Whoa... almost ran into a show-stopper bug last night.

Here's the scenario: I was multi-keying on an Acheron server on my computer to test player interaction stuff. The problem was the everytime that I logged in with another key, the server would crash and the DS/DD would close. Bizarre and frustrating! Occasionally instead of just crashing, the entire server froze and output this BYOND Bug message:

BYOND(350.909) BUG: unexpected file transmission (packet_num = 510 (expected = 509),max=623,pid=4294967295)

After six plus hours of testing and fuming, I came to the conclusion that the bug is caused by having too many complex map files. This bug isn't exclusive to the Beta-- even the old version of BYOND was doing the same thing.

The good news is that after a quick session with some of the private testers tonight, we determined that this bug is NOT a problem when remote players connect. This bug only occurs when trying to multi-key from the same computer the server is being hosted on.

This is a BYOND Bug that definitely needs to be fixed, but at least it won't hold up the final stages of AA development too much. Things could have been so much worse...

Scar here, one of the private testers just wanting to post a talk that Balzack and I had with Silk about Acheron's Awakening on the Balzackian Teamspeak server. Check it out!

http://silkgames.com/acheron/aa_chat.mp3

The 40+ bugs of varying severity reported from the first phase of private testing have been fixed. The next phase should begin shortly. I've been pretty bogged down this week with work (I essentially worked a 12 hour day today... ick).

Keep in mind that this game is a massive project, and I'm doing my best to get it out ASAP. I'm taking advantage of no longer being on a deadline for release to polish things up a bit more before it goes public.

Rest assured, you will be playing Acheron's Awakening soon enough. As I've said a million times before- I'm just as anxious to release this game as anyone is to play it. Thank you for all of the support so far!

Oh, and if you have a problem with any of that, then I'll rip your eyes out:


When a player gets "Player-Killed" he loses more than just his honor...

I finally unpacked my coding computer and got it set up in my new apartment this afternoon. As soon as I booted it up I ended up playing (not coding) Acheron's Awakening for about an hour before I realized that I had to get back to unpacking stuff.

Major work on the game will resume in a few days, and after another round of private testing or two the initial release should be ready for the public.

I'm excited because the release is definitely in sight, although I don't want to give any specific dates or timeframes. I've got a lot of stuff to do for my job this week as well as getting my apartment set up etc.. I'm just as anxious as anyone else is to see this game released, so I'm going to do everything I can to finish it soon!

Lately I have been receiving a lot of emails/pages asking me how I coded the HUD in Acheron's Awakening, and so here are just a few libraries to get you started:

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Nadrew's "HUD demo" library:
http://developer.byond.com/hub/Nadrew/NadrewsHUDdemo

Very simple and easy to understand library that will get you started with onscreen HUDs. If you have no idea where to start, check this out first!

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Crispy's "Heads Up" library:
http://developer.byond.com/hub/Crispy/HeadsUp

Great way to play around with dragging and dropping onscreen HUD objects. It's easier than you think!

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Shadowdarke's "HUDmeter" library:
http://developer.byond.com/hub/Shadowdarke/HUDmeter

Should give you a great understanding of how onscreen status bars are created and updated.

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Dantom's "htmllib" library:
http://developer.byond.com/hub/Dantom/htmllib

Another way to work with menus... this is what Proelium's browser menu system uses.


Let me know if I missed anything!