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Builder Blocks: An item matching in-world minigame


MirceaKitsune

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Unavoidably there are a few bugs. I'll need to release an updated version but would like to cram as many fixes as possible first. Please test and let me know!

I was informed that save games might be broken. That's weird because I tested saving and loading, under both the simple test map and my already complex FM: No errors and the states of active games are remembered too, didn't even need to add any save / load handling to the script. Is anyone else getting this error or similar?

ERROR:Error: file script\tdm_game_blocks.script, line 14: 'game_blocks' : redef
inition; different basic types

That line is the standard object definition (object game_blocks) as done in every other script. Why would the engine feel that anything is being redefined?

Other than that I noticed a few crashes and rare gameplay glitches myself. Will try to fix them today.

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Nice work! It's like you've packed an FM into that machine ;) I think it'd also have potential as a good generic machine prefab with some variants, possibly taking out or replacing some of the more arcade-machine elements like the overhead arch.

Feedback-wise from here:

- the screenshots indicate that the parchment texture is a little too small to fit the game, would be worth stretching that GUI window.

- saving and loading problems generally occur when a scriptobject is stored within a map script (so i.e. nameoffm.script next to nameoffm.map, instead of script/game_blocks.script) or when a script is called from the console. There are also functions that can be added to a scriptobject to Save or Restore, though I have no experience with when that may be a good idea to have.

- "game_blocks" doesn't occur in core .script files, so the only thing I can suggest is that you might have a leftover .script file floating about in your base install or in a .pk4

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Finished a bunch of important fixes. Please discard the rushed pk4 from last night and download the new one, updated in the first post. Notable changes:

  • Fix sound cutting off when items are falling too rapidly, by making proper use of sound channels for each event audio.
  • Saner way of scanning for entity keys when spawning new items. I'm hoping this prevents a rare crash I got once citing a possible infinite loop .
  • Improved the scoring mechanism a bit to better handle clearing multiple items in a row. Shortly after posting I've ran into an edge case where too many items got cleared at once and suddenly added 3 million score with hundreds of levels on the old calculation. This is hopefully no longer possible.
  • In the process I further refined the default balancing to make games last a little longer and be a bit gentler on the player before turning impossibly difficult.
  • When the device is turned off by a button, the entity is no longer rendered completely invisible, the root GUI window is hidden instead. This allows the entity to have a full model containing textures other than just the screen... toggling it will stop showing the screen without making the model pop out of existence in the process.
  • Added credits and basic license information in a top comment. The code is obviously GPL licensed in the way compatible with TDM.
Edited by MirceaKitsune
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29 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

Nice work! It's like you've packed an FM into that machine ;) I think it'd also have potential as a good generic machine prefab with some variants, possibly taking out or replacing some of the more arcade-machine elements like the overhead arch.

Feedback-wise from here:

- the screenshots indicate that the parchment texture is a little too small to fit the game, would be worth stretching that GUI window.

- saving and loading problems generally occur when a scriptobject is stored within a map script (so i.e. nameoffm.script next to nameoffm.map, instead of script/game_blocks.script) or when a script is called from the console. There are also functions that can be added to a scriptobject to Save or Restore, though I have no experience with when that may be a good idea to have.

- "game_blocks" doesn't occur in core .script files, so the only thing I can suggest is that you might have a leftover .script file floating about in your base install or in a .pk4

The user in cause clarified their issue was related to tdm_custom_scripts.script, most likely the script got included twice or a savegame saw it as such. It's an annoying limitation that you can only have one custom scripts file per FM yet need it to include scripts as they aren't loaded automatically, so if your FM has multiple such addons you need to edit them in order to maintain a singular tdm_custom_scripts which includes everything.

Like I said saving and loading of savegames seems to work for me: No errors and you can resume the game as if nothing happened... even if you didn't pause it the game loop function will continue upon loading. I take it TDM already knows how to handle all kinds of scriptobjects scenarios since it does a great job here.

As for GUI stretching, I did my best to maintain the aspect ratio and use a background fitting for the window size. A little complication though is I'm using the same GUI definition for both the overlay and world surface, it seemed messy and unnecessary to separate them. However the player's screen has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (nearly 2:1 aspect ration) whereas the screen on the arcade is typically square if not stretched the other way around. What I did to fix this was to make the GUI surface cut through the screen in the prefab and eliminate some border, though this is kind of a hack I don't feel most proud for using.

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@MirceaKitsune
To me the 2 GUIs look the same - same format, and both just a tad too short. Can't you just increase the vertical size of that GUI window?

Debugging crashes is worlds easier when you can build yourself a debug build, showing which entity and which function was the problem. It's pretty easy to install, pretty easy to compile a new build (open the code in Microsoft Visual Studio, select "Debug with Inlines" from a dropdown list and press F7) and would probably have a high payoff for someone scripting as much as you do:

TDM Compilation Guide

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I might still be able to compile the engine from scratch if requirements didn't change... not sure if I tested that after switching distros from openSUSE to Manjaro but hopefully it still works. Will check again if I get more crashes, as of today's patches all seems to be fine for now.

As for the GUI they are indeed the same. I didn't want it to fully fill the screen even vertically, so you could still see some of the world behind it. But I use a fullscreen tint effect behind the main paper sheet, both to darken the world (similarly to readables) and I also apply a brightness tint (customizable from the def) to simulate screen glow and match the light emanating from the screen surface. The standard base setting for the main window is 640 x 480 so I left it at that (those numbers remind me of the Windows 95 days).

Another thing on the GUI: I set it up so the main window size is based on the number and size of item icons, you can resize everything just by changing the size of the grid item. I settled for 24 x 24 for which looks best for icons, so the paper background auto-adjusts to 8 x 24 horizontally and 16 x 24 + 2 x 24 (HUD space) vertically.

Edited by MirceaKitsune
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  • 2 weeks later...

Looking for more feedback on this as well, please help test it! Anyone tried the arcade so far in your FM? Found any other issues? What do you think about it and the current functionality? I'm hoping the gui / def / script at least can be included for 2.10, this would be a fun minigame to have available for mappers by default.

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On 8/7/2021 at 4:57 PM, MirceaKitsune said:

I'm hoping the gui / def / script at least can be included for 2.10, this would be a fun minigame to have available for mappers by default.

It's an interesting idea and impressive that you got it to work, but we're kind of split on this for a couple of reasons:

- as you say, an arcade game is somewhat questionable in a steampunk universe. I can definitely imagine a situation or two where it would seem fitting, such as the recreational area of an Inventor Guild compound, but those are somewhat unique scenarios.

- testing is another matter. It's a technically complex asset, and as you've said it's crashed a few times. I think it'd be best if it featured in an FM first, since you'd have a good amount of players with a variety of PCs and approaches try it out. It should also result in feedback on how a minigame like this can be integrated into stealth gameplay.

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9 hours ago, Dragofer said:

It's an interesting idea and impressive that you got it to work, but we're kind of split on this for a couple of reasons:

- as you say, an arcade game is somewhat questionable in a steampunk universe. I can definitely imagine a situation or two where it would seem fitting, such as the recreational area of an Inventor Guild compound, but those are somewhat unique scenarios.

- testing is another matter. It's a technically complex asset, and as you've said it's crashed a few times. I think it'd be best if it featured in an FM first, since you'd have a good amount of players with a variety of PCs and approaches try it out. It should also result in feedback on how a minigame like this can be integrated into stealth gameplay.

TDM is in an interesting position world wise: It's meant to take place somewhere between the 1600's - 1800's but not in a historically accurate version. Apart from having undead which don't exist in real life (as far as we know :)) there are many technologies that didn't exist at their time, envisioned as they would have been if they did. One thing that inspired me for this was the inclusion of the automaton AI, along with other beyond-their-time inventions like the steambot or camera: I figured another exception wouldn't hurt... long as it matches the style, hence why I decided against a retro background or 8-bit music but left it looking more like an interactive paper (who knows how they built the device). Though as a mod for this mod, I might make one with custom assets such as pixelated graphics and 8-bit tunes, for just those FM's that wanna go there.

Including it with a FM first sounds like a good way to test. I'm working on one which will likely feature this asset by default, but it's still got a long way to go and will be released later after 2.10. Only FM I actually got around to releasing was Scroll of Remembrance, which I've been thinking of redoing due to the horrid performance and the fact that I didn't monsterclip anything as I didn't know I should at the time; Maybe I should take the opportunity to throw one of these machines in there? In the meantime, if anyone's working on a FM where they feel this might be fitting, do feel free to include it!

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That is very cool and very impressive!

Right now it would be a lot of us to take it on for 2.10, but getting it in a mission would be awesome and prove out a bunch of stuff before going into the mod. I'll download this though and do some testing and play around with it when I get a chance. 

 

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2 hours ago, kingsal said:

That is very cool and very impressive!

Right now it would be a lot of us to take it on for 2.10, but getting it in a mission would be awesome and prove out a bunch of stuff before going into the mod. I'll download this though and do some testing and play around with it when I get a chance.

Yes, likely too early of a target. 2.11 might do hopefully. Hope to have it stable enough and tested to use in FM's soon.

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