Recently started working with ACK

[ishtenos]

Hello everyone,

First off, really like ACK - I bought and used ACS during the 80s on my C128, and found this spiritual successor to be the kind of thing I've been looking for.

That said, been creating a post-apocalyptic themed game with ACK (called "Charred") and ran across a few interesting bugs... wondering if anyone else has encountered them and if there are any known work-arounds.

First was in under "Configure Adventure", page 5, pressing M to alter MP Regeneration speed doesn't seem to work. Tried in a few different games, all seem to have the same issue.

The other was really strange. Doesn't happen very often, but enough to be a noticeable problem. Ranged weapons will stop working (even though they have ammo). Can target, but won't shoot. The only way I've found to get it working again is to do a melee attack, and then switch back to the ranged weapon.

Thanks in advance!

[rld]

Hello everyone,
First was in under "Configure Adventure", page 5, pressing M to alter MP Regeneration speed doesn't seem to work. Tried in a few different games, all seem to have the same issue.

I think someone else has mentioned this before. You should be able to set the MP regen rate directly from a macro as a workaround.

The other was really strange. Doesn't happen very often, but enough to be a noticeable problem. Ranged weapons will stop working (even though they have ammo). Can target, but won't shoot. The only way I've found to get it working again is to do a melee attack, and then switch back to the ranged weapon.

Thanks in advance!

I know I have seen something similar to this. I think I have seen where you select an attack with a ranged weapon, and then hit ESC to cancel, and then the ranged weapon would stop working.

Are you using the plain-vanilla ACK 3.251, or are you using the patched version? The behavior is probably the same in both, I just want to know which version of the code I should look at.

[Admiral Ackguh]

I don't even bother using the HP and MP regeneration settings at all. For more control, I just put in the required code to regen HP and MP in my step hourly, and midnight macros.

[ishtenos]

I'll give the macros a shot for the regen...

Currently using vanilla 3.251, although I plan to give the Megapatch a try in the near future.

Thanks for the help on this

[Garth]

Woah another PA ACK game!? Yeeesss! :D

[ishtenos]

Woah another PA ACK game!? Yeeesss! :D

My favorite game of all time is Wasteland, and I always figured if I was going to try my hand at any kind of game making or module building that would be my inspiration.
Features so far include fully destructible environments along with fully killable denizens (provided you have weapons or tools strong enough), open quest system (help, hinder, or ignore who you wish), and a very retro style take on the genre - doesn't take itself too seriously.

Right now still designing the overall game but am setting up graphics, have a few areas in place and am building the various groups populating the Wastes. Having a blast with this.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

And you couldnt have chosen a better time what with Brian Fargo bringing back the legendary Wasteland! And the best part is he took a gamble on kickstart and found overwhelming fan support for Wasteland 2. It is 100% fan funded! He already achieved the 1.5 million donations mark and expects to reach 2 million! The demand for retro style top down 2d CRPGs is as huge as it ever was!

[ishtenos]

I'm a proud supporter of the Wasteland 2 kickstarter, when I first read about Brian Fargo's idea I was floored. It's given me an even stronger motivation to do this, sort of my own hats off to a long neglected genre/style of game.

[RealNC]

I find it hard to believe that you need 1.5 million bucks to do such a game.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

If programmers make 80,000 a year (and they make much more, but maybe not those who work on games) and you have $1.5 million, well, you can hire 18.75 programmers for one year. You haven't paid rent to anyone yet, you haven't marketed it and you haven't created the physical boxes. Your developers don't have health insurance, and you can't pay them a dollar if they take more than one year. It adds up pretty quickly.

Maybe you can do it for less than 18 programmers, but you're still futzing around with taking from one resource to give to another.

[RealNC]

18 programmers? This game needs just one. Two tops. And the dude is probably gonna do it himself anyway.

One or two coders, one artist for graphics and one for music. Hey, lets double that and have 6 people for more awesome. But it's a long way to 18 and 1.5mil.

But I'm still happy he pulled it off, of course. I just don't buy it that that money goes into the game. There's nothing wrong with getting handsomely paid for your work.

[ishtenos]

I find it hard to believe that you need 1.5 million bucks to do such a game.

The original goal was 900k to do the game as envisioned, basically paying a team of programmers/designers/artists for a year and a half to create Wasteland 2 (estimated release date is October of 2013). As the kickstarter earned it's way past 1.5 million, it will also get ported to Mac OS and Linux. Brian Fargo has stated that he intends to do even more if it hits the 2 million mark.

It all depends on how big that team really is; the original Wasteland had 4 people working on it and had very primitive graphics and no music. I suspect Wasteland 2 will be developed by a team about twice that size, but that's sheer conjecture on my part.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Small price to pay I say to have all of the core members of Wasteland 1988 onboard the Wasteland 2 team. St Andre, Fargo, Michael Stackpole and Alan Pavlish and even one of the less involved original team members Liz Danforth. They also have a few Fallout team ppl if I recall correctly.

To have legends on board a project that is a labor of love and not profit how else are you going to entice them to put themselves to work on this fulltime when they could be putting their talent to use elsewhere to maintain their relatively high standard of living?

Also anyone who has spent anytime trying to develop a game in ACK or any RPG using any toolset (much less programming from scratch) knows the difficulties involved in making a fully developed CRPG. And just look at the shoes they must fill. This is Wasteland were talking about here! It was the most complex RPG of its time and set the bar for all future CRPGs for decades after it!

They are in the difficult position of not only 1 upping that but indeed also having to fulfill promises to a pre-existant fan-base who provided all the funding and are very outspoken and passionate about what they want in Wasteland 2.

If you read a sampling of the thousands of demands being made on the google moderation forum for Wasteland 2 you will get an idea of the length, breadth and depth of Wasteland 2 that fans are expecting.

[Tdarcos]

With a substantial amount of money a lot of time-saving (and potentially money-saving) shortcuts can be taken.

I don't know the game Wasteland or what Wasteland 2 will be, I can simply guess based on the things other world-class games are doing now.

Depending on what the game does, they can buy a graphics engine, they can buy a game engine, they can buy a physics engine, those three right there will save months of development time, at a cost of perhaps $100,000-200,000.

Which can allow more money for artists, level designers, AI designers, tool designers (a big thing would be to allow the customers to be able to create and run their own levels using the same tools as the developers), plus programmers and support people.

Is the game's operation based on the programming originally created or does it have a run-time programming language the way Duke Nukem and Half-Life 2 Ep1 & Ep2 have? Is the game to be single player only, single player supporting multi-player or always multi-player? If the game is multi-player is it ad hoc or does one connect to a server? Do you only connect at the start of the game or can others join in later? Is it customer's server (the game creator's server is just an index to games on other people's servers) or do you use the game creator's server? Do you need anti-cheat protection? Lots of questions that have to be answered.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Hey Ishtenos how've you been? Sorry for inadvertantly creating a hijack situation with your WIP thread. Hope that wasn't the cause of your disappearance.

I'm still very interested in hearing more about what you were working on or what ideas you had or have for Charred.

Don't be discouraged if you haven't had the time to continue development any further. Just look at Fargo's project. It was expected to be completed by 2013 and here it is 2014 and still not even a closed beta testing phase or playable demo! (btw: for any who did not follow the progress of Wasteland 2 on their own, they have posted images of game screens and although it could definitely be classified as retro in style by today's standards it is not Wasteland era retro by a long shot. It actually looks like a isometric Fallout 1/2 clone. So take encouragement from the fact that even Brian Fargo and the other original Wasteland team members are not preserving the original Wasteland form as we are with our ACK adventures.

[ishtenos]

Hah no worries - my intent had always been to create a slightly more official WIP thread for Charred if/when I ever got far enough to know I'd see the project through to completion.

Well, I ended up restarting from scratch a few times and had begun work on a different game at one point. My largest challenge has been (and continues to be) staying focused on the original idea, which was to create a post apocalyptic scenario with clear inspiration from Wasteland in ACK.

Lately my interest in it has been renewed, so perhaps it's time to give it another shot and see what comes of it.