Lyon

[Saxxon]

Please let me know when you get fake-to-monitor working so I don't have to zap my treasure chests. :)

I didn't even know this was an issue. Can you please send me an example?

[bitbot]

Please let me know when you get fake-to-monitor working so I don't have to zap my treasure chests. :)

I didn't even know this was an issue. Can you please send me an example?

#change fake monitor produces a crash.

Will investigate this one.

Of course I can. How thoughtless of me.

FAKE2MON.ZIP

(532 Bytes) Downloaded 228 times

[Commodore]

That screen reminds me that I lost my Escape from Castle Wolfenstein game. :( If anyone has horded it please let me know.

[bitbot]

That screen reminds me that I lost my Escape from Castle Wolfenstein game. :( If anyone has horded it please let me know.

That sucks! I was wondering if you were ever going to release it.

[Saxxon]

Please let me know when you get fake-to-monitor working so I don't have to zap my treasure chests. :)

I didn't even know this was an issue. Can you please send me an example?

#change fake monitor produces a crash.

Will investigate this one.

Of course I can. How thoughtless of me.

FAKE2MON.ZIP

Haha, I did mention that I would look into this and I don't remember the outcome, but it disappeared off my "to do" list. I am really sorry about that.

[Commodore]

I still have the screens from the mig site, so I respond with my own version of that picture.

[bitbot]

I still have the screens from the mig site, so I respond with my own version of that picture.

WoooaH. That looks fun. Hand-drawn is always better. Leaves room for expression. :)
Our soldiers are drawn very similarly... interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[bitbot]

Saxxon, I think I've only begun to scratch the surface of what Lyon is capable of.

I imported a 20k board 101 times and saved it.
ZZT 3.2? nope.
ZZT 4.1? nope.
Lyon? no problem!
Needless to say my game will run exclusively on this platform. Thank you for this fine piece of software!

So what are the limits for boards?

[Saxxon]

Saxxon, I think I've only begun to scratch the surface of what Lyon is capable of.

I imported a 20k board 101 times and saved it.
ZZT 3.2? nope.
ZZT 4.1? nope.
Lyon? no problem!
Needless to say my game will run exclusively on this platform. Thank you for this fine piece of software!

So what are the limits for boards?

Theoretically, as much as your computer can handle. ZZT actually has a hard limit of 8megs+ due to the format. The way I wrote it, there really aren't limits. However for compatibility with ZZT I have to impose the standard 151 objects/board, etc.

Edit: Interestingly enough the limit for ZZT is actually 152. However, one has to be available for the Messenger at all times, therefore you'll never actually be able to use this many. </trivia>

Edit 2: Come to think of it, I am not actually implementing the Messenger as how ZZT would. Perhaps after I get some of these other bugs fixed I will revisit this and actually put it in. Messenger is an object that is created that sits in the upper-left board edge. You can't touch it or zap it or anything. It is created when a message on the screen is displayed and destroyed when the message disappears.

[bitbot]

The limit on objects is not a problem at all.
This really got me excited all over again! MEGABYTES worth of zzt goodness. lol

Infinite boards too... Man, we're gonna start seeing flip motion ASCII movies in ZZT.

[Saxxon]

With that FAKE2MON test of yours, I was not able to reproduce the problem. Perhaps I mistakenly fixed it :) At any rate it is behaving like it should.

I think what I've got now should be OK to release. Most of the changes were to the core so not much cosmetic difference. You will notice that "end this game" now shows. I will have to work on blinks here pretty soon, so that's why you don't get a blinking cursor.

Edit: Considering ability to switch between blink mode and bright mode using a keypress. I think for some games it might be cheating since a few use color 0x80 which is blinking black on black, but would be seen as black on dark gray in this mode. It could be useful to someone I guess.

Edit 2: This release does not have any of the config stuff that I mentioned before. I'll let you know when this is in.

Edit 3: Commodore, that energizer bug is actually a bug in my SZZT world loader. Congrats! I thought this code was bulletproof. I'd switched around the score and energizer cycles. This fix is not posted here since I found it after, but in the next release this should be fixed 100%. I also fixed the aspect ratio for SZZT - next release as well.

[bitbot]

Thank you! Works like a charm.

[Saxxon]

Thank you! Works like a charm.

Great to hear :)

Between KevEdit and Lyon you shouldn't really run into problems with large boards. They aren't locked to conventional memory like ZZT is. The hard limit on board sizes is 32767 bytes (or 32kb) and I think every application will flip out if you exceed this, even in Lyon since it reads just like ZZT. The limit on boards is a bit harder to place.. passages and board edges can only go up to 255 and ZZT uses 1- and 2- byte storage interchangeably. This means that some features of the game will work OK with board indexes 256+ and some features will not. I haven't tested a 257 board game. I doubt KevEdit will let you make one but I can create one just to see what happens. I am curious to see what it would do to the original game.

At any rate, if your computer has the RAM for the game world, Lyon will use it. I refuse to implement fake crashes that result from the size of the world.

[Commodore]

Re: Flashing/Bright. Cheating in ZZT has always been a topic of discussion. If you add macros you can cheat with a button press anyway. I think the ease at which you can cheat actually helps zzt, since it can help you past that slider puzzle you don't want anything to do with, or get past buggy code.

I've got 5 dark boards in the game I'm currently working on. Should I make it #endgame on -dark? Would that be unfair? and ruin my game for people who don't like dark boards? It's a bit like your memory "problem". You could put in measures to crash the game over a memory limit, but why?

[Saxxon]

Re: Flashing/Bright. Cheating in ZZT has always been a topic of discussion. If you add macros you can cheat with a button press anyway. I think the ease at which you can cheat actually helps zzt, since it can help you past that slider puzzle you don't want anything to do with, or get past buggy code.

I've got 5 dark boards in the game I'm currently working on. Should I make it #endgame on -dark? Would that be unfair? and ruin my game for people who don't like dark boards? It's a bit like your memory "problem". You could put in measures to crash the game over a memory limit, but why?

You argue a good point, but a memory limit benefits no one. A cheat is going to benefit the developer and the player. I agree that it's a necessary evil, and I never go to any measures myself to implement anti-cheat as the player is really just ruining it for themselves anyhow.

As far as macros go, I was probably going to implement them as flag toggles instead. If you accidentally pressed it you would want to flip the flag back off so the game works anyhow.