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[Quarry]

Bullshit, how do you learn without anyone to teach

[Pineapple]

you're just jealous of my mad coloring and survival skills

[Quarry]

Hehehe you sure got me there bro

[Eigen]

ALL GLORY TO FEAR THRILLS aka. _Madk

[Joshua]

@Eigen
Any thoughts about handling the transition of seasons? Will the palette fade/interpolate from one to the other?

[Pineapple]

@Eigen
Any thoughts about handling the transition of seasons? Will the palette fade/interpolate from one to the other?

No, everything will be vomit-colored always to denote how healthful the settlers are.

[Eigen]

No, everything will be vomit-colored always to denote how healthful the settlers are.

You so silly.


Currently the seasons change quite suddenly. It's due to the fact when you are in town, you have a button to pass season, that's why it should be quite instantaneous. The screen dithers to black (as in the dark color in the palette), the season is advanced which means loading the new palette and screen is dithered back out to the game. Most likely I'll some text in-between there. During expeditions, each season lasts for 90 days.

I'll get back to work now. I would've done it earlier (I even woke up earlier this morning) but my computer had decided, overnight none the less, that it didn't want me to be able to connect to the Internet. So I spent hours trying to figure it out. It turned out to be a firewall issue and ended with uninstalling shitty personal firewall of shitty McAfee's shitty protection center. McAfee's shitty.

You can join me on Twitch too.

[Eigen]

So, I'm at work and had a little time to spare and decided to work on the game. I run the game from Xcode and saving and loading is all dandy. I then try to run the game directly and the game crashes on loading. I start to look into it with some logging and turns out sizeof(SMyStruct) returns different values when running from Xcode or when running the application directly. More precicely, the struct padding is different. Hence, the data is not loaded in the correct order and that messes it up. I should probably re-align my struct variables so that they align better in memory but since I don't have much time atm. I kept things simple and used:

Code:

#pragma pack(push)
#pragma pack(1)
struct SMyStruct
{
  double param1;
  unsigned short param2;
  ....
}
#pragma pack(pop)

This seems to have solved the problem, for now at least, I have to read up on data structure alignment some more. Now sizeof returns consistent values. I'm a bit puzzled though why it happened in the first place. If I understand correctly, the padding happens at compile-time. When running the game from Xcode, the build is generated which is the same build I run outside Xcode, so why are the values different? It has probably something to do with the debugger, because I think that's the only addition/difference.

Anyway, I thought it was sort of interesting and deserved a post.

[makerimages]

Jõudu tööle! seems wonderful (first impression=  ), will download the new build as soon as possible and compose a review. Keep up the good work!

[Nu-Type]

I think this game is coming out great, been following for a while, havnt tried it yet though. Keep up the great work!

[Eigen]

I think this game is coming out great, been following for a while, havnt tried it yet though. Keep up the great work!

Thank you so much! But probably you should hold on trying the game until I release the next build which will have much more stuff to do - simple combat for once. Hopefully that happens soon. All gears are in motion and I'm working as fast as I can.

Jõudu tööle! seems wonderful (first impression=  ), will download the new build as soon as possible and compose a review. Keep up the good work!

Suur tänu. Have a nice stay here.

[Eigen]

I totally re-worked the first post in this devlog to remove the old stuff and to make it easier to find the downloads and screenshots and whatnot. The old post was getting messy

On the developent side of things ... a few days ago I got a co-worker to play the game and some obvious flaws appeared. Firstly I changed the concept of camps. Previously you could only set up camp if you had a tent. Now it is a separate action and you can camp without it, only a fire appears. Also, the camp appears on the current tile you're on, so no handplacing it which was tedious. The same with leaving the camp, previously you had to click on a tile around it but now you appear right on the camp tile. Again, less clicking which is better. Added some info/tips windows because when the game started, a first time player had NO idea what to do or where to begin. Some more are still needed. I'm also thinking of simple help system. When you see a label like "Scout", "Agility" or "Hunting" anywhere in the game and you want to know what it is exactly, you right click it and a small dialog appears with some helpful text. While not the best solution, I think it'll be better than trying to find the manual and find it there (which is difficult because there is no manual ...)

[Laitch]

[...]you should hold on trying the game until I release the next build which will have much more stuff to do - simple combat for once. Hopefully that happens soon.

But when is soon?

[JobLeonard]

I totally re-worked the first post in this devlog to remove the old stuff and to make it easier to find the downloads and screenshots and whatnot. The old post was getting messy

While you're at it, maybe you should change the topic title to include the date of the build, so it's easier for others to see if there is a new one.

[makerimages]

The build 2 looked great, how do you write the backgrnd music??

[Eigen]

[...]you should hold on trying the game until I release the next build which will have much more stuff to do - simple combat for once. Hopefully that happens soon.

But when is soon?

When it's done. I don't know actually I'm going home this weekend so I'll try to get as much done as possible. I've had some time after work these last few days but when I open up the project I just don't have it in me to write any lines of code. I have such a BS thing at work I'm doing and it's really ruining my desire to do anything else at all.

While you're at it, maybe you should change the topic title to include the date of the build, so it's easier for others to see if there is a new one.

Oh right, thanks. I had something like "(New build available)" there previously but that wasn't very informative either. I'll add that.

The build 2 looked great, how do you write the backgrnd music??

Thanks. I'm not sure if and how I can explain this ... I don't have any specific approach to writing music. I just open a MIDI software and play around until I have a tune I'm happy with. A good ear and fair amount of comprehension of how music works in general is pretty much a must. Once done, I import the MIDI in Fruity Loops and play around with the instruments. That's it really.



Oh, and this game is NOT on Steam Greenlight. Take that! That's how indie I am. Way more indie than you. Way indier. I'm going to burn game floppies myself and then sell them by fax orders only.

[makerimages]

not gonna be freeware? :C and you use a midi keyboard right? but could i record my rare soviet analiog keytar synth JUNOST  21 with  a decent mp3 player and import it for editing?

[Eigen]

A little update to show that I'm not dead and gone nor have been sent to Syberia. But that could easily happen because I've been lazy and I don't have an excuse. All kidding aside, that's actually sad. I don't know what's gotten into me.

Anyway, here's a screeny of one of my guys hacking away at some trees with an axe. That's currently the only usable tool. I kept things simple and just display an axe icon above the tile (+ some sounds). Thought about animating the little guy but it's not like you can see him. So, the icon will do for now.




Now if I could just get some basic attacking done so that the feature list would be complete for the next release. It's not even that much of a task but ... what is wrong with me?

[Bandreus]

You just need more cheering man. Go go go go, game looks so good, keep up the good work

Also, do not dismiss animating. Even if you do a 2 frame animation for a given action, definitely go for it. Icons are pretty plain (although informative) while animations contribute a whole lot to making the game feel polished and giving it a stronger personality.

Can't wait for new build!

[Joshua]

... what is wrong with me?

There isn't anything wrong with you, we all go through this sort of funk. Unfortunately there isn't a magic fix to make this go away. Maybe try working on areas of your game where you don't feel so stuck?

Please stick with your project! You are getting to the good part, and I am very excited to see some real gameplay.