Castle Paradox

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Shoot, Tirgoviste is so awesome that neither the installer nor the zip file fits on a floppy disk! I only have internet access at work and at the library, neither of which allow CD burning. However, my computer at home already has Rusalka. Is there a way that I can download Tirgoviste, and then trim it up to make it small enough to fit on a floppy, given that I don't need anything that has remained unchanged since Rusalka? In particular, I don't need any of the songs that are supplied. Does this mean that I can dispense with the entire IMPORT folder? Any info will be well appreciated.

FyreWulff · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:09 am Post subject:

here you go. a floppy-sized tirgoviste zip file

ohri.rpgcreations.com/tirgoviste_floppy.zip

includes:
- win and dos custom
- win and dos game
- hspeak
- ohrrpgce.fnt , .mas, and .new
- plotscr.hsd
- whatsnew.txt
- documentation

everything else can be brought over from previous versions, I believe.

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:22 am Post subject: Re: allegro

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

A million thanks, Monsieur Wulff.

Mike Caron · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:07 pm Post subject: Re: allegro

Gizmog1 · Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:59 pm Post subject:

What are you, our own special Public Service Announcement? Play games at work! Watch porn at work! Have sex and goof off at work, and get paid for it! America works when people don't!

fungo · Joined: 26 Feb 2006 Posts: 20

so it doesn't have any monstrous bugs waiting to bite my head off? yes!!!!!

msw188 · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 1041

Okay, I seem to be having a bit of music trouble with Tirgoviste. It would seem that the infinite loops are broken in my BAMs. These BAMs were made a while ago, and I have not been able to go into notate to investigate the problem (my notate.exe seems to be broken, so it looks like I will have to find a way to download more of Tirgoviste anyway...). Has anyone else had this trouble? I am using Windows ME.

PS: What are people using to make music for this release? Notate makes BAMs, but I can't hear them in notate while I'm making them, even though custom and game manage to play them. Is there anything that would allow me to alter BAMs, hearing them in the same way the custom and game do now? Or have we given up on BAMs? If this is the case, where can I get a MIDI editor?

PPS: Hey, I don't play with the OHR at work. But my home does not have internet capabilities (no phone line, no cable), so I download at other places and then bring the things home. Not to belittle Gizmog's infinite wisdom.

PlayerOne · Joined: 07 Sep 2005 Posts: 143 Location: UK

I don't know if notate is included with any version of Tirgoviste. I think it has been declared obsolete.

BAMs are translated into MIDI files on-the-fly. The .mid format has no support for looping, the only option is to loop the entire file, so infinite loops which don't go back to the beginning do not work. (Non-infinite loops are unrolled into repeated sections.)

At least, that was the case before Mike added music_native. This version supports various forms of looping to match and exceed the capabilities of BAM. However, someone (er, me) has yet to update the BAM translator so that BAM loops become music_native MIDI loops. It's difficult to do without affecting the other players; music_native really needs its own version of the translator, which in turn makes compiling more complicated. I'll try to remember to sort something out in the near future.

Mike Caron · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject:

Well, you can still unroll the loops, and add the sysexes for the inifinite loops. I used sysexes so that it would degrade gracefully.

Remember:

1. Music code starts with "O", "H", "R", "m".
2. A label is 0x01 <label>
3. An infinite jump is 0x02 <label>
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PlayerOne · Joined: 07 Sep 2005 Posts: 143 Location: UK

It's not quite that simple because the infinite loop point might be inside another loop. That means the tag will get repeated, and the infinite loop will go to the last rather than the first. I think the best solution is to add a flag to the conversion routine.

Pepsi Ranger · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 2:46 pm Post subject:

Just out of curiosity, do any of these new versions support screen capture of CUSTOM for XP users? I'm guessing the Windows version probably does, but as of yet I'm not sure how to use the Windows version (probably because I haven't investigated it yet). I'll probably crack this new version open in a little while to see what I can find, but I know I tried the Serendipity version briefly, and I didn't see any other formats other than DOS, which we all know is edit-unfriendly for anything graphical. So, even if the Windows version works in this matter, I haven't yet figured out how to launch it. (I'm not asking for help on this last matter just yet--I'll figure it out once I give it a chance. I just need to know if there are any versions that are edit friendly for XP, and if not, will there be soon?)

The second thing I had a question about related more to Serendipity, but may or may not have been addressed for this new one, so I'll ask it anyway. When upgrading the soundtrack from BAM to MIDI, are you supposed to just swap them, or is there some other procedure involved? When I tried replacing my BAMs with MIDI versions, I didn't get any sound. Granted, I didn't test it out in the game, but last I checked, the music list is supposed to play music as it's highlighted in the editor, which I didn't hear anything (and that was with VDMS running). If Tirgoviste addresses that, than don't bother answering this, unless there's something I'm not doing right.

Lastly, I meant to say this in the last thread for Serendipity, but since I'm a huge procrastinator, I'll say it now, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for allowing the ability to turn off map names, and also for the new way to edit text. All we need now is an import feature for text, and the engine will be perfect (at least for my needs).

Great job with all the work you guys have been doing. Now I feel obligated to work on something other than my "professional endeavors."

Keep it up, but take a few naps if you have to.

______________________

EDIT:

Okay, never mind about half the stuff I just posted. After installing Tirgoviste, I found all the appropriate versions of CUSTOM and GAME, and it seems the MIDIs work just fine in the Windows version. I guess that was the intention of making the Windows version in the first place. I also discovered the answer to my question about image capturing in CUSTOM. Turns out the Windows version allows it, but it does so at the price of sufficient quality. It seems it only captures images at 16 colors, rather than the full 32-bit (or 256 for that matter).

Anyway, having said all that, I discovered a huge difference between the QB version and Windows version of GAME. In Tightfloss Maiden, there's a level that requires several scripts to be accessed at once through an each-step script. The QB version handles it smoothly (for the most part), but the Windows version runs like utter crap on this level. Thought you guys might like to know that in case there are some clocking or processing issues you still have to work through.

If you need more information, picture this:

In the QB version, the character walks wherever the player sends her without much noticable hesitation. While this happens, the "each-step script" is accessing a footprints script, a random enemy script, a dehydration script, and an auto-kill script, and does so at a fast enough pace to keep the game running nicely.

In the Windows version, however, all these scripts are still getting accessed at each step, but now the character looks like she's testing every movement for landmines (pausing for nearly two seconds between each tile advancement).

This difference in accessing speed might be worth looking into.

If any of you need a test file, let me know and I'll email it to you.
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Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2

Mike Caron · Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:07 pm Post subject:

JSH357 · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 1705

Negative damage appears to be dealing, well, negative damage for me. (As in, it's healing the target) Other than that, I haven't noticed any new bugs.

Edit:
HOWEVER, once again, game.exe has started crashing at completely random intervals. I have no way to reproduce this bug, but what happens is the program just closes out of the blue. No error message, no big unreadable letters, no nothing. Program just closes.

Really, I'm getting kinda fed up with this.
Edit 2:

OK, I've narrowed the crashing down some. It APPEARS to be happening after playsong() commands, and apparently the problematic songs are the BAMs being converted to MIDI by the engine. I'm going to try using stopsong() before playsong(), but since it's still crashing RANDOMLY, I have no idea if this will help at all.