Xeen playthrough in progress

The Xeen playthrough is finally in progress, having been restarted last night. And by the time I went to work this morning, the first town of Clouds, Vertigo, was completable. Huzzah. \o/. I did identify and fix some further problems, such as armor not equipping, reading the note in the Vertigo warehouse, and getting the experience from the mayor. Next stop will be the Dwarf Mines, which I don't anticipate having much, if any, problems. Particularly since I've done some previous testing in them, though I've not yet been beyond the first level.

This is a good omen for completing the rest of the game. Particularly given the amount of care I've already given to fixing bugs I'd introduced in my reimplementation of the combat system. And the fact that all the various towns share the same code base for implementing the different tavern, guild, etc. locations. I'm expecting/hoping that the rest of the game will be straightforward. Indeed, most of the fixes I did last night were fairly straightforward to fix once I'd identified the bugs in question.

Of course, it's been years since I played the game, and honestly I only really remember some of the highlights of the Dark Side. So this playthrough will be a chance to re-experience the games once again. And my unfamiliarity will ensure I go poking into every nook and cranny. Though the downside is that I may not notice minor things not working, such as searching specific locations not giving the expected items, monsters, or loot. Once I've finished my first playthrough, hopefully some more experienced Xeen players can be enticed to play through the game as well.

Well, better get back to work. It may be Friday, but I still have the entirety of the work day to get through before I can get back to my playtesting :)

Xeen there, done that

After all the time spent both in development, and in hiatus, work on the Xeen engine nears it's completion. Last weekend, I finally considered the engine finally stable enough to start my first playthrough of the game. Though, unfortunately, that idea rapidly crashed and burned.. I immediately discovered a variety of bugs in my exploration of Vertigo that my previous casual testing hadn't revealed, particularly with the Guild display and purchase of spells.

Thankfully, I fixed all those, and over the course of the week so far I've also since discovered further minor issues that I've also been fixing as I identify them. As of today, I'm once again at a point where I'm not aware of any other bugs, so I'm once again going to restart my playthrough and start playing my way through the game. As last weekend showed, it's better for me to finish my own playthrough first before I announce official testing, since it will be a chance to fix all of the more obvious errors that crop up, and ensure anyone else that tests the game will have a smoother, more enjoyable experience. And speaking of testing, some good news.. rather than concentrating on just getting World of Xeen working, I've also implemented the necessary extra functionality and main menus for Clouds and Dark Side individually, as well as for Swords of Xeen. That means three separate games as well as the combined World will be playable using this new engine.

Recent discussions on the GOG forums have also got me to thinking about what the future could hold for this engine. Whilst I'm definitely going to move onto working on other games after this, and likely take a break to play some games, there are some fertile areas someone with a knowledge of C++ could work on and submit patches to the ScummVM group for. First of all, this GOG thread talks about "Ludmeister's mod". It seems to have been abandoned by the author without ever having an official release. But it did have a description of all the changes it introduced. Since ScummVM also allows for game-specific options in the launcher dialog, someone could add checkboxes for enabling/disabling the functionality and add relevant code to the engine to implement them. Some of the mod's changes sounded nice, particularly regarding the passage of time.

Another thing I'd love to see is for this to revive some interest in creating new areas and/or content. Not to spoil things too much, but I couldn't resist adding some new content of my own. I'll leave it up to players to see if they can discover it. If we're lucky, maybe it will help spur others to create further new content for the game. After all, Swords of Xeen was original a mod done by fans. With the engine source code as a guide, maybe someone can cannibalize the scene rendering code and build a visual world editing tool around it.