Topic: EXIT: Escape from Sword of Moonlight (Read 24067 times)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #15 on:** October 12, 2017, 11:48:20 PM »

Woops!

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

The last patch wasn't good enough for running over slopes. And I'm currently back to the drawing board on climbing onto slopes as a result.

I had to trek all the way back to that section of the Moratheia 2.1 demo to see if climbing them would work or not. I'll figure something out.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #16 on:** October 13, 2017, 05:42:34 AM »

The fallout from this release is getting ridiculous. The movement/clipping stuff is getting to be more than I can keep track of!

In any event, I've figured out a system that works per the previous post. It's patched of course.

I had to add some smoothing code to moving up and down over slopes in order to be able to run across the triangle and diamond shaped slope tiles. I don't know if this was always a problem, or a side-effect of the changes I made to be able to have smooth experience both walking/running on and scaling slopes.

I think the slopes are probably not stable in rocky combinations, so this is probably a good enhancement. Thankfully it just has to smooth when going down, which can't be confused for climbing up. The slopes have these weird biases. They need special treatment attacking them from the bottom or top.

I've noticed last moment that jumping+scaling sloped platforms isn't taking right now. The slope climbing code is all pretty new and dodgy and I've not been thorough about it.

I'm trying to patch existing features. And trying my damnedest to not add anything new right now.

I've noticed that jumping seems unsatisfying. I have a feeling it's because of the same irregular frame rates problem that prompted me to reevaluate the walking effect. Some jumps are fine. Some are stunted. There shouldn't be any variation.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #17 on:** October 14, 2017, 10:55:27 PM »

Final patch?

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

This patch fixes item pick up, which sometimes can happen without any special screen appearing. This is very rare, except in the Moratheia 2.1 demo, where for some reason it is not uncommon.

This patch fixes a problem with this release with maps that open up to text events; because I've added code that ignores glitches that look like they are warps... unless they are legitimate warps. Problem is, legit warps were missed in this case. (som_rt/db.exe sometimes stops rendering a "frame" in the middle and begins a new one, which makes it difficult to speculate about its internal state.)

I also tested jumping->scaling slopes. It seems to work. There is probably something funny about the MHM geometry I originally tried it with. It might have double-sided faces or something; Coming from a custom tile in Moratheia. (It was quite tricky to set up such a scenario with SOM's original array of options.) Another possibility is a wall may really be a very slight "arch." There's probably some work to do there. But later.

I also noticed that the half-gaits were accessible by themselves, alone. They should always be paired with a whole gait. So I added code to remove these. I don't know if there is similar code somewhere... I looked for it, but what I was doing was creating a whole gait with the rotational axes and a half-gait with the positional axes, and that shouldn't be possible. This might explain some weirdness hither to now. (The layer that generates the half-gaits at best can only see if another axis has a whole gait, but it doesn't know what the axes are for, so it can't make decisions at this level; if it does at all.)

P.S. I thought the warp bug was an original SOM 2000 bug. But false alarm. Here I'm trying to address anything that gets in the way of enjoying the Moratheia 2.1 demo.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #18 on:** October 14, 2017, 11:24:44 PM »

OH YESSS

I feel bad about this. But in the most recent patch I've disabled an AI option that makes monsters turn to face the PC while they are doing their attack sequences...

I realized why Moratheia's demo was so joyless for me in the swordplay dept... How it differed from the previous demo. Why the monsters seemed like pointless, mindless attack dogs. I realized this in the crypt section, fighting with the skeletons... I knew something was just wrong.

I don't know why Verdite switched to using this. But I estimate that there is no good application of this option. It just makes games look poorly made and not fun at all. So I've taken the nuclear option of turning it off.

I wanted to turn this off for myself, so I could enjoy the game. I can't think of how to formulate leaving it on as a configurable extension. And I can't think of any reason to ever use it. I'm hesitant to disable it in SOM_PRM. I don't know what to do in the meantime though. Ideally it can be repurposed. Still AI seems like the last frontier of extension work. So I'm uncertain about when that might be gotten to.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #19 on:** October 15, 2017, 05:59:09 AM »

EDITED: The items pick-up thing remains. I've re-uploaded an untested patch that does the input context switch directly inside the Take? subroutine. Really should've done that in the first place. I forget what's known territory and what's not.

It's very possible that there's no relationship between the input and frame loops; and so that the input could always ~~become~~come before the frame stuff (drawing) or vice versa. All I know is that there can be multiple input snapshots per frame, and I think I've seen evidence of which comes first being basically random... or at least with the clipper, if not drawing.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #20 on:** October 16, 2017, 01:04:36 AM »

For the record (I wasn't going to announce this) I've uploaded one last patch that fixes a nonfatal zero-divide when hitting NPCs with 0 HP (causing a fully red flash) but doesn't address invincible NPCs with nonzero HP (I didn't want to track down the memory that makes NPCs invincible.)

Also it removes something I tried for reasons I can't remember why that would change the dip after a jump/fall if landing on the middle of a platform. That was an experiment that's probably obsolete now.

P.S. I've closed out all of my SOM stuff. I'm going to do at least one feature for COLLADA-DOM before I do anything else for SOM. (First I must put back zipped COLLADA archives--ZAE extension--support. SOM doesn't require this for anything, but I have an obligation to restore the feature since I disable it in order to better organize the software library.)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #21 on:** October 19, 2017, 03:53:40 AM »

And patch...

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

There's a bug in the map crash fix that removes items from maps upon return. I caught this because it removes items that can't be taken too. Otherwise it just seemed like all the items were successfully plundered in the past visit. I think the maps would repopulate with items during play, but any that were saved or left on the map would not return.

The bug seems to affect maps that have never been visited only. Which sounds like something Verdite said once. Luckily, I just had to move the clearing of the old items to a more sensible place (while the MPX file is loading) and this side effect went away.

Also, and I don't know how or why, there was a potential crash in the F6 overlay. Something to do with the pow/mag gauges having too many bars. (This would happen on Loading a game. I don't understand it. F6 limits values to its number of bars--this is impossible.)

I've removed the long input context switch hoping that the idea I had to recognize the context change in the respective subroutine is sufficient. I worried it would have problems with existing extensions that expect the delay to be as little as possible.

I noticed that there was movement happening in the fade in and out screen effects. I'm not sure why, but this patch fixes that too. I may have thought the paralysis code handled it, or that input was not polled during the effects.

EDITED: A new do_save extension found its way into this patch. It's not documented. I might forget about it until asked. It makes the Save function work without save-points. But it doesn't work if the game disables saving with an event. I will later add a do_save2 for that if necessary. This is mainly for debugging, but also for people who're busy.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #22 on:** October 23, 2017, 05:29:36 AM »

Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

This patch improves lighting when the number of light sources exceeds what's possible by selecting the closest light sources (which may or may not be the brightest lights relative to distance.)

There is a bug here too since going over the limit pushes lights off the back of the list, so they must be moved to the front or there is flicker or just chaotic lighting changes.

EDITED: For the record, som_db/rt do seem to compute correct ranges for the lights. If an object is not in range, the light is not considered. I first discovered this problem on a Moratheia 2.1 demo map that has pits of glowing toxic something or other, that produces light, so each light had a range of 50m, or they are 100m across, which is a 1/4 of a map, so there was a lot of overlap. And more than 13 such lights for many things.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #23 on:** October 24, 2017, 04:59:48 AM »

Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

Sometimes jumps happen that go in the orthogonal direction. This kind of a jump is usually an accident. It happens because the direction is changed and the positive and negative directions coexist and cancel each other out.

Also, I've made it possible to jump more freely so that jumps in quick succession are more likely to jump and not stumble. I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but I thought I'd restore some functionality I ripped out with the old Jump button. Doing the jump input sequence is not simple, so it just jumps, even if it looks flatfooted, coming off another jump. It doesn't always work, and doesn't apply to the deeper landings. I'd like it to, but it's more complicated. (EDITED: The older system had simulated pressing the jump button immediately on landing. Which was kind of cool admittedly.)

YESTERDAY'S PATCH had a bunch of DLL files in it, because my mouse is old and malfunctioning and does weird things in a blink of an eye. This one replaces it. I just noticed that, accidentally. I noticed it was uploading slowly yesterday.

There's a new feature in the INI file that you can play with if you want to. It must be manually typed into the file right now. It changes the thumb pad orientation in case your thumbs don't agree with it.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=267.msg2367#msg2367

It might have some strange side effects because controllers don't report proper circles for thumb pads. So the effect is fuzzy. I think maybe it makes jumping a little bit off, but if the bars match the jumps looks the same. I generally like it. I tend to drift, or not be able to move straight, and this helps to straighten me out. EDITED: It seems to make the gait windows smaller (or larger) and I think I see the two jogging gaits almost disappearing at some angles, which can look bad as it vacillates between gaits. I've set up Caps Lock to disable it in debugging builds so I can spend some time comparing it with and without. My (DualShock3) controller seems weird... at maximum the angles at which it can move at a true 45 is about the size of the head of a pin. It reports 1 for like a full 30 or 45 degree arc across the top, so it's by no means a circle.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #24 on:** October 24, 2017, 11:32:26 AM »

EDITED: I redid that patch to add a few last second things.

1) I wanted to refine the lights code from the previous patch. Nothing new, just better code.

2) I found a bug that I think may be new that happens when holding down the pick-up and cancel buttons... this would make the two screens flash for one frame apiece indefinitely---proving they work; but not pretty. The problem was I'd foreseen context switches, but failed to consider what it meant if a button originated in one context, and then the context changes, but then the original context returns!

Come to think of it, I only fixed this for buttons... so it might still exist for other kinds of inputs. There is also a bug where holding down the Action button when the menu closes momentarily registers in the new context. I think this is actually something in the player that carries over from the menu.

3) I had a note to rechristen the "do_shuffle" or "do_bicycle" extensions that I never could settle on a name for to from henceforth be called do_stipple2. So simple, I don't know why I don't think of these things. I've updated the wiki information on it and added do_save to it. The old names are gone. Games shouldn't use these extensions... they are for end-users to use.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #25 on:** November 10, 2017, 09:15:16 PM »

BELATED FEATURE PATCH

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

This is a fix for a classic SOM_MAP bug that I wanted to get into this release. I'm patching it in since the bug can make map work tedious and I don't know when the next release will be...

Without further ado it fixes a problem with ctrl+click that arises when the click causes the palette view's scroll bar to move. When this happens if you don't know what's happening it's easy to end up with a bunch of 0 elevation tiles. It also loses rotation, which can be easy to miss with floor/ceiling squares.

And even if you know it will happen, it's an annoyance. Of course, now ctrl-click is the default click behavior (so it happens when not holding down Ctrl.)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #26 on:** November 11, 2017, 04:54:43 PM »

SOM_MAP KEYBOARD PATCH

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

I noticed SOM_MAP's Home key function wasn't working correctly... and while trying to figure out why I noticed that the fix to make the palette area flexible/fill out the last column didn't recognize the right arrow key.

(Which is nuts.)

The patch adds a horizontal wrap-around function to the palette. If you use Home and the keyboard to get around this can speed up your work.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #27 on:** December 02, 2017, 11:20:35 AM »

KF SAMPLE PATCH

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.1.8.zip

I noticed text translation bugs in the SAMPLE (http://svn.swordofmoonlight.net/SAMPLE/KING'S%20FIELD/) project that this patch addresses.

Needless to say I haven't looked at these files in a long time, so they've gotten out of whack with the overall project.

I've updated the PREVIEW.zip file so it is a more pleasant experience. The text bugs got worse after a change I made to make the 0 cost appraisal prices go away so they look better for appraiser shops/NPCs that don't charge. I ran into problems with that because of a gettext context bug.

This had never worked properly. But the fix made things worse for untranslated text. But even before the fix such text was appearing with a dot in front of it. I don't know why the dot never appeared for any text using the built-in English translation. It's built-in so it might just sidestep some steps.

There were further problems with item names that are clipped short. Owing to a buffer being reused and so overwritten.

This patch absorbed some recent work around menus. It has an auto-map with Alt+Alt+M and the menus remember their selections. The menus look a little nicer too. There's also a wrap-around feature for item lists, but it only works with the keyboard so it's just a quirk that it's in this patch, but it can be tried out.

(Some of the more extensive menu work I've written about eleswhere is disabled in release builds until it's completed.)

ONE MORE THING is I made the "do_dash" extension enable the dash function at the top of the game. The KING'S FIELD demo doesn't have dashing, but I wanted to enabled it, and also lately a "do_save" was added for enabling the save menu, and I felt that these should be analogous.

EDITED: Quick patch. Something I was working on at the end of yesterday. The appraisal shops put every item on the menu, where prior to this patch my theory was that the items must be in stock. It won't work if they disagree. (I'm going to be adding a filter to this kind of shop. One is needed to keep magics of the menu.)

EDITED: Quick patch. Forgot item must be on the PC

and to enable up/down wraparound in shop screens.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #28 on:** December 03, 2017, 02:56:23 PM »

PATCH-PATCH

Yesterday's patches fail to change equipment upon exiting the Equip screens!!!

(I was in the middle of working on something and had only halfway set up a system for converting item numbers to-and-from a new extension I'm working on that rearranges the order of items in the game. It's a major project... you never really know what will or won't be a major project.)

P.S. I did some work late yesterday that keeps items without descriptive text out of the appraisers shop/NPC menus so that you aren't forced to describe everything (some things are self-explanatory, others are maybe better left unsaid.)

In theory this system can be expanded to do something like KF3's Wisdom Fruit, since the stock of such shops isn't doing anything, and maybe not all NPCs should know about everything/every item.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #29 on:** December 06, 2017, 02:20:46 PM »

Minor Patch

This patch incorporates equipment into the SELL menu estimates (can't sell equipped items) and handles free (0G) items in the BUY menu, and sold-out items (they're taken off the menu.)

The only danger here is to under count the size of the menu. That will only come about because of free (0G) items. In that case the keyboard extension will wrap around too early. (I probably shouldn't have included the wraparound extension in these patches, but it takes work to exclude things.)

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Sword of Moonlight| Devs| EXIT: Escape from Sword of Moonlight

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Sword of Moonlight|

Devs|

EXIT: Escape from Sword of Moonlight