Quark Robot dev blog

Week #30 update

Quark Robot -

What I've done this week##

Week 30 introduced some AI improvements for the monks, plus some new additions for gamepad support and non-English language support. Of course, some bugs were fixed along the way.

I think a lot of the issues that pop up with this rewrite of Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge is me overcomplicating things, such as anything to do with the monks.

Compared to the build from last month, the game is coming along nicely. It is far more stable and far more playable. There is still some more work to do on the AI, add saving/loading games and start LAN gaming.

The July build will up for download on Wednesday (the 29th, Australian time).

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

  • nothing, yay!

Game

  • added support for multiple controllers on the one machine
  • added support to vibrate a game controller when;
  • being strung up in a rope trap
  • striking rock with the pick-axe
  • drilling with the jackhammer
  • being buried under pick-axe rubble
  • also added support for bombs to vibrate all controllers connected
  • added support to un-pause a game via a controller
  • fixed bug that forced a runner to climb down a ladder when popping out a hidey-hole (Lavi)
  • fixed bug that prevented a player from falling through a fall-through when dismounting from a monkey bar (Lavi)
  • reworked some of the ladder code to reduce complexity;
  • I've done a lot of testing on this, but if you think you've found something that is wrong, please let me know
  • fixed bug that prevented players from crossing to ladders from a monkey bar under certain scenarios
  • fixed bugs with befuddlement gas tool;
  • fixed bug that could gas some players directly under a cloud or above it
  • fixed players entering gas clouds sprayed left not being gased correctly

Monk AI

  • cleaned up the AI some more
  • re-did "monk stacking" (making them pause when they hit a fellow monk);
  • removed all previous code relating to "monk stacking"
  • added this feature from scratch using a far more simpler approach
  • puzzle 19 is now solvable!
  • rewrote monks climbing out the a hole and waiting for other monks;
  • this did not always work correctly and could result in monks getting stuck together
  • the monks also refused to climb out when they could


The lower monk helps to herd the top monk up the ladder

General

  • fixed tooltips remaining visible when the parent control is no longer visible
  • tweaked the "-" and arrow keys in the Lode Runner font
  • dead code pruned from the project
  • improved the text font parser for Arial (created using AngelCode Bitmap font creator);
  • improved the efficiency in the text parser by Chad Vernon
  • reduced variables and some complexities
  • foreign language support (read: anything that isn't English);
  • rebuilt the Arial bitmap font used in tooltips to include all Latin-based characters
  • completed support to read/load different languages
  • thanks to Lavi, we now have most French translations done for the file dialog
  • if the chosen language is not available or some translations are missing, English will be used.


Bonjour le monde!


Options toggle for languages

Only tooltip text is covered at the moment due to the official font lacking non-English characters as you can see above. I've decided to take the time to draw new characters. This is simple for languages like French and German but very time consuming and complex for other languages with weird characters.

What I'll probably do next week

  • play/test for bugs
  • continue AI improvements