Since developing Millenipede years and years ago I find that my method of coding hasn’t really changed all that much. I’m sort of surprised, but then I guess it’s like handwriting – although it may vary slightly over time, the basic style will stay the same. Because of this, I’m still programming myself into the same old corners by rushing to get something working instead of planning it out. Though I am acutely aware of its necessity, planning scares me because it’s dull, and dull things have made me abandon projects in the past.

Anyhow, the Unnamed Dejenol Demake Project has reached its second milestone and was considerably more work than I expected – I hope this doesn’t set a trend! As the project is still moving forward steadily enough I want to spend a little more time blogging about my progress than I’ve done with my other projects in the past. Yet this is also a slightly scary event, considering I can’t guarantee the project will ever see the light of day, and I’m wary of getting people’s hopes up (even the whole 2 of you who may be at all interested in this ). Maybe the aura of disappointment I spun at the cancellation of Return to Dejenol – nngh, there, I said it – has made me too cautious…

Ultimately, though, what’s the point of hobby-coding if you can’t gush enthusiastically to the world about what puny triumphs you’ve made? It’s about time I started dishing the dirt on what this project might become, and based on past experience and my current level of experience, what features it will and will not have.

Click through the break and let us begin a journey through a +1 wall of text!

Read more…

Okay, so here’s how things are standing with the project-with-no-name – after using some industrial trussing-up code, I’ve finally gotten an ancient and embarrassingly simple bug in the dungeon editor to stop making everything else fall down repeatedly! Friendly advice from one coder to another: Don’t save values as signed Integers and then load them into an unsigned Byte variable. Just don’t. The number formerly saved as -1 is not amused at such shenanigans.

I’m nearly done with Milestone 2, and possibly might have had it nailed today were it not for the aforementioned editor malfunction. Tomorrow I intend to finish defining debug monsters for each of the 18 spawn types – as close as I am to nearly being able to list all of the categories off the top of my head, I’ll spare you the detail – and then, I can crosswire the now-properly-loading dungeon spawn area IDs into the part which keeps track of all the monster spawning, and finally the dungeon will be rid of the Random Monster army!

And after that? A change of pace. Items! And a way to look at how awesome they are! And perhaps if I use enough exclamation marks in this sentence, I can persuade myself that interface design is fun after all! Yeeaah… no. Not happening.

Indeed, I think the new trend in games should be not naming your monsters at all, and instead giving them descriptive labels like what are in this ‘ere clump of pixels.

What? You don’t think it’ll catch on? BAH. I’d argue the point but a whole flock of Strange Creature 73 has just flown up my trouser leg, so do excuse me a moment…

To elaborate on what’s done today: A decent amount, yet not as much as I hoped. I spent far too long iterating the layout of what I am calling the “encounter panel”, but I think this present design uses space nicely enough for the time being. As you can see, I’m using the Oryx tileset (otherwise known as the retro coder’s best friend) since it’s just so easy to work with and is pretty much the best free set of graphics out there right now. I don’t mind that they’ve been used in so many other things – they can be replaced later if needed and it’s way better than looking at dull placeholder squares. Oh, and I know it doesn’t have chests yet; they’re in a later Milestone.

All that remains before Milestone 2 is complete is to finish getting the spawn areas to randomly populate – by which I mean they won’t take account of what monster spawn types (humanoid, insect, devil, etc.) the dungeon file says should actually appear in any given location. Then it’s just a case of actually feeding that “real” data to the encounter panel. Easy! Except it probably won’t be.

To temper my own excitement as well as any you, dear reader, might be feeling, I should say that I’ll update as often as I feel there’s something interesting to mention. With Christmas around the corner, updates may be less regular, but we’ll see how it pans out.

I have made the occasional tweet in the past about being involved in some flash-in-the pan project for this and that (Ho-Hum Piano Dungeon, anyone? Lordy, what the deuce was I thinking…), and they’ve always somehow petered out before they became interesting. Or they just failed to be interesting in the first place. Just to give you fair warning: This could well be just another project. But this is one is far closer to my heart than pretty much anything I’ve coded in the last few years – it is, in fact, a return (*coff*) to a project I abandoned in the days of Firestorm Productions, never to be mentioned again…

This video should instantly tell you what game I mean!

Yes, it is of course an attempt at an 8-bit “demake” of the often-overlooked Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, released in 1995 by David Allen and now owned and marketed by Decklin over in Decklin’s Demise. What the video shows is the program’s completed first milestone: It can load a dungeon using the file format of the old game, and have a “party” of one character move around and explore, respecting walls correctly. For the next milestone I will add an interface to displays monsters and get the spawn areas (i.e. rooms) to individually populate.

Ten milestones are planned to take this idea far enough for it to be a playable game engine, some bigger and more involved than others, with one further milestone required to add the final content and make it playable. Any and all feedback is much appreciated to keep the motivation at its current high level!

On a related note, if you’ve played Demise, the strangely-titled rough diamond that was the sequel to the first game, you might be interested to know that Demise: Ascension – an update that includes even more content and the ability to run natively on Windows Vista and 7 – has recently gone into a public testing phase. You need only put your money down to order it from the Decklin’s Demise page above and you’ll receive access to all current and future versions. If you’re into retro RPGs with many, many hours of playability, you really should check it out!

That’s exactly right folks! I have a beta key for Path of Exile that is burning a hole in my virtual pocket and I’m going to be giving it away very soon! Not heard of the game? Are you a fan of gritty, Diablo-esque click-kill-loot gameplay? Want to give it a try before the open beta early next year? Well, this may be right up your street.

Wander over to the game’s homepage to learn more about it. If your interest has been piqued enough to give this a try, it’s dead simple for you to stand a chance of getting your hands on the key and start forging your path in the land of Wraeclast!

• Step 1: If you haven’t already, you should save some time and create a Path of Exile account
• Step 2: Follow my Twitter account, @Zolyx
• Step 3: Watch it closely – I’ll tweet the key around 20:00 GMT tomorrow (Friday 2nd December)
• Step 4: If you’re lucky then you’ll be in the beta! Let the devs know what you think!

If the start of your week isn’t going as smoothly as you’d like then perhaps this can help. Tune out for a few minutes and wrap your ears around a piece of gaming music remixed with a little modern flair. I know it’s not exactly a new concept and credit must go to those who run similar features (both past and present) – but I thought I’d dip my finger into the pie and see how long I can keep it running.

To get us kicked off I’m going to start with something that isn’t too obscure. If I say the name “Chris Hülsbeck”, you might think of The Great Giana Sisters, Apidya, or possibly R-Type – but for me personally, it’s his soundtracks for the classic run ‘n’ gun Turrican series that I think are the most awesome. Here, then, is Chris’s own Renewal mix of the main theme for Turrican II. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Zolyx’s Game Music Monday #1: Chris Huelsbeck – Turrican II Title (Renewal)

Credit also to ~MrDream from deviantART who created the fantastic artwork. Check out the full version and some of his other work here.

Although I have plenty of tracks to run this with over the coming months, you’re welcome to make suggestions of your own favourite remixes of gaming music – any platform will do as long as it’s reasonably “oldschool”…

Honestly, I feel really bad about this horrendous lack of posts. After blatantly ignoring my own warning about the danger of gaps, it’s only fair that I offer a completely truthful explanation. You deserve nothing less for sticking around. It’s a long story, but what actually happened was this…

I was munching on a very tasty slice of cake whilst playing one of the last Assemblee games in order to piece together TAR part 16 when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flicker of movement. Glancing in that direction I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Assuming it was just the shadow of a flying pig, I resumed my keyboard wrestling match, but before I’d even had chance to type another word, POW! Something rugby-tackled me off my chair and barged me face-first into a pile of extremely uncomfortable cushions.

Choking and spluttering crumbs of cake everywhere, I was otherwise uninjured, and despite being momentarily stunned, it took mere nanoseconds for my secret ninja agent training to recover my senses. Rolling out of the accursed cushion pile and plucking a feather off my monocle to avoid scratches, I locked gazes with my assailant – a Greater-Speckled Commodore Marmot!

Read more…

Things are still broken, but the blog is back at least…

I would’ve given more notice, but because of the silly terms of service of my ex-host, I wanted to move away as quickly as possible to avoid them removing the site rather than me doing it in my own time. Apparently, hosting any file bigger than 1MB was against their terms… *gasp!* So although the likelihood of them cancelling my account was small (since I’d been running with them smoothly enough for a couple of months), they were still within their rights to do so. I really didn’t want to take any chances.

Obviously I can’t predict the future and it’s still early days with this new host but, well, let’s keep our fingers crossed, eh?

UPDATE: Turns out the Millenipede Leaderboard had been broken since the first host move. Wow. I suck! Seems like it has some scores on it nowadays that are slightly unrealistic! I must get around to revamping it some day…