead of shouldering the retarded parts of a website's overhead myself. On the javascript side I'll be leaning heavily upon the YUI, which has already made my life a lot saner.
My goals include making this mofo render sanely on IE6 and up, FF2 and up, and the current versions of Opera and Safari (I have a bit of work to go towards these goals). When the user, board, file, and documentation functionality is in the new version and working better than the current live version, I'll bring everything from beta over to the live site, and retire the Old Ways.
The beta site is currently hooked up to the real data, so you can login and see how newsposts currently render, but I'm still very early on into this implementation. So yeah.
subversion, gdorf 19.
The source for this experiment is in http://www.verge-rpg.com/svn/vrpg3.0/. As of this posting we're at r39.
Now it's time to go eat some delicious steak!
Gruedorf: One day there'll be pretty things again.
Created: 2008-05-05 03:49:47
One day there'll be pretty things again...
So, here's what I did this week:
- Fixed the battle selection code. There were problems with the selectmap's setup that were causing terrible, horrible, really bad problems. I was afraid it was a much more complicated problem than it ended up being. Go team venture! Clearing up this problem removed the last "major" bug blocking battle system development.
- Added the vc code to add Kildorf's new cels into Sully.
- Augmented verge.exe so that if you use textpad's tool option to run your verge game, and it exits, you can click on the output and it'll open the right file at the right line number. This is, by the way, awesome.
- Reformatted the skills.dat file, and implemented the white magic spells *Shield and *Revive.
- Fixed selection so skills that require targets with specific conditions (like "can only be used on dead allies") don't let you select them if there are no valid targets on the field.
Isn't that swell? As per the usual, you can grab all these updates and much, much more over at The Sully Chronicles SVN. One day I'll do something with more exciting explanations and pretty pictures... but for now I'm more interested in actually doing lots of work than in doing lots of explanation. Sorry!
Gruedorf: Things I've done this week
Created: 2008-04-28 02:16:12
Things I've done this week
I added 4 new ways for fucntions to be called in verge3: trigger.onStep, trigger.afterStep, trigger.beforeEntityScript, and trigger.afterEntityScript. They are neat, and explained in detail in a news post and a new docs page.
Updated Sully using trigger.onStep so in battle zones every step you take decrements the counter until the next battle. When it hits 0, you enter the battle system, and when you exit the battle system the counter is replenished beginning the cycle anew.
I also bound trigger.beforeEntityScript to EntStart() and trigger.afterEntityScript to EntFinish(), and removed every single reference to these functions in map vc. Previously, to make things all kosher, these functions needed to be in every entity's function at the top and bottom. So annoying.
Then I fixed up Sully so you could get through a lot more of the game linearly again. Yay! You can presently get up to getting sara to the room with the thermal activators in the chests.
I also have fixed two of the major battle system bugs: the original field music now resumes after a battle, and the renderstack seems to work right after any number of battles (whereas before it would slowly corrupt.)
Pretty awesome, eh?
You can get the updated Sully in the SVN. Anonymous/Anonymous
Gruedorf: Sparse post #3
Created: 2008-04-21 02:06:56
For the third time in a row we've got a very dull posting! Boo!
But that doesn't mean I wasn't productive! Scanning the svn logs shows an assload of work, including adding a massive amount of scripting into jujube (Lance's mountain cutscene stuff and the seal of evil) as well as map tweaking, some cleanup to the cave, and solving one of the major issues with the battle system breakage problems. Namely, I'd recentyl changed from tabs to spaces in the files, and that inadvertantly broke a bit of the BattleMenu parsing functionality since it had tab-literals involved in the code. The solution there was to use chr(9) instead. Whee.
Anyways, That's the score, Alan Moore. I'll be doing more Battlesystem fixing in the next few posts. Maybe I'll even take screenshots.
In case anyone's interested in seeing this week's work, my Arch-Nemesis made a vrpg post highlighting it, and went through the trouble of making new mac and windows zips of Sully. It's worth noting that Kildorf, Gayo, and Myself didn't let a single day this week pass without SVN commits to the project. Momentum has been achieved, mofos!
Gruedorf: Carried away.
Created: 2008-04-14 07:35:29
Another postlet: Instead of composing a big old fancy blog entry, i sorta got sucked into coding of various kinds. Been at this chunk of work for almost a full workday in hours now. Some people play videogames for fun. I work on a decade-old tech demo.
First item: I added a seperate windowsize verge.cfg variable for x/y on top of the "screen size". Say you want your game to be 320x240, but want it to run in windowed mode. Every single computer that runs verge3 will have a minimum res of 800x600, and even that's small for the majority. automax makes an ugly-ass screen with lots of jaggies, and fullscreen mode isn't guarunteed to be a square aspect ratio in this age of LCDs (320x240 on a 1280x1024 native res LCD looks like ass in fullscreen.) So I added new variables to give you a playable window port of 640x480 (or whatever you specify, really) so you can have your perfect aspect ratio and remain windowed. Whee!
Next item: I did a hella lot of scripting of the Lance stuff on Mt. Jujube. Yay for scripting!
As usual, go check it out at the svn repo if you'd like. Username and password both "anonymous", as usual.
I'm going to bed now. Some of us have to work in very, very scant hours :(