Castle Paradox

Solsund · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 10:59 pm Post subject: It's back!

Ok,

My tech demo program is back after losing the whole set of code in the main file.

Not much new to see in this version besides actual support for the new variety of password.

However, the inside has changed drastically with more general support for things. I don't have the drawing functions up yet but I have support for walkabout pictures and I can use that support to get hero/enemy pictures going fast as they use the same style for the graphics.

Once I've got the code for drawing them running they will fit right in with the rest with minimum effort so I hope to have that going very soon, maybe tomorrow night.

Thanks to YSort and James for helping me with the data to get passwords going.

It's really coming along, and I'm enjoying writing code again. Happy

http://gameguru.freeservers.com/techdemo/index.html

Solsund · Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 8:55 am Post subject: Stupid freeservers.

Is there a better free host I can get than freeservers?

It won't even let me download my own file, even when I'm logged into the system as me!

I can't afford any cash right now and I only need it to host some files.

Any suggestions?

MultiColoredWizard · Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2004 9:16 am Post subject:

you can use my section of CP.
(http://www.castleparadox.com/mcwart/)
I'll PM you the info, if you accept.
(and ignore the secret hentai folders...)

Ysoft_Entertainment · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:00 am Post subject:

Nice program, and its waaay smaller in size than mines(need to seriously learn c++)
and now I find no use for my program, well maybe the only thing that is good about my program would be frame by frame export of sprites,

as for the free hosting, try freewebs
www.freewebs.com
and by the way, its Ysoft, not YSort Ha ha ha!

_________________
Try my OHR exporter/importer.
OHRGFX
Striving to become better pixel artist then Fenrir Lunaris. Unfortunately the laziness gets in the way of my goals.

Solsund · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 9:49 am Post subject:

Sorry about that YSoft,

I think I was programming too much that day and my fingers automatically went for YSort instead as I attempted to type YSoft. I didn't make the typo in the readme file when I credited you so it was just one of those 2am things.

What do you mean by a "frame by frame" sprite exporter? The only sprites that have any frames at all are attacks, walkabouts, and weapons.

Not to mention when it comes to pure size your program whoops my ass. Your .dll files and everything you include are all huge but your program is only like 28k in size, mine is 100k minimum.

I've actually gotten walkabout pictures up and running properly (well loading and displaying) however I setup the debug functions of the memory allocation commands in C++ and I have massive memory leaks right now, not sure how many of them are from the new walkabout code.

In fact I'm confused as none of the leaks that I have match up with any memory I am allocating. They are all much larger than they should be. What I don't understand is that I'm sure I matched up all my memory allocations and deallocations, though I did miss a huge one last night I found it and fixed it.

It's just a mess right this second but I'll try to clean it up and release it.

Still no exporting but I figured it was more important to have things _to_ export rather than getting it running.

Solsund · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:11 pm Post subject: *Phew*

Ok, thanks to Infernal Minion I'm now hosted on Castle Paradox
so I can directly link to files if I please. This is much appreciated.

I found my memory leak and it turns out it was in v.03 as well and
it was very nasty. It was leaking 256k of memory each time you
displayed a picture. The memory was just a scratchpad buffer that
was used to convert from 8-bit graphics to 32-bit graphics.

I could technically get rid of the buffer but I'd prefer not to leave a
surface locked for too long. I'll have to see how fast that piece of code
runs and if it's fast enough I'll just remove the buffer.

I uploaded a new verison that doesn't have the memory leaks.

I also found out that the Visual C++ program at my school does a better
job than my older version as it chopped 12k out of my code, just by
compiling it at school. Too bad I'm going to be out of college for a few
weeks as I like this compiler much better now. Happy

http://solsund.castleparadox.com/

MultiColoredWizard · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 4:10 pm Post subject:

"Ok, thanks to Infernal Minion I'm now hosted on Castle Paradox so I can directly link to files if I please"
Must have been 2 am again. Raspberry!

Ysoft_Entertainment · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:29 pm Post subject:

dude, get devC++, I hear it is better than vc++, just search google for it.

as for mcw, please refrain from posting off-topic posts, I see that you are in a habit of posting too much of the off-topic sentences. if you got nothing useful to say don't say it.
_________________
Try my OHR exporter/importer.
OHRGFX
Striving to become better pixel artist then Fenrir Lunaris. Unfortunately the laziness gets in the way of my goals.

Solsund · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 12:07 am Post subject: Hmm...

No, my bad on that one.

One of those things where everytime I read it I saw "Infernal" rather than
"Inferior". Shows I should read a little closer sometimes.

Well, as I said once I got one picture type going I'd have others but I didn't
expect to get them all done already.

I also added the ability to change the size of the window so those with large
resolutions can actually see the pictures.

For anyone who downloads the new version I'm putting up and wonders why
some pictures dont work understand that for things like attacks and weapons
there can be empty ones so just change to the next one and it should display then.

Oh, I do have one tiny bug. If you are on palette #2 and you go down
you end up at the last one rather than the first one. Simple fix, just
remembered about it though.

So let's have a picture:

http://solsund.castleparadox.com

jabbercat · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 10:17 am Post subject:

I use DevC++. But you don't need Dev only the g++ compilier. The program looks useful, but your link isn't working so "ARGH". Also, what game is that you used the example from? Is the memory leak due to pointing? If so, get rid of the pointers, in a program like that you don't need them.

MultiColoredWizard · Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 1:15 pm Post subject:

OMG I GOT SRUVD

Don't be ridiculous. It was a reference to another part of Solsund's post.

Also, because, holy crap that looks awesome.

Solsund

I do most of my programming at night as it's when I'm not working or
going to school but I need to be more careful when posting online.

The link was broken because although I thought I was all lowercase on the
name it turns out I had an upper-case 'T' and Linux is case sensitive.
Gotta keep that in mind.

The memory leak I had was due to needing a place to store data as I
converted from one color depth to another. I was allocating the memory
and then not deallocating it. Very simple. Considering the number of
allocations I have in the process of running this only missing one isn't that
bad. As per the pointers, without pointers I'd be screwed. In fact I had to
program in QBasic for a class I was in (Got an A in) last semeser and it
was pissing me off that I didn't have pointers.

As per Dev C++ it sounds interesting and I'll have to try it out, though for
the most part Visual C++ seems to be one of the few microsoft program
that are decently written. I'm not too worried about the extra bit of size in
my programs as once school begins again I'll just compile from there.
I'm seriously Internet limited right now with the only real access being at
the library and I can't bring home 12 meg files from here.

The game that I used for that screen shot is the excellent WingedMene

I did more work on the program last night, making functions more general
and adding clipping to the drawing functions. Curiosity got the best of me
last night when I was testing the clipping functions so I changed the
program to run in real time and draw each frame and was pleased to see
that for basic stuff (Just one map screen or font) it was running around 75
FPS on my sad little K6-233 and 271 FPS on my parents P3-700. That's
without any of the optimization for the drawing functions, just code to get it
up and running so I'm liking that. I actually plan on changing the way I
store the tiles for the tile sets in memory and that should make a huge
change as the current code for drawing one is really messy.

I've got to get the other drawing functions up and going in a general way
rather than just dumping their data to 0,0. Then I'll see about actually
rendering some scenes rather than dumping graphics data. I think I'll
start with enemy formation sets as I don't have the map formats fully
going but I do have all the enemy, backdrop and hero pics ones going.
Also thanks to James and his link from a previous post I got the
information I needed to do 16 color bitmaps. Wow, it's coming along.

Solsund · Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 12:22 pm Post subject: Holy ****

Ok, can't help posting again.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was using a scratchpad buffer for
color conversion and that's where the memory leak was at. I said
I might remove it and it dawned on my today that I'm not using
a critical surface so I can leave it locked for a little longer than normal.

I removed the buffer and instead just converted straight into the destination
and when I ran the program I got 121 FPS, adding 50 frames to my already
good frame count. It just rocked too much to ignore. Happy

Also, I was tooling around in the game.exe file and noticed that it was
packed using the UPX packer so I picked it up and tried it out. Drops
my file size from 108k to 40k. Not bad at all.

Ok, time to actually go continue working....

TMC · Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 4:14 pm Post subject:

UPX? That's cool, I'm looking at it now!

That's some pretty mean framerates... isn't optimisation fun?

I'm finally back to work on 'TinyTile', after working out where the problems were. It's already about 300 bytes, which is worringly large considering that it doesn't do anything yet :/
_________________
"It is so great it is insanely great."

Solsund · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:16 am Post subject:

I'd like to see tinytile in action when it's done. Sounds like fun.

Of course, me being online means I'm here to upload a new version of my
program. Didn't get near as much done as I wanted to but there's some
new stuff.

First off: Formation sets can now be displayed.

Secondly, there's now an option fade out/in when switching between
items.

You can lock the frame rate down now and there's keyboard
short cuts for almost everything.

A few bug fixes and other miscelaneous stuff. All in all, not bad
but I'll have to do something important soon, such as the picture
exporting.

Personally, I'd love to get the battle engine going so people could
test out their battles but that's WAY in the future as I not only have
to setup the whole battle engine logic to do that but I'd also have to
make some way to create a party and set their levels/items so you
could use the party to test. Still, I think it would be useful.

Time to sleep again............
_________________
New OHR Importer teaser program available.
http://solsund.castleparadox.com