I've spent the last week with an in progress working my way through Dark Side of Xeen. As of last night, I've mapped out the bulk of the southern side of the map up to the mountains, released the first stage of Queen Kallindra's castle, finished the Temple of Bark, and am just winding up clearing Sandcaster and it's sewers of enemies. I've identified and fixed multiple problems as I went, and not all of them were specific to Dark Side.
For example, one bug I'd been meaning to fix for a while was finally resolved - when monsters were triggered to hate & attack the entire party at the same time, they were originally only ever attacking the first party member. This made the Dragon Caves on the Clouds side *so* much easier.. all the dragons would wail away on my first character, even after he was dead, leaving the rest of my party to kill them at their leisure. By the time I left the dragon caves, my first party member was below -5000HP :) Another, ironically, coincidental script problem meant the dragon containers didn't tax me when I walked past them, so I didn't even have to worry about losing gold and gems.
I also fixed some bugs in the sound system that could cause crashes when multiple sound effects were played in rapid succession, and a bug in the combat system that could case a crash when recalculating the order that characters and monsters fight in based on their speed. The later I'm particularly hoping will help resolve the outstanding rare crashes I was previously getting with extended combat. It may be naive.. I'll have to wait and see whether any further crashes occur.
So yeh, things are progressing, and the engine is getting more and more stable; I'll keep working my way through the game. I've got a long weekend coming up tomorrow, but honestly, I'm not sure how much time over the weekend I'll end up playing the game. I think I'll keep the bulk of it for some R&R and doing other things. We'll see how it goes.
For example, one bug I'd been meaning to fix for a while was finally resolved - when monsters were triggered to hate & attack the entire party at the same time, they were originally only ever attacking the first party member. This made the Dragon Caves on the Clouds side *so* much easier.. all the dragons would wail away on my first character, even after he was dead, leaving the rest of my party to kill them at their leisure. By the time I left the dragon caves, my first party member was below -5000HP :) Another, ironically, coincidental script problem meant the dragon containers didn't tax me when I walked past them, so I didn't even have to worry about losing gold and gems.
I also fixed some bugs in the sound system that could cause crashes when multiple sound effects were played in rapid succession, and a bug in the combat system that could case a crash when recalculating the order that characters and monsters fight in based on their speed. The later I'm particularly hoping will help resolve the outstanding rare crashes I was previously getting with extended combat. It may be naive.. I'll have to wait and see whether any further crashes occur.
So yeh, things are progressing, and the engine is getting more and more stable; I'll keep working my way through the game. I've got a long weekend coming up tomorrow, but honestly, I'm not sure how much time over the weekend I'll end up playing the game. I think I'll keep the bulk of it for some R&R and doing other things. We'll see how it goes.
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