Brick Atelier 0.89

New version of Brick Atelier is out today. You can find it from the homepage link at the bottom right which I finally fixed (it was the old broken mbnet link for too long). In this version the goal was to fix undo/history operations and that I did. To make things easier to myself I did remove some difficult operations from history like adding and deleting tiles to the tileset. Operations that don't have undo are features, not bugs.

I would like to think that the next version is released even faster than this one. I would like to keep a release schedule at least with this project if I'm unable to finish my roguelike projects in any sane time.

The raccoon island

I could fix all other undo/redo operations with the new simpler system, but as a side effect now it seems to be quite difficult to figure out how to handle tileset operations like delete and insert tile. I know it can't be impossible, but it sure feels like it.

Meanwhile I've returned to the raccoon island aka Teemu. The last time I was trying to balance the RPG system and it's still one of the unfinished features. But in a way you could almost play the game already, "everything" is in place, maybe some random stuff still missing. During these years Teemu has became a large-ish project with 343 source files and 44K lines of code, but luckily it's quite easy to handle, at least much easier than Kaduria which did became a mess in some parts.

I think Teemu will be quite a nice game if I can just fix balance issues. There are many ways to do that, not just increasing the damage player can do to make fighting less tedious. One of the ideas I have is that monsters would not usually even attack, their range of detecting player should be smaller etc. They could also attack each other, or flee when hit couple of times, depenging on how hard the player hits.

Brick wall

Undo and redo for paste and work selection tool is almost ready after hours of confusion-filled coding. I made undo node simpler to make it easier and I think it's the only way anyway, you have to save every "state" of the tile. There is still a problem with paste modes and selecting paste tool in undo/redo. The idea I have is to undo/redo the tool that was used at that moment which would remove confused moment when the standard mode of paste is selected which makes paste disappear if you use another tool.

Programming undo and redo has been one of the most difficut parts of Brick Atelier which may sound strange, because in theory it's simple. But it reminds me of save and load game in games which is also quite difficult to implement sometimes despite the simplicity of the concept. In Brick's undo and redo things got complex fast and there were special cases (still is), but the new undo node is simple enough so it can handle undo operations which don't have a reverse command. There are 53 undoable operations that I need to test before new release, so it's not over yet with undo.

With undo/redo fixed I can focus on some new and unfinished features. One of them will be animation tool, it should be easy to do as well...