CRPG DEV - The 2016 Update and future plans

January 2016 has passed but I hope you had a good Christmas / New Year or holiday.

I'm sorry for not posting anything for such a long time. I've found it difficult to focus and use my time well to make the significant updates to Alternate Reality X which I've wanted to despite putting in some serious hours. I started some major structural changes as well as trying to make the code fully object oriented. Looking back I tried to change too many things at the same time and my experience of full object oriented coding isn't really good enough. I should have stuck with the style I'm familiar with rather than what I thought I should be doing.

The SFML media library I use also underwent some other changes which broke my 3D view code as it relied on some no longer supported OpenGL functions. I've considered going back to a previous version of the SFML library, though I'd prefer I was using the current version.

I've given it a lot of thought and planned out some more realistic short term changes to ARX. I'll stick with my procedural style and concentrate my efforts on the areas that really need attention to allow progress to be made with the game. With the New Year I've given a lot of thought to what I want to achieve this year - professionally and personally - and making significant progress with ARX (and CRPG Dev) is high on my list.

I'm now working on a simple 0.72 release (as my past official release was 0.71). Once I've fixed the 3D view I'll make this available - the purpose of this will be to update ARX to the latest version of SFML and also make use of the new Visual Studio 2013 build. I'm no longer using Code::Blocks as my development environment as I'm trying to improve my coding and many of the tutorials and books I've been studying use Visual Studio.

I've lots of plans but I'll not say anything more about those just now until I've proven that ARX is still ongoing with a couple of new releases. So hang in there! 

Thank you for your past support and interest in what I've been doing - it's really meant a lot to me. So with that I'd like to wish you (a belated) all the best for 2016.

Alternate Reality X - Modifying the display

Example Dungeon screen (672x480) from the Atari 800 Emulator

As mentioned previously I was investigating a possible move to using SDL as an alternative to the SFML media library. Whilst I'm not a 100% certain I'm going to stay with SFML it's looking extremely likely. The main reason for this is that I understand from what I've read that unlike SFML, SDL isn't able to easily mix it's native graphics with an OpenGL view. One of the things I found useful with SFML was that I could limit my use of OpenGL to just drawing the 3D City / Dungeon view whilst using SFML's 2D functions for everything else. The disadvantage I've found with SFML is that a number of people have had issues with the OpenGL support and video drivers on their Windows machines. There are a couple of changes I can make which might address the problems under Windows and flag up the possible impact on gameplay at start up for the player.

I've been spending some time trying out the City and Dungeon using the Atari 800 emulator (version 3.0.0). This emulator seems reliable and hasn't yet crashed on and lost my emulator settings which I found to be a problem with Atari 800 Win Plus. One of the first things I'm doing is making some changes to simplify the display options to make Alternate Reality X look more authentic and make best use of the original Atari 800 graphics as I didn't like the way some of them appeared when stretched by my multiple screen options. In practice this is likely to mean more limited screen display options (at least for the next release) but will hopefully make for a better Atari 8bit look which most players are apparently using when playing ARX. I will still be leaving in the support for alternative media but it's not going to be a focus in the next few releases. 672 by 480 pixels is likely to become the base resolution for the game from the next release with options to have black borders or not. This will give you a very accurate, double sized version of the original and will allow me to match the display very accurately with the original versions.

One of the benefits about my investigations into the SDL media library was that I've been reading a SDL game programming book and this has made me rethink some of the ways the game programming could be improved to make better use of the features of C++. These would probably simplify development, improve my code reuse across multiple shop type modules and reduce the risk of crashes due to my ill informed programming techniques. These are general C++ game programming techniques - just as applicable to a SFML game as a SDL one.

These might seem like very trivial points for me to be focusing on but having the display "look right" for me will make a big difference to me. Release 0.8 is now under development so watch this space.

Alternate Reality X - Back to Basics

As I'd said previously I wanted to review what I'd achieved with Alternate Reality X (ARX) and what I needed to do to take it a step closer to completion. I've given the project a lot of thought and wanted to post an update.

I found some of my early AR images on the internet dated 12th June 2004. Eleven years ago! These are very old when I was using Mike Robert's excellent TADS 3 Interactive Fiction system to read the AR binary map files and display an overhead view. Thanks to Mike for answering my often off topic questions when I should have been using TADS 3 to write more adventure games :) Here are the images:

My early Alternate Reality port using TADS 3!

Another screenshot but with a different font and a very simplistic 3D view

My next move after moving away from using TADS 3 was to post a little SDL based demo of some randomised Dungeon combat with various Dungeon denizens things have changed a lot. My original demo looked very authentic and just worked. I liked that version :)

My original goals for my Alternate Reality remake were to:

• Produce an easy to use version of AR that would run on modern systems
• Allow players to move seamlessly between the City and Dungeon scenarios

It was not my original intention to improve the graphics and sound or to try and complete the other scenarios. The display and audio options as well as multiple screen resolutions have all added to the development time for me. Not ideal when this is really my first proper programming project :)

Since then a lot of time has passed and over the years the project has started and paused a number of times due to other commitments and changing ideas about direction. My conclusion now is that the best direction for now is to return to my original goals for the project and try to bring it to a sensible conclusion, or at the very least bring this stage to completion so that there is a solid foundation for myself or others to build on (e.g. adding a new scenario).

The original Alternate Reality:The City

The other conclusion I've come to from the emails and messages I've received over the years is that the vast majority of people are really looking for a fairly faithful port of the original games - including the original 8bit graphics and sound. I really need to pair back the project to its core so that I can rewrite some of the dubious code in the background. This is turn would provide a solid platform for possible future scenarios to be added - once the City and Dungeon are 100% implemented.

There are a couple of other things I've considered. SFML's use of OpenGL causes a lot of issues foe people who don't have fully compliant OpenGL video drivers on their Windows PCs. This is a big concern for me with Windows 10 now on release.  A switch to the SDL media library which I believe doesn't use OpenGL would probably help a lot with this. I've also decided that for ARX any ports to Mac OS X or Linux would probably have to be carried out by someone else. Unity 3D I'll use for new projects rather than ARX.

So where does that leave the project? 

Here's my current plan and thoughts for Alternate Reality X development:

• Microsoft Windows only
• Staying with C++ and a media library (SFML or SDL)
• Review each section of code, rewriting where necessary
• Concentrate on adding the remaining functionality
• Stick to the original 8bit look and feel for now

August 2015 Already?

Is it really over six months since my last blog post and even longer since my last game upload???

You might have wondered if I was still interested in CRPGs and game development or whether I had hit some serious problem in my personal life. I'm pleased to report that there have been no major disasters but plenty of other things have taken up my time and my personal interests including my game development has suffered as a result.

I'm taking part in a year long training programme which has seen me travelling away from home a lot more than usual and whilst it's been enjoyable and interesting, it means that when I'm back home there is a lot more to catch up on with my family and around the house . I've also completed some other training and exams (work related) that I'd wanted to do for some time. I'm doing some major redecoration and clearing out of our house which has been really time consuming. To top everything off numerous things in the house have broken, developed faults and either need fixing by me or more often replaced or fixed at great expense by others. Additional hassle I didn't need. Net result that the last six months of 2015 have been a total blur.

On the more positive side I did complete a review of Alternate Reality:The City for inclusion in the excellent The CRPG Book Project. This is shaping up to be an excellent book once it's complete. The current version has over 200 pages with around 100 game reviews. Felipe Pepe has done an amazing job putting this together so please check it out if you haven't already. You can find the current version at: https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/

I have also really enjoyed playing Rocksmith 2014 which I bought just before Christmas. If you're unfamiliar with this "game" you plug in a real electric guitar or bass and play along with real songs and play the actual guitar parts.You can slow down sections to practice and vary the difficulty or accuracy. As you improve and depending on your level and playing style (rhythm or lead) the computer gradually adds in more notes until you're playing the authentic guitar parts with all the notes and nuances. It hasn't made me a guitar master but it really is a lot of fun and feels very productive compared to something like Guitar Hero as my guitar playing really is improving as result.

On the game development front I'm thinking through a few ideas at the moment - some about how to progress Alternate Reality X and one of my own CRPG projects which isn't AR related. Unity 3D looks like the most likely choice of platform for anything I do though, mainly due to its rapid deployment to other platforms including web options. Anything I produce I suspect will have a distinctly "classic" look. It probably won't look anything like a normal Unity 3D game :)

Thanks to those of you who have asked how things are and for your continued support and interest in my projects. All the best.