New version of Geas with all the changes I've made in the last few months since I've posted properly, including a battle system that sort of "works" but is incredibly simplistic and not especially fun.

Download this week's alpha release of Geas!

Discussion

Quite a bit has changed but it's not immediately obvious. Hit F1 to start a fight with some slimes. Esc exits the battle immediately, or you can just defeat the slimes. Only Attack is implemented, and anything else will just waste your turn.

I've also added a console that is currently not terribly useful but will be eventually, in theory. Since it was written to be included in KISSKISS it should be relatively simply to drop into any project, which means that we now have a (rather "feature light") console for VergeLua now. You can open the console by hitting Tab.

The other somewhat-interesting thing is that, yet again, I am using the newest version of the Verge executable, which is more up to date than the last official V3 release. This exe allows a couple of interesting things that Overkill has added and I haven't tried out yet, like allowing you to pass functions directly to the Hook* functions, instead of just string function names. It also allows you to use (some) control character escape sequences like \n and \f in VergeC, so font subsets are available to the VergeC-using masses again.

If you want to get just the newly compiled verge.exe, you can get it right here. If you do try it out with your project, please let me know how it goes, especially if you encounter any bugs.

Much of my free time this week has been taken up by getting together a new Verge engine release. So now:

This has actually been a few months in the coming, and Geas has had updated verge executables along the way; if you noticed the size of the .exe changing every few weeks it was because I was trying to keep up to date with the version in the SVN and doing testing with my code to see if things had broken (which was often!)

Anyway, hopefully now that this is out I can get back to worrying about Geas, and we'll see more game-stuff next week. Have a good one, everybody!

I've got the first section of the LuaVerge tutorial up. It includes one goody in the form of a nice clean workspace zip for building Verge games. The next section is in the works but not near finished yet since it requires me to have time to make some resources for fresh, bright-eyed newbies to use for MAEK GAEM.

By the way, I need to thank Overkill for listening to me ramble and whine. I was really unsure as to the direction that I should be taking with my tutorials, and he straightened me out like the stand-up gent that he is.

Unfortunately, I haven't had time to do any on-computer work for Geas this week. Things have been hectic.

Excitement.

Download this week's alpha release of Geas!

This update adds new portraits for Kiel (which I don't really like better but they are more consistent with Tanessa's portrait), every house in Shoda's Brook has an 'inside', and you can now leave town. Unfortunately, the overworld is still heavily in progress so you can't get BACK in town.

I've been sitting on some of this stuff since Christmas (for some reason) and some of it is more recent. Lame, I know. Anyway, I like how the overworld graphics are shaping up, though the mountains are somewhat busy. I love the little short sprites and I want to get to animating making more directions for Kiel and a new sprite for Tanessa.

In addition, the download this week features an absolutely up-to-date copy of the verge engine so it is possible that it might be a little broken for some people. Please let me know if you have any problems! Also, if you are into this sort of thing, you can look at the directory structure and see that it is SO MUCH CLEANER now that maps can be stored in subdirectories of the root.

Lastly, as I mentioned last post, I am looking into writing some documentations. I hacked together a quick system to help me write them and make them accessible, and I've put up an index of topics I intend to write on, in some sort of semblance of order that halfway makes sense to me. You can check that out at...

I'd like to hear some comments, if anyone has them, on the topics and the ordering. Please let me know if there's something I've left out or you think should come earlier or later. I'm very much wanting to produce a tutorial that focuses on getting a game made, rather than focusing just on the scripting. Hopefully it works out.

Sadly, just words again this week and not even as many. I need to get up early in the morning so I'll have to keep this short.

The Verge engine is getting close to being ready for a release. Which is great! Unfortunately we're now at the stage of a bunch of noodly bits like getting it compiled on multiple platforms and lame stuff like that. Foremost for me, I think, is fixing any bugs that crop up during testing, and to start working on a tutorial for using Verge with Lua. I'm starting to organize things in my head and I might (maybe) even manage to make a mini-post midweek about that.

Anyway yeah. Good night.