ravel back it time, see the golden age of Xoom, witness the horror of the NBC invasion as it rent the land, leaving misery and sorrow in its wake. Or, read old updates. It depends on your mood.
| Wednesday, November 15th, 2000 |
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Don't believe everything you read! Majora's Mask has "pop up", quite noticeable in some places. MGS has FMV, too. Don't you just love reviewers who make totally erroneous statements?
So, how about this election? Mr. Roboto vs. Daddy's Boy. Personally, I'd prefer a robot to a whinny child. At least robots are characterized by logical thought. And does anyone else find it odd that the man who flunked prep school, did poorly at Harvard and Yale, bankrupted three companies and traded Sammy Sosa away is currently going to become our president? I mean, even if you're Republican (and I disagree with the Party System) how can you want this man to lead the country? Is Daddy going to help him through his term? Are we electing Bush JR., or the people who fix everything for him? I'd rather see Nader in office. Too bad he didn't get his 5% share of the votes so that next election he'd be granted a snowball's chance in hell at the office... What a circus... This was a perfect time for such a close election, too, because now everybody sees how horribly inaccurate the voting tallies really are. They should hand count every disputed state, and just get an accurate number and resolve this. Clinton can stay in office two more years if we need him to, so no rush. Afterwards, the Federal Government needs to implement a unified, digital voting system. Each state would remain in charge of their own voting, but it needs to work the same way in every state, and it needs to be digital, so that the computers can count with a much smaller margin of error. Each "ballot" should be one of those little mini-CDs. You get handed one, drop it into the voting machine, make you choices, confirm them, (just like installing software) the computer burns the CD, double-checks that the "ballot" is correctly cast, drops it into an internal bin, and you're done. Then when it comes time to read the votes, they just have
a big machine where you drop all the mini-CDs in and it reads them one by one like a juke box. Since it's reading binary data, it can't make any of the mistakes associated with reading physical ballots.
In Haven's Saga land, I'm working on tiles. Screenshots to follow.
| Tuesday, November 7th, 2000 |
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Okay, so v2k+j is screwy because I'm the only person on the planet who uses the advanced features.
New subsection added: Flags, Banners, Standards and Emblems. Find it on the artwork page.
To anyone wondering when a demo will be availible (all none of you), the answer is not any time soon. There won't be a demo until most of the game systems are fully functional, and that includes artwork. The Interactive Preview has gone nowhere lately. I was working on my varible width font, and then I was going to work more on a test map that would be featured in the IP, but then v2k+j got screwy.
| Saturday, November 4th, 2000 |
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Said other project isn't going too well, Majora's Mask kicks ass, (as any game that manages to humourously work in the original dungeon theme would. Swiming as a Zora is cool, too.) Ogre Battle 64 is great as a game, very weak as a story, (major shortage of cutscenes, Dio and Leia are more or less silent for 80% of the game, final battle (Zenobian plot) needed work. Also, as much as I like "Revolt", almost every single level uses that music. I didn't even hear half of the soundtrack going through the Zenobian plot.) and v2k+j is screwy.
Anyway, OLAD is on continued hold until I find out why v2k+j is screwy. (Fonts and CHRs and images and stuff in general dun't* work.) I need v2k+j for the ChangeAll function, which is a critical part of my battle system. (I was going to pester Speed Bump into adding it to v2+i).
Buy Majora's Mask. Just do it. It's better than Ocarina. It evokes feelings I've not had since Link to the Past. Being a Goron or Zora rocks. Bombs blow up way better now. New and more interesting songs. Play the Song of Time backwards! It's just like Groundhog's Day, only staring Link, and funny in a different way. Learn the daily patterns of the townspeople. Take advantage of future knoledge. (Lotto anyone?) Check out Link's new fancy jumps. Get twenty-some-odd masks, most of them interesting or useful. Interact with characters from Ocarina, characters who only look like characters from Ocarina, and brand new characters. Features evil moon with evil grin. Way better cutscenes. Much livelier dialogue and more witty writing. Also starring Tatl the sarcastic fairy, who generally only tells you something once, and makes fun of you for not knowing what Leevers and Like-Likes are. (Also wonders why you think she has all the answers) Comes in gold cartrige. Has hologram lable. Is best Zelda game since Link to the Past.
*Yes, I meant to say "dun't"
| Monday, October 2nd, 2000 |
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Yet I defy all odds with another update just three days later. Yes, I realize that that last update wasn't up on Friday, but that's when I wrote it. I wish a large object would crush the dog next door... or at least put him into a coma. Either way, he needs to stop barking before I start pelting him with paintballs. I lived here long before he moved in, I should be barking at him. This'll probably be the final update for a while. I'm working on the opening theme for another project (which I'm only involved with, I'm not trying to make two games at once) as well, so OLAD is on complete hold for the moment.
| Friday, September 29th, 2000 |
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The Decathalon is a medal compitition, Synchonized Swimming is not... And who thought that combining basketball with soccer and putting it in a swimming pool was a good idea? And on top of that called it Water Polo, even though it bears no resemblance to the game where you ride a horse and hit balls with mallets.
This might be my last update for a while, as Ogre Battle VI is on its way, and unlike my last eagerly-awaited entertainment purchase (FFVIII) this one should actually be worth it. Now I just have to finish Tactics Ogre...
As far as that other, silly little game those guys are putting together, Of Light and Darkness, there are actual tiles now! And they actually look pretty good. Maybe I'll build something interesting out of them and take a screenshot. I'm redoing the title screen to emphasize the fact that Haven's Saga is the title of the series, not the game. I'm trying to get around to the combat sprites, too, but the whole battle system is in such an experemental state, mostly waiting on the new stat/item system which I have fully planned but not a single line coded.
Oh, and due to my dislike of slimy corporate things, such as the Peacock Overlord here, I may be moving this website to my puny little personal webspace and using i-drive to store major files now that their servers are back up. Or failing that (the site is already too large to fit without some cuts), maybe move to chocobo.org. I still have access to a 20mb account there that an old friend of mine opened years ago for a project we were working on. (A project which somewhat indirectly led to the current incarnation of Haven's Saga) ... I'm currently resisting the urge to go into a whole explanation of how Dark Magick and Haven's Saga relate to each other... Errgh...plot spoilers... must...resist...
| Thursday, September 7th, 2000 |
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You see, the whole point of difficulty settings is to allow the developers to add some actual challange to the game without hurting the delicate Squaresoft fans, who probably haven't experienced 'challange' since the Marsh Cave... Oh, that's right, nobody remembers Final Fantasy anyway. (Granted, Apollo in SaGa 2 was actually hard.) Well, the actual subject of this update is two fold. First off, work continues on the Interactive Preview. It runs, but all you can do is read character profiles (and no, it's not the same info from the website) and watch the opening sequence, which was never finished anyway. (I'm working on that too) And secondly, the battle system is growing closer to actual code. I have most of it worked out now, so I may actually begin coding soon. Believe me, the graphics in this thing are going to be beyond the scope of every 2D RPG yet produced. Probably not in individual quality, but in overall presentation...ouch. ;) 60+ frames of animation per character plus the component system... And no one has seen the battlegrounds yet... If I have my way, 640x960 areas (keep in mind the game runs 320x240) with partial background animation and semi-realistic
damage from spells and special attacks. (Which means, given V2+i's current capibilities, you'll need a PIII 700 to play it... ;) Not that I have one... :( )
| Thursday, August 10th, 2000 |
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Okay, so Valkyrie Profile has difficulty settings. I didn't know that yesterday.
| Wednesday, August 9th, 2000 |
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It's been a while. A lot has changed since my last update. First and foremost, we've switched to Speed Bump's V2+i, because it has _real_ 16-bit color support, and is updated at least twice a month. (With actual, useful fixes and additions that don't require you to reformat your VC)
In addition, I've decided against the original character/item system I had coded, as it lacked depth and was dependent on masses of Global Arrays, which I've since discovered are quite flaky under certain circumstances. (Such as within my battle system) My new system is almost entirely custom coded in order to avoid VERGE's buggy Globals, however, I'm still working on coding a method of storing strings without using an actual string variable. The entire system is based on offset data within Bytes and Quads, both to reduce memory usage (Why use a 32-bit variable to store 1s and 0s?) and to get around the fact that VERGE's Globals aren't entirely stable. I've been thinking though that I may not need to bother with a custom String function, as the Global String Arrays never gave me any trouble, and I'm not creating instances of an item out of thin air, so having a preset array entry attached to each memory heap should be fine.
In other news, Haven's Saga has gained difficulty settings, thus setting it apart from every other RPG I've ever seen. (You know, this is going to end up like a Star Wars thing... The game is titled "of Light and Darkness", and is the second chapter in the Haven's Saga Quintology, but it, like A New Hope, will end up being called by the series name. Even I call it Haven's Saga all the time... Hell, the title screen even makes it look like HS is the title.) Ehhr, back to the point, the game currently has four difficulty settings, Easy, Normal, Hard and Nightmare. These settings modify a number of game elements, with combat being the most obvious. (By the way, the other four games are First Dawn, A Tale of Two Crystals, Dark Revolution and Battlefields of the Mind.) I'm in a weird mood this morning...
Currently, I'm working on the first concrete evidence that this game actually exists: The Interactive Preview. Not to be confused with a demo, this contains no actual gameplay segments, but provides a chance to experience the game's field maps, combat system and cinematics. Now that I've said that, you have to understand that there will be a considerable delay while I get around to actually coding/drawing/scripting the features I just mentioned.
Also, if I ever get around to it, there's a new section waiting to be added to the website wherein you can learn about the world of Haven. Read up on it's history, geography and mythology in a series of documents and short stories authored by yours truly. (When I get around to it) God, I am in a weird mood this morning. Sleep depravation due to Final Fantasy Tactics... My former Walstanian Liberation Army guys were getting killed against that Necromancer/Summoner/Bounty Hunter (the one who summons Zoshnell first turn), so I went to play with Ramza and his Hokuten buddies, and now I'm tired. Anyway, I have so many wonderful things planned for Haven's Saga... Oh, yeah. I added background images to most of the site. It looks better now.
General site redesign. Most everything was redesigned to be the same as before though, so it's not that apparent, aside from the new Artwork page. (And the removal of the worthless and never-updated Technical Info page)
And big bonus points to EGM for this little screenshot. This qualifies as 'getting' ** on the main page. ;)
Static sprite number nine is up. Since it is neither Elen nor Dolph, this person as well shall remain nameless.
Uploaded a slightly touched up version of the Jera animation and added an eighth character to the static sprites. Due partially to the colors used, and mostly to the white background, she looks washed out, as if her contrast is off badly, but there's actually nothing wrong. She's wearing tan and has dark skin. (Though nowhere near as dark as the big guy.) Also availible is a .CHR sample of the same character, wherein she looks much better.
There's also a new MP3 sample up. It's a [bad] sample of the boss theme. Get it from the music page.
Uploaded all the sprites that I've drawn. None of these are new, but I haven't shown them to anyone yet.
I know the animation needs work, but I don't have an animation program, so I have to draw them frame by frame in Photoshop and make animated GIFs out of them for testing. Hopefully I can get the animation engine into the battle system so that I can just test them quick in VERGE. It still needs a lot of testing however, as I believe I calculated that with the component system, each char will require 21 blits per frame, x5 party members plus 10 or more enemies (even if they are less detailed) and you can see how this plus the interface rapidly approaches 200+ blits per frame. Fortunately, the battle system currently runs at 107FPS on my 233MMX,
and since I only really care about keeping it over 25 FPS, I should have the performance I need, as long as I make sure to optimize everything.
Speaking of the component system, I've always been bothered by the fact that the new crop of (mostly crap) 3D RPGs don't bother to allow you to see the equipment on your characters. (Except The Legaia Legend, go figure.) Oh, sure, they let you see your weapons (and in FF8, that IS all the equipment) but each character is limited to a single weapon type. Anyway, following the example of Ultima Online and Diablo II, I've decided to develop a component system, whereby each apparent sprite is actually made up of many layered sprites so that small details can be changed without drawing a completely different sprite. This is very significant when you consider that any combination of different equipment types can then be mixed on a given character. Rather than having to draw every possible combination of weapon and armor (which consists of chest, arm, leg and head pieces, literally thousands of combinations), I only have to draw the character, and then draw each piece of equipment, and the game composites them to create the final sprite. The Jera animation you see is the basic Jera sprite with the Rapier and Leather Armor sprites layered over it.
I've also updated the music page. No, no new samples, but I did add the two new songs, "Showdown" and "Can I Stain My Hands For Justice?" to the track list.
Not much has happened in the past month. I've composed two new songs, and I have a bunch of unfinished sprites on my drive. I've drawn seven of the characters, but aside from Soric and Jera, I've done only a single frame each, to get a feel for the characters' looks. I'm working on animating Jera now, and also drawing some tiles. I'd love to get some actual gameplay shots up. Especially since the bugs in 16-bit color mode are preventing any sort of demo release.
Wheee, 16-bit VERGE! Oh, what a happy time! Let us all frolic about in CLUNK!
That was reality. And it hurts. Yes, 16-bit VERGE is out at last. It's also full of bugs and barely compatible with the previous version. To be fair though, I don't think this version was meant to be released for its 16-bit support. It's buggy, it's incompatible, and it's almost completely undocumented. The 8-bit mode seems to be a good improvment over the previous release, and at last, for the first time in VERGE history, the HookTimer is stable. (Or at least stable enough) The fixes to the font subset methods and GrabRegion()'s bizzare glitch are welcome as well. The 16-bit mode looks really nice, and allows the loading of 8-bit images regardless of palettes, but unfortunately has some sort of trouble freeing malloc'ed memory that dumps to DOS with a prefix corruption at best and sometimes hangs the system completely. I'm also confused as to how the GrabRegion() function can even work in 16-bit mode, since you need to malloc more than just width * height to hold 16-bit data, yet the EXACT same code works in 8 and 16-bit modes. Though in 16-bit mode it crashes when it tries to free the memory. I suppose the malloc command might have been reprogramed to allocate twice as much memory when in 16-bit mode, and perhaps they forgot to take that into account with free(), hence the memory error.
| Saturday, March 11th, 2000 |
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Well, thanks to a bug in VERGE, a real nasty one, too, the battle system is on hold. I think it's releated to the memory corruption bug that Aen and vecna were hunting down with their tracer function, because it involves incorrect writes to global arrays when multiple nested functions are running in a loop. It's a killer, because programming around it is all but impossible, since once you pass the threshhold as it were, it occurs constantly, even in parts of your code that haven't been modified. The battle system is now on indifinite hold, so I'm back to working on the menu system, hence today's pair of screenshots depict the battle system in its current state, and some resent changes to the menu.
By the way, I stopped reporting updates to the Progressometer because it was getting silly. I always update it whenever I add an entry to this page.
| Monday, February 21st, 2000 |
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I've updated the Concept Art section (it's on the screenshots page) with new versions of the old moon and lighting pictures, plus I've included a nifty 3D render of the planet and, at last, the map is avaliible.
| Saturday, February 18th, 2000 |
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There isn't all that much progress to report, although the battle system has progressed enough that it can be sucessfully activated now. There aren't any enemies yet, and we're still pretty far from a quick demo release.
The menu has been polished a bit more, and the remaining options have been inserted, though most are still disabled. I've uploaded a bunch of screenshots, though most of them are updates to the previous menu shots, there is one of the battle system and one from the opening.
I've counted up the current development stats again, this time including some additional data. This information is probably of no interest to anyone other than myself and the few others of my kind.
VC+DAT= 214,164 bytes
Raw file size for .VC and Data files
Game= 5.4 MB
Estimated file size for the entire game at this point
Planning= 204,763 bytes (Standard ASCII formated TXTs)
Raw file size for all the .TXT files containing plans and information
309 ints (mostly arrays), 25 strings, 142 functions. 17,577 lines. (This is way off. I think it's counting each line twice.)
Information reported (very poorly) by VCC
| Friday, January 14th, 2000 |
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Well, VERGE still runs on this side of 2000, so Haven's Saga is still on track. (Albeit progressing slowly) I've been going through one of those bla periods wherein you just don't want to work on something. Even though I should be working on those damn sprites I've been working on the battle system instead. I really have no clue what Castles is doing, and I want a very specific battle system. I'm blending what I perceive as the best aspects of Final Fantasy, Lunar and Suikoden's engines and tossing in some bits and pieces of various PC RPGs. (Yes, there will be combo attacks, but not exactly as Suikoden handles them)
As in Suikoden, there will be multiple battle modes. Four of them are currently planned. Aside from standard party battles there will also be one-on-one duels, (This is the most ambitious part of the system. I'm going to design something a lot more complex than Rock-Paper-Scissors, but hopefully without making it tedious)
small units combat, (This aspect will be very much in the style of Ogre Battle) and full army-vs-army battles.
(These will probably play out Langrisser style) My brother and I strongly believe that a game should not limit itself to a single engine "Just because it's ". The best games are the ones that use multiple engines whenever necessary, rather than limiting themselves artificially. I'm beginning to wonder if I should classify Haven's Saga as an RPG at all. I'd prefer to think of it as an "experience", a game that exists to be played, a game that refuses to be bound by genre. Then again, if Suikoden is considered an RPG, I guess Haven's Saga is, too. ;)
| Sunday, December 19th, 1999 |
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Well, in over a month I have little progress to report on the sprite animations. I just haven't found that 'just right' yet. At least I've been working on the system designs and characters in the meantime. There's a new splash image up (it's the back cover of the soundtrack CD) and three new MP3 samples. Well, actually, one of them is a better version of the sample that was already up, but the song has been changed a bit since then.
There was a general revision of the progressometer in there somewhere, too.
| Thursday, November 4th, 1999 |
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Most of the recent progress has been centered on HookRetrace'ed graphic effects (Fog, rain, letterboxing,
motion blurs, hopefully lens flares) and on near-endless character sprite experiments. I think I finally found a style that fits the game format, looks at least passable, and isn't an enormous strain on my artistic abilities.
Aside from that, I've been designing more characters -the list is up to thirty five now- and filling in bits and pieces of the story. There's finally a title menu in place as well. I'm going to experiment with the Pack files
soon in preparation for an eventual early-early-alpha release, and it'll make playtesting easier, too. I have
five PCs ranging from a 486DX/66 to a Celeron MMX/333 (Why throw the old machines out?) so I can do some
pretty good speed-testing. Plus the machines range from 8 to 64 megs of RAM, so I can judge memory
requirements. I have a 286SX/25 with 2 megs of RAM as well, but that one's out of the question. ;)
The game usually maintains a frame rate between 20 and 30 FPS which is fine, although some of the graphics
effects (especially the motion blur) knock up to two-thirds off the frame rate. At least it's better than the original, un-optimized motion blur which rendered at seven frames per second. ;)
The game's VC currently stands at 7,064 lines, 239 integers (Many of them arrays), 15 strings and 119 functions.
Because of the rather high number of arrays, there are actually well over 12,000 variables being tracked just in the item and character systems alone. I must admit I am impressed with VERGE's ability to take almost everything I've tossed at it without a crash. (It did crash once when I tried to write an SNES mode7 emulation,
but I was asking it to clear, write and scale 240 graphic buffers each frame) Despite all this, it still appears to run on a 486 with 8 megs of ram.
| Wednsday, September 29th, 1999 |
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More screenshots: updated status screen, configuration screen, equipment screen.
| Sunday, September 19th, 1999 |
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There's a new screenshot up for the status window, which is now almost finished. Boy did I ever nit-pick the positions of all those subwindows and icons... The cursor is used to select between viewing status effects/ailments and elemental strengths/weaknesses. There just wasn't enough room for both.
Also, I just realized that I never uploaded the colorized picture of Jera. Cheyenne (if that's still her nick...it changes often...) CG colored it and I added the background effects. I think it looks pretty good considering
what a poorly scanned pencil sketch it was.
| Wednesday, September 15th, 1999 |
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Well, Final Fantasy VIII is out of the way (and unfortunately another let-down, but that's another topic all
together...) so work should resume on Haven's Saga shortly. I've uploaded screen shots of the most resent
build of the menu system. It should be noted that the main and inventory screens are fully functional and
are reading information directly from the data sets. The inventory is fully scrollable and allows empty slots
to exist in between items. The auto-arrange function does not work yet however. The stats system is about
75% complete, but I haven't programed the status window to display them yet. (Only the HP/ME/MP/STM/EXP
stats are displayed, the same as the main window)
| Tuesday, August 25th, 1999 |
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The end of the world is coming!! Three updates in four days! The menu system is starting to shape up, and
the character data file is fully functional. I've uploaded a screen shot, so check out the screen shots page.
There's also a shot of the new title screen. (Yes, another new one)
| Tuesday, August 24th, 1999 |
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Whoa, another update! How'd that happen? I re-wrote part of the text on the main screen, since it was months
out of date. I've also made more progress on my systems. The item system is almost in place, and the
data set for the character system is pretty close to complete, currently at 109 vars per character. What can
I say, the system tracks alot of data, and it's completely open-ended. Not a single thing is hard-coded.
| Sunday, August 22nd, 1999 |
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General revision of the progressometer. Also in the news, my increasing coding skills and Castles' continued absence has led me to begin work on my own game systems. I've finished (though not tested) the item template, and am currently working on the character template. Each character is currently defined by 70
variables, and I'm not finished yet. This level of detail will allow great variety in the character stats. Many (about 20 I guess) of those variables are used for my custom level system though.
General revision of the progressometer. Plus I moved the MP3 sample from rdatoc.com (which no longer
exists) over to Xoom itself. I just hope they don't give me any crap about it. I wrote it, I arranged it, I recorded
it, I compressed it, and I uploaded it. It's MINE, not some bootleg pop song.
General revision of the progressometer.
Added two new screen shots and a general revision of the progressometer.
General revision of the progressometer.
| Tuesday, March 16th, 1999 |
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Added two new screen shots and a general revision of the progressometer.
| Sunday, February 21st, 1999 |
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Added a new screen shot. I saw TearDragon's new logo, and for some reason I took it as a challenge. So, I rendered a new title screen, which I actually like better than my original 2D one.
| Thursday, February 18th, 1999 |
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I forgot to mention that I uploaded another XM sample, the Haven Theme. It's been up for weeks. What's new
in this update is a new graphic on the main page, which provides the first solid public information regarding the world of Haven, and a general revision of the progressometer.
| Thursday, February 4th, 1999 |
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I uploaded an XM sample of one of the game's songs, "And Darkness". You'll find it on the Music Samples page.
| Tuesday, February 2nd, 1999 |
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I updated the site and added two new pages. You're currently reading one of them, and the other is the Characters page. I've posted information and names regarding three of the playable characters. It's probably no secret that those three are whom you'd consider the Main Characters. Yes I said characters. All three of them are "Main", so, unlike certain games which shall remain nameless, if you don't like one of them, there's still two more.
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Well, in the process of writing this update, I added another page, bringing the total to three! That's three new pages! Ahahahah! *Lightning flashes, thunder rumbles* Find out everything you never wanted to know about
us by clicking on "The Team".
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Hello, me again. I updated the screenshots page this time. I think it's the last update for today though.