Let's Play Ultima 1! Part 1: Getting Started

Never finished it though I've played it many times.

Hello and welcome. I've finally decided to play through Ultima 1 from beginning to end. I've decided that I will not use a walk through or any other hints or cheats found on the web. I will try to use my wits and the provided manual to figure this stuff out. I'm playing the DOS version which I bought over on Good Old Games.

A little history. The first time I played Ultima 1 was back in the mid 80s. I had several friends who played it and a technique was to grill each other at school the day after an intense night of gaming. We'd let each other know any secrets we found or how to solve a quest if it proved to hard to figure out by our selves. Those were fun days of gaming.

One may wonder why I'm starting on Ultima 1 instead of Akalabeth  (or Ultima 0). A number of years ago I played Akalabeth on an Apple II emulator and recorded the process to be uploaded to YouTube.

After going through that I found it hard to actually want to play the game again. I might give it a go if/after I finish Ultima 1. There is now a C64 version of it out now and I'm thinking about giving that a go. We'll have to see.

Fighting The Good Fight!

Looked up "silly" on the Internet. Was not disappointed.

The struggle is real my friend! Okay, just kidding.

That aside I got a bit of work done on the game today. Unfortunately it's a bit of underlying stuff so their is really nothing to show. It looks exactly like the image I uploaded yesterday when run so have a look at that if you want to see what it looks like today. Instead I'll find something silly to upload.

Today's work was making a texture class to wrap images I load up into it. The class handles rendering and will return the width and the height of a loaded image.

Step By Step

Updated "retro style" graphics but not final at all.

Today it didn't seem like I got much done today but I actually got more than I thought I would.

Aside from the new graphic I made for the temporary title screen, I created a timer class so I could control the frame rate of the game. The game now runs as fast as it can but updates the screen ~60 times a second. I'm not sure if I will keep this as some people have displays that refresh at higher frequencies than 60 hertz. Some people are up in the 120 range and beyond.

It's Late. So Late

Not quite state of the art graphics...yet.

So, once again I didn't get as far as I wanted to. The plan was to pull the Windows source code from BitBucket and get that working on Linux.

Well, pulling the code was the easier part. Getting it working under Linux was a lot harder. I spent more time than I should have mucking about with that. Eventually you have to decide if it's better to spend the time trying to get what you've working under the new OS or starting over from scratch.

Success! Kind Of...

Ugh, my day job makes me want to finish this game as soon as possible so I can, maybe, make a living off of game development. I think to myself that maybe I won't enjoy it (you know, seeing how the sausage is made) but I know working for myself is a hell of a lot better than putting up with a gig I do not enjoy.

"Hello World!"

Today I had hoped to be further along on my game than I got. I have a feeling I might be typing that a lot as I progress along this path.

The main problem was that, for whatever reason, my Linux workstation would lock up when ever I tried to do some updates. This happened four or five times and I'm not sure what was going on.

I Believe Tim Sweeney Is Right

An Oldie But Goody

[Williston, ND] Linux has been on my mind a lot lately. Even more since I read several articles about Tim Sweeney and his dislike for Windows 10 and what, potentially, Microsoft could do to turn Windows into a walled garden and kill off services like Steam.

Of course Sweeney is right. Even though it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t. I do remember the Microsoft of the 90s and what they attempted to do to squash competition. I don’t trust them. But then I do the stupid things and start reading the comments on these stories. People are either totally trusting in Microsoft or they don’t care. Or, maybe, they just trolling.

Making A Text Dungeon Crawler On the Commodore 64: Part 5 Catching Up

So, I took a couple days off from my Commodore 64 BASIC dungeon crawl to take breather from the project, a little breather, and to work out how I was going to handle the movement and other factors that are needed to make a dungeon crawl.

In my attempt to "save memory" I decided to use a one dimensional array to store my room data and, even worse, I stored strings instead of integers in my array. Something like:

10 DIM RM$(100)

Making A Text Dungeon Crawler On the Commodore 64: Part 4 A Brief Interlude

Welcome to video four in the series. This is getting to be an enjoyable series for me!

As I get deeper into this project I wanted to take a few moments and fix a variable that I may have problems with in the future. This project is reminding me of the many pitfalls I had on my BASIC game projects when I was in high school. The most noticable to me is the fact that I didn't plan out the projects that well. So, as a result, I'd either work my self into a corner and have to start the project over and better planned or I'd have to implement a feature poorly because I didn't think it out well enough. There were also times I'd get so fed up with a project I'd abandon it. I find that is the case here.

Making A Text Dungeon Crawler On the Commodore 64: Part 3 Character Creation And Bug Hunts

Ah, the third video in a series of videos where I uses the Commodore 64 to create a simple text dungeon crawl. Of course I'm using C64 BASIC.  This video is a bit long and I think it clocks in at over 30 minutes but that was not on purpose.

When I'm doing these videos I'm programming something off the top of my head. This is not the proper way to do things as you would usually do a lot of planning. This was, however, how I used to do projects, well most projects, back when I was in high school. It was any wonder I got any of them completed.

Game Update 2: Heaven And Earth

What a world!

Another update on the programming my game. I've achieved my milestone of implementing a map using the Mappy map maker and the associated files. As a result I've had to change my development environment because I was having problems linking the mappy files to my project. Apparently with the gcc compiler on windows I needed to compile it to an "object file" and link it to my project as such. The problem is mapping the %PATH% variables properly so I had access to the Allegro header files. On Windows it's a pain in the ass. Seems like it's much easier to do from Linux.

So, from the image you can see my little program has a map (with my hasty, thus crappy artwork) that can be scrolled using the keyboard arrow keys. I feel good getting to this point however, I've been this far along in other programming projects and lost interest. So, the next hurdle will be to implement a sprite that is controllable by the mouse and that can react to collision tiles on the map (as well as eventual collision sprites that represent mobs.  Eventually.  We'll see if I can cross that line.

Game Update 1: The Blue Screen Of Life!

It's not much but it's a start!

I figure that since I made a huge proclamation of making my own CRPG I should start updating on how it's going.  I mean really, come on, right?

So. Since I made my epic blog post I've worked on the game for a couple days now. Some of that time has been story related stuff and some of that time was getting Code::Blocks, Allegro 5 and Windows all to play nice. I finally got Code::Blocks, Allegro 5 and Windows all to play nice. Wasn't that hard. This is a good thing since when I start making the Linux version I'll most likely use Code::Blocks to develop the game.

Of course, the reward for my hard work is a window filled with blue.  That's okay though because it shows me that everything is working well together.

New Things & Game Programming UPDATED

Since the passing of my grandfather back in June I made it a goal to lose some weight. It took me about six weeks to drop ~20 pounds and I'm still at it. I feel good about this and it really hasn't been that difficult.  So, in honor of achieving a goal of losing weight and since it's been so empowering I've decided to set some other goals and see if I can achieve them. The first of these is a programming goal.

I must confess. I'm an okay C/C++ (yes I know they are two different things) programmer. Not a super good one but an okay one. I can usually figure out how to achieve most task and if I get stumped a little Google-fu has gone a long way in helping me. So, my next goal is going to be programming a Computer Role Playing Game (CRPG) for Windows and Mac since I own the two. I do have a Linux computer but it is in sad need of repair at this moment. As soon as I get it fixed I'll port it to Linux too. I've done some tech demos of 2D maps that I was pretty proud of so I think I can handle the job.

Ten Year Civ II Game? Incredible!

So. Hard. To. WIN!

A member of Reddit called Lycerius has been playing the same Civilization II game for the last ten years. What makes it more interesting is the fact that he is a stalemate with two other A.I. players and it's been total war for the last 1700 years in game time. There is starvation, pollution and war. Lots of nuclear war.

I've been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years. Though long outdated, I grew fascinated with this particular game because by the time Civ III was released, I was already well into the distant future. I then thought that it might be interesting to see just how far into the future I could get and see what the ramifications would be. Naturally I play other games and have a life, but I often return to this game when I'm not doing anything and carry on. The results are as follows. [via Reddit]

The this is an interesting concept and the comment sections to read are interesting too. Especially the parallels this game to George Orwell's 1984.

If you are a Civ 2 player, have a copy of the game and have some free time you might want to download a copy of the game save file and give it a run.

I'll be watching this thread pretty closely. I love when people do stuff like this.

New Dark Star Wars Game...Wow, this Might be...Interesting!

"Who ate beans?"

So I saw on Gamasutra that LucasArts is looking to release a dark game in the Star Wars.  This looks interesting and I hope they are able to pull this off.  From the article:

Players will take control of a bounty hunter exploring the Coruscant underworld, as he attempts to uncover a criminal conspiracy. The game promises third-person gritty combat, as opposed to supernatural Force powers. [via Gamasutra]

 This bodes good things to me as I am getting sick of robed Jedies or Sith wandering around with their laser swords deflecting blaster bolts and levitating stuff.  What is also nice is the fact that the game is going to take place on Coruscant which is one of three favorite locations of mine in the Star Wars universe.  The other two being Tatoonie and Naboo.

Diablo 3 Woes - [updated]

Ah, so this is what the game looks like!

So, as a part of the Annual Pass for World of Warcraft, I got Diablo 3.  Knowing it was going to be a mess when it launched and being keenly aware of it's "always online" Digital Rights Management (DRM) I decided to wait a few days for things to steady down before I downloaded, installed and played the game.

I must say, hell has definitely come and it's not the demonic horde of the game. It's the fact that I cannot stay connected to the servers in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME! I think to date I've been able to kill four monsters and in that time I've been disconnected two times.  The first time locking up my computer.

I don't know what Blizzard is hoping to do but apparently it has a lot to do with their Real Money Auction House. I guess they are hoping it will be a recurring source of income for them.  I'm to assume that if it's successful then it'll probably rear it's ugly head over on World of Warcraft. Also, I'm pretty certain that a lot of it has to do with them trying to prevent piracy and, maybe, cheaters.

Here's the thing. Here is why I hate DRM and this is a perfect example of it. You see, it'll be a matter of time before this game is "cracked" if it isn't already. So, those who pirate the game will have a better product than those of us who obtained the game "legally". The ability to actually play the game, when ever I want, would actually be a feature I'd really like.  You know, pay money for.