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[timmeh]

@Alfie275 - What Orange said   If you want me to I can put my code up somewhere for you to look at, but it's such a mess that I don't know that it would help...

@Outcast Orange - Thanks

1.  Hmmm... the only time I use red at all is in the inventory and for the hunger/energy bars... I'll look into for sure.
2.    I think that's cause of the level of the enemies they think they should drop different items.  I need to adjust the values some, so food and stuff are more common drops...
3.  That's cause the way I connect the doors, I just put a door in the center of the right and bottom walls of each room that isn't on the edge.  It's horrible, inefficient, and not how I want it to work, but until I can figure out how to connect them properly...

Are the invisible tiles really green like that though?  They're supposed to be a darkish gray... I think I need to be running checks to see which colors I am and am not allowed to change on certain computers...

Thanks again, I'll look into these soon, I've made a little progress with magic, but not much (the effects would work as expected on the player, assuming of course there was any way to set an effect on the player...)

[Outcast Orange]

I suppose we've all figured out that my computer doesn't support color changes in curses.

The red things are usually represented by slashes, and sometimes appear in the walls.
They don't function as doors though, since you can't travel through them.

For the corner stuff: Run a test to make sure that the tiles are open on at least two sides of the door.
If it isn't, just leave those doors out, since they don't serve a purpose anyways.

I enjoy running around in your dungeons, making a collection of different objects and armor types.
It's some sort of clepto-oriented fun.

[timmeh]

I'll look into having it just use normal colors if it can't change them, that way it'll just be less colorful, instead of drawing things in the wrong color

I'll also see what I can do about the doors, the information you provided should be more than enough for me to get it working, thanks!

Still not sure about the red things though... that's really weird...

Anyways, thanks for the support!
Since I don't have anything else to show for today, I figured I could at least share the utility I wrote for a game I started playing recently. 

The game is called "Warlocks".  It's a turn-based strategy game of sorts, in which you take turns making gestures with both hands, trying to string certain patterns together to create spells.  The strategy strikes me as almost chess-like, as you spend at least as much time considering your opponent's moves as you do your own.  It's a simple enough game to start playing, but there's a lot of depth to it.

Anyways, I decided to make a utility to help me keep track of my opponent's possible future moves.  I wrote a much longer description than that for the Yahoo! group, and while I don't really have the time to rewrite it now, I've copy-pasted it into a spoiler below, that you can read if you're interested.

Please note, this is an exact copy of the e-mail I sent out to the group, so parts of it may be irrelevant here.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hello, I started playing "Warlocks" on games.ravenblack.com yesterday, and had something I'd like to share, as a sort of thanks for all the work that must have gone into this awesome game.  But first, a little back-story on the project (or you can just scroll to the bottom for the link and instructions...)

---===---

During my first game, I found myself often referring to the Quick Spell Reference table quite often, not just to see what spells were possibly and to double check the commands I was entering, but to compare to my opponent's last few moves, and see what they appeared to be doing.

After the first few turns, I realized I would almost always miss at least one of the possibilities if I tried to find all the possibly moves in my head, so I started opening note-pad each round, and comparing my opponent's commands to the spell list, writing down each possible spell and going back to compare them to previous turns, to try and guess what he or she was thinking.

Of course, this got very tedious, very fast.  So I spent this afternoon working on a small project of my own, that would help me narrow down my opponent's possible moves a little quicker, so I can concentrate on my strategy.  Basically, I can input a sequence of gestures (say, "SD") and it brings up a list of all the spells that use that pattern of gestures somewhere.

---===---

When the program starts up, you will see a console window with:
"WARLOCK SPELL-PARSER, vX.X
By Timothy Sassone"
printed across the top.  Press any button to start the program.

At this point, you can type in any pattern you want (using the same notation at the website, with capitols for one-handed gestures and lower-case letters for two-handed gestures), then press enter and it will bring up a list of spells using those gestures.  If you press enter without entering any gestures the program will display a full spell list.

When you're done looking at the spells, you can press any key to return to the input screen, so you can enter new gestures.

WARNING: WHILE THERE ARE NO VIRUSES IN THE PROGRAM (I wrote it, I ought to know...) I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU SCAN THIS FILE, AND ANY OTHER FILES YOU DOWNLOAD, BEFORE YOU RUN THEM!!!
Download (55.5KB): http://www.4shared.com/file/151161017/56d65401/WSP.html

Thanks again to all those involved in Warlocks, especially the developer(s)!  Thanks as well to my first opponent, "larspcus2", for making my first game such and enjoyable experience.

Timothy Sassone

I've added this to the front page as well, under "Other Projects" (used to be "Other Games").  The source code isn't available yet as it's still a bit messy, but it shouldn't take me long to clean it up.

[Alexhans]

Note to self:  I shall read and test this...

I haven't forgotten timmeh... I'll be back

[timmeh]

  Thanks.

My break from school starts soon, so naturally all the teachers see fit to assign loads of extra homework ahead of time, to keep me busy through Christmas... I don't really have the patience to do school work during a break, so the next week or so may be a little hectic.  I will be working on ToA, I just might not have much to show for it for a week or two...

[EDIT]: Self-targeting health spells work   Adding the other self-targeting spells should be trivial.  The tricky part is going to be targeted spells.  I need to figure out how to handle it when the player tries to use a targeted spell without an enemy in view, or when he/she selects a square that doesn't have an enemy in it as a target.  The other hard part is going to be letting them choose a spell to cast.  At the moment I've got a test function that adds a simple spell, then casts the first spell available, but I need it to list spells you have enough experience to cast.  AFTER all the spell stuff is working, I'm going to start figuring out how to load them from a file.

Before I can list the spells I'll have to figure out how I want to decide how many times a spell has to be cast before it can be cast from memory (without a scroll/wand)...

[EDIT2]: The rest of the self-targeting effects seem to be working, both temporary and permanent.  Now to figure out targeting...

[EDIT3]:  Things are progressing far faster than I had hoped!  I've successfully tested a ranged spell, and successfully loaded a self-targeting health spell!  Now, at the moment only the "NAME", "TARGET" and "HEALTH" tags work, but the rest should be a lot easier than what I've accomplished so far!
Here's the text from the file that the basic health spell was loaded from, the spell is self-targeting, and instantly heals 5 points of damage.

Code: [Select]

[NAME:TestSpell]
[TARGET:SELF]
[HEALTH:5:-1]The "NAME" tag ought to be pretty self explanatory, and the "TARGET" tag takes one of two options, "SELF" or "RANGED".  The "HEALTH" tag is what I'm dubbing an effect tab, it adds a health related effect, using the first number as the magnitude (negative numbers would remove health), and the second is the duration.  A duration of -1 for a health effect mean that it just instantly heals or hurts the target.  A longer duration would temporarily alter the maximum health as well, so you can make a spell that gives you temporary health points.

Next I need to get the hunger and energy effects in for the player, then the stat altering ones.  Once those are done I need to let the player select a spell to cast (at the moment it just casts the first available spell, I need to display all the spells the player knows and let them pick one to cast), and add scrolls/wands.  More interesting effects, such as teleport, slow/freeze and such, will come soon after, but I just want working magic for this release.  It's bound to be bug riddled anyways, so I'll likely spend more time bug-fixing than adding features in v0.31...

[Outcast Orange]

Awesome! That's really cool!

Can you help me do raw stuff later on?
I might be ready for that in in about a week.
Your game is really customizable.
It sounds like it could go anywhere from here.

[Org]

Where can I download C++?

[Outcast Orange]

That is a broken idea, there Org.
I think what you want is a C++ Developement Environment.

Code::Blocks is here:
http://www.codeblocks.org/downloads/5

Visual C++ 2008 is here:
http://www.microsoft.com/Express/VC/

I have used both, but I highly recommend Code::Blocks,
because it is very cross-platform friendly.

[timmeh]

Yeah, you'll probably want an IDE like the ones Outcast Orange linked to.  Once you've got those you should be able to find a simple "Hello World" tutorial, to help you figure out how to compile and run your code.

Once you know how to use your IDE there are endless tutorials available to help you learn C++.  There's a really good one in Alexhan's signature, but whatever you can find that suits your learning style best.

[EDIT]: Some links:
The tutorial from Alexhans' signature
A tutorial for setting up Code::Blocks and compiling

[Org]

Thanks!

[timmeh]

No problem

All my spell related stuff seems to be working so far.  I have both self-targeting and ranged spells, and a selector that lets you pick a spell to cast.

I still need to set up wands/scrolls, and some sort of spell memorization system.  Here's what I'm thinking.  Each spell has a sort of "understanding" variable.  It starts at 0, and is increased by 1 each time you cast the spell from a wand/scroll.  If the spell's "understanding" is above a certain number (based somehow on intelligence) then it can be cast from memory, but it decreases the spell's "understanding" by 1.  So basically, spells you use regularly off scrolls/wands you could cast from memory every now and then, but will still require that you use the scroll/wand every now and then to refresh your memory.

To do this, I'll have to add a sort of "spell" effect to items, which mean enchanted items might not be too far behind.  My thoughts on the scrolls vs. wands are this, they work almost identically, the only difference being the number of uses, and maybe (although this isn't likely) the scrolls would give 2 points instead of 1 to a spell's "understanding".  Otherwise, scrolls get 3 uses, wands get 1.

What does everyone else think though?  Very open to ideas at the moment.

[Org]

I started reading and I dont really understand. :I

[timmeh]

I don't blame you, the stuff can be pretty complicated, especially at first.  You may want to google "C++ Tutorials", you might find something that's a little easier to get started for you.

Lots of save/load related bug-fixes coming up too... I've been forgetting to clear the various vectors when I loaded the game, so it when you loaded mid-game it would just add the old enemies in, so if you saved, went up a floor, and loaded, the enemies on the floor prior to loading might still exists, and the other enemies would just get added to them.  I think... anyways, I'm clearing the vectors before loading their contents now.

[Outcast Orange]

@Org: Check your PMs. If you didn't get the message I sent you, let me know.

@Timmy: Sounds good. You are way ahead of me in terms of functionality.
I'll be here watching every step of the way, keep up the good work!

[Org]

@Org: Check your PMs. If you didn't get the message I sent you, let me know.

@Timmy: Sounds good. You are way ahead of me in terms of functionality.
I'll be here watching every step of the way, keep up the good work!

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