Dungeon Master Forum

What is left george?? Aside from a couple of bugs all I can think of is multiple saved games. And of course the RTCute but that will come after RTC 1.0 right?

BTW I love it! Great work, wonderful spell system.

- Amaprotu

What's left....? Lots and lots and lots of playtesting to find all those pesky bugs... not that I'm suggesting there are many, but that there are ALWAYS more than you expect

I know Gambit, I'm jusr curious what more, besides the bugs, is left to work on in this game. heh guess I'm looking for sort of a 'to-do' list.

A rough 'to-do' list would read something like this:

1) Finalise the formats for all the extra objects needed to do CSB (various special cases of teleporter and pressure pad). I can't really anticipate this in advance, so will be done, to a large extent, as I go along converting CSB; V1.0 will come with the full DM and CSB dungeons.

2) Framework for porting characters from one dungeon to another, in particular from the Prison/DM to CSB. I'm still undecided on exactly how to do this.

3) Tweaking of monster characteristics - this will arise from much play-testing so it will be a while until this is finished.

That's about it though. It's pretty close, however I'm going to be very busy in life outside DM (there is such a thing?) for the next month or so, so it may be a while...

Having said that, alot of the testing can be, and is being, done right now by you all and throwing up all sorts of useful things which would take me ages to find. Every little bit brings the full version a step closer!

Perhaps it would be better to sum it up as:

V1.0 will be released when I believe that a V1.1 will never be needed.

i'm not a believer in releasing "completed" software that clearly isn't. As such RTC will remain a test bed until such time when it isn't!

Don't forget to include "improve game speed"!

Can ya be more specific rick?
loading speed?
monster movement speed?
monster attack speed?
party movement speed?
party attack speed?

all of htese have been discussed already i think....

Well the delay between key/mouse and the genearl effects - compared with DM, RTC is still a bit (or more) slow, like if i hit 5 times the up key in a second, the party should have moved 5 squares within one second (with a certain limitation which is the stamina etc). Maybe it was the language/toolkit RTC was made with... maybe the way of writing graphics to the screen, i just remembered that if you used the windows putpixel functions, filling a screen was quite slow - if you used DIBs on the other hand (i saw a unit for Delphi called UniDIB, was pretty fast) you could write about 14 frames per sec. 40 if you just filled with one color and did no calculations. (And it didn't require DirectX!)

I'm sure there must be freeware graphic toolkits out there in the web for this kind of stuff.

RTC has a time limiter on walking. pressing up five times lets you move five times but not as fast as you can type... after all .. can you run as fast as you can type? Many people confuse this with slow CPU calcs but it's intentional for the most part.

Yes, but it only affects gameplay. I mean, if i run like hell, the time should adapt to my typing speed and not viceversa.

If i have to walk thru a 100 tile corridor, the time restriction only makes this boring. I have to wait until i have walked to press the up key again and this makes me feel like playing quake 2 on a 286 (well you get the idea).

Instead i want that if i press 10 times up in one second, the food and water stats (and even the monster steps) go accordingly. LIke instead of (or besides) being time-controlled, every time the party moves do as if some time passed. This way most of the time spent in the game will be effective fun time, and not "wait to press the next key" time.

Speaking about running, what if i press shift and the party RUNS at a greater speed (relative to monsters) in exchange for lost stamina / food ?

My 2 cents.

This is a real time role playing game. While it would be nice for the world to speed up to your typing speed that would take away from the real time aspect. If you want to run faster carry less and work up your stamina and strength.

Aside from that, if keystrokes can be queued that would be great. Even in the original DM if you presssed the up arrow 10 times you had to wait until the characters moved all that way, it wasn't instantanious.

It seems like george would have to take more control of the way keystrokes are handled and I don't know how much work that is. Previously he was allowing windows to handle keystrokes (i'm assuming) and windows will send multiple keystrokes if a key is held down. If it didn't count as a key press until the key was un-pressed (you let go) then key queueing might work great.

Running would be a neat idea, the party shouldn't be able to do it if any party member is out of stamina, and it should take at least double the stamina to move 1.5 times as fast.

My 2 cents =) <p><img src="http://www.ulink.net/amaprotu/images/lo ... ="logo.jpg (32741 bytes)" align="top" border="0" width="359" height="71">

a.k.a
<b>Mahkahl Darkwolfe of Avvisione</b>
Flez Fuu of <b>Fuu</b></p>

There is a reason for the delay between 2 moves:
it matches the way the ST version (and maybe the Amiga, too) was working; the PC version doesn't have any delay and is way too easy.
This discussion happened long before on the Daniel's board, to solve the mystery of why ST version was harder than PC.
Anyway, the Shift option to run (at stamina cost)
looks very interesting for the gameplay. I second the motion.

holding down shift cuts movement speed down by half and doubles stamina loss. that would certainly be worth while. After all it makes sense and if you wanna get the heck out.. well you don't wanna be walking.

DM right now is about walking speed. A brisk walk but a walk none the less.

Hey how about this? If you run like hell (too fast), you tend to drop things from your backpack, like potions scrolls or something else. And then OH NO! We have to go back! (of course if the characters MENTION it it would be even more realistic.

Like

"Linflas: Oh no! The firestaff just fell off my backpack!" Or...

Alex Ander: "The keys, oh shoot i think they fell off my pouch with those 20 DRAGONS guarding them!"
Halk: "It has ALWAYS to be you Alex Ander! This is the THIRD time you lose the keys!"

Or maybe if what gets drop is a FUL BOMB or a ven potion... muahahahahaha! ):D Of course, broken flasks CANNOT be recovered.

What do you think? The probability of losing an item in a speed run (or a weapon in a fight) depends on the character's dexterity and level. This would teach you not to give fancy weapons to (or overload a backpack belonging to) low level characters.

Hmmm... now that i think about keys, what about this? A KEY-RING! With place up to 5 keys. Goes in your belt. Each character has one.

Frankly, i can't understand why i can put a BIG sword or axe in the backpack, but only one key if i have only one slot left. How about variable space backpacks?