New year released soon

I guess it is unless world is going to end. It didn't end in 21. December which was a bit of disappointment even I'm not a believer of ends of world. It means I have to go on and try to finish Teemu's next version.

I've scanned through and improved level themes. There are two themes which need more work than others, but then the world structure is ready again. The big issue is how to create content in form of game objects. I have an attempt to create a data-driven system which allows new game objects without any special tweaking. Then I'm going to use up to all ascii letters for monsters and items.

However game object generation is the only part with that kind of system, because in other areas I'm just fixing problems fast when I find one. I'm not trying to create a neat engine based solution, because that kind of stuff is time consuming.

Hardware tweaking

My laptop suffered from multiple problems. Since bios didn't keep the time Windows was unable (who knows why) to update itself. After setting the time there were 104 updates, starting since 2010. At first Windows needed to update the update system itself and then it took a couple of attempts and errors to update everything. Some updates failed, but I think they were covered by newer ones. SP1 failed too, but manual update was a success.

The reason why Windows had not been updated was no internet connection. Fixed it by loading manufacturer's drivers (.exe with manual update overriding the idea of Windows already having up to date drivers). Then WPA2 and internet started to work again.

Still need to change the bios battery. You can't buy one I guess (for Amilo Pi3560 model), but it's some kind of small battery covered by plastic "sock" (I don't know how it's called in english).

Vacationing

More or less vacationing. I had big plans, but I guess I'm applying (r)est command for now. Took an interest to finish an ongoing home (music) studio project by ordering some equipment. I'm also building a 1x12 guitar amplifier cabinet from an old combo, removing the amp part from it. I guess Christmas time is making me kind of lazy. It's like waiting for it to pass and then life can continue. Why do we have Christmas at all? Everyone is spending money like crazy.

Forays Into Norrendrin is a cool new roguelike. It could have more catchy name. It's highly tactical and looks like it's got only practical stuff in it. Everything you do has some kind of meaning, every item and spell must be used wisely. There are some interesting design decisions like weapons and armour which are fixed, you carry a selection of them with you from the start and use one at a time.

Vacation days

Due to strange vacation day law my vacation days had been stacking and there were 9 on them which we noticed at the workplace yesterday. So from today to end of year I'm in vacation. For unknown reasons you have to keep vacation days so here I am. Of course this is great time to crunch some projects. I'm programming all three major projects, but I'd like to get Teemu's version 1.3 ready as soon as possible, because there is not that much missing from it.

I have good plan how to proceed in Teemu so it's quite nice project compared to Kaduria and Brick Atelier. However there is one thing I have refactor out from Teemu. It's the message event. I realized that when the regular message type went to kind-of event type (added in a list) it's confusing the event message system which I suppose is displaying messages in wrong order. Other than that there is just regular content stuff and trying to figure out more generic way to create monsters and items in levels.

It could be awesome to get 1.3 ready before Christmas, but I'm a little bit skeptical about it.

Roomies

The routine to search rooms was simple to implement, but problems started then. There is no mask map tech in Teemu so it's impossible to tell apart room floor (area) and regular floor. Doors could be created to another room, never connecting that room to the maze.

Luckily it was quite easy to add mask map, although it doesn't work perfectly. Also there is a bug in rooms next to right side of the level (also bottom side). There are no doors in them. I can't seem to figure out how the bug works, but it has to do something with checking out-of-bounds in level. If there is a bug in it it's quite hilarious since I've been using it always like that.

Digger part 2

Experimenting with steps and cloning values I soon noticed (which can be considered obvious) that fast cloning rate fills the entire level and leaves very small empty areas.

This version is made with 4 steps and 2-4 cloning rate. However turning fast makes the clones reach dead end quite soon.

This is more relaxed version with 4-11 steps and 3-6 cloning rate. More steps means longer corridors and makes possible for small empty areas to appear. This generator is actually quite good as labyrinth, since it's all connected, just pick locations from opposite sides for start and exit.

So how about roomies? Or rooms, as I tend to call them. One idea I had was actually create some rooms first, then labyrinth routine would go around them, but you could connect rooms later with a simple search routine to create a connecting piece of corridor.

Or it could be possible to extend some of the dead ends to rooms, or even search for those empty spaces and turn them into rooms.