simple machines forum

I’m happy to announce 2 new releases have been published. The current release is a foray into opening up Sword of Moonlight’s SFX system to tinkering and sharing. The previous release went unannounced, but I just want to add that it adds a new kind of animation called skin or weight animation, that allows for animation that is somewhere in between the two other animation types, by combining skeleton based animation with the appearance of soft or continuous skin, instead of hard body parts that do not deform.

To “democratize” the SFX system, there is now a DATA/SFX/PROF folder with a new kind of profile that represents a single entry in the classical SFX.DAT table. In addition these profiles can assign models and sound effects (only primaries) that aren’t restricted to 4 digit file names. There aren’t any new features added other than to hopefully make it possible to design SFX profiles and share them and use custom file names for this purpose. Finally a new SFX.DAT table is generated, and stored in your PARAM folder, along with an SFX.PRO file that contains these extended file names.

This release includes profiles of this kind that reconstruct the original SFX.DAT table. The old table is still there behind them, however editing it does not take precedence over the profiles, the profiles themselves need to be saved like regular files. I could not remove the existing SFX.DAT table without disturbing too much, and I would like it to remain as a reminder of how SOM works, and why it works that way.

I kid with my schizophrenia that we do “shadow work” and “light work”, meaning I feel like my brain is a nursery school for pod people, implications unknown. These sound like Jungian and New Age terms, but shadow work can also mean things like homemaking (unpaid labor) or anything we do for commercial companies on our own behalf in order to save them the expense. Light work just means I try to not work too hard. I.e. lightly.

I haven’t been blogging here enough. Everything in my life is complicated and grueling now. I can’t remember what all is in the latest release of SomEx here, but I know it has animated shadows for NPCs now. And I’ve just worked on a patch that shows elements in SOM_MAP’s main screen, and it will let you copy/paste and rotate them from that screen, with full, unlimited undo support. I’ll try to remember more things in the forum.

Since last seen I’ve put finishing touches on the new tile icon generation system and the old tile system too. The latter is now accessed by pushing the slider bar in the map editor to the very top. The slider can also now be used to fade out the grid lines and to fade in direction arrows.

There’s many more additions mentioned in a wrap-up address inside the Discussion forum. The advanced profile editing tools can now be left open while working, and the Alt key works with clicking to open a 3D model editor. The parts editor tool now has a UUID system shoehorned into the icon field. This works because the old style icons are secondary to computer generated icons. The art system also uses this icon generation system on everything else so its “shortcut” files display a thumbnail graphic. I want to add that a whole lot of work has gone into all of this. The new map icons fill in the space between the grids and include a 2 pixel border for shadow highlights. Getting everything right took weeks.

In other news I’ve reset the Subversion repository. The first revision is now classic Sword of Moonlight for previewing and comparing to the second revision. I’ve removed all traces of “source code” for work from the web. I’m keeping it private going forward. I have private copies on Github that I hope will outlast me. I’m actively trying to make a turn to commercial outlets. I intend to consult with From Software reps before making this move. I’m going to put a non-commercial version on Archive.org as-soon-as-possible. In the meantime, please stay tuned, use SOM, and support my work!