Older blog entries for DrCode (starting at number 1)

Exult (Ultima7)

We're in the cleaning-up phase, which for me, means playing the game and looking for holes. My main enhancement over the weekend was getting teleports to work. In addition, I fixed a bug that allowed monsters to walk through walls, smoothed out the walking animation, and fixed a combat bug where your character wouldn't attack when you wanted.

As usual, testing the above revealed more unsupported game features: traps, sleep fields, poison fields. These appear to be instances of 'type 1' eggs, which I had thought were only used for creating monsters. So... more reverse-engineering is required here to figure out the data format.

Non-Programming

Took my daughter to see Pokemon2000. Actually, it wasn't bad at all, with an almost RPG'ish sort of plot. And some really nice animation.

Exult (an SDL-based engine for playing Ultima7)

Seeing great progress in all areas. Suddenly, the Midi's sound great, thanks to Dancer and Ryan. Tristan's got the intro. movie working beautifully, including the Guardian's speech. And I finally have the horses facing the right direction when you turn the carriage (yes, one of the major advances in comp. sci!)

So what's left before we can release an Alpha:

1. Implement the starting menus.
2. Finish the combat system.

Kind of scary to think that after more than two years, this project may actually be finished. And it's even scarier to think about all the bug-fixing, testing, and cleanup to be done before it's really finished.

Random

After nearly 20 years, I'm reading Lord of the Rings again. The first time I read it, as a teen, it was great. But when I read it the second time a few years later, it seemed contrived. Now that I'm somewhat (but not a whole lot) more mature, I'm enjoying it more than ever, and see why it's inspired so many writers and game designers.