Voxatron 0.1.8

zep • 2012-02-01*2012-02-01 17:44* •

BBS>

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[Note: this is a quick follow-up patch. Check out the changes for 0.1.7 here if you want to see what's new. Also check out the Development Status page for future plans]

How to Update

Use your Humble Store / Humble Voxatron Debut links. Search your email for "Your Humble Bundle order" or "Thanks for purchasing Voxatron". Alternatively you can request a new link here. Lexaloffle accounts still aren't integrated -- I'll post about that separately when it's ready.

Changelog for 0.1.8

Added: turn on splot mode per-room by including _splot in room name
Fixed: Loop of death when selecting joystick control without joystick plugged in
Fixed: BBS LEVELS search string input only active when the search menu item is selected
Fixed: Definable keys don't interfere with search string input

voxatron update

forces • 2012-02-01*2012-02-01 18:55*

The Linux build doesn't seem to be updated... But still, thanks for the update!

zep • 2012-02-01*2012-02-01 19:32*

It looks like the files are 0.1.8 but the download page still says 0.1.7. So just check the version number on the file you have downloaded to be sure.

chaosking2 • 2012-02-01*2012-02-01 20:19*

probably shoud have made the suggestion for making the triple shot and blaster items permant... room propertiey... thingy O_O
like _blast and _trip sooner.
(note to self: think of ways to say things better)

Tom.K • 2012-02-02*2012-02-02 03:39*

Good to hear about new bugfixes and minor features!

However... my preformance seems to be slower in 0.1.8 than 0.1.6...

@chaosking2: maybe instead of _something would be more useful to make room/start options part where you can check what can be set.

chaosking2 • 2012-02-02*2012-02-02 05:31*

my word... BRILLANT!

zep • 2012-02-02*2012-02-02 09:19*

The _something flags are a super-ugly hack -- I never meant to include them as documented features. I'm glad I did though -- _dojo has been put to good use. (:

Things that happen per-room would be best handled in scripting but unfortunately it will take a long time before that's ready (it needs to evolve with the monster editor and other things). Because of this, I'm considering a cut-down version of scripting for 0.2.0 because the goal of that release is to be able to make decent adventures. There are other things it could be used for, like detailed control of object triggering and popping up speech bubbles.

If minimal scripting doesn't turn out to be practical in the short term, I'll still find some other way to include the functionality of things like _blast and _trip though. The other way to do it might be to provide a separate set of weapon pickups that are permanent. e.g. "Sword of Eternity". I also want to get ammo pickups and weapon switching into 0.2.0 because the demo level we are making suits it. These things are built into the weapon itself, so if you pick up a ye olde triple shot in 0.2.0, it will still behave like the old arcade version.

Tom.K -- thanks for the heads up. I suspect parts of the renderer have grown too big to fit in the instruction cache on some machines. I can probably revert to something closer to the 0.1.6 method. While I was looking through the code, I also found a great potential optimisation. Woo!

EDIT: How bad is the performance drop? Just noticeable, or makes the game hard to play? By the way, you can check the frame rate if you look at video options from the main menu.

Tom.K • 2012-02-02*2012-02-02 14:32*

Noticable at some point. 32/44 FPS (Soft/Hard Shadows) on completely empty map from editor. I think that FPS on 0.1.6 was about 45/55 before. Forgot to say that splot mode makes FPS at 22, which is hardly non-playable at some point.