Choosing your display options in the Mac OS X 0.1 release of ARX |
Thanks for your support for CRPG Dev and Alternate Reality X.
Choosing your display options in the Mac OS X 0.1 release of ARX |
Thanks for your support for CRPG Dev and Alternate Reality X.
I’ve made a start on coding the save game feature and so far it’s working as expected. Might be a few weeks before I am able to release a version for people to try it out though.
I recently posted on the 8 bit Atari Age forums and some of the regulars there who’ve responded to my AR X posts over the last couple of years reminded me of an often mentioned issue which I’ve still to fix. This is the high speed which the City and Dungeon gate counters spin around. I’m not currently timing the speed with which different computers should display things on the screen which means some people find this very frustrating as it’s way too fast.
Along with the save game facility I’ll aim to fix this problem in the next release. I know what SFML commands I need to look at to help with this and once I’ve worked it out this will hopefully help me to be able to tackle others features such as encounter animation and on screen timed song lyrics.
Lots of people have asked me to include a save game option in the next release of ARX. I’m really surprised as I expected players would be looking for other features first before they would want to save characters. Anyway I think I’ve come up with a fairly good way of providing a save game option in the next release which will allow players to save their characters AND load them into future versions of ARX. I can’t guarantee this but I’m going to give it a good try.
The next release will allow you to save and load into one of 10 save game “slots” similar to the original Dungeon game.
My 10 year old son started enjoying the wonders of Alternate Reality last night for the first time. He’s seen me playing the original games and working on Alternate Reality X plenty of times but yesterday he downloaded version 0.41 of ARX from the website and started playing through what’s there. He quickly got sucked into the game but was a bit frustrated once he realised there are some features missing. In the meantime he’s keen to try the originals.
One of his complaints was that he could not trade the gems and jewels he found from encounters for silver so I thought I would put that into the game next. I’ve added the “Currency Exchange” menu to the Damon & Pythias shop so you can now trade in gems and jewels as well as convert silver and copper to gold to lessen your load ( for a fee of course ). I’m away at a conference for a few days but will add the similar functions to the City banks on my return.
I’ve finally uploaded release 0.41 of Alternate Reality X to www.crpgdev.com – it’s only about 4 months late! Finally tackled some of the work on the City taverns and I’ll try and totally finish these for release 0.5. Tavern features still missing are buying rounds and friendship levels which determine whether you get help when you’re down and out or get refused entry to certain taverns. I’m also keen to add a save game facility as many people are asking for this.
Anyway here’s what’s included in this 0.41 release:
Feedback as always appreciated.
I now feel I’m back into the swing of coding for my long sterm Alternate Reality remake project. I’ve now completed moving it over to use the latest version of the SFML 2.0 media library and I’m pleased with the results such as the automap display now displaying instantly.
I’m now working towards releasing a new version of ARX. This so far contains bug fixes, a few new placeholders for shops / modules such as the Dungeon Chapel and pretty much the full Troll / Goblin ring quest. I’ve also added in the Dungeon fountains and have made a start on adding more features to the City Taverns. It also features an updated City map provided by Dalimar with all the shop door signs now in place and the Arena walls using the pillar texture. You can also move / wrap from one side of the City map to the other using those secret doors – instead of appearing “outside” the map as in previous versions.
Hopefully have this mini release which I’ve marked as version 0.41 out in another week or so.
After taking almost a year between the first and second demo releases for Alternate Reality X (ARX), I’ve vowed to release updated versions more frequently. However I have been really busy with work and been away on holiday so I’ve made very little progress since the demo release at the beginning of August 2010.
I have started working on the City character creation and now have it at the point that it’s mostly complete. I still need to fix a few things such as the colour of the counters and music / sound effect timing. I’m not attempting to match every element of the original character creation sequence but hopefully people will understand that. I’m rather spend the time on key parts of the game such as combat and shop functionality.
My graphic card issues are now resolved so I have ARX running at about 60 frames a second – much better than the previous 6 frames!
Over at the ARX forums there a number of bug reports which I will try to resolve in the next few days. Possibly the worse is the teleport bug which places you outside the level 2 map. I think this will be due to me using level 1 teleport coordinates when adding the level 2 dungeon map. Thanks to dalimar for pointing these out.
I’m hoping to finish off the city character creation sequence and fix these bugs for a small 2.1 update release sometime this week.