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Hello Readers! Fat Albert shared a link to the Ludum Dare, a game in 48 hours contest that happens this weekend, and BYOND games are eligible (and have in the past) to participate. Unfortunately, I'll be swamped with operating a benefit breakfast on those two days. That's enough telling of the future; let us take a look at what has developed over the past three weeks!

BYOND

A bunch of bug hunting has been going on over the past few weeks in BYOND's development, and 510 still haven't been declared the stable version. But it has to be getting close, right? Anyhow, while Lummox JR has been dealing with those nasty bugs, he has been looking into and implanting features for 511. Keeping in mind the day he made the post, one might want to check out the comments before getting too excited about the features he mentioned here. But then one week later he's digging into the compiler guts (unofficially now regarded as the axial deframbulator) and making optimizations.

BYOND Games

Dark Space is the latest project on Manio's plate. Players start out as engineers on a space outpost on Xenos, where a strange parasitic life form is discovered, that causes humans to become frantic and dangerous when bitten. Suits, weapons, quests, and lore will be available to find during your stay on Sol VI.

Severed World has been progressing consistently over the past year and is now looking to begin public testing next month, and Pixel Realms wants to build a team of dedicated testers for the fantasy RPG. Those who are interested should contact him with their Skype username.

Sigrogana Legend 2 has a new cave called the Argentyle Caverns, where the strength of the monsters scale your strength, and along with these caverns come a new race, the Naga. New alchemy ingredients means new alchemy recipes, and some NPC assistants are now less non-player, and more player-controlled.

Ishuri shares the weekly development progress logs of Land of Fire in three new editions. Three week ago, respawning and partying were scratched off the list, and the challenges of hand drawn maps, such as collision and elevation were fledged out. Two weeks ago, friends were made, and Luke Ford joined the team, specializing in detailed sound and music. Most recently, elevation got a graphical rise, there's a lot of concern in their campfire scene, crude weaponry is displayed, and lively fireballs set the stage for a new approach to techniques.

As Yutput pushes for a Steam Greenlight release, he has been polishing Epoch, by enhancing the interface, creating new dungeons, fixing bugs, and revealing the storyline. The Temple of Fire, Serenda, and Tor are ready to explore, Fonts and music were created, and new characters, such as the chatty (read: bratty), huge sword wielding, alter-hero Dood was added. A free version of the game is currently available for testing and requested feedback. Check it out here.

1.23 is the latest edition of Avalon, created by Taint_thewizard. Homing and auto targeting is in, monsters and stats have seen some revisions, and the world map has been improved. Version 1.24 is looking promising with the addition of new dungeons, minions, and magic.

Ki Warriors has made will be making a return, tentatively this weekend, featuring new features that help to resolve some of the humdrum content complaints of the past. These include training mini-games, resource harvesters, item crafting, and a handful of other revamps. Unfortunately, any former saves will no longer be compatible with the newest edition.

Yutput made some changes to the original Epic, allowing the game to play properly at various resolutions and reducing the amount of lag (and thanks heavens, if I recall correctly, the second town and dungeon reduced the frame rate to an unbearable crawl).

2016 has been declared the year of Feed by Kumorri. An attempt to end world hunger? Na, rather it's an attempt to slaughter endless zombie hordes in as many crazy ways as possible! Most recently, gun shells clink when they hit the ground, Portals keep one out of tough situations, sights have been added for guns, Arrows point the way to the final zombies, scoreboards track your high scores, and things are moving downtown. There are a ton of GIFs, but fair warning, Kumorri is wearing his (safe) birthday suit in some.

New enemies have found their way into Bravo's Lux. The first is a water-type enemy dubbed the Luxgar. Next is an unnamed beast that fires void squares at the rover, and it looks like the rover can send these squares flying back at him using a sonic blast I haven't seen before. Then a humanoid robot was added, and explodes on impact. The currently progress check indicates that there are 28 created rooms, and plans for a demo once the third boss is complete.

Graphical and atmospheric enhancements were the goals for Lummox JR in his latest developments of Scream of the Stickster 2. Icon matrixes replace most icon procs, walls change appearance when damaged, and opacity has been removed, along with a whole lot more. His to-do list has been shared as well.

Polish and ketchup were the focus of the latest release of Azusa RP. Once the sun and the moon had cycled, and the developer got his head out of the clouds (both of which are new, btw) hunters were created, spawning was changed, and a catch-up system was added to help new players get into the game and reach the heights of more long-term players. Optimizations and new keyboard short-cuts help, and recently created items are available to find.

BYOND Resources

  • Popisfizzy released an incomplete version of pif_longInt, useful for accurately dealing with large whole numbers. Never use scientific notation again!
  • Ensure that your transmitted and received messages are real with pif_QuickSig.
  • Ter13 released a snippet to alter maps by rotating, flipping, mirroring, and changing z level dynamics.
  • ErikHanson shared a tool for converting icon files into PNG files, bulk options available.
  • Why go linear when PopisFizzy has Bezier Curves to help smooth things over?
  • Take one step closer to being a master at operators with Ter13's twelve step guide to thinking outside (or inside) the brackets and braces.
  • Kozuma3 shared their approach to creating HUD's such as was displayed in Elora 2.
  • Mix together multiple particle effects in Flick's PartIcon's icon effect generator.
Woo, look at all these pretty games! Thanks again, Higoten.
I think you linked to the wrong post re: the axial axial deframbulator. It's actually here. Also, I don't know the criteria you make these posts on but I actually released a full Bézier curve library very early this morning.
nice job everyone
looking nice. there are a few cool projects that would interest some people but they've only been teased at in that "Show me what you got" thread

http://www.byond.com/ forum/?post=1911651&page=189#comment19340942

http://www.byond.com/ forum/?post=1911651&page=170#comment19140870 - apparently this will be a tutorial type game

http://www.byond.com/ forum/?post=1911651&page=179#comment19233600
In response to Popisfizzy
Nice catch, everything you've mentioned has been corrected!

I typically keep a document of "interesting" links, and build on it though out the weeks, then decide what to include/omit when it comes time to write everything up. Coincidentally, I was looking at your Bezier curve library page when I wrote the bit on it, but forgot to change the link to the snippet page, which I had intended to omit completely in favor of the libraries' hub page.
In response to Higoten
Ah, that makes sense. Reading that, it sounded more like it was referring to the library than the snippets link.