STOS Dungeon Crawling

[Eero Tamminen]

EDIT: Re chakrams, I wanted to get some slightly more unusual weapons. I thought the standard thrown weapon would be a knife but that's boring, so I made it a shuriken. But that also is boring, so you have a chakram.

What about razored boomerang? Just remember not to offer your throat when it returns!

[Encolpius]

EDIT: Re chakrams, I wanted to get some slightly more unusual weapons. I thought the standard thrown weapon would be a knife but that's boring, so I made it a shuriken. But that also is boring, so you have a chakram.

What about razored boomerang? Just remember not to offer your throat when it returns!

I think I'll stick with the chakram to be fair.

I've decided when it comes to assets for now I'm going to concentrate on those that might be used early in the game so when all the coding is feature complete I can thrust out a "preview campaign" of the first few levels.

[Encolpius]

Finally, Warriors of Light v0.63E is here. This is the update that includes freestanding decorations and chests. It was too big to fit on a single disk image so I made it a zip.

There are two levels included here with two different wall sets. I don't know if you can get to the second one; I may have forgotten to put the correct key. I was mainly focused on making the decorations line up property and the chesticle logic.

Responsiveness is not great because I basically was very heavy handed with the number of monsters that I inserted into the level. I wanted to stress test with other than "random wandering" behaviour mode. But it's responsive enough, at least when compiled.

Changes made:

- New Wonderful Industries splash screen ripped off from, sorry, INSPIRED BY, the Cannon Films logo.
- New monster - the Archer Ant.
- Chests and decorations. Each decoration type has its own description that if you click it is displayed. Decorations are also wallset agnostic so in theory you can put an onyx pillar in the forest. Chests are clicked to open and can hold up to 8 items in a last in, first out manner.
- The two levels included are unfinished but have the rough shape and design that they would in the final game.
- Finally made a level using Mike's grey wallset.
- Fixed the area guard behaviour so it doesn't make monsters wander through walls on odd game ticks.
- Slightly tweaked the interface. This is so the health and mana gauges are all within the same 16 pixel area and thus can be adjusted by simply pasting part of the empty gauge and part of the full gauge in place.

Roadmap:

- Inventory and object handling overhaul (0.66) by 14 March 2021. Contemplating using L. J. Greenhalgh's image put command from the Control extension for this so all the objects can be rolled into the heap and thus packed more easily.
- Stereo sampled sounds by end of April 2021 (0.69)
- Scripting by end of May 2021 (0.70). This means switches, pressure plates, and similar. Also non-object projectiles (in practice spell effects).
- Pits and slog zones implemented by end of June 2021 (0.71)
- Player journal by end of July 2021 (0.80). Yeah, I know I proposed this for 0.65 but there's no point doing it until everything else that would be stored in it is implemented. Shortly followed by saving and loading (0.81).
- Every new build contains a new monster!
- After 0.81, well, probably spells and magic for 0.85 and probably combat and balancing would be the big thing for 0.90. Then it's just a case of making levels, drawing monsters, putting together scripts, recording noises, and then bolting together a preview campaign (0.94) for my birthday, and making an intro and ending cutscene for 31/12/2021 which is my pencilled release date. Speaking of which, I have an idea as to how that could be implemented using a custom assembler function.

[MM41]

Thanks Encolpius ,
downloaded and just moved in, nice .
I have to do a test with another ST (mouse or hard drive driver problems on my STe with WOL)

[Encolpius]

Thanks Encolpius ,
downloaded and just moved in, nice .
I have to do a test with another ST (mouse or hard drive driver problems on my STe with WOL)

Which driver are you using, and what problems are these?

[MM41]

I use an old (very old HDDriver version) with my Satandisk,
but i can try with my other STe (SCSI HD+Link2 and ICD driver)

[Encolpius]

I use an old (very old HDDriver version) with my Satandisk,
but i can try with my other STe (SCSI HD+Link2 and ICD driver)

I use HDDRIVER on my STE and there isn't any problem with it with an Ultrasatan. Whereabouts does it freeze or bomb exactly?

[MM41]

I had two times TOS error #48 after change keys setting, not in game but after reloaded game.
I think that's my SD card who make troubles .

Wol don't see allways when i use the mouse keys , it's not easy to move an item.

I'll try with my other STe.

[Encolpius]

I had two times TOS error #48 after change keys setting, not in game but after reloaded game.
I think that's my SD card who make troubles .

Wol don't see allways when i use the mouse keys , it's not easy to move an item.

I'll try with my other STe.

Hmmm, I might look into that.

The item moving is something I know about and will be addressed as part of the object overhaul in the next built. It's basically because it still thinks you're clicking multiple times. A lil' loop to pause the program until the mouse button is released would fix that.

[Eero Tamminen]

Few observations:

• Settings screen lists only numbers, not options
• Music started only after visiting Settings screen
• After coming back from Setting, bottom of the two lower main screen buttons is missing
• Game crashes if settings.cfg file is not writable
• In the game play itself, direction buttons need often to be clicked multiple times something to happen
• Works with EmuTOS! (which isn't given as this was written in STOS)

[Encolpius]

Few observations:

• Settings screen lists only numbers, not options
• Music started only after visiting Settings screen
• After coming back from Setting, bottom of the two lower main screen buttons is missing
• Game crashes if settings.cfg file is not writable
• In the game play itself, direction buttons need often to be clicked multiple times something to happen
• Works with EmuTOS! (which isn't given as this was written in STOS)

Welp, sorry to keep everyone waiting here. I recently got sidetracked by my newfound interest in cassette tapes and taping. It is strangely comfy. As is the classic boombox I came into possession of recently and have been restoring.

Well, regarding EmuTOS, that's possibly because I compiled it with PPera's patched STOS V300 compiler which I believe is TOS version agnostic. It works on my Mega STE for that reason.

Settings.cfg needing to be writeable is because it auto-saves the settings after exiting the settings page. I have to do this because I haven't worked out how to check that a file is not set to read only. I can check disks being write protected with, I believe, a trap call. Though I don't think there's a similar one to check a read only file flag. Of course, the obvious thing would be

The numbers being listed is because I moved from using inkey$ to a custom assembly function with two trap calls to read the keyboard in an optimisation bid - and also because this would make it keyboard agnostic for users with QWERTZ or AZERTY keyboards. It basically shows the "raw" input from that. Strictly speaking I could insert a table to translate those into ASCII or scancodes.

I suspect the icon clicking may be less responsive than using the keyboard. I will look into that though. It shouldn't be; other mouse-only commands are just as responsive as they should be (opening chesticles, etc.) Though I might try using a proper series of switch constructs instead.

I haven't tested on EmuTOS, only 1.62 and 2.06, so other bugs may be a result of that, esp. as you didn't expect it to run on same.

For the record, 0.66 is approaching inexorably. But slower than intended. If only I had known about L. J. Greenhalgh's Control extension when I first implemented object handling.

EDIT: The opening level in this build is absolutely awash with monsters partly because I wanted to stress test the engine with everything in it. That may be why it is bogging. Other than a few specific areas, the final game won't have "horde" rooms necessarily, but instead for areas like that have just a few monsters but with respawn scripts in place.

[Eero Tamminen]

Settings.cfg needing to be writeable is because it auto-saves the settings after exiting the settings page. I have to do this because I haven't worked out how to check that a file is not set to read only. I can check disks being write protected with, I believe, a trap call. Though I don't think there's a similar one to check a read only file flag.

You don't need to specifically check whether disk or file is readable, write failure is that indicator, so you can just handle that.

[Encolpius]

And this is the latest build of Warriors of Light for those of you who might want to give it a go. Yes, there are several levels but only the prison level will work because I haven't got round to drawing the decorations for the cave wall set. Though all the other assets are in place.
I've also thrown in the sauce as an .asc if you want to pass comment on it. If you want to rebuild it yourself, just load it into STOS and load heap0_66.mbs and you should be able to run it.

Changes from 0.63:

- Objects are now less clunky and overhauled. This was the big thing from this one. They use Stevie Wonder which means they draw way faster and throw even faster still.
- Reworked inventory screen, you now have 16 pack slots. Also stats and buffs apply in real time, as well as a line to show status effects.
- New monster, the Mechamantis.
- New wall set, the Prison.
- Thin text used everywhere apart from entering the character name. PRINT is for losers.
- Pace of game slowed from 150bpm to 130bpm. It's barely noticeable and makes it significantly more responsive. Given the amount of things that are having to go off each game tick, this was necessary.
- Lots of drawing bugs squashed, in particular the one where doors would appear with buttons / pull chains where they shouldn't and you were in a diagonally adjacent square to them.
- Anti aliasing on all walls and nice outlines round most things. Makes the dungeon pop more and less pixel washy.
- Superior settings screen.
- Superior pause menu.
- The options sliding on to the screen while Quartet music is playing at the main menu are now a lot smoother and faster.
- Doors now slide open rather than "clunk" as they used to. I was trying to emulate the "clunkety clunkety clunkety" sound from Eye of the Beholder but it would have led to headaches further down the line as I'd have to track exactly how far open doors were at any given time. They now do a Grimrock style whoosh.
- Monster behaviours are less fluffy and more definite.
- Squashed a bug where objects would clone themselves if you picked them up while facing a certain direction and from a certain position on the ground.
- Erm... that's it.

Still to do for 0.70, the next version:

- Draw the cave decorations
- Draw the Cave Moth monster type, who is the prototype for the "high" monster which can ignore pits.
- Draw the Sandiff monster type, because he's the prototype for the ranged monster. I've decided all ranged monsters will use special non object projectiles otherwise the dungeon just gets filled up with knives and chakrams.
- Write a script interpreter in assembly language
- Write a program which generates the bytecode that the script interpreter comes up with, and also vice versa.
- Draw switches and ground plates and pits for all current wall sets. Also camouflaged switches for secrets.
- Tweak the level switching routine to automatically trigger with a nice "aaarrrggghhh!!" type animation when the player falls down a pit
- Decide how in the name of bloody hell I'm going to implement illusio-walls in a way that is fair to the player but not too screamingly obvious. Any suggestions?

[farvardin]

hello,

i've tried to run it with Hatari (tos 206 fr), I could create a character, after I hit "begin" I got "initializing dungeon", and then I got: "Error #008, press any key"

edit: I've read the manual and increased the RAM to 4 Mb! It runs now. But after a few moves, I got a "Error #082" this time!

[Encolpius]

Error 82. Okay, according to my STOS manual that's an illegal instruction. Which means one of my assembly language functions has gone wrong.

I haven't tried Hatari as an emulator. I have tested on STEEM 3.2 and a real STE. It could be an emulation issue.

It should also work on TOS 2.06 because the V300 compiler is totally TOS agnostic and I believe it even runs on EmuTos. Unless one of the extensions I use isn't compatible with TOS 2.06.

The one thing that might be is that if you're using a French TOS, the trap calls I use you read the keyboard might be giving a different and unexpected result to the key bindings I set by default which were with a UK TOS 1.62 and thus a qwerty keyboard, while your TOS means you have an azerty. Try going into settings and rebinding the keys to be either arrows or ZQSD for movement.

E: If you have a copy of STOS you can load the wol0_66E.asc into it with heap0_66.mbs and run in the interpreter to find exactly where this error is. You'll need the extensions Misty, Missing Link, Control, and Stevie Wonder. Possibly Extra as well. All these are on Exxos I believe.

E2: There is a bug in the file OBJDIR5.CSV which results in certain objects being displayed incorrectly. It is a fix you can implement yourself with a text editor but I have attached a fixed version.

[MM41]

Nice work Encolpius
I go back to explore in the corridors