The Upward Spiral - Skyline 1.1 work in progress

[RSS Bot]

I know that practically nobody downloaded Skyline 1.0, perhaps because of the utter lack of interesting storyline, so while I have planned some code improvements for Skyline 1.1, the biggest improvements --- more game. More maps, more dialog, more character interactions.

• Total game-data redesign
  
• Throwing away the 1.0 game world and starting over
  
• Some characters/puzzle elements may be re-used, but totally revamped
  
• More text, less wasteful graphics
  

The hoped-for changes:

• Do away with "missile stuck" / "missile loss" problems when using items (item-in-use sprites getting stuck or disappearing)
  
• Do away with "picture roll" due to Ursa script execution times -- I'm changing the script interpreter to have a timeout and interrupt scripts when it falls behind, rather than letting the picture roll. If the script interpreter falls too far behind, it'll even interrupt drawing of frames until it recovers ...
  
• Additional Ursa commands
  
• Additional compression of data sets (less spacing data) -- might also do a more highly compressed form for storybook graphics to save ROM
  
• Code improvements ... ? general performance
  

Some administrative-type changes:

• New developers' web site with development Subversion and Wiki system (Trac) --- this will allow Skyline (and any offshoot projects that might crop up ... I have some awkward ideas in that regards ...) to share a public Subversion repository and bug tracker, general wiki.
  
• New authoring toolkit (web-based) --- allow game designers (not programmers) to enter data using web-based forms and get back a binary cartridge image --- this would involve a text editor and a simple pair of sprite/tile editors --- and be a massive improvement over the current ASCII forms.
  • This is my #2 priority behind actualy bug fixes/performance issues in the code, as it will make it possible for me to do the additional design work. Stuff like picking NTSC, PAL, and SECAM colors for every tile are exceptionally awkward using text editors and look-up tables, and a nice EcmaScript application to do that stuff for me would be fantastic.
    
  • Specific apps: tile editor, sprite editor, and map editor, and a general text editor for editing Ursa scripts.
    

Thanks again for everyone's support, and hope 1.1 will be less of a disappointment to you all.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=4428