Re: [Adonthell-devel] More adonthell-0.3 updates

[Kai Sterker]

After spending much of the day in a fruitless attempt to install OSX 10.11,
only a small update for today:

Just changed the locations where saved games and the configuration get
stored to something more standard-conform. For Linux, it's pretty clear
what needs to go where, pretty much the same for OSX. I haven't tested
latter, but the code is taken from v0.4, so should be okay. Windows turns
out to be less easy to support properly, at least not without resorting to
lots of Windows-specific code.

So this is another area where SDL2 might be of value, as it just happens to
include a much better implementation for retrieving system directories than
what I came up with.

The other part where it could be useful is in the switching between Window
and Fullscreen mode. As I found out, SDL1.2 only support that on X11, and
it doesn't do it well either (in testing I had cases where keyboard input
no longer worked after switching. And killing the program while in
fullscreen mode left X in a sad state).

And finally, with the scaling and screen size adjustments implemented in
v0.4, the graphics quality should be much better than the blurry output you
get right now, when the monitor does the actual scaling. (Though going full
dynamic size would also require changes to the user interface. The
alternative might be letterboxing)

So I am starting to warm for migrating to SDL2 after all. But first,
achievements!

Kai
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Re: [Adonthell-devel] More adonthell-0.3 updates

[Kai Sterker]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 9:46 PM, Kai Sterker  wrote:


> I also am thinking about actually adding a settings window. Initially I
> did not think it would be feasible, due to lacking widgets, but I think I
> came up with a design that should work quite well and be simple enough to
> add.
>
[...]

> Basically you'd use the up/down arrow keys to select one of the options or
> OK, then use left/right to cycle through the possible values (or in case of
> the volume increase or decrease the number). OK will close and save. Should
> be easy enough to write in Python, like the rest of the UI.
>

Implemented and comitted, though only tested on Linux with Python 3.5.

And it's actually quite good I implemented this, because during this I
discovered that the localization does not really work anymore. Basically,
gettext no longer loaded the message catalog from its custom location, for
whatever reason. I implemented the workaround found at
http://stackoverflow.com/a/1564879/2501078 , but I am pretty certain there
never was the need to call setlocale(LC_ALL,"") before.

Anyway, another bug fixed, and we now can change the most important
settings on the fly and without manually editing the config file :-).

Kai
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Re: [Adonthell-devel] More adonthell-0.3 updates

[Kai Sterker]

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 7:52 AM, Josh Glover  wrote:


> I think achievements is a nice idea. I worked for a games company for
> a year, and I know that our players were really motivated by unlocking
> and earning new achievements.
>

As I said, from a personal perspective, I see them somewhat critical, But I
guess if they are done well and neither require mindless grinding nor are
simply collected by mindlessly playing the game there is nothing wrong with
them. They are easy enough to ignore, and sometimes I even find it
interesting to see what I unlocked after I am done with a game.

Implementation wise, the biggest obstacle must be the changes to the
dialogues (as a lot of triggers will have to be in those). Basically it
requires a functional dialogue editor. The one in the v0.3 source tree is
still based on GTK+ 1.x, so not sure whether it can be made to run. The one
in the v0.4 tools should fairly easily be compilable with GTK+ 3 even, but
is already adapted to the newer engine. It needs some shuffling of the two
to get one that is fit for the job.



> It's cool that you're putting a little time into Adonthell. At some
> point when I have some free time, I'd really love to port the game to
> a modern engine. I think the gameplay and art and world design is
> spectacular, and I'd like to focus on that aspect whilst offloading
> the heavy lifting to some code I don't have to maintain. :)
>

I'd still be interested in implementing the v0.4 plot. But even with a
readily available engine and tool set, there's still the issue of the art
assets. Well, better concentrate on what's achievable now and reach for the
stars later ... ;-)

Kai
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Re: [Adonthell-devel] More adonthell-0.3 updates

[Josh Glover]

Hi Kai,

I think achievements is a nice idea. I worked for a games company for
a year, and I know that our players were really motivated by unlocking
and earning new achievements.

It's cool that you're putting a little time into Adonthell. At some
point when I have some free time, I'd really love to port the game to
a modern engine. I think the gameplay and art and world design is
spectacular, and I'd like to focus on that aspect whilst offloading
the heavy lifting to some code I don't have to maintain. :)

Cheers,
Josh


On 3 May 2016 at 21:46, Kai Sterker  wrote:
> On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Kai Sterker  wrote:
>
>> I also compiled and tested it on the ancient iBook (gcc 3.something,
>> Python 2.3, SWIG 2.0.0) and it worked. Played it through one more time, but
>> it stopped during the outro, on the transition from mapview to the little
>> cutscene of the chest and Bjarns little hiding place. No error message
>> though, and since I played fullscreen not much chance but killing the
>> process.
>
>
> Actually that had nothing to do with the machine in question, or old or
> incompatible version of Python/SWIG. Instead it appears to be legitimate bug
> ;-).
>
> The one thing that seemed kind of odd, but I did not give much heed to it
> yesterday was that Bjarn was already standing next to his chest when the
> outro started. I believe that in turn caused his pathfinding during the
> outro to fail, which causes the script to endlessly wait for pathing to
> complete, which it never will. Played it through again today, and no trouble
> making it through to the end credits. Fix should be as simple as checking
> Bjarns location before triggering the pathfinding and skip it, if he's
> already near the chest. Must be quite a rare thing, though :-).
>
>
> I also am thinking about actually adding a settings window. Initially I did
> not think it would be feasible, due to lacking widgets, but I think I came
> up with a design that should work quite well and be simple enough to add.
> Might look like this
>
> ++
> ||
> |  Display Mode   <  Window   >  |
> |  Master Volume  <50 >  |
> |  Language   <  English  >  |
> ||
> |  OK|
> ++
>
> Basically you'd use the up/down arrow keys to select one of the options or
> OK, then use left/right to cycle through the possible values (or in case of
> the volume increase or decrease the number). OK will close and save. Should
> be easy enough to write in Python, like the rest of the UI.
>
>
> The other addition that just came to my mind, after having played it for the
> 3rd time in a row (though mostly clicking through without reading) would be
> Achievements. While I personally don't care about those, I think they would
> be a nice extra touch and would really highlight the variance and different
> options of playing through. (It amazed me again, how reactive the dialogue
> is at times. I.e. try talking to Oliver before entering the Inn vs. talking
> to Orloth first. Or you can get Jelom to let Silverhair off the hook without
> talking to Erek and Bjarn and it will accommodate for that just fine. Or
> talk to Erek the first time when you already uncovered the gem. Or the
> difference whether you rat out Talan or cover him. We really put more
> thought into that than I remembered.) The thing is, all this effort goes
> largely unnoticed, unless you play a couple of times. Some kind of
> achievements could be an incentive to replay and discover all those little
> things. Effort would be greater, though.
>
>
> Lastly, I really would like to improve the helpfulness of Fellnir Kezular a
> bit. He was supposed to hand out some clues, but I think the conditions for
> his dialogue are really off. I never got anything out of him other than that
> he does not know a thing, even though in my first playthrough I really had a
> hard time uncovering Talan. Don't really want to add to his dialogue, just
> try and make what's already there appear when it would be most useful.
>
>
> Again, please let me know what you think, especially about the achievements
> idea. (A couple that come to mind are:
> * Talking to all NPCs during one play through
> * Tasting the wine from all 3 barrels
> * Ratting out Talan
> * Not ratting out Talan
> * Always being honest (i.e. never hiding your connection to Silverhair and
> the location where you found the gem)
> * Presenting the gem to Erek in the first conversation with him
> * Finishing the game
> * Trying to climb up the vine
> Don't have to be more than 10 in total, but other ideas certainly welcome.)
>
>
> And yes, need to be careful to not fall into the old trap of feature-creep
> again :-). I have about another 6 or 7 weeks to waste on this, afterwards
> time will be scarce again. So don't hesitate to say