If you downloaded Monster 2 1.0 for Mac OS X, you’ve probably found out by now that the OpenGL version fails to start up. I could go into detail about why, but it’s fairly boring so I will just present a solution here in the form of a patch.
First, download the patch. Next, open a terminal (Utilities->Terminal). From your home directory, type into the terminal tar xf path/to/Monster2-patch-1.0_to_1.0p1-macosx.tar, replacing path/to with the directory of the downloaded patch. Now type cd Monster2-patch-1.0_to_1.0p1-macosx and finally sudo ./runme.sh /path/to/Monster2.app, replacing /path/to with the full path to Monster2.app (which would be /Applications if you stored it in your Applications folder. Give your password when asked.
It’s been 26 days since I released the first release candidate of Monster 2. I thought it might be fun and interesting to give some statistics on downloads. These numbers are counting each IP only once. If I count total downloads the numbers are a lot higher but less useful.
Windows installer: 319
Linux binary: 277
Mac OS X binary: 106
Windows ZIP file: 63
Total: 765
Interestingly Linux accounts for almost as many downloads as the Windows installer. That is thanks to the great free software sites: Freshmeat, linuxgames.com and the Linux Game Tome.
About a week after the first release candidate of Monster 2, I’ve uploaded a second. There were a lot of minor changes but the game remains almost the same. If you haven’t had any problems with 1.0RC1 it’s probably not cause to upgrade. If all goes well with this release I should be able to do a 1.0 release very soon. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks go out to everyone who has downloaded the game!
It’s here! Ok, it’s not 1.0 like I promised. I decided to release a Release Candidate first and make sure that 1.0 is bug-free. Thanks everyone for the help and support. You can get the game here.
I decided to forego a public beta and do the testing myself. I’m going to give a conservative estimate that the game will be released by the end of June (I actually think I’m much closer than that). Sorry to keep you waiting and I hope you stick around until it’s done!
For the past week I’ve been playing through the game, correcting quite a few small glitches and about 2 (yes, only 2!) major bugs. The amount of bugs I’m finding is much lower than what I expected and experienced in Monster 1. I guess my programming ability has improved. I expect to be finished with alpha testing by the end of May, at which point I will try and find some beta testers (can’t have too much testing going on!). I plan on having some very nice CDs made professionally, so if you contributed significantly to the game, expect to get one. Beta testers will get one too, if they complete the game and report bugs.
So far I have played through the game about 1 and 6/8ths times. It’s quite a large game and fixing glitches takes its time too. There is a wide variety of levels, monsters, spells, items, and secrets to be found, and of course I need to test all of them. 7 is the magic number. I have to play through 7 times because there are 7 platforms/graphics drivers supported. Once beta testing is finished I will play through all 7 once again before the first public release.
Today is a special day for me. Monster 2 (what I’ve been calling Operation Frozen Eagle) has been completed and entered the alpha testing stage! It’s been a year and a half and a lot of people have contributed to make the game what it is now. Thanks to you all if you’re reading this.
Soon I will be looking for people to do a private beta (about 3-4 people tops) before releasing version 1.0. If any of you readers are interested please contact me.
OFE turned 1000 today. As in 1000 commits to SVN. That number is a little deflated, by about a month or two when OFE wasn’t under version control. Here’s a screenshot of the current area:
In order to simulate things at multiple heights in a 2D game, you need some tricks. More layers don’t help the situation where you can walk under something at one level and over it at another. For this situation, which has not come up extremely often, I have adopted a simple script-based approach to the problem. Two trigger points “on the ground” switch tiles between layers and set different solids depending on which trigger is stepped on.
In order to do this properly you need a persistant flag that marks whether you are up or down. Besides that, it’s pretty simple. Here is some source code straight from one of the area scripts in OFE:
local low_solids = {
{ 24, 15 },
{ 16, 15 },
}
local high_solids = {
{ 19, 22 },{ 19, 23 },{ 21, 22 },{ 21, 23 },{ 15, 12 },
{ 16, 12 },{ 17, 12 },{ 18, 12 },{ 19, 12 },{ 20, 12 },
{ 21, 12 },{ 22, 12 },{ 23, 12 },{ 24, 12 },{ 25, 12 },
{ 25, 13 },{ 25, 14 },{ 25, 15 },{ 25, 16 },{ 25, 17 },
{ 25, 18 },{ 25, 19 },{ 25, 20 },{ 25, 21 },{ 24, 21 },
{ 23, 21 },{ 22, 21 },{ 21, 21 },{ 25, 21 },{ 19, 21 },
{ 18, 21 },{ 17, 21 },{ 16, 21 },{ 15, 21 },{ 15, 20 },
{ 15, 19 },{ 15, 18 },{ 15, 17 },{ 15, 16 },{ 15, 15 },
{ 15, 14 },{ 15, 13 },{ 18, 13 },{ 18, 14 },{ 18, 15 },
{ 18, 16 },{ 18, 17 },{ 18, 18 },{ 19, 18 },{ 21, 18 },
{ 22, 18 },{ 22, 13 },{ 16, 20 },{ 24, 20 },{ 20, 17 },
}
function make_solid(list)
for i=1,#list do
setTileSolid(list[i][1], list[i][2], true)
end
end
function make_unsolid(list)
for i=1,#list do
setTileSolid(list[i][1], list[i][2], false)
end
end
-- from and to are layer numbers, 0-3
function change_layers(x1, y1, x2, y2, from, to)
local x, y
for y=y1,y2 do
for x=x1,x2 do
local v
v = getTileLayer(x, y, from)
if (not (v == -1)) then
setTileLayer(x, y, from, -1)
setTileLayer(x, y, to, v)
end
end
end
end
function lower()
change_layers(16, 13, 24, 20, 2, 0)
change_layers(16, 13, 24, 20, 3, 1)
change_layers(20, 21, 20, 22, 3, 1)
end
function raise()
change_layers(16, 13, 24, 20, 0, 2)
change_layers(16, 13, 24, 20, 1, 3)
change_layers(20, 21, 20, 22, 1, 3)
end
Pretty simple stuff. Here’s a video of this area in action:
