The Dink Network

Finals &c.

January 12th 2005, 03:35 PM
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I have a chess tournament this weekend, finals next week, and another tournament the weekend after that. I will assuredly do poorly on all three. Afterwards, though, I'll have plenty of time to work on the dmod I started during winter break.

I won't say what it's about, or what features I plan on including; for me, revealing details is counterproductive, somehow. Plus, it'd suck if I said, "hey this is gonna be awesome" and then didn't finish it.

I will, however, give some release dates: I plan to have a beta done sometime in between August 1 and Halloween 2005, and hopefully a full version will get released on December 25. If not, meh. I find, though, that without deadlines, I never accomplish anything...
January 12th 2005, 03:57 PM
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Binirit
Peasant She/Her
 
Cool.

If august is the deadline, then either the D-mod is rather large or you really don't have anty time to work on it.
January 12th 2005, 08:51 PM
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igloo15
Peasant He/Him
 
you should plan smaller deadlines like finish this city by so and so or finish this script by this day blah blah. I find that long deadlines are no good because they seem daunting and never work out.
June 2nd 2005, 04:11 PM
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Wow. I had no where near as much time to work on it as I thought I'd have. Since schools been out (about a week, now) I've made good progress, though.

Anyways, I was going to push forward the release date to December 2006, because I doubt I'll have time to work on it during school next year, and it could only be released at Christmas time.

Then I saw when SimonK was (ostensibly) releasing Necromancer, and I figured it'd be nice if they came out around the same time (I won't have to worry about winning any of those pesky awards, lol). Plus, Chicago starts late, so I should be able to get it to beta status by the time I have to go back to school (it's a longish but fast paced quest.)
June 23rd 2005, 02:55 PM
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I'm almost done with the first part (it's a four part cycle, I guess). Considering I started right after Christmas, this may not bode well.
June 30th 2005, 11:03 PM
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Yay, more progress! It took me nearly all week to iron out the bugs from last time, but now I've layed out the mapping and some of the scripts for the first half of the second part (the third eighth?). I'm about ready to put my fist through a window though... nothing ever works as I want it to.

For instance, I have this in the .ini:

load_sequence graphics\rain\rain- 894 50 0 0 -1 -1 1 1

Somehow, this sprite is not centered at its upper left corner... that is when I do a create_sprite(0, 0, 0, 894, 1) half of it winds up off the screen. Needless to say, when I tryed to change it with the editor, it told me that 0,0,-1,-1,1,1 was a valid setup for placing the center in the upper left corner... sigh.

Yeah, I'm going to do something similar to FIAT for the rain effect. Dan explained it somewhere... you divide the screen into quarters (or whatever) and have each do random frames at regular intervals.
June 30th 2005, 11:08 PM
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redink1
King He/Him United States bloop
A mother ducking wizard 
I seem to remember some problems with using 0... try

load_sequence graphics\rain\rain- 894 50 1 1 -1 -1 1 1
July 1st 2005, 12:28 AM
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That fixed it right up like a blind man doing a chainsaw circucision. Thanks.
July 4th 2005, 05:04 PM
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Ok, I've gotten through the intial stages of the second part. Sadly, they lack the intense fighting of the beginning... my ideas for monsters and weapons haven't been as good. Anyways, if anyone wants to see what I've got so far, I can try to email it to them, although I doubt my email can handle so large an attachment.
July 5th 2005, 01:27 AM
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Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
Sure, I'd like to take a look.
July 5th 2005, 02:36 PM
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I sent it to your rpgplanet address, hopefully that still works?
July 5th 2005, 03:15 PM
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Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
Yeah, though I'd suggest sending stuff to my redrecondite address from now on (which I just now added to my profile).
July 24th 2005, 03:28 PM
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I just uploaded (hopefully) a dull little tile-based puzzle dmod that I made to develop the tools needed to add a similarly dull tile-based puzzle level to my main project. In case anyone downloads it and wonders about the rules, you can't have two stars at once, and without a blue star the water kills you.

EDIT: also, I'm going to get around to replaying/re-reviewing Dinkdragon's dmod (as I promised to do earlier), hopefully sometime before August.
August 18th 2005, 09:57 PM
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Yay, tommorow is my last day of work.

I've decided to divide this project in half, which makes sense because there's a 10 year gap between the point where I'll leave off and the next part due to a neat twist I kinda stole from "Diamond Age." That would put me at around 70% done (with the first release)... except I've realized that I need to rework everything I've done because it's too confusing. I really tried to keep the dialogue concise, but I overdid it, so it's impossible to tell what's going on, what you have to do next, etc.

School starts again in mid-September. I plan to spend the next week building a small test dmod to balance some new monsters/weapons. Then I'll finish the last areas (hopefully by early September) and start reworking the dialogue, adding characters, fixing bugs, etc. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to get a beta up before my all my free time is consumed by math and such.

The release date is still tenatively Christmas.
April 6th 2006, 02:57 PM
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I had finished making about 80% of "A very Dink Christmas" by the end of September. Then I had to go to school. When I played it again, over spring break, I realized that it sucks hard, and I'll probably never finish making it, for several reasons:

1. There are way too many attempts at humor, almost none of which are funny. Your first quest is to retrieve several scrolls from the four transvestites of the apocalypse and give them to the shadowy warlock known as the Pedophile... because, you know, everybody laughs at pedophilia. As unfunny as that part is, the humor only goes downhill from there.
2. It's impossible to figure out what the hell is going on. (In terms of the story.)
3. Way too linear.
4. There are two bugs (one serious, the other very annoying) that I have been unable to fix.
5. I had a pretty cool story, but I've completely forgotten it.

On the other hand, the fighting is challenging but balanced, and there are a lot of good enemies, along with a few good weapons and spells. The most likely outcome is that I'll release the enemy and weapon scripts in a pack, and maybe submit the dmod as unfinished.
April 6th 2006, 05:13 PM
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Tal
Noble He/Him United States
Super Sexy Tal Pal 
I wanna play.
April 6th 2006, 11:16 PM
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VaultDweller
Peasant He/Him United States
Wanderer of the Wasteland 
Honestly Milobones that doesnt sound bad. Come on release it!

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
April 7th 2006, 05:02 AM
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metatarasal
Bard He/Him Netherlands
I object 
Hmmm... Too bad, I would have liked to play it...
April 7th 2006, 11:26 PM
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VaultDweller
Peasant He/Him United States
Wanderer of the Wasteland 
With all the work he's already done the missing story wont matter much. I mean just abandoning it is a total waste and isnt as good as a D-mod with no story.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
April 8th 2006, 08:16 PM
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In response to popular demand, I have uploaded the file in it's current, unfinished, never-to-be-finished state. Please note the following bugs/idiosyncracies:

0.The dragon "carcass" they worship in New Eden is supposed to be a dragon carcass.

1.In Albert's basement, you will eventually need to enter the spirit plane via the well of souls.

2.It is not at all obvious how to use the spirit whip. The combos are as follows:
Shift (to cast) + direction = straight attack in that direction.
Shift (to cast) + control = whip attack in direction you are facing.
Shift (to cast) + shift = makes little red things circle around you.
Shift (to cast) + shift + direction = powerful straight attack.
Shift (to cast) + shift + control = projectile attack which removes 1 HP.
Shift (to cast) + shift + shift = makes acid rain thingies circle around you.

3.In Albert's basement, the leaper boss has no actual plot value (it did originally). Killing it might give you some defense points though, which are needed to go through the fire.

4.The only way to kill the Hermaphant (the tough stone giant boss) is with the Earth spell you find near the stairs (I forget what it is called.) You could theoretically kill him with the whip's shift shift control attack, but it would take a long time.

5.The optimum drawback on the bow is 8/10.

6.In the village of exiles, you have to use the alcohol on the fireplace several times before it actually registers as an explosion. Ditto using the water to put it out. I tried to fix this several times, using different methods to trigger the explosion, but for some reason I couldn't get anything to work.

7.There is a severe bug in the fire village. For some reason, killing people will occasionally set the story variable too high. I forget what this does, but it's bad. I have no idea why this bug happens; it's occurence is almost totally random. It's not very frequent though (1 in 4 plays, maybe? I really don't know.)

8.The mines in part 2 are empty, I never got around to making the mine quest, which was supposed to give you some cash to help get the fault sword, which was the only which could kill some of the water monsters. Oh well.

9.Once you get to Cowper's island, the game is basically over. More stuff was supposed to happen, but I don't think it ever will...
April 9th 2006, 05:58 AM
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Simeon
Peasant He/Him Netherlands
Any fool can use a computer. Many do. 
I have uploaded the file in it's current, unfinished, never-to-be-finished state

Reminds me, I have a D-Mod in unfinished, hopefully-to-be-finished state somewhere..
April 9th 2006, 07:56 AM
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Christiaan
Bard They/Them Netherlands
Lazy bum 
Wow, sounds very promising. Especially the spirit whip. Does it work smoothly and bugless?
April 9th 2006, 05:00 PM
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Occasionally the shift-control attack will refuse to fire in the right direction. This problem generally goes away on its own, IIRC, after switching spells or something.