Tim
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Do I need the latest version of java to run this? I am using an old web browser, so java is probably too old???

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Maurog
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You tried and it didn't work? Dunno about Java compatibility for earlier versions, but I believe if you download this Java Runtime Environment, you will be fine in any case.

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Maurog
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Say hello to version 000.04, in which you finally may see all the weapons working properly, the roaches working properly, and the weapons working properly on roaches
Some notes on the new functionality - you shoot the crossbow with space, and if the roaches get you, you may click on the "Start" button to restart. Also, don't forget you still have full god powers, i.e. the ability to place walls anytime and anywhere you want. Play around to get the feel of weapons and their differences. The next step would be separating pits from walls (pits don't work right now, they are treated as walls, but they shouldn't be), and add a special effects engine. Then we move to pit traps, tiles, arrows and switches (orbs), saving/loading capability and all the other stuff in the long run. Any comments welcome.

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egg egg
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In the current version the crossbow doen't shoot yet.

You also can't turn your sword from ne to e, or visa versa.

Also you probably shouldn't be able to place walls under urself, as this makes you invincible.

[Edited by egg egg at Local Time:03-18-2005 at 09:10 PM]

Doom
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I don't know what version egg egg has but the crossbow does shoot but only every two turns. (And only by pressing space) The effect isn't visible but it kills roaches.

Sword and club can be rotated in all directions (but they can't be on walls unlike the crossbow).

And the wall placing is definitely to make testing easier. (As the random generating places you often in deadly starting position)

Tim
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Hey! I've finally got your homepage working...

It looks like a real editor already. Cool.

I will try this latest new version soon, but just to let you know it works!

Thanks again!

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egg egg
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Sorry I was mistaken about sword turning, as I assumed they could go over walls.

With the crossbow it appears that you can only shoot after you have tured it, for some reason.

Also I really like the club, as it is great being able to push people!

Maurog
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egg egg: With the crossbow it appears that you can only shoot after you have tured it, for some reason.

Ah, I see what the problem was. For some reason you couldn't use the shoot button at all if the crossbow was unloaded. This is not consistent with anything, and will be fixed. From the next version on, shooting with empty crossbow is possible and is treated in much the same way as walking into walls, or turning weapons into walls

Speaking of consistency, as you have noticed the walls are higher than in DROD (where they are about chest-high and allow turning the sword over them). So weapons cannot go over walls and, in my opinion, this doesn't hurt the gaming experience at all. However there is one case that i'm not sure about. Right now, this movement is possible:

W\\.       W..       W = Wall                     W\\.       r = Roach
.WH  -->  \\W.       H = Hero                     .rH
..W       .HW       \\ = Sword                    ..W

This is all well, but considering these are supposed to be high walls it looks like the hero is walking right through a wall. There are two options - either allow this and just ignore the issue, or not allow this which rises another issue. If this movement is not allowed for the reason of moving through the center wall, what to do if there is a roach instead of the center wall? (see the position on the right) Currently, you can move through it and let it eat you in its turn. However, if you cannot move through the middle wall, its reasonable that either the hero or the sword go through that square. If its the hero, you won't be able to move through the roach, so it's almost the same. If it's the sword, reason says the roach should die, but then you are able to kill (or move) two roaches in the same turn! Tell me what you think about this tricky situation.

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egg egg
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I personally do not object to multiple killing, as this would further separate this version from the current drod.

This would mean that you couldnt do that thing through walls though

Maybe you should be able to raise the sword above your head?

Maurog
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I guess for now it will stay as it is, and will be justified by the hero raising the sword, stepping diagonally, and putting the sword back in one swift move. This is consistent with everything else, so no problem here. Also, I want to inform you that it will be some time before the next version because the next few days will be dedicated to a college project

By the way, does this layer system of a cell looks right to you?

4 The special effects layer - Will be drawn last and hold the special effects
   like blood, bolt path, orb and mimic beams, etc. Mostly transparent stuff.
3 The monster layer - Will hold monsters that can be inside the cell or tar. The 
   hero himself is on this level, but gets special treatment (drawn last).
2 The object layer - Will hold objects like switches (orbs), scrolls, 
   potions, chests, traps and any other items that can be on the floor.
1 The floor layer - Will hold floor tile graphics, or wall graphics if there
   is a wall there. Also, doors and pit traps are on this level.
0 The pit layer - Will be drawn first, and will hold the graphics for the pits 
   or a default neutral background tile which you won't see.

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Maurog
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---------------------------------- MONTHLY REPORT ----------------------------------
The project is one month old now, and first of all, I'd like to thank all of you who
 visit this thread and help me with your comments. This monthly report will conclude
 the progress reached and my thoughts for the future.

Achievements: This is the first month, and I'm very pleased with the progress. When
 the project started, I never thought it would advance so much in a mere month. 
 First thing that was done is taking an old project of mine and converting it to new
 form. At first, there was nothing except a grid with walls, which later started to
 connect graphically, the new wall styles were introduced, and the very first editor
 system allowed to place them. Then came the roaches, which merrily chased the mouse
 since it was still real-time. Finally, the hero figure was introduced, along with 
 the weapon system and the queue, and the project became turn-based, although the 
 real-time engine is still there and will be used for special effects.

Technical stuff: The project is made in Java, the tools currently used are JCreator,
 which provides Java programming environment, MS-Paint, which I use for basic tile
 drawing, and Pixia, which I use to make transparent and semi-transparent tiles.
 The project runs well in at least four operating systems (three different Windows
 environments and Linux). All the code and tiles are 100% made by me, which makes me
 happy, but something will have to be done about sound (I'm no musician). There were
 no complains about speed, but I bet the slow first time image loading is still an
 issue, and will have to be dealt with. 

The future: The first thing that will be done is separating the cell layers, which
 will make pits different from walls. Then, I plan to make the whole tile system
 more generic. There will be style controllers which will allow making styles with
 a single tile (like pit traps in drod), with two tiles (like the current floor), 
 with 17 tiles (like the walls), and other stuff including evil mist (tar). Also top
 priority is the special effects engine, which will work in real-time and produce
 the graphics for killing stuff, shooting, and all other effects. After that stuff
 is finished, it's time to build the module for saving and loading rooms, and then
 introduce more game elements like switches, pit traps, arrows etc. Also, making the
 editor a separate panel, and giving it more power (putting objects in rectangles 
 instead of one by one etc') will be necessary.

Just thoughts: Although not much feedback was received, I like to think it's because
 there aren't many bugs rather than lack of interest. That's very good because bugs
 grow exponentially while the program advances lineary. The fewer bugs we have now,
 the less work will be needed to deal with each of them later. Distinction from DROD
 goes as planned, I believe the gaming experience will be totally different, and one
 can only hope it will be just as fun nevertheless. I planned to release a new
 version with this report, but my college projects already suffered neglect, and
 more time will be spent on them in the next few days, sorry people 
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Tim
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Heh, I've just downloaded and played it last night, and it looks really interesting now.

Maurog wrote:

There were no complains about speed, but I bet
the slow first time image loading is still an issue, 
and will have to be dealt with.

I'm not sure, and maybe because many people have better machines (my machine is already 3 years old). The loading takes some time, but I don't really mind. But it is a bit slow playing. At least it feels slow (although it is a lot faster than the previous version.)

There's also a strange difference between this and the previous version. The previous version, when you get killed, pressing start will restart the game. When I die now, pressing start changes the screen into "progress:0%", and stayed that way. Am I missing something?

By the way, I did not notice any changes when I pressed the faster button... Is my machine really that slow?

Another thing, I really like the way the walls are connected, they really looks cool. Did you draw pictures for every one of them?

[Edited by Tim at Local Time:03-24-2005 at 09:39 AM: changed last into previous ]

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Maurog
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Okay, restarting fixed and improved, default delay reduced to 0. It won't go any faster than now, so if it still goes too slow, it's really bad news. There probably is a way to deal with images faster, but it's not known to me yet (it probably involves Roster or something). Oh yeah, tell me what are your computer parameters (processor speed, operating system etc), I want to know how far off is it from standard.

PS: In this version you can slash walls down. It's temporary, just ignore it

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Maurog
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A new version! You won't be able to see most of the changes though, because the major work was in code. Basically, the association system of graphics to cells was completely changed, there is now a special class that handles it. So it should look completely the same, even though it really works in a seriously different way. This new system allows me to handle walls and pits separation with ease, so as you can see, both walls and pits work now as intended. By the way, the layers will be different from what I planned before - pit and wall/floor layers are combined, and there is another layer between them and the creatures which will hold stuff like pit traps, carpets, floor drawings etc. maybe even arrows. The last change will sure be appreciated - the editor got powered up, and now you can click and drag to add/remove whole rectangles at once. Try it and tell me what you think!

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Tim
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Maurog wrote:
Oh yeah, tell me what are your computer parameters (processor speed, operating system etc), I want to know how far off is it from standard.

Okay, lets see: AMD 1100, MX440, Linux, Java thing from the link you put up here. (I couldn't get that installed on windows, as it's asking me for network that I don't have.)

Let's sat that if I keep holding on the w key, if will flicker a lot, and sometimes it changes into a red background (previous version).

Yeah, I know people think it's slow, but JtRH work on it perfectly (well, it has its slowdowns with too many monsters), but DROD has it as well...

-- Tim

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gamer_extreme_101
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Tim wrote:
Okay, lets see: AMD 1100, MX440....
...
Yeah, I know people think it's slow, but JtRH work on it perfectly (well, it has its slowdowns with too many monsters), but DROD has it as well...

Joy. I can't wait to see it run on mine now.

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Maurog
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Okay, I couldn't say it before because the server was down, but JtRH is out, and all secondary things like working on this project are postponed until I finish it or get seriously stuck. Also, I feel that the project code is getting extremely unmanageable. If you use the mad scientist analogy (which fits disturbingly well anywhere you talk about coding software), I am the kind of guy who likes to see something alive as fast as he can. Even if this means skipping the whole researching forbidden manuscripts business and going straight to scrapping some spare bodyparts from the conveniently close graveyard, attaching them with a stapler and running a 1.21 gigawatt lightning bolt through what results. Sure, it's alive, but just barely, and it tends to lose its limbs because those staples don't hold too well. Now, it is time to go over the code and make it good. To people who understand Java a bit, the whole business with everyone having pointers on everyone else and using supposedly private variables of other classes left and right is unacceptable. So what I did is, I printed the whole thing (20 pages of code), and I'm gonna mark all such things with a yellow marker and then change all the classes and functions until it's all neat and object-oriented. So go back to playing JtRH people, the next update won't be anytime soon

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Maurog
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---------------------------------- MONTHLY REPORT ----------------------------------
Okay, the project is now two months old, but in the last month there was almost no
 progress. This mostly has to do with JtRH coming out after just one week of work 
 and eating all the spare time that was usually dedicated to Hog. Currently, I am on 
 the verge of finishing level 21, so hopefully soon JtRH will be mastered and more
 attention will be turned to this project. Of course since you people are playing 
 JtRH too, I bet the lack of progress on my side isn't bothering you at all.

Achievements: Despite this being a slow month, there were some advancements. Most
 important and noticeable change was switching to image pre-loading. This means you 
 have to wait a bit for the program in the beginning, but the graphics are now nice
 and smooth. No more of that annoying flickering as the program tries to fetch 
 images in mid-run. Another change was the first step of improving the editor. I am 
 very ambitious about the editor, it is gonna have lots of power, but for now the 
 change was that you can click and drag to select whole rectangles. The other 
 improvements were in the code, so they were invisible to you. CellStyle was created
 to hold image and flag information for the cell, and soon there will be MonStyle 
 and HeroStyle to serve the creatures and hero respectively. Also, the code was made
 object-oriented, meaning that most variables are now private in their classes, and
 classes no longer have more pointers to others than necessary. This is more work
 than it sounds, at one point I had like 100 errors at compilation for all those 
 private variables. Also, there was this bug when all the roaches started to move 
 around the hero in clockwise circles instead of chasing him, that was hilarious.

The future: After finishing JtRH, there is much to be done in Hog. I plan to juice 
 up the editor some more, making a separate panel for it and an interface for 
 switching between groups (walls/creatures/objects). Also, I really should start 
 working on that special effects engine. Anyways, that's all I can say for this 
 month. I'll go back to playing JtRH or something now. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Maurog
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Ok, I'm just letting you know that I'm back on working on this project after a really long delay. A new version 00.007 is attached. The improvements from 00.006 are that the wall styles are stored as two files each, rather than 17 like before, and these much neater packages are located in \\Data\\Tiles\\Wall. Also, I added the ability to open and close doors using the interface, causing it to change a bit. The new functionalities are:
Left-clicking with optional dragging to place a wall or block of walls.
Right-clicking with optional dragging to clear a tile or a whole block.
Choosing wall style with mouse wheel, or by clicking the upper left corner.
Opening/closing doors with single left-click when the appropriate style is chosen.

Moving is still the direction arrows, switching weapons with 123 and shooting with space.

As usual, any comments, questions and suggestions are welcome.

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skell
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Ahh. I was really waiting for you to continue this proj, and as I see, I'm not disappointed.

Well I've downloaded it. I'm not sure if this is slow, because everything on my comp is slow. It took me a while to remind how the hell it worked. Well, quite quickly I've noticed, that weapons (excepting crossbow) can't be in the walls. So, err... A little "Feature Request".
When we have such situation:

######
...\\.#
####P#
####.#

Where P is player, and \\ is sword. I can't go north in this situation, so I propose, that in that kind of situation, when I go N, I will go north, and sword will turn CCW.

######
...-P#
####.#
####.#

I must go to toilet now.

So, I mean, that when I'm trying to go anywhere, but my weapons is not allowing me to go to this place, and I'm not going in the direction which my weapon faces, I should be able to go in that direction, and be turned so weapon won't be touching the wall. Look at that:

...   ...   ...   ...   P..   .P.   .-P   .\\.   ...   
.#| W .#/ W .#. N P#. N |#. E /#. E .#. S .#P S .#| W.... Etc 
..P   .P.   P-.   .\\.   ...   ...   ...   ...   ..P   

I think It would be great . But probably rather hard to code (Well, I would have to think a bit, to be able to know this for 100% - I'm also programmer(programmist?)).

Anyway I'm looking forward to see this project. Good Luck

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[Last edited by skell at 01-29-2012 08:42 PM : Going to the keep]

Maurog
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An excellent idea! I disliked the way it was before because it restricted the player too much. With the new movement patterns, not only it becomes much different than DROD, I can see possibilites of exciting new strategies. Check the new weapon-deflecting walls out, new version is attached.

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skell
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Maurog wrote:
Check the new weapon-deflecting walls out, new version is attached.

I've did it already, and I must say I'm Impressed . Not sure why, but... Er, well, No errors/bugs detected. Also no problems. But I'm actually wondering how that other things in editor works :unsur. I don't managed to discover it, so I'm asking you .

Maurog wrote:
I can see possibilites of exciting new strategies.

Yeah. Imagine you are chased by roach in a maze . "Brained" Roach .

Well anyway, as I said before Good Luck

ps.
You could update the main page .
ps2.
In the new version you could add a belt when you shoot with crossbow. It would be nice. Or something like "Air Movement". When you shoot with crossbow, there is created a fading very light blue line. I can imagine it now, and It also would be nice. Even nicer than belt . But it probably is much work (I don't know. I would have to know your code and Java to be able to say accurately )

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[Last edited by skell at 01-29-2012 08:42 PM : Going to the keep]

Maurog
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There is one situation I'm unsure about:

..#.    ..#.    .##.    .##.
.|.. -> .-P.    .|.. -> .-P.
.P..    ....    .P..    ....

Seems a bit too powerful to move and turn twice. Maybe changing it to:

..#.    .\\#.    .##.    .##.
.|.. -> ..P.    .|.. -> .|..
.P..    ....    .P..    .P..

This way you can count on walls to turn you but not out of proportion.

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skell
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Yeah. I think this is the best way.

But in this situation:

######                                   ######
..|...                                   ..-P..
..P... -> tries to go north east/west -> ......
......                                   ......
......                                   ......

It should simply disallow movement in such direction.

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[Last edited by skell at 01-29-2012 08:42 PM : Going to the keep]

Tim
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I haven't have time to test the sword movements yet, but this time the game is fast enough even for my computer to play. It took a lot of time to get to the progress and game screen though, but I don't mind that at all.

It's definitely getting better now.

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halyavin
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I don't understand how to download the last version. Is it attached to the first post in this topic?

skell
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halyavin wrote:
I don't understand how to download the last version. Is it attached to the first post in this topic?

It's logical .

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Maurog
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I added a side panel to the editor. It doesn't look like much now, since it only holds the wall types, but in the future it will have full functionality. Walls, floors, objects, creatures, just like in DROD you will be able to add them all. I attached the latest version to the first post as usual. Also, the sword moves were fixed as discussed in previous posts. Any comments welcome.

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skell
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(Yawns) I just get up, and this is 4:28, and I have much work to do before 6:00, but I've decided to stop by while installing Office, and say few words. Because probably you wonder what to do now, but maybe not, but if yes, or partly yes, then it would be nice, if we will be able to place roaches.

But I must go to my work

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[Last edited by skell at 01-29-2012 08:42 PM : Going to the keep]

Maurog
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Added the monsters into editor. The side panel can be switched to select between wall/monster layers (click the roach or wall on top respectively). When in monster mode, use the same controls as before: left-click puts, right-click deletes, and you can drag to select whole rectangles too. Also, in that mode, scrolling the mouse wheel changes the direction of monsters you put. Added the latest version to the first post as usual (or just get it from here).

Monsters also have their own styles now, much like walls. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to combine these into single files (the combined files in Data/Tiles/Mon/ don't really work). Still have problems with breaking a single image into many without losing transparency. Anyways, next thing will be either starting the effects engine, or saving/loading from files.

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