8 Responses

  1. Sanctimonia says:

    Not sure what’s going on around here the last few days, but the deadness is deafening. So… Have a sweet newbie article on the A* algorithm, which even an idiot like me can understand:

    policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm

    Patrick Lester has my sincerest thanks for a truly great article.

    In other news, gear management basics are done for Sanctimonia. You can swap gear between yourself and other players with a spiffy interface. Still have a lot of detail work to do on it such as adding all the other locations (fingers, toes, etc.) and enabling selective gear layering so you can stay comfy under your plate armour or show off your contrasting-colored tunic and supertunic. Pickpocketing logic needs to be implemented as well, and I already have all sorts of good ideas about that including degrees of success and failure.

    Also the game is stable enough now that I’m thinking about doing a pre-alpha (is there such a thing?) just to see what happens outside the confines of my LAN. The problem I fear is that I wouldn’t be able to find enough people running Linux with dual-shock style gamepads willing to participate. Seems like there’d be some in-place mechanism for doing such things outside of a full marketing blitz, like maybe an “indie guinea pigs” web site. Ideas anyone?

    Back to AI research, sigh…

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Not sure what’s going on around here the last few days, but the deadness is deafening.

      I’ve been looking at houses, working on something for GOG.com, and…actually, I’ve felt a bit run-down since Tuesday (or thereabouts), and I’ve been spending a bit more time offline.

      But apart from continuing to look at houses, I’m past all that now and feeling good to go again. Expect more soon!

      Also: Yes, there are such things as pre-alphas.

  2. Deckard says:

    Somewhat slow Ultima news week, combined with Quest for Glory on GOG, which I played a few hours last night.

    On the UO front, Dupre has rejoined the active UO world, and within the next week, we should have a very clear outline on where UO is going. Might even see some screenshots from the high resolution artwork update.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      There’s a reminder here. Aiera may have slow times, but between it and the UO Gateway (which Deckard here so excellently maintains) there should always be some kind of fresh news.

  3. Sanctimonia says:

    There actually has been a fair bit of news all around, it just struck me as unusual that there hasn’t been much conversation (outside of Twitter perhaps) about it. Normally posts generate a fair amount of replies unless they’re just universally boring (rare). Then again, maybe I’m just paranoid because of what happened to /. after their site update.

    @WtF, glad you’re feeling better.

    @Deckard, you do do (not doo doo) a fine job with the UO subdomain. The articles are well written, interesting and insightful, and have given me some food for thought occasionally about my own project.

  4. MicroMagic says:

    So I guess there’s no time window for the facebook Ultima rpg thing yet, eh?

    Anyone else super excited about Generals 2? I know it’s old news, but I’m excited about it. Old cnc vets coming back to make another cnc.

    Not even touching the new SC2 thing. So I can play 2/3rds of a full rts? No thanks.

    So how about that Hollande guy and the Greek elections. Kinda kicked Wall st in the pants. Although, who didn’t see the index’s fallling and the dollar getting stronger after Socialists get elected in Europe?

    I guess my preordered copy of Xeno… Blade came in a few weeks ago. I think I’m gunna go to Gamestop and get my five bucks backs. Those new rpgs usually just don’t do it for me. Haven’t even played ME1, and at this point, probably never will.

    I’m at like level 26 in Fallout New Vegas. Lightyears and dozens of hours further than I could push myself through FO3. It’s a lot easier to keep playing a Fallout where they take the cannon into consideration. You can’t just throw guns in an rpg, brotherhood of steel, and super mutants and call that cannonical.

    Then again, it’s a lot easier to take an already made engine with tons of prerendered art assests and make a killer rpg.

  5. Sanctimonia says:

    Rise from your grave. The new site design is excellent. Very technological. Terse and communicative. Love it.

    • WtF Dragon says:

      Yeah, it was time for a refresh, and this theme is pretty solid…on desktop certainly, but also on mobile. I get much better control over what mobile users see and don’t see, which helps keep their experience uncluttered.

      A big deal on a small screen, you know.