Today I relaunched retrolab.servebeer.com to clean up old hacks I had used to get my Ultima Online server emulator chugging along. I'll be leaving that and my Quake II server down for a few months to come. If anything, for the purpose of just having 2 less things online that I have to worry about that I've barely had any time for lately. I'm trying to focus on working on the DPRK themed game, as well getting back to actually playing a few games such as Resident Evil 7 and my arcade games. Some good progress has already been made on the last third of Days in DPRK, but I slowed down considerably with the second third. I don't want the player to feel like any of the 3 slices of the game feel "rushed".
The Guerilla War cabinet I previously talked about is now completely gone with exception to the marquee and bezel. The PCB and control panel were sold for enough money to break even for buying that cabinet and the Double Dragon cabinet. After cleaning up the Double Dragon cabinet with a lot of Lysol cleaner, magic erasers, and other means, it looks and smells a lot better than when I first picked it up. The monitor was removed from Guerilla War and installed it into the Double Dragon cabinet after swapping the wood panel connected to the frame and replacing the molex connector to the wires that were originally just grounded to the monitor frame to the isolated transformer inside the cabinet. The monitor that was originally in Double Dragon had severe burn of the game logo burned into it and had to go. I hope to do a tube-swap on it in the future. This setup is working well for playing Robotron 2084 and other games on a 19-in1 multi PCB. The Double Dragon PCB is still on the shelf for audio repairs.
Showing posts with label Hugo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hugo. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Friday, February 12, 2016
2016
Two years have gone by since my last interactive fiction full game release, Blackness. Blackness was written in 3 hours for Ectocomp, so it's rather short and there isn't a lot of attention paid to detail. There may be a chance of entering that competition or another short competition this year with another small game written in Inform7. While the Hugo IF authoring language has now became my favorite platform for authoring IF, I do miss some of the conveniences and quirks of I7 and never have gotten around to using the OSX version of it much.
However, I did manage to get a demo of DPRK released. It didn't get a lot of play-tests, but the few random ones I did hear reports back from on sounded very positive aside from a movement bug. Around Christmas of last year, I returned to the project to begin working on the final version of the game. With a lot of help from Roody (author of RoodyLib) I've started a "simulation lab" of sorts to start developing and testing encounter and combat systems. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think the project is still promising and have a positive outlook to get the rest of the content and system coding done by the end of the year.
In other Hugo related-project news, Cyberganked is also coming up! Robb Sherwin has created a character using a picture of myself and I will be writing up some dialogue drafts soon for him to digest into the game, as well as doing some testing as needed. I'm really looking forward to the release of this game and to playing it. Anyone who enjoyed Wizardry and text games I think will as well. Roody has also been hard at work on RoodyLib for this past year.. which Cyberganked and DPRK both utilize. He's also been working on things such as handicap-friendly interfacing and other Hugo magic lately.
In 2015, I did manage to keep a group of 6 going for a table-top RPG going since December of 2014. As a listener of Burzum, I heard of a game that Varg Vikernes created called MYFAROG. I missed out out the first printing in Halloween of 2014, but managed to score a 2nd printing copy of the 1st addition shortly after that. We began as me playing the role of "MythMaster" (Dungeon Master) which was a fun practice returning to creating stories, characters, local areas, etc on the fly while keeping campaign solidarity. Most of the players eventually bought books, and one player took over the role of MythMaster long enough for another player to spend a few months in another country and for me to actually play as a PC.. an experience I haven't had in a very, very long time. I blogged about our game here if you are interested in how it began.
I also hope to get a refurbished monitor from Arcade Buffett soon in the mail to finally get my Neo-Geo MVS-2 arcade machine running again. I bought this cabinet (my first!) in January of 2015 at an auction for 425$ before fees and it worked fine aside from monitor issues. The main culprit of the issues was a crappy Kortek chassis. After a lot of de-soldering and soldering to replace all of the capacitors and the flyback transformer, I learned the hard way replacement flybacks are just not available for the crappy Kortek. So, I ordered a complete monitor as I plan on keeping this machine for years anyway and want something solid (and non-Kortek). I may buy a seperate chassis and yoke to rebuild another monitor with the leftover Zenith 25 inch tube.
The only major non-work or non-DPRK distraction I can see coming up? The new Doom game in May. If it's all it promises to be, expect to see more in the Id Software section of my website! I've still got a "Photon Doom" project I have on a backburner that may end up ported from Doom3 to that. I won't know until I play it. If it's not fitting to Photon, Doom3 BFG will be the target for a new Photon Doom mod. If anyone reading this is already planing a Photon mod for any game engine, please contact me. I'd be interested in sharing ideas and assets.
However, I did manage to get a demo of DPRK released. It didn't get a lot of play-tests, but the few random ones I did hear reports back from on sounded very positive aside from a movement bug. Around Christmas of last year, I returned to the project to begin working on the final version of the game. With a lot of help from Roody (author of RoodyLib) I've started a "simulation lab" of sorts to start developing and testing encounter and combat systems. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think the project is still promising and have a positive outlook to get the rest of the content and system coding done by the end of the year.
In other Hugo related-project news, Cyberganked is also coming up! Robb Sherwin has created a character using a picture of myself and I will be writing up some dialogue drafts soon for him to digest into the game, as well as doing some testing as needed. I'm really looking forward to the release of this game and to playing it. Anyone who enjoyed Wizardry and text games I think will as well. Roody has also been hard at work on RoodyLib for this past year.. which Cyberganked and DPRK both utilize. He's also been working on things such as handicap-friendly interfacing and other Hugo magic lately.
In 2015, I did manage to keep a group of 6 going for a table-top RPG going since December of 2014. As a listener of Burzum, I heard of a game that Varg Vikernes created called MYFAROG. I missed out out the first printing in Halloween of 2014, but managed to score a 2nd printing copy of the 1st addition shortly after that. We began as me playing the role of "MythMaster" (Dungeon Master) which was a fun practice returning to creating stories, characters, local areas, etc on the fly while keeping campaign solidarity. Most of the players eventually bought books, and one player took over the role of MythMaster long enough for another player to spend a few months in another country and for me to actually play as a PC.. an experience I haven't had in a very, very long time. I blogged about our game here if you are interested in how it began.
I also hope to get a refurbished monitor from Arcade Buffett soon in the mail to finally get my Neo-Geo MVS-2 arcade machine running again. I bought this cabinet (my first!) in January of 2015 at an auction for 425$ before fees and it worked fine aside from monitor issues. The main culprit of the issues was a crappy Kortek chassis. After a lot of de-soldering and soldering to replace all of the capacitors and the flyback transformer, I learned the hard way replacement flybacks are just not available for the crappy Kortek. So, I ordered a complete monitor as I plan on keeping this machine for years anyway and want something solid (and non-Kortek). I may buy a seperate chassis and yoke to rebuild another monitor with the leftover Zenith 25 inch tube.
The only major non-work or non-DPRK distraction I can see coming up? The new Doom game in May. If it's all it promises to be, expect to see more in the Id Software section of my website! I've still got a "Photon Doom" project I have on a backburner that may end up ported from Doom3 to that. I won't know until I play it. If it's not fitting to Photon, Doom3 BFG will be the target for a new Photon Doom mod. If anyone reading this is already planing a Photon mod for any game engine, please contact me. I'd be interested in sharing ideas and assets.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
A Day In DPRK demo released
After stabbing at this project off and on for three years, I'm finally releasing a demo to the public now that the foundation is in place. While this demo is not the final version, it demonstrates the system and sets the story into motion. I welcome people to try it out and if you have time send some feedback on the game either by email or commenting here. I'll try to update this demo if bad bugs are found and will note the version in the file name.
Again, please note that this is only about a third of the final game. I'm just eager to release a chunk of it to go ahead and start getting some feedback.
Here is what I would like to know from the test:
Again, please note that this is only about a third of the final game. I'm just eager to release a chunk of it to go ahead and start getting some feedback.
Here is what I would like to know from the test:
- What about the system of the game (parser, graphics, sound, etc) did you like or dislike?
- What could you not do and wanted to be able to do? (What was missing?)
- Did you find any bugs or anything otherwise broken?
- And most importantly, are you interested in a final version of this?
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Three Days in DPRK & Red Star Linux 3.0
Since May of last year, I've said that a demo of my newest interactive fiction for the Hugo engine would be released soon to a few play-testers. That finally started to come to be a reality around Christmas instead. At this point, I just need to wrap up things involving the first player character meeting the second player character, and working out any consequences of that meeting before displaying another room or two and ending the demo. This should be done in within the next 2 weeks, and if not Valentine's Day should be the absolute deadline.
Why is it taking so long? I've been quite busy with work, I finally played and beat LA Noire, Wasteland 2 came out, I got MYFAROG around Christmas, and I kept getting distracted with things like this:
Why is it taking so long? I've been quite busy with work, I finally played and beat LA Noire, Wasteland 2 came out, I got MYFAROG around Christmas, and I kept getting distracted with things like this:
 |
| DPRK running in HUGOR on Red Star Linux 3.0 |
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
IF Updates
Today I moved everything from my "if" folder on my personal webserver running in my living room over to my Amazon Web Services instance. My main homepage @ http://home.roadrunner.com/~fragmeister/ has not changed, and all IF-related links there are now routed to the new host. Any old links to any of my old interactive fiction titles with retroshard.no-ip.org in the URL are now broken.
During this process, I added some new material as well. You can now view the source code to Lunar Base 1 on the website. Blackness has also been added along with its source code and a "making of" section that shows my notebook scribblings as I planned out what I would code within the 3-hour time limit of EctoComp 2013.
No Spring Thing entry for me this year. Currently focusing on getting a beta test / teaser of sorts for the North Korean game originally announced here over a year ago. It is being written in Hugo and is using the current version of Roodylib.
During this process, I added some new material as well. You can now view the source code to Lunar Base 1 on the website. Blackness has also been added along with its source code and a "making of" section that shows my notebook scribblings as I planned out what I would code within the 3-hour time limit of EctoComp 2013.
No Spring Thing entry for me this year. Currently focusing on getting a beta test / teaser of sorts for the North Korean game originally announced here over a year ago. It is being written in Hugo and is using the current version of Roodylib.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
End of Summer Update
The dust has been collecting here since Janurary. Time for an update!
Free time has been very short since the last update. Things with my current job never did slow down. If anything, they became more intense and time-demanding. The work is both exciting and interesting for me, so I can't complain. Some of the things I've either learned from scratch or improved along the way prompted me to start my own web browser game engine, which is a Wizardry-like CRPG type thing. I'm not sure how much will actually get done with this, but it's a fun side project to tinker with. But of course, nothing half as Robb Sherwin's upcoming game, Cyberganked.
Within the bits of free time I've had, I found myself reverting back to simpler things. Actually playing some games rather than writing them, and most of these being older games. I acquired a Commodore 64 setup over the past few months, including a Zoom Floppy. More than a few hours have gone into playing games like Wasteland and other RPGs on this setup. This has been a bit of inspiration for creating my own "retro" graphics for use in my games.
One such game is one I worked on some more this morning called "Surf's Down". It's original intention was for it to be a non-traditional IF written in Hugo for an upcoming Hugo Comp. That competition has yet to come, but I continue working on it here and there because it's been a good learning exercise for me as I write the more complex DPRK game. Hopefully the short source code of Surf's Down will also serve as good example code for others learning Hugo as well.
Surf's Down is basically a Hugo conversion of an old Atari 2600 game prototype which was never released, called Surf's Up. I fired up the game on an emulator and was actually a bit impressed with some of the design aspects of the game, especially the beginning phase of paddling out into the ocean. I've been a surfer for quite a while myself, and despite the very out-dated graphics, I felt the game managed to somehow capture the feeling of going out into the waves. Unfortunately, the actual gameplay phase of the Surf's Up left much to be desired. The gameplay in my game is decision-based, yet all decisions are made using cardinal compass points.
Progress on Three Days in DPRK has been much slower than I had hoped for. At one point, I was considering trying to enter it into IFcomp 2013. In retrospect, I'm glad I did not. While the game is roughly three-fourths complete, it would have been way too much of a rush to try to finish something I'd be confident in entering. Instead, I look forward to playing the games of others. Perhaps I'll have something ready for Spring Thing 2014. Though, I think Interactive Dreaming would be a bit more well suited for that one.
The actual code of Interactive Dreaming hasn't been touched since my last update here, but the story and materials for the game continue to slowly build. The conversation system also needs to be redone now that I've removed a prototype system I used in Lunar Base 1. Trying some recent ones others are using has some ideas about what I'd like to use or create myself, but I'm still researching this. A new release of Inform may affect this as well. While I'm eager to try the new version once released, I'm not sure how smooth it will be to compile Interactive Dreaming along with all of its required libraries.
Free time has been very short since the last update. Things with my current job never did slow down. If anything, they became more intense and time-demanding. The work is both exciting and interesting for me, so I can't complain. Some of the things I've either learned from scratch or improved along the way prompted me to start my own web browser game engine, which is a Wizardry-like CRPG type thing. I'm not sure how much will actually get done with this, but it's a fun side project to tinker with. But of course, nothing half as Robb Sherwin's upcoming game, Cyberganked.
Within the bits of free time I've had, I found myself reverting back to simpler things. Actually playing some games rather than writing them, and most of these being older games. I acquired a Commodore 64 setup over the past few months, including a Zoom Floppy. More than a few hours have gone into playing games like Wasteland and other RPGs on this setup. This has been a bit of inspiration for creating my own "retro" graphics for use in my games.
One such game is one I worked on some more this morning called "Surf's Down". It's original intention was for it to be a non-traditional IF written in Hugo for an upcoming Hugo Comp. That competition has yet to come, but I continue working on it here and there because it's been a good learning exercise for me as I write the more complex DPRK game. Hopefully the short source code of Surf's Down will also serve as good example code for others learning Hugo as well.
Surf's Down is basically a Hugo conversion of an old Atari 2600 game prototype which was never released, called Surf's Up. I fired up the game on an emulator and was actually a bit impressed with some of the design aspects of the game, especially the beginning phase of paddling out into the ocean. I've been a surfer for quite a while myself, and despite the very out-dated graphics, I felt the game managed to somehow capture the feeling of going out into the waves. Unfortunately, the actual gameplay phase of the Surf's Up left much to be desired. The gameplay in my game is decision-based, yet all decisions are made using cardinal compass points.
Progress on Three Days in DPRK has been much slower than I had hoped for. At one point, I was considering trying to enter it into IFcomp 2013. In retrospect, I'm glad I did not. While the game is roughly three-fourths complete, it would have been way too much of a rush to try to finish something I'd be confident in entering. Instead, I look forward to playing the games of others. Perhaps I'll have something ready for Spring Thing 2014. Though, I think Interactive Dreaming would be a bit more well suited for that one.
The actual code of Interactive Dreaming hasn't been touched since my last update here, but the story and materials for the game continue to slowly build. The conversation system also needs to be redone now that I've removed a prototype system I used in Lunar Base 1. Trying some recent ones others are using has some ideas about what I'd like to use or create myself, but I'm still researching this. A new release of Inform may affect this as well. While I'm eager to try the new version once released, I'm not sure how smooth it will be to compile Interactive Dreaming along with all of its required libraries.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
2013 IF Plans
This year I will be working more on Interactive Dreaming along side another project I've recently started, called Days in DPRK.
The general prototype framework of Interactive Dreaming feels okay, but one of the first things I will be doing is completely changing the conversation system. I originally used one that ended up in Lunar Base 1, but that doesn't feel flexible enough to be quite what is needed for dream conversation. I think I will just test out a few systems or try creating a hybrid of one specific for the anxiety/lucidity statistics. For now, the best thing to focus on is fleshing out most of the rooms and developing a few puzzles that will also utilize those stats.
Days in DPRK will be my first game written in the Hugo language. Because there's sure to be a bit of a learning curve, I don't want to get too over-ambitious with my plans for it, but I do think it will be an amusing adventure (though it may be a bit short). The concept is that you are spending 1 day in the life of a tourist in North Korea, the 2nd day you are a resident of Pyongyang, and the last day you are in another different situation. I don't really want to elaborate on the plot much further than that for now.
Other than that, I don't know that I'll be doing much else. Paid work lately has been rather hectic, but I am learning stronger programming skills as a result of that which will help in all future game programming projects.
The general prototype framework of Interactive Dreaming feels okay, but one of the first things I will be doing is completely changing the conversation system. I originally used one that ended up in Lunar Base 1, but that doesn't feel flexible enough to be quite what is needed for dream conversation. I think I will just test out a few systems or try creating a hybrid of one specific for the anxiety/lucidity statistics. For now, the best thing to focus on is fleshing out most of the rooms and developing a few puzzles that will also utilize those stats.
(Interactive Dreaming)
Days in DPRK will be my first game written in the Hugo language. Because there's sure to be a bit of a learning curve, I don't want to get too over-ambitious with my plans for it, but I do think it will be an amusing adventure (though it may be a bit short). The concept is that you are spending 1 day in the life of a tourist in North Korea, the 2nd day you are a resident of Pyongyang, and the last day you are in another different situation. I don't really want to elaborate on the plot much further than that for now.
(Days in DPRK)
Other than that, I don't know that I'll be doing much else. Paid work lately has been rather hectic, but I am learning stronger programming skills as a result of that which will help in all future game programming projects.
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