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[Outcast Orange]

Timmeh! Where are you?
Tower of Azari waits for no one!

Account for your inactivity at least.

[timmeh]

Sorry!  Work is just really, really slow right now.  I have another week or so to get all my college applications out, the various financial support forms finished etc...

But there is some progress.  For one, I fixed the Xbox... sorta.  The RRoD is gone, but it turns out the DVD player the last repairmen put it is broken, so now I have to replace that too...

On the ToA front, I have enemies that can be seen and hurt, although they don't disappear when their health hits 0 (that's my task for this morning).  Once I've got that done I'm going to get them to move and attack again.  I'll probably start with the attacking bit, since movement is going to require that I do some research into path-finding, and my internet at school (which I'm using now) is a bit limited.  Albeit, that's mostly because I'm not really supposed to be using it at all, but if they didn't want me on it they should have picked a better password... 

I'm not dead though, just a bit lazy.  I had planned to work on enemy deaths yesterday, and ended up spending the hour or two of free time watching game-play videos/let's plays of Demon's Souls... I really shouldn't do that, cause now I really want the game...

[timmeh]

My apologies again for my absence, but I haven't been entirely idle.  Enemies can be killed, and can kill the player (sorta, death isn't handled very nicely, but the core of it is there).  They don't move yet, and I want to get them loaded from a file before I bother with path-finding (although I'm strongly considering this, so I only have to path-find once a round, not once per enemy per round...).

With any luck I'll be able to finish sending out college applications tomorrow, or the day after.  Once I've done that I'll have a lot more free time, at least until I have to start scholarship applications, or actually start college, but I'll deal with that as it comes.

[EDIT]:  Enemies are now loaded from a file, along with some settings.  The enemies can die, and will fight back when you stand close enough.  The difficulty, drop values and exp can all have a multiplier applied to them via the settings file, so that I can tweak them easier.  Once I've found ideal values for each I'll probably hard-code the values, to keep people from cheating and applying a *200 modifier to their exp gains or enemy drops...  The drops work fine, and the exp will only take another line or two of code, but the enemies aren't spawned properly yet.  I've been testing them by having a key spawn a random monster for me, so my next task is getting them spawned in the map when it's generated, sorta like the items.

I'm thinking I may have some sort of weighting system for enemy spawns, since I don't want to simply have a set number in a given room, since that could make the game far too difficult to have an enemy in every room, and multiples in some.  My current plan is to spawn a number of enemies based on the number of floor tiles (decent idea of the actual walkable space in the map), but pick their placement based on some sort of weighting on the rooms.  The tricky bit is figuring out the weighting.  I'll probably have it prefer to put each creature in a higher-weighted room, but set limits, and lower the weighting each time one is spawned in the room...

[Outcast Orange]

Progress actually continues.

: )

[timmeh]

Heh, thanks for the vote of confidence.

My original plan was to get the enemies spawning today, but I ended up spending the time working on smaller things I'd forgotten earlier.  I've put in critical hits, and made the effects from your weapon transfer to the enemy.  The effects aren't doing anything at the moment, but getting them to update shouldn't be difficult, as the enemy class is nearly identical to the player class, and the code shouldn't have to change much between the two, cept monsters don't get hunger effects for the time being.

[EDIT]:  Okay, I got more done than I thought I would today, but I've ended up putting enemy path-finding and spawning off again...  I tried spawning this morning, and ran into some bugs I couldn't identify, and ended up just doing some general cleanup for the enemy and player files.  I've also updated the splash-screen for the town, and added the trainers/exp "shop".  I just need to add buying and selling items, and some way to rest (recover health and such) and the town will be done.  The resting will be easy, the shops aren't going to be difficult, so much as they will be time consuming (I suck at designing interfaces, most of the stuff I've got took me ages to figure out, although I've slightly sped it up now that I realized I can do some kind of basic layout in paint...)

Once I've finished that (probably tomorrow at school, shouldn't be too hard), I'll take another shot at enemy spawns, then I can try movement again.  I may try and come up with a better way to handle spawning enemies, but I may be able to get it work as is...

[Outcast Orange]

Will there still be apples?
Those were the days.

[timmeh]

Will there still be apples?
Those were the days.

  Yes, apples are staying, and now that you've mentioned it I may have to come up with something subtle and clever to stick in their description... 

[EDIT]:  No progress today.  I woke up this morning with about 1 hour before school, and remembered that I had to be the defense attorney in a mock trial for government... I spent the morning reading and re-reading the fact sheet and such, and formed what pitiful defense I could, and got beaten so badly I begin to wonder why I bothered to try.  Note to self, actually read all the papers involved before we resume next Thursday...

Okay, technically it wasn't no progress at all, I wrote the pseudo-code for the shops, and added the inn, but neither one took more than 5 minutes or so.  Even with the homework, I should be able to get the shops done tomorrow, it'll be nearly identical to the inventory code (just need to buy or sell the items instead of using them, and create the purchase list from the master list, instead of what the player is carrying) so it shouldn't take long.  Then hopefully I can get enemy spawns working.  Worst possible outcome, I leave room weighting out for the moment, and just stick with random placement so I can move onto movement and get another tech-demo out.

[Outcast Orange]

This thread must live.
Timmeh, my structural sanity depends on you.

[timmeh]

  It lives, I just haven't achieved much.  I finished the selling half of shops, and will hopefully be able to finish the buy menu today.  Unfortunately, I slept in by accident, so I haven't even finished my school yet, so I won't have as much time as I'd like...

[Outcast Orange]

Same here.

I just feel back asleep by accident,
 and lost another four hours of my day.

I hope you don't feel forced.
If you do not want to do this anymore,
 that is totally cool.

I would prefer it if you stayed on B12 though.
Timmeh = good company.

[timmeh]

Not at all, you'd have to pay me to quit

I've got the shops done, and as soon as I can work out some irritating bugs enemies will be spawned when each floor is generated. 
Once I've got that I may do a quick release, just so you guys can test out the enemies and balance and such.

I've also redone character creation to skip the exp-spending step, and instead it sends you to the town to spend your money and exp.
Speaking of which, the amount of money you start with is now also determined by your class.
The classes are probably horribly unbalanced now, but I'm going to have to add ranged weapons and magic,
and balance the stat costs and item power/prices before I can really balance them fairly... so yeah, that's gonna have to wait

[EDIT]:  The bug is almost fixed.
It doesn't lock up any more, but it seems to find it absolutely hilarious to place as many as will fit in the first room...
Makes for a very short adventure...  

[Outcast Orange]

Does your game want to kill you?

Everything I make in Garry's Mod wants to kill me.
Even the most docile soda can or watermelon.

[timmeh]

Does your game want to kill you?

Everything I make in Garry's Mod wants to kill me.
Even the most docile soda can or watermelon.

Seems like it...

LOL!
I had that problem back when I was absolutely obsessed with Halo 3... I would almost always die somehow while forging... either something would fall on my head, or a random explosion would fling a cone or crate at my head... not to mention the horrible things that happened once I started messing with lifts, remote doors (it can be done though!) and man cannons... 

[EDIT]:  Okay, fixed the bugs.  Should be able to get it stable and commented enough for another tech-demo either tonight or tomorrow.  There are almost no enemies in the fie at the moment, so you're likely to encounter a lot of the "Shadow" creatures from the previous versions, that are basically slightly weaker versions of the player.  The engine works though, so adding your own shouldn't be difficult.

The weighting is pretty straight forward, you can use the [spawn_weight:##] tag to set the weighting to place enemies in that particular room.  It defaults to 3, and has a cap at 25.  At 0 you're likely to either get no enemies ever, or it may glitch, I actually haven't tried it yet... guess I ought to do that before releasing

So basically, just need to wrap some things up, and you can try what I've got this far.  Then onto movement for the enemies, then ranged weapons and magic, then I'll be caught back up   After that, I may re-visit the rooms and see about some of the atmosphere stuff (furniture items, semi-random room descriptions, etc.), and probably find some way to give creatures some form of magic, if only by giving them some constant or on-attack effects...

[Outcast Orange]

Yay!

I will best this tower some day.

[timmeh]

Okay... it's officially the 3rd as of about 10 minutes ago, but the release is ready and uploaded.  I didn't managed to get it on the 2nd, but I was damn close

Links are in the first post, under the *gasp* links section under the ToA heading.  I've uploaded this release in both .7z and .zip, in case anyone prefers one or the other.  It takes me about 10 seconds to do this, so I'll probably continue to do so for future releases, assuming they both get downloads.  It's a negligible size chance (about 70KB), but I know people who prefer one program over the other, so I figured it couldn't hurt.

Beside the in-game changes (enemies, simple combat and the town) I've also done a lot more documenting both inside the code, and outside it in the "raw" files.  There are 3 README files, each pertaining to the files in the same folder.  None of them are really necessary for anyone who's played before, but I figured I'd be better off doing them now, while I've got momentum, than waiting till later and putting it off forever   Besides, they're useful documentation as far as the tags and such are concerned.

Anyways, I need sleep, cause I have to throw together some semblance of a defense argument for a mock-trial to be held on Thursday, and I need to do it tomorrow morning   Enjoy!

[EDIT]:  As I closed Code::Blocks it asked me if I wanted to save the project file.  I could have sworn I did this prior to uploading, but if anyone tries to compile and it gives you trouble, let me know and I can re-upload the source separately.  Also, I have a spreadsheet set up to calculate character/enemy levels, if anyone thinks they would actually use this just let me know, and I can upload it as well.  Just make sure you specify what tool you view your spreadsheets in, so I can upload it in the right format