Development

I’ve been working on the dungeon visuals in the ZXodus][Engine. Figuring out how to store the tiles in the least RAM, and the best way to display them. As a result I’ve reworked the 3D tile set somewhat. Hopefully no further changes will be necessary. The main change is that the banners now have head on and side on visuals at three magnifications.

The overhead map view display code and the 3× scaler (for displaying monsters in the dungeons) are done. This means when the dungeon layer code is done all the video code will be finished. And that’s what I’m moving onto now.

I’ve created a Facebook page for the engine that U3.5 will run on. If you want to see how progress is going on the engine you can like the page to get updates: https://www.facebook.com/zxodus

[Edit]: This is now the homepage for all my projects, hardware, software and publishing, but I’m not changing the link for now.

I forgot to mention, the Russian translation of the U3.5:PB manual is done. http://notabenoid.com/book/39728

I have decided to keep the party size down to avoid combat becoming overly tedious (and also because of the smaller view window) so it will be a maximum of six in a party, as per Ulitma 5. I’ve sorted out a beta version of the party file format which should be good enough for me to finish the character generator but leaves plenty of room for further expansion.

The scripting engine is working out nicely so the game logic can be written in something close to classic BASIC. The next step is to finish the updated character generator, which I hope to have done before the end of the year. Then it’s the long slog to finish coding the game engine.

The plot is written, the NPCs chosen, and the map data complete. I still need to port the audio files into the native format and write the dialog trees. Fortunately the coding breaks down nicely into modules so I’ll simply code one at a time and if I get stuck or bored I can switch to another module. I have less free time to work on the project now, but I’ll keep plugging away until it’s done.

= new version of U3.5PB music.

Nothing much to report except that I’ve chosen a scripting language for the ZXodus][Engine (the engine the game runs on). It’s pretty close to classic BASIC.

I’ve been working on the plot. Expect to encounter all the dilemas from the character generation in-game and more besides. I’m also looking at featuring some really long-term character development … friendships and relationships. Both will be based on mutual compatibility according to virtue scores. The simulation won’t be very deep so the experience will depend on your imagination.

I’ve chosen and arranged the music that will be used for the following:

• town
• talk
• shop
• ship
• british
• wanderer
• dungeon

Completed the final Roman character set. Asked the UDIC Facebook group what the general feeling was about the use of runic script in the game. I assumed dragons could all read them without a crib sheet by now, but would they want to see them used not at all, sparingly, copiously? I didn’t bother with a poll as I’d wanted to hear why they feel the way they did about the runes. The result is that I will be using them, but sparingly.