SLUDGE 2.0 - a work in progress

[Erwin_Br]

On my PC the problem is NOT there. I'm assuming it's related to VM-Ware's graphics drivers.

I wouldn't focus on it either. Most games don't run at all in VM-Ware, with its limited DirectX support.

[Trumgottist]

Ah. That's good to know. It's not great that the engine doesn't run in VM-Ware, but with an OS X version of the engine the need to run it in VM-Ware should be small.

Now I just hope that it really is a VM-Ware bug, and not something that would turn up on other computers. We'll see.

[Trumgottist]

I found the bug that crashed Mandy. I was stupidly writing past the end of a buffer.

[Erwin_Br]

I found the bug that crashed Mandy. I was stupidly writing past the end of a buffer.

Whoo-ha! Congrats 

Does this mean you have some time for the Freeze issue that does some weird things with pasting sprites?

[Trumgottist]

Certainly. But maybe not today. I've now managed to hang Mandy, and thus found another problem to fix.

Reading text files in ASCII mode on different platforms... Need I say more? At least this is an easy bug to find unlike those memory errors.

[Trumgottist]

Now that bug is fixed too, so the windows engine doesn't choke if it gets fed a text file in Unix format.

I've uploaded a new Windows binary (1.18 MB zip file, and console is removed). Now only the startup window is missing, and then it will have caught up with the Mac. But that (and the freezing thing) will have to wait until next time. Now I'm done with SLUDGE for today. Time to eat!

[Trumgottist]

I couldn't stop myself, so there's a new windows version again. Now complete with a startup window, so unless any more bugs are found the windows engine is finally equal to the mac engine.

Now the freezing bug is at the top of my SLUDGE todo-list. (But I don't know when I'll next find time to work on it. Certainly not in the coming few days.)

[Trumgottist]

(And if anyone is wondering why the logo only shows if the program is started directly and not if it is opened with a game file, it's due to that code path not querying the hInstance as it should. I've fixed it but not uploaded the new version.)

[Trumgottist]

I've fixed the blurring of the background that occurred when doing a freeze. Binaries uploaded.

(Fixing the pasting of sprites it still on my to-do-list.)

[Erwin_Br]

Downloading! The timing couldn't be better now I finally have some time again because of the weekend.

[Erwin_Br]

Blurring is indeed gone now.

Regarding the pasting of characters, did you by any chance also notice that it not only pastes the sprites double, they are also one pixel off from the original location. And what's interesting is that the transparant box around the sprite also affects the background. I can see the background image is also shifted one pixel, but only the part overlapped by the box. I hope this'll help in tracking the problem, if you're still searching.

[Trumgottist]

Yes, I've noticed that.

[Trumgottist]

I've talked about a "to-do-list" in the past in relation to SLUDGE development, but no list has actually existed. I've had various notes on pieces of paper all over the place, but that's not exactly the best kind of organisation (particularly when it sometimes can be weeks of no SLUDGE work), so I'm now creating a file to serve as a to-do list.

For the Development Kit, it's obvious that there's still plenty to be done, so I'm not going to list that yet, but here is what I have on the list for the Engine:

* Fix the sprite pasting bug.
* Save settings made in the setup window to the ini file. (And include a setting not to show the setup window.)
* Let games replace the logo in the setup window?
* Allow launching of one SLUDGE game from within another.
* Movie support (this is one for the future - not planned for SLUDGE 2.0)

I'm sure there are things I've forgotten (or not thought of yet), so if you'd like to remind me that'd be great.

[Erwin_Br]

I don't think I've addressed this one before:

Sound doesn't play over the sound device selected in the System Preferences of Mac OSX. It plays everything over the crappy speaker inside my machine, instead of over the Digital Output. (I have a Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System connected to my machine)

I don't know what it does if someone uses the  normal Line Out, I can't test it myself. The Windows version does not have this issue as far as I know.

[Trumgottist]

Hmm. The sound library is told to use the default device when initializing.

Did this bug pop up in the latest build? When fixing the Windows engine, I changed the device from 1 (= first real output device) to -1 (= default device). That change carried over to the Mac build I uploaded today. It would have made more sense if the effect had been the reverse though. Now I don't know what to think. Will investigate. (I have an external sound card I can connect to test with.)