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[Toady One]

It should be a little faster now, but I'm still working.  Why not put it up when I get a chance though?    There will be at least one more clean up release.

Here's the new quadraped (surrounded by red ogres):

   

I believe it's called something tragic like the "Behemoth Slaughter-Beast".

[ April 06, 2002: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Demon]

Always nice to wake up to a new version of Armok!  I think in the next release you should work on hit locations.  As a titan I kicked a human (I think it should have been full body but) in the head.  His left eye was hit.  Thats all...    :roll:

Also blood dosent display properly on my computer...  Its like 3 terrain triangles with blood texture instead of a nice puddle like I see in the screen shots.  I know Denim gets the good puddles.

[Demon]

Also, when you run until you pass out and wait:  My stamina never comes back!  I've waited until all my wounds heal and still i'm too exhausted to do anything!  Even when I switch to survivor mode I still can get any stamina back, although I do become concious again.

Also, I think you should change the comma 'sleep' to the new wait thing, with possibly the option to wait until healed/ not fatigued/ whatever.

[Toady One]

Well, it IS possible in "real life" to only graze the left eye as a titan, but since it ISN'T possible to completely flatten a creature, I'll have to put that in too  Multi-bodypart strikes might be a little hard, at least to get the text and wound IDs right, but I need it eventually.

3 terrain triangles with blood texture?  Can you email me a screen shot (Alt+PrintScreen and paste into Paint is the fastest way I know)?  Cut out the picture so it's small if you can.  My connection is Really slow.

I'll fix up the stamina regain, but I'm not sure about the sleep change -- sleep until all of your wounds are healed?  That takes weeks sometimes!  A button like that would be hard to justify in later versions, although it might make sense now.  On the other hand, a button that just waits until you've regained your energy would work for me...  perhaps the "8 hour sleep" button should be moved, since it would be used less often than an energy regain button.

How fast is it now?  Any changes?  When is it slowest?

[Demon]

It does run about 2 fps faster than it did.  

Are we gonna be able to save in the next release??

Also, if we copy down a certian seed number will the world come out exactaly the same?  I'm thinking that if thats true we should get some seed numbers that cause 2 civilizations to overlap!

[Toady One]

2 is progress!  Progressive meshes are the next big step in that direction -- without them, I've had some atrociously high triangle counts in the town (45000+ sometimes).  That's unacceptable on my computer.

I'm also going to allow the game to flat out skip some frames if it detects that things are going slow -- this will be an option, since it might cause (real-time) combat to be harder, but if graphics are the bottleneck on a computer, it will make things a lot faster (though choppier).

Yeah, save/load is going in for the next one.  I'm also adding in a lot more information about growths (notably claw attacks, teeth, and symmetry) that I will need to have encoded to do the motif editor in the reptile release.

If you copy down a seed, the empire positions are the same, so you can write down a seed if you find overlap.  In the next version (with save/load), you'll be able to save and load active worlds, and also the parameters that generated them (if you want to refresh them), so you won't have to copy anything down.  You can then just name the universe "Overlapping Empires" or something more inspired and save it.

I'm not sure why, but town positions ARE NOT the same if you use the same seed.  I mean, I have a good idea why, and it will be fixed for the reptile release.  This isn't a problem if you want to get a lot of creatures fighting each other -- if towns are reasonably close together, you can lead some creatures to another town (of a different species) to start one of those battles.  If you don't find nearby towns, just restart and their positions will be changed.  This would conceivably work even if you find two empires that are adjacent with towns next to each other on the empire border -- this happens a lot more often too.

With saved worlds and games -- right now, it is very likely with each release that save games/worlds in prior versions will Not be usable.  It is impossible to encode compatibility when things are still changing so fast.  In the future as things become more stable, most releases will preserve the save file structure.

[Toady One]

I finished frame-skipping.  I'm fairly happy with it.  It's kind of a last resort -- if things go slowly, it doesn't print a certain number of frames, depending on how slowly it went.  This artificially speeds things up -- now the goal is to get it to skip as few frames as possible.  There are also some game steps (creature movement for instance, I think) that are slow but not related to graphics.  Frame-skipping can only partially eleviate these problems.

[Toady One]

Creature movement WAS a problem.  There was a little helper function that was, well, Poorly Implemented.  It has now been Implemented Properly.

Aside from the fact that creatures now walk through hills and in the air.  However, I know why that's happening  I still have some speed things I can do (AI tweaks, progressive meshes) if it's STILL slow on a given computer, but I have some other things I have to do first (TEETH!  SAVING!).

[Toady One]

I slipped a Follow Up version on to the web site, in case anyone wants to see if the speed works.  Fatal crash bugs a possibility

[Demon]

Did you get that screen shot?  I sent it earlier today, so it should be there by now.  Any idea what causes that?  How long until the next cleanup?

When the magic release comes out can you put in some magic items?  Could make body detonation weapons or titan/human/kobold slaying weapons.  And it'll be even better when we can make magic armor in the next release!    

Do you ever get the error where youre moving and your legs just go back to standing..?  It happens alot when I attack something far away.  But thats not the only time.  My things just hover across the screen.

[ April 07, 2002: Message edited by: Demon ]

[Toady One]

Yeah -- I sent an email back, but anyway, it looks like all of the textures (not just blood) are displaying wrong.  What resolution/bits per pixels are you running it in (when windowed)?

I also get the problem with the legs going to standing position.  I'm still trying to figure it out...  there are lots of different things that cause it to happen.  I guess I've found about half of them so far  :roll:

With the magic release, I'm hoping to put in a magic representative of each kind, so that all of the basic structures are in.  That'll mean at least one spell, one "magical" creature/special ability, and an item.  Maybe also some type of magical terrain...

BTW, that follow up version DID have a fatal crash bug.  I put up ANOTHER version just now.  Don't run 0.03.36b.

As for the Real next release, it'll either be next weekend or the weekend after that, depending on how teaching and so on goes.  I'll be able to be more specific later.

[Demon]

I was runing it at 1024*blah and 16 bit color.  I get 17 ish frames that way...  I switched to 24 bit color just now and the game plummeted to 2 FPS, but the textures did work...  I'll keep messing with it.

I'll check it out in the new speed fix and see what I can see.

[Toady One]

Bizarre -- I was hoping for the opposite, since it works in 16/32 bit modes here, but I don't have a 24 bit mode to test.  I'll see what I can figure out from the GL docs, etc.  Keep fiddling with it if you can think of some more stuff to try.

[Toady One]

Hey Harlander, I think I may have found (and fixed) that crash bug.  Or at least I found one that was really nasty.  Basically, when a creature attacks you, after it is done it deletes the attack action, which is fine.  However, if the ATTACKER falls over at the moment of the strike, it was deleting the action prematurely, which caused the game to crash when the action was deleted a second time.  This crash bug is rare, because attackers hardly ever fall over exactly when they hit things.  The only way I got it was by being attacked by a titan that was too weak to stand in the first place (it attacked me right after it was created).  Some other permutation of this error might have caused your crash bug...  one can hope anyway...

It's late, but I'll put up yet another fix tomorrow, assuming everything else is stable.

[Demon]

If you can squeeze it in I think theres a couple of things you need to change.

Even the title screen is Horribly Slow!  Isnt there anything you can do to make it reasonable?  I dont understand why its like that!  It takes a second or so before it registers that I'm highliting things.  Also it takes much too long to delete the seed numbers.

You definately need to put in an option fir how many frames to skip!  30 is far too much!  The game looks horrible.  Extremely skippy.  I'd be far happier with a smoother 20 FPS.