Quark Robot dev blog

Week #24 update

Quark Robot -

I've never said this before on our Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monk's Revenge project, but special thanks to Gareth for testing on OS X. If you don't know, Gareth is my brother and has written quite a lot of code for the project - for example, the entire UI system, full-screen toolbox, blasting pixel shader, scores, and darkness/night mode were all written by him.

LAN gameplay has been the sole focus this week and is coming along nicely. Thanks to Rick for being my guinea pig and for the feedback.

A name in parenthesis and in bold is the finder of the bug/quirk. Thanks to all, I really do appreciate your time and support. Cheers!

Editor

  • fixed issue with toolbox not able to move outside the windowed screen size when launching the game directly into full-screen (Gareth)
  • fixed bug when painting random items (CTRL+R) (Gareth)

Game

  • your points are now reset correctly when restarting a game after death (Amy)
  • fixed bug that crashed the game when inserting a regenerating bomb back into the puzzle
  • fixed bug with liquid animations (Gareth)
  • fixed bug that could show an empty prompt box to enter your high score
  • fixed bug that did not reset animations correctly and caused odd results (Gareth)
  • runners entering a puzzle on the top row will exit straight away if no gold is in the puzzle - this matches the Original
  • monks can no longer eat runners escaping a puzzle - this matches the Original

LAN

  • lobby;
  • maximum player count reset to the default (4) when entering/exiting/entering the lobby
  • you can no longer change your name or boot out players when you are ready
  • support to collect gold, tools, bombs and use all tools added
  • last remnants of the old networking code removed from the project
  • reduced bandwidth

LAN games isn't a major concern for bandwidth but if/when web games are added it will be. I'd like to be able to reuse 99.99% of the code so I may as well squeeze as many bytes out as possible now. I've got a 4G connection that is not only pricey but limited to 25 gigabytes a month + $10 per 1 gigabyte over the limit - so it is a must to cut out the extra fat.

If you're interesting in network programming or just programming in general, I highly recommend you read Glenn Fiedler's articles on networking.

General

  • normal exits no longer show in puzzle previews - this matches the Original

Bugs being worked on

  • monks merging together on ladders (Leandro)
  • keyboard shortcuts not working as they should on Mac OS X (Gareth)

What I'll probably do next week

  • LAN gameplay