Category: Uncategorised

Alternate Reality X – Fixing zones

Acrin1 Leave a comment

Now that release 0.42 of ARX is out I’ve started on the next set of fixes and additions. A few people had commented that some of the Dungeon map zones were displaying the wrong textures and colours so I thought I would look at fixing these. For example the areas around the Dungeon Chapel had a bright white floor and the Blink Mine area kept displayed the City mountains as a background -Interesting but not really true to the original game!

After a bit of digging I reacquintainted myself with the zones system. Basically the Dungeon designers set up a system where you could define a “zone” by specifying a pair of X and Y co-ordinates on the Dungeon map. These are used to control the colours, textures used (eg. rock walls, ice crystals in the crystal caverns), types of encounters (e.g. lots of guards around the bank vaults) and anti-magic zones.  It’s an efficient system (as you only specify 4 numbers to define the area) and I might use something similar for some sections of Stone of the Citadel.This is one of the things I like about AR over other games of the time – the variety of different area styles as opposed to other games which had one set of wall graphics for the entire game.

The original Dangerous Area



The ARX Dangerous Area

Anyway I focused on the southwest area of the Dungeon map and went through every area and zone there to match them up and add any new styles and colours required. I haven’t matched all the colours and areas exactly, partly because the colours in the version of Atari800Win I’m using didn’t look quite right to me but also because I could spend a lot of time making every area look exactly the same and most players won’t remember the exact scheme. This area of the map is now nicely tidied up and all the zones look sensible. I’ll move onto other areas shortly.

Alternate Reality X – Version 0.42 released soon

Acrin1 Leave a comment
I’ll be releasing version 0.42 shortly. This will only be a minor release but it does add a few features that people have been asking for repeatedly. 
The main changes are:
  • Save
    and load characters in the City or Dungeon
  • Updated automap that only shows
    explored areas
  • Updated Exit / Quit behaviour and help screen
  • Sell gems
    and jewels at the Dungeon D & P
  • Some adjustments to the City Smithy such as better weapon choice for new characters and correct intervals for restocking weapons and armour
  • A
    few more bug fixes
Please consider the save and load options as experimental
in this version so I would suggest not putting lots of effort into building up a
character at this stage.
Hopefully have this uploaded in the next few days.

Alternate Reality X – Updated automap and options

Acrin1 2 Comments

I’d always intended to have the automap display only those places on the map that you’d explored so I’ve spent some time this weekend updating the automap. As you explore each location on the map they become visible on the map making it easy to see which parts of the map you’ve still to explore and will avoid the problem of the player missing any potential specials objects or locations.

The updated automap showing the starting area of the Dungeon

I’ve also added some additional code to each of the shop locations to mark out all the cells of the map relating to that shop are appropriately coloured in (e.g. The Retreat and Grille above). It will take a while to mark out the same for all the shops, guilds etc in the City as well. I need to add this new automap information into the save game format so that save games include the areas of the automap explored so far.

I’ve also made some changes to fix the problem people reported about accidently quiting from the game by pressing the ESC key twice. When you now press ESC you get an options / help screen.

Further options will be added in future

If you select the Quit option you’ll also be asked to confirm it with a Yes / No prompt now so hopefully no more accidental lost characters. You can currently only load your save games from the main menu.

SFML 2.0 – Release Candidate

Acrin1 Leave a comment

The Simple Fast Media Library (SFML) version 2.0 is now at the Release Candidate stage and is available as a download from the SFML website. I’ve been waiting for this for some time. Hopefully the final 2.0 release won’t be far away. It provides you with all the necessary library functions you need to code your games and there are a variety of bindings for different languages. There is a very active forum and lots of active SFML users now so help isn’t far away if you need it.

I’ll switch over Alternate Reality X and Stone of the Citadel soon to take advantage of this new release.

Alternate Reality X – Further tweaks

Acrin1 Leave a comment

I’ve just about completed the saving and loading of characters within ARX. The only things to add to the save game format for current features are the tavern / inn jobs available and tavern food / drink available. Both of these change on a daily basis and should really be captured as part of the save game.

In addition I’ve made a few minor tweaks as suggested by folks over at the AtariAge forums. You should now always get the option of buying a cheaper weapon in the City (providing you have enough coppers). I’ve also changed the frequency of when the City Smithies restock – I’d set it to be on the hour but it was daily in the original game so I’ve fixed that.

Alternate Reality X – Saving and Loading characters

Acrin1 Leave a comment

I’ve now added basic support to ARX for saving and loading characters. You can save a character whilst exploring the City streets or the Dungeon corridors. Saved games can be reloaded from the main menu. You can’t save during an encounter or whilst inside a special location such as a guild. There are 10 save game “slots” to use and these can be used for multiple saves of the same character into different slots. New saves can overwrite old ones. These are just straight save games so there are no penalties when you die other than lost progress. I now need to add in some additional save game information to make this feature complete for the current version features.