[MicMotorhead]

Galladin, on 04 August 2022 - 08:36 PM, said:

This is great - I hope we get to play this soon! />

Appreciated

It's going forward real smooth so far. The main file is 8.33mb by now.
I feel like it's for sure gonna be done before hitting much more than 9mb. Or so I hope!

[T-Bone]

Quote

I think the hardest part is over by now, so I just have to stay motivated until I'm done. Sometimes I'm feeling excited about the project, sometimes not so much. I'm sure anyone making MZX games can relate!

I hear that.

[MicMotorhead]

Still working on the game, but took a break. Only minor tweaks over the last month, but lots of new stuff added since my last post of August 2022.
The main reason its taking so long to complete is that I'm really picky about how to handle the final few things that I want to add, such as
the special abilities for the final two boss fights and a few more items/weapons I want to come up with. But the game is somewhat mechanically simple,
so I don't have that many moving parts to work with when trying to come up with something interesting. Once in a while, I get an idea that feels like
just the right one, and then I get back to work. That's how it's been since last August.

I also need to fix some minor issues, plug a few holes, replace a few riddles that I can't even solve myself anymore (a good indicator they're too hard
or don't make enough sense.)

But I'm close enough that I could wrap up the game in a weekend if I didn't care about quality lol

[Padz]

Take your time and wrap it up how you see best. Don’t need to finish it asap. I’m still working on my own game every couple of years I pop on and add something eventually I’ll get done but it’s more for me than anyone else.

[MicMotorhead]

Padz, on 09 April 2023 - 05:49 PM, said:

Take your time and wrap it up how you see best. Don’t need to finish it asap. I’m still working on my own game every couple of years I pop on and add something eventually I’ll get done but it’s more for me than anyone else.

Yeah, I agree with that way of looking at it. Ultimately, it's just a hobby project. I do wish it took a bit less time to make games, but at least its fun.
I'm starting to feel the itch to move on to new ideas though.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 11 April 2023 - 11:19 AM

[MicMotorhead]

[X] Area 1 & boss: Done
[X] Area 2 & boss: Done
[X] Area 3 & boss: Done
[X] Area 4 & boss: Done
[X] Area 5 & boss: Done
[X] Area 6 & boss: Done
[X] Area 7 & boss: Done
[\] Final boss tower: One more floor, then it's done.
[ ] Final boss: incomplete
[X] Story: intro
[ ] Story: ending
[ ] Last few puzzles
[ ] Put houses and NPCs in one more small village to the north

Finished boss number 7 today and I'm pretty happy with how their skills work.
Also did a bunch of other stuff, including the story intro, which is something I've been
putting off for ages.

EDIT: "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board."

So I guess Imgur is not usable anymore. I just went through 5 minutes of cursing to figure out
my login for that site for nothing. *sigh*

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 13 May 2023 - 07:22 PM

[MicMotorhead]

Been busy with varying things, but some progress is being made on the game. Adding some more NPCs, puzzles and details to some areas that felt like they were missing something.

Otherwise I've been playing a lot of games and using the map editor for Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition. I've even been doing a bit of work on a 20 year old ZZT project.

Kind of shocked to see that I hadn't been working on my MZX game since may! But the train is somewhat rolling again.

[MicMotorhead]

I want the game world to be interesting to explore, so I've been adding some more secrets, NPCs and a other details.
At this point, I really just need to make the final boss and the ending.
Lacking ideas for those, it's a good alternative to flesh out the game's world, so that's what I'm doing for now.
Not that it needs to be any bigger, honestly.

Sadly, I'm giving up on adding a soundtrack. It's just too much work! I'm thinking I might add that somewhere down the line, but it's
never gonna be done if I try to do that now.

I'm having a slight technical issue with occasional dropped inputs when you move around the screen. Maybe some of the scripts that control interface elements don't need to update so much. I don't really have any concept of how many times per second my game checks things.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 06 September 2023 - 12:56 PM

[MicMotorhead]

Recording of a test of build #374 - about 27 minutes long:

https://www.youtube....h?v=lGjHf1PRfzc

Hopefully it shows that it's actually a fully fleshed out game at this point, even if there's still a
few things left to be done.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 15 September 2023 - 11:17 PM

[Lachesis]

MicMotorhead, on 13 May 2023 - 01:04 PM, said:

EDIT: "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board."

Which image extension is IP Board rejecting? Most normal extensions should be fine but if it's something new it's probably just not in the extension whitelist.

Quote

I'm having a slight technical issue with occasional dropped inputs when you move around the screen.

If it's dropping very short keypresses, this can also be a symptom of the current MZX speed; slower MZX speeds make it easier to press and then release a key within the same frame, which currently causes MZX to ignore the press.

[MicMotorhead]

Lachesis, on 22 September 2023 - 01:13 AM, said:

Which image extension is IP Board rejecting? Most normal extensions should be fine but if it's something new it's probably just not in the extension whitelist. />/>

I just attempted to put in a pic from my Imgur, which is what I've always used. It's been a while since by now and I haven't tried again, so it's unclear whether it would work now.
But back when I posted about having that issue, I recall doing exactly what I used to do.

Lachesis, on 22 September 2023 - 01:13 AM, said:

If it's dropping very short keypresses, this can also be a symptom of the current MZX speed; slower MZX speeds make it easier to press and then release a key within the same frame, which currently causes MZX to ignore the press.

My game does run on somewhat low speed (because I didn't want player walking speeds to be super fast), so that could be it. I might have to just accept it then, since it would mess up a lot of things if I had to significantly increase the overall MZX speed.
Maybe I'll give it a bump or two and see how that feels.

Thanks for the heads up anyway. I weas getting worried if I have too many robots doing cycles on some boards.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 22 September 2023 - 07:31 AM

[MicMotorhead]

Working on the final boss. Got stuck for a while coming up with an idea for two boss battle phases that would make sense together. Finally got a great (?) idea that feels appropriate for a final boss. So now I just have to actually figure out the specifics and write the code.

Hoping to finish the game this year. I've even got a post-it note on my laptop saying "Cybil 2023!", so that's gotta guarantee it, right?

[MicMotorhead]

Haven't been working on the game in a long while by now.
The reason? I bought a ps5 in December. This MZX game is turning into Chinese Democracy.

[MicMotorhead]

Been adding more secrets to the map. There are some fights against unique enemies that can be found in some secret areas. I want to add a bit more stuff like that, since it's one of the design goals for the game that exploration should be fun and interesting. There are w few big secrets already, but I think there should be more.

Also been adding more "useless" details, like little notes that can be found in the game world. Some NPCs also have some less obvious behaviors if certain conditions are met.

I've also considered if the game should have a map of some sort, but I don't think the game world is that hard to figure out the structure of. It's not wide open - but more of a series of forks in the road, with a handful objectives cutting the game world into an "early game" and a "late game" half. But I was thinking that a map could be used to sort of hint at what one might be missing. A very incomplete map like in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, which I think did it in an interesting way. It wasn't good for navigation, but it did let you understand the general placement of areas relative to each other, as well as hint at what might be coming.

The only regret I have about the overall world layout is that the second half of the game is more linear than the first half. But it might be too late to do much about that, aside from stuffing a few more secrets into the second half.

[MicMotorhead]

I'm currently mapping out the text for the game's few story segments that appear after each boss battle.
There's not a huge emphasis on story, but there needs to be something to glue it all together.
I've had certain things in mind for years, but now is when I have to sit down and actually figure out the specifics.
The ending also needs to be put together, but I'll do that as the very last piece of content added to the game.

After that, I just need to code the final phase of the final boss and do a bunch of testing.
There are also varying smaller loose ends, like puzzles that make too little sense, missing descriptions, missing entries
in the built-in game manual, etc.

The bug testing is what worries me
I mean, I have been pretty thorough in testing stuff as it was added. But there is just no way I haven't flubbed a thing
here or there. In fact, I randomly bumped into a dungeon where I made the door require one kind of key, but gave the player
another type... So i definitely I plan to sit down and scan through everything at some point.

[MicMotorhead]

I found a really dumb oversight that will take a little while to fix, since it affects multiple boards.

Aside from that, more stuff has been added. My procrastination strategy with regards to finishing the last two big things that are necessary for the game to reach 1.0 is to just add more stuff to do elsewhere in the game. But I really am making very good progress towards 1.0!

It really isn't that much that NEEDS to be done. But some of it is writing and that is not my forte. The combat script for the final boss (two distinct phases, each with their own board) is somewhat tricky, but nothing I haven't done before with other bosses.

Some stats and features:
- real time exploration combined with turn based combat. You can avoid enemy encounters if you're quick on the keys.
- A variation on RPG mechanics where equipment and items is prioritized way more than stats. There is no XP or leveling up.
- over 50 enemy types
- Lots of tricky puzzles. Generally optional, though.
- Secrets hidden everywhere!
- over 30 costumes, plus other items to change the main character's looks.
- 8 main bosses, plus a few mini bosses
- fairly big gameworld (by mzx standards anyway) with dozens of boards to explore
- lots of potions, skills, weapons, pendants (Haven't counted, but there's... a bunch)
- 6 towns with NPCs and shops
- 5 difficulty levels
- option to turn on cheat keys
- 3 starting loadouts to begin the game with. You'll be playing as Cybil regardless, but depending on starting loadouts, several things
will change: Starting items, costume, skill and one unique "old friend" NPC which can be found somewhere in the game world.

There's a decent amount of "dungeons", in which you find items needed to unlock the boss towers. There are more of these items available than needed, so that means you can skip an amount of dungeons. There's also a great degree of non-linearity to the game. There's only two big "choke points" on the map where you are gated completely from progressing until conditions have been fulfilled: A bridge in the town you start nearby. This bridge can only be crossed when the first 4 bosses have been defeated, in any order. And then there's the final boss tower, which can only be accessed when all 7 bosses have been defeated.

Not sure how long the game is, but I'd guess at somewhere above 10 hours - at least if the game is played like intended: Reading text, exploring thoroughly, interacting with all game mechanics.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 22 May 2024 - 11:20 AM

[NoahSoft]

All caught up and looking forward to it!

[MicMotorhead]

Fixed some errors that affected all instances of enemies that are set to be stationary.

Most enemies roam around, but some enemies are modified to stand guard and approach the player if within a radius. An oversight that has been in the game for years meant that they wouldn't quite behave like they were supposed to on difficulty levels above the standard level. I hope I found all of them. They actually still worked as such, but the programming oversight meant that the action where they approach the player after locking into combat wouldn't happen, except on difficulty level 1 (there are 5 difficulty levels selectable, but only 3 defined in the code. The easiest and hardest levels add another modifier on top).

Also added some more optional areas. Thankfully, with how the game is set up, adding mini-bosses that act like modified regular enemies, also with their own MZM illustrations, are really easy to add. So I've been adding mini-boss encounters that reward varying rare items. Some of these encounters are hidden in secrets or gated behind locked doors that use the rarely found red keys (bronze, iron and gold keys are commonly used. Red and blue keys are for special purposes).

The editor is starting to feel a bit laggy at times. My theory is that the world file's growing size (currently 11,5mb) makes the auto save system hitch. I'm gonna look into if I can disable backup saves, since I often save new versions of the world file manually anyway.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 07 June 2024 - 10:39 AM

[Lachesis]

MicMotorhead, on 07 June 2024 - 04:36 AM, said:

The editor is starting to feel a bit laggy at times. My theory is that the world file's growing size (currently 11,5mb) makes the auto save system hitch. I'm gonna look into if I can disable backup saves, since I often save new versions of the world file manually anyway.

You can set "backup_count" to 0 in config.txt to disable the backups. This should also work in 2.83 if you are still using that version to edit your game.

[MicMotorhead]

Lachesis, on 07 June 2024 - 09:15 PM, said:

You can set "backup_count" to 0 in config.txt to disable the backups. This should also work in 2.83 if you are still using that version to edit your game.

Thanks. I'm gonna try and see if that makes the small stutters go away. I've moved the project to a higher Megazeux version once or twice, so I'm currently building the game in 2.92c.

Is there an upper limit on how many boards you can have? I haven't ever counted and was shocked to see that I'm at over 200 boards. I know this is not ZZT, so I'm probably not in for some world corruption, but is there a hard or soft limit in modern Megazeux?

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 08 June 2024 - 11:30 AM

[Lachesis]

MicMotorhead, on 08 June 2024 - 05:25 AM, said:

Is there an upper limit on how many boards you can have? I haven't ever counted and was shocked to see that I'm at over 200 boards. I know this is not ZZT, so I'm probably not in for some world corruption, but is there a hard or soft limit in modern Megazeux?

You can have up to 250 boards in a single world. If your game goes over that, you have to use the SWAP WORLD command to switch to a second world (which will preserve all of your counters and strings, but will reset the state of the first world if you try to swap back).

This post has been edited by Lachesis: 09 June 2024 - 05:06 AM

[NoahSoft]

I kinda wanna have the most boards in an MZX game, but this is hilarious that there is now some competition Keep goin bud!!

[Lachesis]

Actually, there is a potentially bad bug you might want to watch out for. The MegaZeux 2.9X world format is based on the Zip file format, and until 2.93, MegaZeux wasn't Zip64-aware. This means that if the total number of files in your world goes over 65535, you game might corrupt. It takes a very large number of boards each with a large number of robots/scrolls/signs/sensors to actually do this, but I thought it was worth its own post to note this. If you have 7zip installed, you can open a newer .MZX file with it and see how many files it contains (if you want to make sure you aren't near that limit).

[MicMotorhead]

Oh, well that does clear some things up! I'm gonna do an exact board count so that I can plan carefully what to use the remaining ones up to 250 for. Due to how the game is designed, it would ruin the game if the world state is reset, so I definitely have to stay within the 250 board limit, rather than swapping.

And I will consider rolling up to MegaZeux 2.93 to get around any potential corruption, perhaps. But I do think I'm unlikely to hit that file count, since every board is quite limited in size. Sure, there's over 200 boards, but none of them scroll. Screenshots posted from my game earlier show a small viewport. The game does not scroll inside this area, so I should be far below 65535. I still better actually go and check haha... I don't want to risk anything this far into the project.

If I understand right, the game would have to contain and average of more than 240 robots per board to go over the limit in file size - unless more things count. My boards have a handful of hidden robots that do interface and combat scripts, plus 5 to maybe 40 other robots per board, probably. I don't even put the combat robot (the largest apart from the global) on boards that have no enemies.

Really good information. Thanks Lachesis.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 11 June 2024 - 05:25 AM

[MicMotorhead]

NoahSoft, on 09 June 2024 - 06:12 AM, said:

I kinda wanna have the most boards in an MZX game, but this is hilarious that there is now some competition /> Keep goin bud!!

/>

If your boards actually scroll, you're immediately sure to have the bigger game if we both hit 250 boards

[Lachesis]

MicMotorhead, on 10 June 2024 - 11:12 PM, said:

If I understand right, the game would have to contain and average of more than 240 robots per board to go over the limit in file size - unless more things count.

Each board is 7 (overlay disabled) or 9 (overlay enabled) files plus 1 each per robot, scroll/sign, and sensor (not including the global robot). You could probably average about 250 of those storage objects per board without issues, but not much more. There's also the complication that if you save on a board with "Reset board on entry" enabled, that board will be saved twice in the save file (the original plus the current temporary board). One file per object was not the best decision I made when designing the world format...

[MicMotorhead]

If someone tried to make a game with 200+ huge boards with lots of complicated mechanisms, maybe there could be an issue, but it seems you're gonna have to REALLY try to hit that limit. Many of my boards have less going on than the average, and the average isn't that high. With the explanation you posted above, I'd be surprised if my MZX file hit more than 30000 files. I still wanna check it with 7zip like you suggested, just to know for sure.

The 250 board limit is more of a potential problem for me, but I need to do a full count when I come home from work. My last count was me just counting up to a 100, noticing that the scrollbar was less than halfway down and assuming that I must be at 200+ then. I better check exactly how close, because there are some boards that need to be there that I haven't done yet. If I run in to trouble, there are actually some boards that could be combined into one by just copying mzms onto a board in story sequences (right now they're individual boards with text written on them).

There are also boards in the world file that are only for development purposes. For example creating mzm drawings and storing my palette of enemies and items. They could be removed if I really had to.

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 11 June 2024 - 09:23 AM

[NoahSoft]

Good points all around. Excited for Cybil! We were talking on discord too, like what even is a "board" or like you said, some boards the player won't visit. But maybe we should just go up to 250 board limit. I mean why the hell not?

[MicMotorhead]

Just did an actual board count and it's only at 206 after I deleted a few unnessecary leftovers from years ago. So I should have plenty headroom left for the remaining things I need to add, like some story screens and a few more secret areas.

I opened the world file in Winrar and it reports that it contains 10461 files, so I'm well in the clear there as well.

I'm just glad there's no need to restructure anything to avoid issues. I did have to do that with an old ZZT game of mine because I didn't learn of the precise limitations of that engine until years later. My game had broken every single one of them lol

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 11 June 2024 - 08:02 PM

[MicMotorhead]

NoahSoft, on 11 June 2024 - 06:55 PM, said:

Good points all around. Excited for Cybil! We were talking on discord too, like what even is a "board" or like you said, some boards the player won't visit. But maybe we should just go up to 250 board limit. I mean why the hell not?

Playable boards are probably the ones that count if you wanna compete on board count haha
But I can't do a count of playable boards until the game is done. I do plan to leave in boards purely used for development. I just think that would be more interesting for anyone who likes to open peoples projects in the editor to see how it's been put together (I like doing that myself).

I think I have been to the Discord a long time ago. Can't even remember my login!

This post has been edited by MicMotorhead: 11 June 2024 - 08:08 PM