[Dragon]

I can hear that theme in my head right now...

Happy.

But wait!  There's more!  Order now and you get this revamped Shofixti Scout absolutely free.


We might even throw in a Mycon Podship!


.

In other words I felt like drawing the rest of the stats screens too.  I think all the others have been posted here before but you can see somewhat updated versions over at The Pages of Now and Forever should you feel that way inclined.

[Firefox]

I was (and still am) writing the gameplay for Star Control in my own implementation of SmallTalk

Wow, that's very cool stuff!

[Cymon]

Okay, and all very cool, but I WANT TO PLAY EET!

[Dragon]

Not an update, I just felt like teasing Cymon

[Cymon]

I need a picture of Cymon shaking his fist.

But the worst part is I knew. I knew when I saw that you updated it that it was not going to say "first playable beta. Download here." I knew it. And yet, I clicked. I clicked because I had to.

[Sphere]

But the worst part is I knew. I knew when I saw that you updated it that it was not going to say "first playable beta. Download here." I knew it. And yet, I clicked. I clicked because I had to.

I sympathize buddy ;-)

[Marioman]

Any news of a little demo maybe??

[Dragon]

Any news of a little demo maybe??

I was hoping to get something out when I posted here, but alas, I just don't seem to have had any free time recently.  I really want to get something out soonish though.  After my little optimisation debacle I'm going to write the first version in C++ which will speed dev up significantly.

[Sphere]

I was hoping to get something out when I posted here, but alas, I just don't seem to have had any free time recently.  I really want to get something out soonish though.  After my little optimisation debacle I'm going to write the first version in C++ which will speed dev up significantly.

Yay, and in my experience seeing cool things that you have made speeding across the screen is good for motivation and morale :-)

[Dragon]

I'd like to ask a favour.  Could you please test this file and let me know if it runs or not.  I've also attached the same file to this post. 

Hopefully you should find yourself in a small multi-coloured box.  That's the best outcome.  The worst outcome is that it runs but all you see is a pale blue window.

If it crashes and burns.  ie: a window *briefly* pops up and then goes away again you may need to install either the VC2005 runtime or the DirectX 2009 (March) runtime.  If you know you've installed both of these and it still does nothing then can you please post the contents of the log.txt file here. 

The reason I'm asking is that I thought I'd ironed out most graphics card related bugs (remember the early Star Control tech demo) but it looks like I was mistaken.  I'm developing on an NVidia 7600 which runs fine but I tried running on an ATI 4890 which does the pale blue screen of death thing.  Not cool.

I'd like to know if anyone else running ATI cards has the same issue.  I sort of suspect that the card itself is broken rather than being an ATI driver bug but if it is a driver issue I suppose I'll have to fix it.  I'm utterly stumped as to what it could be though...

If it does run you can push 'c' to swap to a controllable camera.  Slightly more interesting stuff in the readme.txt file.

[Cymon]

I've got an ATI card at home. If anyone will break it, I will.

At the same time if there's anyone this had better )@#% well run for it's me.

I'll let you know... hopefully tonight.

[fwibbler]

I just get the corner of a green box (see image)


I'm using an ATI Radeon X1550 (so quite old)

[Dragon]

I just get the corner of a green box (see image)
I'm using an ATI Radeon X1550 (so quite old)

Thanks, that's running perfectly.  An empty blue screen would have been bad.  Star Control proper runs all the down to an X300 which is I'm so perplexed that it doesn't run on a 4890.

I'm starting to suspect that somehow I've ended up with a bad combination of drivers installed.  It's strange that most other games work.

I've got an ATI card at home. If anyone will break it, I will.

I'm counting on you, give it hell! ;-)

Somebody else has got to get this error, it can't just be me.  That'd be such a co-incidence that I'll feel bad about not playing the lotto for the rest of the year.

[Cymon]

It worked once I installed DirectX 2009 (March) runtime, tho I can't delete the blinkin' directory now that I've run it and closed it. I hate having to reboot close a program properly.

But, yeah, graphically it worked.

[Dragon]

tho I can't delete the blinkin' directory now that I've run it and closed it. I hate having to reboot close a program properly.

Yay!  I knew you'd come though for me. 

Although seriously I hoped I'd beaten that bug into submission months ago.  Are you running Vista by any chance?  It only seemed to occur on Vista and even then, not always.

Also could you post the contents of the log file please.  The last line should read "Main world destruction.  Done." but I don't know what I'm hoping it would rather read.

[Sphere]

Cool. It runs here too (on an nVidia 7600 Go).

Interesting Box you got there, only being able to see the inside and all ;-)

Screenshot is attached below.

Incidentally, I am running the Windows 7 RC (Build 7100).

[Cymon]

Yay!  I knew you'd come though for me. 

Although seriously I hoped I'd beaten that bug into submission months ago.  Are you running Vista by any chance?  It only seemed to occur on Vista and even then, not always.

Also could you post the contents of the log file please.  The last line should read "Main world destruction.  Done." but I don't know what I'm hoping it would rather read.

Sorry I haven't run this. I need to run it on my main computer which is generally the play place of my wife, I don't go there often any more. Actually I was there this morning and forgot. Sorry.

Hey, don't you go blaming the delays on me, you've been the one taking so long on this one.

[Endurion]

On an Intel 965 I get the same green corner, so I guess that's ok then.

[Dragon]

Thanks again guys.  I'd love to say I knew what caused just that one box to break - you know, the only other box I tested on - but I haven't a clue.  For the time being I'm consiging this issue to my wierd-stuff-that-computers-do bin and moving on.

As an update on dev:  my plan was to take it slow from Jan to 1st May because we had a big deadline at the office.  Unfortunately that deadline has grown arms and legs, possibly it's own evil sentience, and is now rampaging over the country side.  Which is to say I wish I knew when I'd get a decent block of free time to work on this but I just don't.

It looked like things were finally over which is when I started working on a release - so close - but I turned out to be quite wrong.

Eventually, eventually.

[Marioman]

Thought I would give this a nudge to see if it's moved any 

[Dragon]

Thought I would give this a nudge to see if it's moved any 

It has indeedy.  Although I've been off on a few Mad Tangents^TM since my last post.  

Somewhere along the line I went and rewrote the UI (and all the infrastructure behind it).  That caused me to reconsider how I drew and edited text and that caused me to write a super text editor widget (word processor might be a better term).  I then realised I didn't like how my input framework worked and began the grand unification of every input device I could think of.  And that showed up a major bug in my image editing routines (they both share the same bit fiddling code).

Oh, and somewhere in there I wrote an XML parser an MD5 hasher and rewrote my file handling routines.  Disturbingly the release of Star Control depends on all of the above due to my: "Will not hack it out" code style change towards the end of the 2008 compo.

I am slowly popping the stack back to the UI and then Star Control.  I haven't updated here because all the code I've written in the last 5 months would seem to be largely unrelated.

[Cymon]

It has indeedy.  Although I've been off on a few Mad Tangents^TM since my last post.  

Somewhere along the line I went and rewrote the UI (and all the infrastructure behind it).  That caused me to reconsider how I drew and edited text and that caused me to write a super text editor widget (word processor might be a better term).  I then realised I didn't like how my input framework worked and began the grand unification of every input device I could think of.  And that showed up a major bug in my image editing routines (they both share the same bit fiddling code).

Oh, and somewhere in there I wrote an XML parser an MD5 hasher and rewrote my file handling routines.  Disturbingly the release of Star Control depends on all of the above due to my: "Will not hack it out" code style change towards the end of the 2008 compo.

I am slowly popping the stack back to the UI and then Star Control.  I haven't updated here because all the code I've written in the last 5 months would seem to be largely unrelated.

It's called technical debt and don't I know all about that. 'Bout to pay some off on ASCIIpOrtal, but it's necessary before I go online. There are times I just want to scrap the whole thing and start over. I wont, but I want to.

[Sphere]

There are times I just want to scrap the whole thing and start over. I wont, but I want to.

I have found that that works remarkably well on occasion, especially allowing the rectification of initially poor design decisions, but then I discovered after my third comsci module at varsity that every time I learn something new I think "Hmm, that would work well in Project A..." and then I proceed with yet another re-write ;-(

Luckily all my comsci modules are done now ;-) so hopefully I can get something out at last :-)