My Challenge to this area

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 1:38 pm

I get inspired to do a little more work on one or more of my old projects everytime i read one of your posts Joe. Keep up the great work. And ishtenos take comfort in knowing that I feel the same way about myself and my cherished but unfinished ACK adventures. And I'm sure we aren't alone in our broken dreams.

by **Joebonked** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 7:09 pm

It is important for support and public to see completed games. On the other hand, as long as we keep at the ACK editor and keep making our games then at least the ball keeps rolling. In my game I found an exquisite way to do maps that caused me to delete the first 50 maps I had already made. Since we can hack new tile sets, I remade all towns on one giant world map. This allows for so much more maps to use for other purposes. And so I would be finishing up the last details if not for that. But now I have (happily( tons more maps available to make. I was at map 92 when I decided to delete 1 through 52 to consolidate them. Now I can do even more for the game. Compared to a typical Ultima game from the 80s, mine, as far as hours of game play, will be 10 times more. My only concern now is conserving the dialogues to allow for the so many different worlds the player will visit, and the many time zones they will visit. (Ultima 2 time zones where what date you were presently in). Mostly lots of fun and never ending story lines. MAcros really can add a great deal of task when they can trigger events and map altercations. I think personally, my greatest challenge is to resist the urge to make a new macro event that can redefine the whole game. ACK is just great.

by **ishtenos** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:07 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Okay, it's been almost a year. Has anyone finished a game?

Gawd I suck.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri May 22, 2015 3:35 pm

Okay, it's been almost a year. Has anyone finished a game?

by **ishtenos** » Sun Mar 08, 2015 11:41 am

Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Understood, I've felt the same way and tried other more powerful game authoring tools myself. Maybe its just me but I found all of them to be more not less time and effort demanding than ACK. I had to take an honest look at my game development history and realize that if I didn't have enough time to invest in finishing a game in something as simple as ACK there was just no way I was going to do it in a newer more feature rich game authoring kit. The more features there are, the more options I have to choose from, the longer it will take me.

I've also realized I need to reign in my visions a bit if I'm going to finish anything. This doesn't mean I am permanently disabling my vision or dream of the ultimate adventure, you can't really stop dreams or visions when you have them. I'm just taking a more realistic approach to inspiration and goal setting.

I must face the fact that I am no Richard Garriott. That if I haven't created my Akalabeth by now it's just not in the cards for me. I'm only like a decade younger than Lord British I think and he had his first full length adventure Akalabeth complete by the time he was 18. So yeah, I must be far more patient with myself and my meager abilities than I would expect the world to be with someone like Mr. Garriott.

I've read that it's often a difference in sheer will power/determination between people who complete projects (like Richard Garriott) and those of us who strive, but end up with partially finished creations. I believe this, at least to some extent. I find, at least for myself, the other component is a matter of momentum - once I'm going, I do well, until something sidetracks me. Starting up again is the issue.

Never have had a shortage of ideas, but executing them? Nope, just doesn't happen.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 11:08 pm

I'll send you the sprite sheet. If you can get them into ACK (and tell me the process you used) that would be awesome!

Thanks, Garth.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:20 am

I can do that for ya right now Rob if you don't mind sharing the sprites privately. garthsequipmentshop@gmail.com

Or I can try to walk you through the process step by step either here or via the chat prog of your choice like IRC or Skype or Facebook or whatever. Skype is very useful for helping with computer related stuff due to it's built in support for screen sharing. http://www.skype.com/en/features/screen-sharing/

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:02 am

There were two things that stopped me from even starting on a game.

The first is that I can't figure out how to import graphics. I bought a bunch of sprite sheets from Oryx Designs. I need... some sort of way to bring those graphics in.

http://oryxdesignlab.com/ is the page I got the sheets from.

The second thing is that I got promoted at work and I'm there all the time now and yet still feel behind, haha.

But for real, someone help me get the sprites in and I can whip a little something up.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Sun Nov 09, 2014 7:39 am

Understood, I've felt the same way and tried other more powerful game authoring tools myself. Maybe its just me but I found all of them to be more not less time and effort demanding than ACK. I had to take an honest look at my game development history and realize that if I didn't have enough time to invest in finishing a game in something as simple as ACK there was just no way I was going to do it in a newer more feature rich game authoring kit. The more features there are, the more options I have to choose from, the longer it will take me.

I've also realized I need to reign in my visions a bit if I'm going to finish anything. This doesn't mean I am permanently disabling my vision or dream of the ultimate adventure, you can't really stop dreams or visions when you have them. I'm just taking a more realistic approach to inspiration and goal setting.

I must face the fact that I am no Richard Garriott. That if I haven't created my Akalabeth by now it's just not in the cards for me. I'm only like a decade younger than Lord British I think and he had his first full length adventure Akalabeth complete by the time he was 18. So yeah, I must be far more patient with myself and my meager abilities than I would expect the world to be with someone like Mr. Garriott.

Hell, I could get pretty depressed comparing my life to his, he has had so many real life adventures as well, diving to the Titanic, exploring the desert, even freaking space travel for godsake! YEah, I don't even want to go there, dwelling on how much better his life is lol.

I'll just be content that I have a bit of time to myself once in a while with which I can do with whatever I want. And my biggest worry will be how well I am using that time to do what I most want to do, which is make adventures! ;)

by **ishtenos** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:05 am

I think ICJ got hit by the curse of ACK...

Admitting that I won't likely finish the challenge here, still working on my retro RPG on and off, but returned to GameMaker to better match the design to my vision.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 4:52 pm

lol

cant wait to check that shit out Rob! Oh hey, if you're still working on it, heres an idea for a quest in it. Help a sad NPC to rebuild his home arcade collection after he was forced to sell them all off! PC then must start with the list of people they were originally sold to and then track them from there to their current owners and then get them back one by one whether by force or persuasion or by doing some favor for the current owner.

by **ICJ** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 12:53 pm

I am making the world's most basic ACK game so that we can finally have a complete game.

You guys are ON NOTICE.

by **rld** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:52 am

The cone weapon issue (for room maps, at least) and the
bug about creatures not walking over lightsource/opaque
spaces should be fixed in the newest ACK patch; see the
Megapatch 0.9 alpha release thread, and let me know if this
helps. Thanks!

by **joebonk** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 6:25 pm

rld wrote: From what I have gathered, there are more than a few of these game-halting bugs. We need to get these bugs red-flagged, front and center, so we can trace them down and resolve them one way or another. If someone has put time and effort into ACK development, that shouldn't be scrapped because of some quirk or rough edge in the ACK engine.

So, let's have a list. Who's got a bug that is preventing a game (or a feature needed for your game to work as you envisioned) from being completed? Post them here, and hopefully we can work towards getting more of these games into a finished state.

My biggest irk is that presently ACK can't have enemies firing lasers, or when the tile effect is set to line. This is also for a tile spread. My space program is on hold because this is a must for enemies and enemy space ships not firing lasers. What is happening is a change to ACK that messed this up. I think the change happened after U4Part2. If I can append the data from the changed files, I may be able to resuscitate that function. But I do not know which file and where.
Then other bigger problem was that in my space program, you can walk around your ship while it is journeying to a new galactic location. An hourly macro will keep track of when you arrive. And this means ships have maps. But when an enemy arrives during the flight, you are switched to a map of stars and your ship vehicle is turned on. And an enemy ship appears on opposite side of room map.
But when the change of map happens ACK crashes. At the top is an error os some kind detailing what line of code (I believe). It's been awhile since I ran this and would have to do it again to get a screen shot.
But it may be something that elvist said. My star tiles have light source on and enemies can't navigate that. Also the enemy is W spawned on them. Maybe the game does that familiar enemies move a space before you do something, and since this map change arrived from a macro being run, this could cause the crash since an enemy can't move on a tile with light source on. I would have to turn them off to see.

But the very most request I would like is to rid the smily face that shows up with a set tile later space. If a transparent character walks onto such a space, a smile face shows up underneath. It doesn't bother me that it changes but why not change to just all black? The smile face just ruins the whole thing.

by **elvist** » Wed Jul 30, 2014 1:09 am

@ishtenos

No problem, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

The difficulty is high at low levels, but I always played Ultima by simply running to the first town I could find and selling some of my starting gear to get the best weapon and any armor I could afford and just wandering a bit until I got a few levels under me. I guess I just transferred that strategy here and made it the de facto strategy for starting these things. Hopefully you'll be able to level a bit quickly and really be able to explore it more.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm thrilled that they're getting played.

Cheers,
elvist

P.s. These do use the v8 mega patch for fixing the touch macro, but nothing further so if you don't have it it should still be playable.

by **ishtenos** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:34 am

elvist wrote:I'm in the process of finishing my third. I've shared the previous 2, and while they are not parodies they are reimaginings of early ultima games, so I realize that might not be your cup of tea.

I do have a bug that admiral ackgurgh is helping me with at present on my latest one and then it should be done, and while my previous two might have bugs present due to my not having a wide pool of play testers (or any ) they are complete from beginning to end... Even if they are incredibly difficult at low levels .

Cheers

Currently playing your Ultima 2 reimagining. You weren't kidding about the difficulty, it's quite the challenge. But then that fits, the early Ultima games weren't exactly forgiving. No bugs that I've caught so far.

Thanks for getting these out there!

by **elvist** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 10:29 am

Oops. I just realized after all this time that the link in the stickied thread about finished games actually links to a thread where I introduced myself and discussed them with rld and Garth, but doesn't have the game links.

Here are the links, and I'll try to find a more appropriate place to post these (posting here because, you mentioned coming back here if you couldn't find them).

http://www.pnxdigital.com/ULTIMAEX.zip

http://www.pnxdigital.com/ULTIMA2.zip

These are just zips of the game folder and are not compiled into standalone apps.

by **ishtenos** » Sun Jul 13, 2014 8:47 am

rld wrote: So, let's have a list. Who's got a bug that is preventing a game (or a feature needed for your game to work as you envisioned) from being completed? Post them here, and hopefully we can work towards getting more of these games into a finished state.

The main bug that I've caught a few times now is one that will randomly prevent ranged attacks from working. Switching to melee, and then back, gets around it but it does disrupt the flow of gameplay. Granted, on the two projects that I've seen it happen on, neither was using your MegaPatch.

It happened in my original Charred project (consistently, about every 3rd fresh game would bring it out), and then it happened in an instance of Super Adventure King. The latter only happened once, and I was able to reverse it by going to a previous back up. I'll keep an eye on it to see if I can replicate the circumstances.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Jul 11, 2014 9:50 pm

elvist wrote:I'm in the process of finishing my third. I've shared the previous 2, and while they are not parodies they are reimaginings of early ultima games, so I realize that might not be your cup of tea.

I do have a bug that admiral ackgurgh is helping me with at present on my latest one and then it should be done, and while my previous two might have bugs present due to my not having a wide pool of play testers (or any ) they are complete from beginning to end... Even if they are incredibly difficult at low levels .

Cheers

Elvist, I commend you for finishing your games. I'll try them out if they are parodies. Shoot, why not?

I am going to check the sticky threads in this base to see if there is a ACK game repository. If not I shall... I shall return to this thread.

(There should be a site where you can get every finished ACK game in the world. If there isn't, I need to make one.)

by **elvist** » Fri Jul 11, 2014 5:58 pm

I'm in the process of finishing my third. I've shared the previous 2, and while they are not parodies they are reimaginings of early ultima games, so I realize that might not be your cup of tea.

I do have a bug that admiral ackgurgh is helping me with at present on my latest one and then it should be done, and while my previous two might have bugs present due to my not having a wide pool of play testers (or any ) they are complete from beginning to end... Even if they are incredibly difficult at low levels .

Cheers

My Challenge to this area

Post a reply

Expand view Topic review: My Challenge to this area