Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Eric McDonald]

Hello fellow Xconquerors,

   Elijah Meeks has released a new version of his 'Specula' game. The 
new version is called 'Opal', and is now available in CVS. It looks fun; 
I hope you have some time to check out his work.

Note to game designers:
   Elijah has also been industriously working on importing a grpahical 
image set for Angband into Xconq recently. I have checked in the first 
part of his endeavors. The available images are listed in 
'lib/angband.imf'; I have refrained from adding the images to the 
'lib/imf.dir', since the problems with Imfapp have not yet been sorted out.

   Enjoy,
     Eric

Re: Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Hans Ronne]

>Hello fellow Xconquerors,
>
>   Elijah Meeks has released a new version of his 'Specula' game. The
>new version is called 'Opal', and is now available in CVS. It looks fun;
>I hope you have some time to check out his work.

Nice work, Ekijah.

>Note to game designers:
>   Elijah has also been industriously working on importing a grpahical
>image set for Angband into Xconq recently. I have checked in the first
>part of his endeavors. The available images are listed in
>'lib/angband.imf'; I have refrained from adding the images to the
>'lib/imf.dir', since the problems with Imfapp have not yet been sorted out.

I will check an improved IMFApp soon, that works better on all platforms.
But I am not sure that we should continue to keep all images in one imf.dir
even if IMFApp can handle it. The only point of having it is that you don't
need to include the relevant *.imf files in the game file, but many game
files do that anyway.

Hans

Re: Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Hans Ronne]

>>Hello fellow Xconquerors,
>>
>>   Elijah Meeks has released a new version of his 'Specula' game. The
>>new version is called 'Opal', and is now available in CVS. It looks fun;
>>I hope you have some time to check out his work.
>

Nice work, Elijah.

is what I meant, of course.

Hans

Re: Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Eric McDonald]

Hans Ronne wrote:

>>Note to game designers:
>>  Elijah has also been industriously working on importing a grpahical
>>image set for Angband into Xconq recently. I have checked in the first
>>part of his endeavors. The available images are listed in
>>'lib/angband.imf'; I have refrained from adding the images to the
>>'lib/imf.dir', since the problems with Imfapp have not yet been sorted out. 
> 
> I will check an improved IMFApp soon, that works better on all platforms.

Good.

> But I am not sure that we should continue to keep all images in one imf.dir
> even if IMFApp can handle it. The only point of having it is that you don't
> need to include the relevant *.imf files in the game file,

Right. And that is quite convenient, wouldn't you agree? Why get rid of it?

> but many game
> files do that anyway.

This comes at the expense of having to rummage through each ".imf" file 
separately. Having a catalog of all images in one location (which can be 
browsed with Imfapp) is more useful, IMO.

Eric

Re: Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Eric McDonald]

Eric McDonald wrote:

>> But I am not sure that we should continue to keep all images in one 
>> imf.dir
>> even if IMFApp can handle it. The only point of having it is that you 
>> don't
>> need to include the relevant *.imf files in the game file,
> 
> 
> Right. And that is quite convenient, wouldn't you agree? Why get rid of it?

I suppose that you weren't implying that we get rid of the master 
catalog concept, but rather just split it up along the lines of genre or 
something. Or, at least, that would be my suggestion....

Eric

Opal

[Elijah Meeks]

Okay, so this game was a real mess back when it was
Specula, and most of what I was doing was trying to
make it work.  The default game is still too large for
anyone to have a quick-sit-down-and-have-fun time, but
I'll be putting together some random setups with
various map sizes in the next few days.  Still, it has
a number of features that I'm quite proud of, many of
them only made available by Hans' and Eric's
improvements to the engine.

Most noticable are the undead, who produce all manner
of different undead depending on what unit they
destroy and what unit does the destroying.  They're
pretty weak to begin with but they're like a plague--a
really nasty plague, and if you're not careful you
could find yourself beset by an army of liches,
zombies and death knights.  Also, the leader of the
undead can turn other leaders into liches.  The way
XConq handles capture of self-units is such that this
means the undead side captures the entire side, which
makes sense from a storyline perspective (Kind of like
Sauron corrupting the kings of Men with the nine
rings).

Also, there's an experience system, but a very
primative one.  Regular units, if they survive enough
battles, can turn into a 'Hero'.  They're powerful
melee units and are also self-units, which makes sides
not quite as fragile as they used to be.  The same can
occur with mages turning into 'Archmage' units, but
it's much more difficult to keep mages alive.  A Hero
unit can turn into a Legendary Hero unit, which is one
of the most powerful units in the game, if he can
survive combat with self-units and other heroes long
enough.

As an aside, this highlights an issue with the current
experience system.  It doesn't seem to give cxp for
every combat and it gives equal cxp whether you miss,
hit or destroy.  Not too big a deal, but Legendary
Hero units leave behind an Eldritch Artifact unit
(that represents their fancy sword or ring or armor or
whatever), which is supposed to give enough cxp to
change a Hero into a Legendary Hero, but it doesn't
always work.

Aside from that, the magic system works pretty well,
though the AI only likes summon spells.  Cast a Power
Word, Kill and annihilate an army; or use the various
nature spells to create a mountain range or inland
sea.  There's always a chance that some swordsmen or a
fort or a wyrm will appear.  There's also a
possibility of an independant hero or archmage
appearing, and using the independant-capture-chance,
if you can avoid being slaughtered by them, you can
convince them to join your side.

If anyone gets a chance to play it, I'd love to hear
feedback.

Elijah  


		
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Re: Major Game Upgrade + New Images: Specula is now Opal 2.0

[Hans Ronne]

>> But I am not sure that we should continue to keep all images in one imf.dir
>> even if IMFApp can handle it. The only point of having it is that you don't
>> need to include the relevant *.imf files in the game file,
>
>Right. And that is quite convenient, wouldn't you agree? Why get rid of it?

Well, here is one reason (from imf.c):

if (images == NULL) {
    images = (ImageFamily **) xmalloc(MAXIMAGEFAMILIES * sizeof(ImageFamily
*));
}

MAXIMAGEFAMILIES is currently set to 3000, to accomodate all image families
in imf.dir. This is not primarily because of IMFApp, but because Xconq
needs it, since all image families in imf.dir are allocated in every Xconq
game. This is true even if you run duel.g which has only one image family
(the tank). This is also why you don't need to include stuff from imf.dir
in your game files - it gets allocated anyway, for better or for worse.

So if we get rid of imf.dir (or more precisly its current use in Xconq) we
gain the memory footprint of 2999 image families in the Duel game. Somewhat
less in more complicated games. This would probably make it easier to run
Xconq on pre-NT Windows systems (98, ME) that have limited graphics memory.

Another solution is, as we already discussed, to rewrite the imaging code
so that only stuff that is needed in the game is allocated.

>I suppose that you weren't implying that we get rid of the master
>catalog concept, but rather just split it up along the lines of genre or
>something. Or, at least, that would be my suggestion....

Yes. In fact, many *.imf files, including those that I have added over the
years, are already pretty much along genre lines.

Hans