Viridian Games

All subsystems are now working – indeed it is possible to play the game all the way from beginning to end. You can even save and load!

But as a lot of people suspected, the vertical layout just looked and felt bad. So I’m trying to get a horizontal layout going. Here’s a current screenshot:

I wish I could finish this project faster, but lots and lots of extraneous stuff has conspired to keep me away from it. I am hoping to have the landscape version complete by the end of this week, then spend next week adding the new content and making the demo…and then hopefully I’ll be done.

And now we’re on the device – or at least the simulator.

The game loop is now running on the iPhone Simulator on the Mac. All drawing is now being done by OpenGL instead of SDL (which has been completely purged from the project). I haven’t implemented the new input controls so you can’t actually play the game yet, but there it is. I expect quick progress from here.

Getting there.

Frankly, this code base is just awful to work with. Drawing in the input function, magic numbers everywhere – who wrote this crap?!

Oh, right.

On the upside, I have now made sure that all tiles in the game are either public domain or ones I’ve created myself, so I’m not worried about infringing anyone else’s copyright.

I think the way I’m going to do the interface is that you’ll play it GameBoy style, with a virtual D-pad under your left thumb (and I’ve recently discovered that virtual D-pads actually work really well on the iPhone) and the four icons for Fight, Look, Pick Up, and Talk under your right thumb, with your stats in the middle. Above that will be the area for the game strings (I’ll switch to a smaller font so I can get more text in there) and above that, of course, will be the map view. Since I don’t actually have an iPhone, can anyone out there who does tell me if this sounds viable?

Lured by the promise of potential Starcraft II beta keys, I went ahead and created a new Battle.Net account.

And I discovered something interesting that I hadn’t seen people mention much. You can add Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III to your account just by typing in your (valid) CD key for each product.

At which point Blizzard will store the key and allow you to download and install the games onto any computer.

Which means that, for the first time since its release ten years ago, you can finally play Starcraft without needing a disc in the drive. Same thing for Diablo II. (To Blizzard’s credit, they did remove the CD check from Warcraft III a few updates back.) Indeed, you don’t need the discs OR the cd keys ever again, as long as you’ve got an internet connection.

This is progress of the highest order. The only thing lacking is the ability to buy the games online (Blizzard will still ship you a physical box if you order a game from them). Once that happens, Battle.Net will effectively be Blizzard’s version of Steam or Impulse.

Of course, you can’t add Diablo I or Warcraft I or II…which is kind of disappointing. Maybe that’ll get fixed later. Maybe Blizzard could offer those games as freebies to people who have purchased enough Blizzard products (which, goshwow, I think I have.)

Jules Winnfield: So tell me again about the disc images.

Vincent Vega: What do you want to know?

JW: They’re legal there, right?

VV: Hell, yeah, they’re legal. When you download an application you’ll usually get it as a disc image. And I’m talking about perfectly legit applications, not the Bittorrent stuff. You can write these images to a disc to make an installer, or you can just mount the thing straight on the Mac as a new volume and install it from there.

JW: They don’t consider disc mounting software a tool of piracy?

VV: Naw, man, it’s built into the operating system.

JW: Oh, I’m goin’! I’m definitely going.

VV: I know baby! You’d dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Maccyland is?

JW: What?

VV: It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.

JW: Example?

VV: All right. When you launch a program – sorry, an “application” – from the dock, you don’t get another icon telling you that program is running. The icon on the dock just gets a white dot next to it. And if a program on the dock needs your attention, it doesn’t pop up and grab the focus. It just bounces the icon and waits for you to click on it. Also, windows in Maccyland are double-buffered, so you’ll never see the awful tearing that you see so often over here.

JW: That sounds cool. Anything you didn’t like?

VV: The one menu bar thing screwed me up for a long time. Since the menu bar is not connected to the app it represents, you can’t give an app the focus by clicking the menu bar. You have to click the app’s window or its icon on the dock. Plus, Ctrl-V doesn’t paste.

JW: What?

VV: I’m serious. Ctrl-C doesn’t copy and Ctrl-V doesn’t paste. Instead it pages down in your text file. That’s doubly bad because it looks like it did something when all it did was lose you your paste location. Plus the Home and End keys jump you to the beginning and end of the current document, instead of the current line.

JW: Aw, man. I usually copy a URL in my browser’s location bar by hitting Home, holding down Shift, and then hitting End to select the whole URL. How’m I supposed to do it now?

VV: Triple-click.

JW: What?

VV: You triple-click the URL. That’ll select the whole thing.

JW: Seriously?

VV: Yeah, man, that shit even works over here – at least in Firefox.

JW: Triple-click. Man, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a triple click. Does it work in Opera too?

VV: I dunno, man, I didn’t go into Linuxville.

Despite Demigod’s absolutely disastrous launch, it appears to be selling well. Stardock’s policy of “No DRM” seems to be paying off yet again. I wonder when other companies will get with the program.

Because two people demanded it!

Yes, it’s true. My new current project is Inaria for the iPhone. I was greatly encouraged to do this by my good friend Ryan Clark, who has just been incredibly supportive during my entire time of trouble. He even lent me the Mac that I’ll be doing the development on. (And that I’m currently posting from.)

Porting it to the iPhone probably won’t take long; the hardest part will be making sure the new interface works well (and finding some music and sound effects I can use with the game). I will be adding some extra content – new maps and a much better leveling system. I hope to have the project done by the end of May.

And now I finally have something to blog about on this blog again!