Hey all! I have an update ready for anyone who wants it!
[EDIT] just fixed a minor bug and attached the update here. Also moved the game to Yousendit.
LBT RPG v0.131New stuff in this version:-
Fixed some more bugs relating to the water. If you can
still swim in the air or walk normally underwater, please let me know because I think I fixed that.
[edit] added one line of code that should make this pretty bullet-proof. If you can find a way to break the water now...well I'll be sad.
-
Added a screen before the main menu loads. This screen will let the player choose the resolution and colour depth to run the game at. I did this because it is a limitation of DirectX that one cannot change the resolution without reloading ALL of the 3d objects and textures again. I was running into serious complications and crashes relating to changing the resolution so I just said, "okay, if you can choose it before I load all that media and then I won't have to worry about that!"
-
Increased the resolution of the in-game map from 128x128 to 256x256.The result of this is that the maps can have a more 'flowing' shape: smoother hills, more little details, less-jagged terrain, etc.
This resolution change seems to have generated a bug with 'invisible' walls around the map. I have been able to control them much better since I first noticed the problem. I hope they won't be a big deal but I'll play around some more and hopefully find a workaround. They seem pretty minor but I can tell something isn't *quite* right in the odd place...
-
Started on the development of character stats.
Each character choice does save different values to the game, which will soon be used to allow the player to have a different game experience based on the character they chose.
The characters do have "current" and "maximum" life/stamina values, as well as other basic stats described in the "character stats" topic.
-
Started on the development of Life/Stamina meters on the interface. The meters at the top-left of the screen do respond to your character's life/stamina. The game has no code yet to cause you to lose life/stamina so you won't see it. I have, however, manually tested changing the player's current life in the code and the sizes of the bars change appropriately.
-
Changed the maximum view distance that the player can see down to 8000 units. This will help keep performance up on lower-end video cards and low-RAM machines for now. Soon, I'll let the user set the view distance from the Options menu.
Coming soon!-Option to change view distance
-Ability to see your stats in-game
-The ability to save options (resolution, colour depth and view distance, for now. More later) to a file on your computer and skip the "choose resolution" screen once you have one you like if you want.
A little later:-an attempt to give the player an NPC to talk to
Known problems:- If you jump out of the water while swimming, your speed in the air is faster than while in water so it's like a speed boost.
-Sliding down a hill into the water is kind of a pain to recover from once you're in the water. Try jumping and moving away from the hill.
-If you hold down both mouse buttons, the camera will stay where it is, no matter where you move.
Just a little tip:You will need the mouse to control in water. Without it, it will be a lot harder to get precise control since the control system is based around using the mouse.
Technical stuff:The game does eat up 150MB of memory at its peak now, so low-memory video cards may have a hard time with it. The bad news is, this is only going to get worse. This game will demand quite a bit of memory but I will try to keep the minimum requirements as low as possible.
And if anyone cares, the code is 4169 lines long now.
