Write once, debug anywhere

Finally I've got the much-procrastinated task of setting up a Linux test environment. Ubuntu 11 on VirtualBox does the trick, with Puppy Linux on the wife's old HP G7000 Laptop as a backup.

Right off the bat, two showstopping bug were easy to fix. Graphics and audio related oddities in the Java API, this despite the entire app being in 100% pure java and using no third party libraries other than what comes with the JDK (I am in the process of integrating JOrbis for music, but that's another blog post).

Inset a moderate rant about leaky abstractions here.

Clearly nobody has been playing on Linux, because these were non-starters. My apologies if you tried. v0.906, due out at the end of the month, will include these fixes.

v0.905 released

Version 0.905 is up on SourceForge.

The UI refresh is not complete, but things already look a bit better.

--------------------------------------- v0.905 (28 February 2012) --------------------------------------- Features: - UI Refresh, part 1 Other 3482612: Sohei "Short Spear" kit bug 3482613: Idenfity spell not working 3483469: Crash while saving 3483079: NPX selling items to Ideaus 3484570: Hero class missing Melee Master modifier 3484571: Remove Curse spell always fizzles 3484572: Spell selection widget not updating casting cost 3484609: Many foes have insufficient magic points

UI Refresh Progess

I'm been tinkering away at making the game look prettier. All the renderers are done (the easy bit), various background screens are in the works (the hard bit). A new font is in place (Monaco).

I think I'm going to aim for a monthly release cycle, so wherever it gets to at the end of Feb I'll drop onto SourceForge.

Some screen shots of the work in progress:

The main menu

The player character widget

Item details dialog

Documentation Has Moved

The MediaWiki from SourceForge was pretty crap, so I've moved the documentation to Google Sites.
You can find it here:

• https://sites.google.com/site/escapeftmaze/

Alas, it is no less sparse than it was. But hopefully quicker to access and maintain.

A Busy January

Jan 2012 turned out to have the most downloads since the initial release. And not even any from Poland.
We're still not exactly breaking any speed limits here, but it's a start. Thanks to anyone who downloaded; your feedback is always welcome on this blog, the SourceForge forums or my email inbox.

Windows downloads

Comment located in the source code

InventoryDisplayWidget.java:

// this whole fucking thing is such a fucking hack.  fucking ui programming horseshit

No idea when I wrote that, it must have been at least four years ago. But it certainly is some ugly code!

v0.904 released

The official release date is 4 Feb, but I've kicked v0.904 out the door tonight. Get it over at the SourceForge project page. It's a rollup of stuff reported since v0.903.

Compatibility: Save games from older versions won't load correctly on v0.904 unless you manually fix them by editing data/default/save/<savename>/conditions.txt, deleteing all the contents and saving it as an empty file.

---------------------------------------
v0.904 (4 February 2012)
---------------------------------------

Features:
 - Additional hints for quest Red Ear's Taxes
 - Event display delay is configurable in maze.cfg

Other
3477194: Crash when saving and loading
3477638: Linux: Invalid display mode
3477642: Died while swimming in water and it crashed
3477652: Magic modifiers not being practised
3478229: Crash while fighting gnoll hunters
3479204: Shopping bug: scroll pane to small
3480742: Charm and Beguilement spells fizzle
3480942: Broken chest in Ichiba Domain North
3480946: Item enchantments not loaded from save games
3481288: Invalid item in Ichiba villa chest
3481715: Martial Arts not being practised
3481725: Item enchantments include old modifiers

It strikes my fancy to give the engine and default campaign a break and work on the skin for a while. The basic renderers weren't even anti-aliased, and all the dialog boxes are using obscene stretched versions of the same PNG. Hopefully I can get it looking a lot more polished.

New Look And Feel

For the blog, that is. Because I was bored of the old one, and this one looks pretty clean and simple.

A v0.904 release is in the works for next week some time; it'll be a round up of bug fixes reported since v0.903.

A new look and feel for the game is inevitable too, and I'm almost tempted to work on it as the next major feature. DIY-GUI supports pluggable rendering, and the current yellow-blobs-grey-text look was only ever intended to be the testing skin.

v0.903 released

This version ships to fix the windows launcher, and includes generally better and more repeatable packaging.

---------------------------------------

v0.903 (1 January 2012)

---------------------------------------

3467452: Broken maze.exe

Also, happy 2012!

I'm done and married now, still catching my breath after the event. Perhaps updates to this hobby project of mine will be a little more frequent. 2011 was a busy year for me and 2012 promises more of the same, but Maze is close to my heart and I'll try and carve space for it out of the chaos.

Nothing To Report

Wedding planning is gathering momentum - we're two months out now.
I'm busy playing Avadon, from Spiderweb Software. So should you.