Stuff Under the Header

10/26/2010

Progress Was Made

Edit: (October 31, 2010) I think I may release an update soon with the new revamped sound system. Everything, including the music will be changed. I'll include an option to turn the sound changing system off if you don't want the various effects from it. This only includes the low health changes, the rest will stay on.


Anyway, this little edit is mostly about Slaix' play-through of the game on Hard mode. He's done a lot of other play-throughs of underground games and Distorted Travesty is his next game. He is actually taking a break on posting his current LP ("Let's Play" for those that don't know the term) as it is a very large game and is now posting Distorted Travesty. He will probably take a break from posting this one about half way through and continue with the other to another major point, then finish up this play-through. Anyway, the link to the playlist is here and on the sidebar now.


Edit: (October 27, 2010) The new version with the updated sound has been uploaded. Since the sound buzzing was the last of the major bugs, I've decided to call it complete. It is no longer considered beta, it is done. I will still fix reported bugs and all that jazz though, I definitely won't abandon the project. The music is still not using the new sound though. It's going to be a bit tricky to get the music to work with how I have the code set up. Gonna have to rewrite a few things, which will take some debugging time. Working with it kinda killed my inner child a bit, so I'm going to put that on hold for now.
On the changed noted below about the sound changing when your life is in critical range, that is disabled if the low health warn is turned off.
Oh yeah, save files are still not encrypted. :P

I did something on the game today. I fixed the sound buzzing bug, yay! The game is now using the supersound extension, however only the sound effects are using it. The music is still using GM's default sound system for now. Until I can find a method for converting the midi to ogg files without a huge spike in file size, it will remain this way... Unless everyone doesn't mind a 20-30 MB increase to file size because I'm estimating it to boost by that much. That really doesn't seem so bad. I'm going to play around with things and see what I can do. Once you see an edit to this post, the new version with the new sound system will be in place.

Note: There might be a few crash bugs that slipped through while I was converting the game's sound. Luckily most of the sound plays through one place in the game code.

Game Changes
The new sound system has allowed me to do something I've wanted to do since the beginning and that's change pitch of some of the sounds based on what is going on. Your attack swing will change pitch based on your hit combo, the higher it goes, the higher the frequency. When your life is in the danger zone, all the sounds will slow down. (When/if I get the music converted, it will do the same, it's quite a humorous effect, especially when you get hit.)
Some of the sound effects will sound a bit different, in my opinion everything sounds much better.
The game runs a bit more efficiently now, GM's sound functions, including the loading calls, eat up more memory than supersound's functions.
Remember the slight memory leak I mentioned before. Well it's gone now... well sorta. It's even smaller, once I have the music converted to this system too, all the memory leaks will be gone.

10/20/2010

Away + [Insert Title Word Here]

Edit: (October 23, 2010) I might give out the gmk file sometime if anyone would like to see and edit the game code. Then you all get to see my terrible code. A note on that. You can see the code with any version of GM, but if you do not have GM8 Pro, you can not edit it. You could technically with GM 7 Pro, but you would need to change a few things... a lot of things.


Another note, I'm sure some of you may have already caught on, but Distorted Travesty has a minor memory leak. It's been around since version... I don't even remember anymore, it's a memory leak that's over a year old. It's minor and I probably won't fix it, but I just wanted to make everyone aware that there is indeed one there.


Two other things that are actually unfinished. The main one is encrypting the save data and the other is a sound bug. The sound will start to buzz on probably 99% of sound cards out there after you have played DT straight for an hour or so. Restarting the game will fix it, but I don't like that. Sounds like Nintendo's way of dealing with bugs. I may in the future convert DT to use the supersound extension as it will most likely fix the sound buzzing. It will also make sound... sound better, give me a few more tools to edit sound, and lower the file size since I will have to convert the mp3 to ogg. I should not have been using GM's default sound functions as they are shitty at best. To anyone using GM for ANYTHING, do not use the default sound system, use something like bassmod.dll, supersound.dll, or FMOD.dll. Most of them have an extension package you can use so you don't need to mess around with the messiness that is dlls. A google search will reveal their locations to you. If I do convert it, I will use supersound because I am familiar with how it works and it is very reliable.


For those concerned, I haven't been ignoring you, I've just been away and working all week and been without a computer or Internet. (for the most part) I'm back now with nothing TOO much to say on the game. No changes have been made the last few weeks. Looks like the project is at an end now. I'll put in the save file encryption sometime and remember that they won't be compatible with older saves once I do that.

Hmm, now what else to say...? Oh, I doubt I'll be making another level. The Spire seems like enough. Maybe one day there will be a Directors Cut version or some pretentious thing like that. :P Also the suggestions will be considered if that day does happen to come around.

For future projects, I'll keep them posted here or if they get their own blog, I'll link to them. All my blogs are listed in my profile here. I am still working on stuff, but it is mostly generic prototypes for now.