Quark Robot dev blog

Week #34 update

Quark Robot -

What I've done this week##

Most of this week was spent on LAN gaming, moving game text to the language files and tweaking the player movement to further match the original.

You'll notice the join/host dialog is not the same as the original. The original was too confusing and not very intuitive. Monks don't work with LAN at the moment but this will be done before the August update next weekend (29th). The video shows me joining another game on my network and finishing the first puzzle. The video is not very complex and certainly not interesting but it does show off the basic mechanics of joining a game on your network.

*Welcome to LAN*

This week I thought I share the amount of storage space Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Rewrite project is taking up. On my Z1 machine, 812 megabytes. This includes;

  • the project source code
  • helper tool source code
  • OS X/Linux test programme source code
  • new artwork files
  • some planning documents
  • 203 work-in-progress images
  • copies of the mods I've made to FNA
  • binaries for FNA, SDL2, etc.

On my Synology DS212J NAS, I have 7.49 gigabytes of backups. This includes;

  • all of the above
  • 25 separate complete backups (which is a copy of the above)
  • copies of the project before major rewrites/milestones are added
  • 619 megabytes of work-in-progress videos
  • 203 work-in-progress images
  • old source projects for OGG playback in XNA
  • both MP3 and OGG copies of the audio tracks

My brother also has quite a lot of USB sticks floating around his house with pretty much all of the above. Why don't I use online backups? 4G (super fast, 30ms ping) at these prices... Call me old fashioned, but I also don't really get the point of online backups.

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

The issue with a monk not playing nice with each other on ladders discovered last week (thus breaking the ability to solve puzzle 19) has now been fixed. The fix also stops monks getting stuck on top of each other on ladders.

  • one of the most requested features and one of the most noticed differences between this rewrite and the original is movement. In the original you can hold left or right and then hold up. Letting go of left/right whilst still holding up would allow the player to move. This rewrite didn't support that but it does now.
  • you can no longer rapidly change directions when running (can swap right when running left still) - this matches the original
  • fixed a texture caching glitch that could cause the editor/menu to show incorrectly coloured numbers
  • continued work on LAN games;
  • whomever hosts the a game of Lode Runner will always be the intrepid hero, Jake Peril, while the player joining the game will always be Jake's loyal buddy, Wes Reckless. When playing the original game in the late '90's and early naughties, I myself was Wes Reckless.
  • reduced the amount of data sent between machines
  • created a new, temporary, host game button


Updated join network dialog

General

  • reduced code in the puzzle viewer dialog

Bugs being worked on

  • Gravis gamepads not working with OS X (Adam)
  • Windows with Japanese language causing a crash on start-up (Kyson)
  • the current workaround is to set Windows to a Latin-based language (English, German, French)

What I'll probably do next week

  • prep for August update
  • play/test for bugs
  • continue AI improvements
  • continue LAN