The Golden Hasweg: A Dwarven Tale / News: Recent posts

Finally I released the first version of The Golden Hasweg. It is still not complete and many features are missing, but it works very fine.

Compared to the latest snapshot release I added more colors to the user interface, changed the way your dwarfs find needed resources and implemented a new zone concept. I also changed the way stockpiles are created and used by your dwarf. Workshops have a size of 3x3 fields now and stockpiles can also have a size of more than one field.... read more

Hi there, my last posts are already some weeks (or some months) old. But I wasn't lazy all this time. I programmed lot. I will give you some details later this week.

At the moment I am preparing release v0.0.1. For that I have to complete a little tutorial and write some readme files and release notes. You know all these things, nobody likes to do. I hope I can release version v0.0.1 of The Golden Hasweg next week. But maybe it will takes a little longer ... you know I'm not that fast.... read more

At the moment I'm working at adding more colours to the display. Grass for instance should be displayed with green background colour and stones should be grey. I also added two new ground types (cavern floor and wall) changed the description of the existing ground types.

I uploaded a new snapshot version of The Golden Hasweg. It contains the complete version of the new UI (it is done now). I also added a new file to configure field types (see /cfg/cfg/field_type.cfg).

This is an unstable snapshot version of the game and the overall status of this project is still prealpha.

I finished refactoring the API classes of resource and workshop types. It was a lot of work.

The new UI needs some additional work (more unit tests, display different colors in menu entries, adapt style of game menu, ... ). I will try to do this next.

Hi there, I changed the part of the application that loads information form config files. With that information the game configures available resource types (like stone or wood) and available workshop types (like carpentries or masonries). Beside of adding a new type to a config file, you also hat to add the new type to a java enum. I changed that, adding the information to a file is enough. The core implementation was very strait forward. The main problem was, that my unit test had a lot of references to this enum entries. Also the application code had some references (... a dwarf try to find a bed to sleep in). I'm still working on it. Maybe I will also add a new config file. With that file you can configure the different ground types.

This evening I wrote a lot of JavaDoc comments and added smaller improvements to the code. The XRadar reports and test coverage reports were good.

During the day I had some ideas how I can implement a mechanism to load and save the game. Maybe I will try to code this soon. I had an other idea (lots of ideas today) how to remove enums for resource types. Maybe I can do this tomorrow.

I fixed the problems with the game menu much faster than I thought yesterday. Because of that I uploaded a new snapshot version today. It is not perfect, but maybe you can get a idea of how I change the user interface. I still need to complete the unit tests and add JavaDoc comments to the new classes.

This is an unstable snapshot version of the game and the overall status of this project is still prealpha.

Back in November I started to implement a new user interface. The old implementation was not very flexible. I also had a lot of problems with loading fonds on different platforms.

The new UI is tile based. Although it is still an ASCII game, you can adapt the game easily to use a simple graphic interface.

At the moment most parts of the core implementation are finished. Only the game menu is still not yet done. After that I will need some time to add JavaDoc to new classes, to write unit tests and to clean my code. I hope I can release a new snapshot at the end of January.

I uploaded a new snapshot version. It contains some new help files and a new readme.txt. I also did some minor changes at the menu.

Keep in mind that this is an unstable snapshot version of the game and the overall status of this project is prealpha. Please report bugs.

I redid my bugfix with missing fonts on windows. My new solution isn't also very nice, but it is much better then the last one ...

At the moment I'm improving the code quality. I removed some cycle dependencies between different packages and added javadoc comments to new classes. I also refactored some very long classes at the gui package.

I fixed the bug with the missing font on windows but it took me some hours and I'm not very happy with my current solution.

The current snapshot does not run well on windows machines. I will fix it tomorrow.

I released a new snapshot version after a long time of development. I hope you enjoy the new features.

My current plan is to stop adding more features to version 0.0.1. I will fix some bugs, finish writing help files and try to release this version as soon as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is an unstable version of the game and the overall status of this project is prealpha.

I improved the game menu last week and made minor changes at the user interface.

I test the application under linux (ubuntu 10.03) and fix some bugs (display problems because of unknown fonts, timing problems while initialization, ...).

The mechanism that initializes the resource and workshop types is now also used to load world map. For that I removed the file 'world.txt' and add a new file 'world.cfg'. ... read more

I finished implementing the help menus, but I'm not ready writing the help files. But it is still on my todo list.

After some minor refactoring I started to write a component, that can read special config files and store the readed information inside data structures. I use this component to initialize resource and workshop data. Now I can configure new resources and new workshops and I can also configure how to create a resource. To test my implementation I configured a new resource 'coal' and a new workshop 'charcoal burning'. With that workshop you can create one coal from one wood.... read more

Finally I started to implement a help menu and a mechanism to display text files. For that I had to change some parts of the user interface software architecture. It was a bit complicated. Now the implementation itself is quite finished, but I must still add some unit tests and write javadoc comments. Maybe I will release a new snapshot version in a few days.

I improved the random number generator. My original idea was to generate random numbers from a dwarfs current position. The advantage of this is that you can test all your classes with unit tests (even the classes with random behavior). But it doesn't generate good random numbers. I implemented a standard random number generation algorithm. I still have my unit tests. I control the generated numbers by setting the right seeds in every test.

I'm still improving the code quality. But it is quite boring. I will start to implement the help menu maybe tomorrow. I hope it will be more fun than trying to remove cycle dependencies between the packages.

I'm busy with refactoring and improving the code quality. For that I installed XRadar (see http://xradar.sourceforge.net\). I needed some time to get it run. Even now I'm not able to run my unit tests inside XRadar.

I uploaded another snapshot version of the game.

Please keep in mind that this is an unstable version of the game and the overall status of this project is prealpha.

I spent the last few nights adding a new feature to center a dwarf, a building or a resource. I had to change the game menu because it was no space left to add the information that 'c' is the key to center a selected item. I changed the way you close sub menus and the way you return to the start menu. You can do both by hitting ESC. If you are in a sub menu and hit ESC the sub menu is closed and the parent menu will be displayed. If you are in the root menu and hit ESC you return to the game menu. I had some problems to mark the selected item at the map. I tried different things (using a different color, let the item blink, use a bold font, ...) but it was not that what I want. In the end I show the item itself and an 'X' by turns.
Yesterday I spent some time to improve the build script. If you build the application it executes now the unit tests and the build fails if the tests are not OK. The script also creates a zip file from the application automatically and adds the current date to the zip file name.