101 replies to this topic

[Deedee]

Transparent dark rooms; you mean like the screen is obscured except for a little window in front of the player? Sounds like you run a few dozen draw tiles on layer 6 each frame, why would that be laggy?

 

I mean a little circle of light surrounding every single light source in the room including the player, with translucent darkness. TheOnlyOne apparently did it using line drawing, with huge amounts of lag. He is the only one I know of that has done it.

Edited by Dimentio, 08 February 2016 - 04:44 PM.

[Timelord]

ZoraRPG, everything you're ultimately trying to do can be done with scripting, though.  I suppose that using ZScript doesn't lend itself to a point-and-click interface for others to use, and that's potentially important if you want non-programmers to make quests.  Is that the point?

Not the point, at all. Almost everything that I listed is either physically impossible at present, or requires extremely non-optimal, hackish workarounds. Just about everything on that list has to do with ZScript, not the ZQuest editor, so I'm not sure where you are getting this desire to do GUI-related things.

The Flag editor ties directly into ZScript too, although it's one of the components that isn't technically script-mandatory. Also, SCCs, and quite a few of the things on the list aren't my personal priorities. I think you missed the 'our' and 'we' in the statements above. It's a summation of the things that we want to add to ZScript, and to a lesser extend, to ZC/ZQ. I really couldn't careless (personally) about SCCs, but gd regs and pointers caps are a very high priority for me.

I likewise have sufficed with faking function pointers, but they are the highest priority for grayswandir.

While some of this is only immediately useful for very advanced code models, most of the planned additions, and fixes are pretty useful, in general.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 08 February 2016 - 06:06 PM.

[Gleeok]

Since there seems to be people only interested in only working on 2.50.2+ it'd be best to keep everything unified so that everything remains in a working state and there's (hopefully) only one main version that can combine changes, etc.. There's no problems with releasing new versions as well once everything is tested. I can tell you from experience that it is really easy to 'fix' one thing in ZC that causes seemingly unrelated bugs somewhere else, and we just don't have time to babysit every random change, so at the very least we'd need a volunteer or two to be in charge of this. Let me know if you are interested.

[Timelord]

Since there seems to be people only interested in only working on 2.50.2+ it'd be best to keep everything unified so that everything remains in a working state and there's (hopefully) only one main version that can combine changes, etc.. There's no problems with releasing new versions as well once everything is tested. I can tell you from experience that it is really easy to 'fix' one thing in ZC that causes seemingly unrelated bugs somewhere else, and we just don't have time to babysit every random change, so at the very least we'd need a volunteer or two to be in charge of this. Let me know if you are interested.

Sure, if you want volunteers to maintain it, and handle versioning, fixes, progress, updates, and whatnot, I think you can count on the three of us. I know that Dimentio, grayswandir, and I all have very solid goals in mind, and are willing to work on it. Hell, i volunteered in the past, as I recall.

I will confer with them, but I'm pretty sure you'll get the same answer from each of us. If you want to discuss it with us directly, we can do that.

[Deedee]

Sure, I'll volunteer, because I'd rather these changes get done before the next decade, and more volunteers means there will likely be more productivity.

[James24]

Hmm...this open source idea is very nice and all.  Certainly the idea that ZC can improve with the contributions of others is very noble and utopian.  Sadly, my prediction is that you will only get a few worthy additions, if any.  Firstly, learning how to script and such is something that is not for everyone - you need to be a semi-genius to become any proficient at it.  Second, you would do well to learn the lessons of history regarding communism in China and Russia when they tried it.  See what happened when it was implemented it and try and relate it to ZC now.

[Timelord]

Hmm...this open source idea is very nice and all.  Certainly the idea that ZC can improve with the contributions of others is very noble and utopian.  Sadly, my prediction is that you will only get a few worthy additions, if any.  Firstly, learning how to script and such is something that is not for everyone - you need to be a semi-genius to become any proficient at it.  Second, you would do well to learn the lessons of history regarding communism in China and Russia when they tried it.  See what happened when it was implemented it and try and relate it to ZC now.

 

What?! Oh my... What in the world has Communism, Marxism, or any political agenda to do with open-source software? Maybe you missed the news, but the open-source initiative has been around for decades. In fact, the core components of Zelda Classic have always been open-sourced. Allegro, Bison, Flex, you name it.

 

My eyes are confused. I think I'm in need of some new doublethink to comprehend this...maybe it's covered in the 10th Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary? That, or the latest Hitchhiker's Guide.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 10 February 2016 - 08:44 AM.

[James24]

I don't want to elaborate any further regarding Communism and what's going on right now - this can easily end up as a flame war.  Connect the dots if you're smart enough.

[Gleeok]

I am not smart enough.

Sure, if you want volunteers to maintain it, and handle versioning, fixes, progress, updates, and whatnot, I think you can count on the three of us. I know that Dimentio, grayswandir, and I all have very solid goals in mind, and are willing to work on it. Hell, i volunteered in the past, as I recall.

I will confer with them, but I'm pretty sure you'll get the same answer from each of us. If you want to discuss it with us directly, we can do that.

Sure. I'm pretty busy this week but I'll try to set aside some time for this. Not entirely sure how git wants to manage branches, but I'm sure it will give me a headache.

[Timelord]

I am not smart enough.





Sure. I'm pretty busy this week but I'll try to set aside some time for this. Not entirely sure how git wants to manage branches, but I'm sure it will give me a headache.

 
It'd make more sense to make it a unique trunk: A separate entity. That, because it's doing to develop in a different direction, and the two will diverge too much to permit a push between them, although maybe we can work on a ZScript interface for AngelScript for this too. Just not immediately.
 
 
I think we could use most of the lexer params to scan ZScript and convert it into AngelScript, if we try hard enough; but as we'll probably be expanding ZScript, it'll mean doing some other things first.
 
P.S. Please include your VS files, and any makefiles, if you can.I'll try to convert them to VS2010.`
 
P.P.S. If Saffith could send you the stuff that he uses to build Linux, and OSX builds, and you could provide that too, it would be very useful. IIRC, he uses a VM to run OSX to build, so if he wants a place to upload the VM image, I'll prepare an ftp account for him. Or, I could order a USB pen drive for him, and have him send it to my US office, prepaid.
 
I would rather not have to figure out what he's doing to do OSX builds 'from scratch'.
 
I may need to refresh your ftp account to the faster/bigger server too, if you want to use it., The old 10.4 server is having problems, and I need to merge all the accounts over to another machine; but everything is still archived. I'm unsure if you have any real use for it, but maybe it'd be a good way to privately exchange files and such.

P.P.P.S. We don;t need these building files/tools immediately (although the more we have, the more we can do and test). We can wait for them, and work on the code; so you don't need to worry about providing it all at once.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 12 February 2016 - 02:57 AM.

[Gleeok]

I use VS 2010 to run performance builds on ZC so I know those work without any problem; 2013 should be the same. I strongly recommend not using 2015 however, as apparently it's broken everything so you are on your own. Someone was doing a setup for that but I don't know the status.

That account has been down for a while. (I'm guessing a month or two?)

[Timelord]

I use VS 2010 to run performance builds on ZC so I know those work without any problem; 2013 should be the same. I strongly recommend not using 2015 however, as apparently it's broken everything so you are on your own. Someone was doing a setup for that but I don't know the status.

That account has been down for a while. (I'm guessing a month or two?)

Was that _Mitch? Might be good to discuss that on the side, so that we're all in the same room insofar as knowing 'Who's Who, and What's That' without giving everyone the opportunity to pester people.

Anyhow, I don't have, or use VS 2013+, so that's not a concern. I have no desire to update, either. I only use 2010 because it's impossible to refresh a 2008 key these days.

I thought that you still need 2010 project files as an update? I think you mentioned that. You're using 2010 with the 2008 projects, I presume?

[lonegraywolf]

There are two known issues with VS2015 for the record. First: header files that were missing before are now available, but that throws Allegro off due to assumptions made back when Allegro 4 was popular. Second: VS2015 prefers only linking to libraries that were built using VS2015. I believe the PNG library is one such library that would need a rebuild.

[Gleeok]

I thought that you still need 2010 project files as an update? I think you mentioned that. You're using 2010 with the 2008 projects, I presume?

No, I just don't want to maintain them.

It was far easier for me to simply generate the files when I need them rather than have to keep track of a whole new set of project files.

There are two known issues with VS2015 for the record. First: header files that were missing before are now available, but that throws Allegro off due to assumptions made back when Allegro 4 was popular. Second: VS2015 prefers only linking to libraries that were built using VS2015. I believe the PNG library is one such library that would need a rebuild.

Honestly, an easier way might be to use /NODEFAULTLIB and then just fetch the appropriate CRT. But I guess I just have zero tolerance for Microsoft shenanigans these days.

[C-Dawg]

I mean a little circle of light surrounding every single light source in the room including the player, with translucent darkness. TheOnlyOne apparently did it using line drawing, with huge amounts of lag. He is the only one I know of that has done it.

 

Sometime this month or next, I'll tackle this and get back to you.  The algorithm should be pretty darn simple.  Each frame, check for the location of certain combos or the player.  Then, identify the combo numbers around that location.  Next, draw an all-black tile to Layer 6 on all locations of the screen except for those nearby an identified light source, where tiles with a transparent circle get drawn.

 

This will result in a "jerky" light source around the player, kind of like how Dragon Warrior I does it, but this could be overcome using either lots of tile space (draw the open circle in all possible positions and choose the one appropriate for the player's position) or drawing some number of black, unfilled circles around the player necessary to fill up the space between the edge of the player and the first black tile.  Probably no more than 16 circles would be necessary.

 

So, we're talking about a few hundred drawTiles per frame, and that shouldn't be too bad, I don't think.

Edited by C-Dawg, 12 February 2016 - 11:48 AM.