Alternate Reality X: Dungeon Door Madness

Firstly thanks for the messages of support for the project following my previous blog post. It's good to know that people are still interested in ARX. I think the post possibly sounded more negative than I intended but I felt an update on progress (or lack of over recent weeks) was required.

One of the causes of my frustration...

Anyway I have made some progress in recent weeks. I'm now using the latest version of SFML 2.0 which is the multimedia library used for ARX. SFML 2.0 is supposed to fix some of the display bugs that some people were experiencing but only time will tell. I also switched over to Visual Studio 2010 Express for development. Unfortunately Visual Studio 2010 seems significantly slower that 2008 which came as  a big surprise and annoyance to me. The web is littered with tales of frustration. It seems to have settled down a bit now though generating new executables still seems slow.

A few weeks back I thought I would add "barred doors" to the Dungeon. If you're familiar with the Dungeon you might remember that you come across some doors which require some effort on your part in order to pass (screenshot above). Now I thought this would probably take me a couple of hours to implement. How wrong I was. I should know better that the things that look really simple will always take me much longer than expected. I've just finished coding up these doors this morning and I'm pleased to say it now seems to be working properly for both forward and backward movement through the doors. ARX will also remember the most recent couple of dozen doors you "opened" for a while. Don't be surprised if you start to find some of these doors added to future versions of the City map.

Dalimar has also kindly tweaked the City map and zone data so that all the enclosed areas on the map show up correctly (e.g. they have roofs and can have other behaviour added such as no rain). He's also modified the 2 Deathtraps so they are no longer traps which result in the loss of your character. Now I need to add something interesting into those 2 areas... If you have any ideas you'd like me to consider then drop me an email - encounters, special treasures or maybe a special passage or teleport to some previously unexplored area of Alternate Reality...

Alternate Reality X: Hitting the Wall

I've been struggling a bit over the last few weeks to get enthusiastic about my next update for Alternate Reality X and found myself thinking about other game designs for my own original games. I pulled out some old design documents for my space exploration and trading game for example - some of the oldest designs dating back to when I was a teenager (which was a long time ago).

The Palace Entrance - Still some way from going through those doors

After following a link from the Rampant Coyote and reading Chris Kaitila's blog about his 12 Games in 12 Months challenge (create 12 games in a year) one bit in particular caught my eye. The bit that interested me most is where he writes about "hitting the wall" where a project is no longer fun, is very complicated or the finish line is much further away than you originally thought.

I think this is the point I'm currently at with ARX. I've been there before of course where I've felt really burnt out and the thought of working on the project seems like work without any fun or achivement. It's only a temporary state but when a project which I'm supposed to be doing for fun feels like work and the prospect of firing up my programming environment fills me with dread then it's time to take a break. I've totally failed to keep on schedule with my ARX development roadmap but it was useful in that I can easily pin point where the time went (adding other features to ARX not on the original roadmap). I've even considered starting an AR project from scratch so I can fix all the issues I know about which I feel are bad design decisions I made in earlier times.

So don't panic if you don't see any updates for a little while and don't be surprised if you see an update on some new project. These other projects allow me to keep my outlook for ARX fresh and come back with renewed enthusiasm and energy. I really want to see the project through to completion but there is still a lot of work to do and I don't want to get burnt out along the way so that I get to the point where I want to abandon the project altogether.

All the best,
Acrin1

Visual C++ 2010 Express and SFML 2

Based on some issues that players of Alternate Reality X reported, I was keen to try out one of the more recent versions of SFML 2.  Hopefully this would resolve problems relating to the use of RenderTextures on machines using integrated Intel graphics. Using a very helpful tutorial by SFMLcoder over at http://sfmlcoder.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/building-sfml-2-nmake/ I was able to build my own SFML 2 binaries and libraries successfully for the first time.

I also used this as an opportunity to switch from Visual Studio C++ 2008 Express to the 2010 edition. It looks like there are a few changes between 2008 and 2010 but no major issues just now.

One thing to remember if that players will need to install the Visual Studio 2010 runtime for the next ARX or SOTC release.

Alternate Reality X - Release 0.57

 
Release 0.57 is now available for download from www.crpgdev.com/downloads.html

New features and bug fixes include:

• Added Encumbrance / object weights, messages and some side effects
• Added "Use timepiece" option to display hour and minutes
• Added menu option to select new music where available (Tavern, Smithy, Troll King, Goblin King, Guild, Death)
• New versions of Tavern, Smithy, Troll King, Goblin King, Guild and Death music from "Furious"
• Added on screen song lyrics for Death and some other music
• New song from Furious - The Nightstalker added to Taverns
• Bug fix: No longer start a new Dungeon character in a "Creepy Room" location
• Bug fix: Now correctly registers death whilst exploring
• Bug fix: Stopped loading shop interior images every frame!
• Bug fix: "Get" command didn't display armour names when picking up from ground
• Bug fix: Tavern opening and closing time checks prevented access sometimes
• Bug fix: Corrected Tavern opening and closing times message
• BUg fix: Paying a tavern membership fee bypassed opening time checks
• Bug fix: Object buffer tidy routine would sometimes remove carried objects
• Bug fix: Use / Drop routine would sometimes not display carried objects
• Bug fix: Apparel wasn't being saved in save game
• Bug fix: Large encounter images for fixed encounters appeared out of proportion to doors