12/30/96Another slow week. This week I worked more on some cave tiles. I'm still not any further than I was, I keep starting over and trying new things.. Eventually I'll find something I like
The image this week is a water color done by Brian before he left. It was just a scene of Talibah he was working on. I need to write Brian soon and see how he's doing.
My girlfriend and I had our one year anniversary the 26th of this month. It was a night I will remember always... Otherwise, there is little to tell this week. I am redesigning the home page where I work. This is taking a good part of my time. Hopefully I will get a week of solid coding in before school starts, but it looks like this summer before I can hit this project hard again. I may stop the weekly updates soon.
12/24/96Well, it seems like I keep slipping and slipping... Now I am several days late... I suppose I should just give up on trying to update on the weekends... Anyway, on with this week's progress report...
The image this week is of some more cave tiles I have been working on. I like the look of the wall and the fade into black, but I don't like the floor tile at all.. I am still trying to get the right realistic look. I previously thought that I would have lots of time to work over the Christmas holiday, but I was very wrong. So far, I haven't even had much time on the computer. Most of the time my father is playing Warcraft 2. I haven't touched the code yet this holiday, but I plan to soon.
Merry Christmas to everyone. I got a zip drive this year. It will be pretty handy cause as it is, I have no way to make backups other than floppy disks.. My girlfriend got me some Eternity "smell-em-good" and I got lots of other neat stuff.
12/16/96How about that? I'm late again... When will I ever learn? BTW- I've gotten a number of messages lately with bad return adresses. If I didn't answere your e-mail (and its been a few weeks) you need to make sure your return adress in your mail proggie's setup is correct.. I've got about three different message from the good ole' "mail daemon" because of this.
Its been a dry week. As the image suggests, I've only worked on the code, and I've done VERY little to that. I've been trying to come up with the best solution for my keyboard input. I've gotten my scrolling a little smother, but every now and then there is that slight pause that really messes things up... Don't worry, I'm working on it... I'll get it sooner or later.. Right now I am not coding the actual "main loop" of the game at all. Most of that code consists of nothing but remarks as I am working out the stucture. What I do have now is a test loop. If you click on the image, you can read the first few lines of the procedure for the test loop (like you care)...
I thought Christmas break would give me more time for the game, but its been pretty busy and stressful. I've got to go buy gifts for everyone and I'm working 5 days a week while I'm outta school to afford those gifts and be in a position to start paying on the load I just took out for next semester...
12/8/96I don't have much in the line of graphics to show this week. What's here might be the look of the status screen... but I'm not sure yet. I think I want to go with a light background because the images that will be shown there were scanned in and originally done on white paper. I think this looks pretty sharp myself. Maybe I should have a different one for every character... For the new folks, the fella over there is known as Gerwin.
I tried to smoothen out the scrolling and managed to get locked up a few times the night before last. I was getting pretty pissed. I think I can do t though... I also found someone with some great musical skills, I will have to talk with him some more. I thought I found my artist for sure, then over the past few days I got a number of new messages from eager artists. I will probably go with the guy I was considering originally, but I will have to look at some samples first. For now I think I will close the help wanted section..
Another project may soon be taking up some of my time. BOB 2 might be out before you know it. Diing will do most of the code while the before mentioned artist will be doing the artwork. It should be interesting, but hey, this is the TLOT page and you don't want to hear about that here.
I am happy knowing that I am finished with my C class and have scored an A in the class, thus I do not have to take the final. I also got a raise at work, a pretty good one too! I also might be getting a good solid cash flow from some other source, but I can't discuss that here... ;-) All in all, things are sorta getting better... good actually... but I better keep my mouth shut eh?
12/1/96What is that on the right? Its the Rod of Phonovan. There will only be three colors of crystals, but Brian drew several for me to choose from. The rod is a very important part of the game. Various combos of crystals will produce different effects. One crystal might double your normal exp gain, another might reduce the number of fights you enter by half, another might increase your max hit points by 2x, and other wonderful effects. You must have three crystals in place for the rod to do anything. You can only have a red, green, and blue crystal in the rod at one time, and they must be in their correct places. It will all fit into place when you play the game...
I did some major plot revisions two nights ago. I didn't change any events, just thier order. Do to the advise of "Tuxedo Incarnate" I've added alot more mystery to the start of the plot. I haven't put a copy of the new plot.txt online cause its kinda hard to read now. I finally understand the importance of story boards... I thought I would sit down and work everything out and finish up the plot and by the time I was through moving those events around, I was kinda tired... I had to go and re-read everything looking for things that didn't "jive" once I changed things. Everytime I read it, I find more mistakes. I can't just blow through speed reading, I have to read word per word, and just because I re-read it doesn't mean I fixed all the mistakes. I've got alot left to do.. has anyone actually been reading that thing at all?
I just got news that my musician will probably be leaving me do to lack of access to the internet. Thus, I will need a new one. I want to move to digital music if I can. I have mod_obj and its a good package. It plays a 4 channel .mod file (mono) and one track of sound effects. One track of sound effects just kinda sucks though. The libs I was originally going to use support FM synth midi and 8 channels of digital sound on a Sound Blaster card. mod_obj supports lots of cards. I am just not real sure yet. One BIG problem is the size of digital music, but if I move to a new comiler, I might be using protected mode... I just donno yet, its all so fuzzy.. send me advise! If I do go with digital music, I might just write the music myself... who knows...
As for me, I FINALLY got my vehicle up and running although it provided for a lousy holiday... oh well.. Things between me and my girl hit a few rough spots as to be expected in the course of a relationship. If you see her on the street, tell her that her boyfriend loves her very much ;-) I got some good Techno CDs from Uther and was I hope they provide me with some energy for christmas break as I need to do some coding...
