Vierstein / News: Recent posts

I bet you thought I don't work on this. Well, sort of. I probably only work on it 1 or 2 weeks every 6 months. Amazingly, I still understand the code (most of it) when I see it next.

The project is more of an excuse to play around with Python. This latest release has mostly Pyui fixes. So, if you want a Pyui with bug fixes oriented towards PyGame and OpenGL ... this isn't a bad thing to download since Pyui and Pyui2 haven't been updated in a while.... read more

This new release fixes the texture issue. It was a texture index problem. Somehow, glGenTextures was not incrementing correctly depending on who called it. Whatever, I fixed (i.e. a hack) for now.

The main brunt of what was added in this release is Events. Including linking events (e.g. you can chain a shop after a text event), and conditional events. Like everything else, it is still in the begining stage. However, it is close to being in state to start actually trying to construct a scenario from it.

Until the next time I have time to post :).

I've seen texture problems on some of the newer Nvidia Drivers. You might see numbers/letters on the map or something similar. Right now I am still using Nvidia's version 61.77 and haven't had the time to track down what I can do to get around it.

Ah.. the latest is up, along with a Windows executable this time. <Skip to disregard rant> I am always dubious that py2exe (along with me coping what I remember) creates workable program even though I test it on a box with no Python or anything installed on it. Why is that? Just that maybe there was something missing. Or, when I compile it on WinXP it doesnt work on Win2000. My only real distaste with python is that I can't make a compiled executable. (Though obviously, the interpreted nature is blessing sometimes as well.) Of course even C++ in today's world, I would still need to give you 900 .so/.dll(s) due to using helpful libraries (I am looking at you OpenSceneGraph).... read more

New release out and one step closer. Rules were completely changed to simplify them. This will allow me to build the rules up more easily.

The original idea was each weapon/armor would have 4 stats of varing strength corresponding to the 4 elements. But, this was overly complicated. Now, each weapon can be made of 0-4 elements but its just 1 or 0 (True or False) for each element. Anyways, one day the rules will be layed out more detailed manner. Just wanted to reveal some of the thought process.

Basically, when you download the source, read building.txt under vierstein/docs. Or you can look in cvs here:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/vierstein/vierstein/docs/building.txt?view=markup

To run, read the running.txt, or again look in cvs:

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/vierstein/vierstein/docs/running.txt?view=markup

You CAN transfer scenarios between Linux and Windows now. It was as simple as opening the file for binary when writing to make the line breaks compatiable on both sides. Being that there is no full-up scenario/game yet, to who does it matter?

It does to me :P

First off:

Yea!

With that out of the way, we can continue.

There was only a minor change needed to build for Linux; I had to change the way fonts were loaded in pyui (yes, there is a but...); for more info see Fonts below. But... the way scenarios/maps are saved is not cross-platform compatiable. This means, the linux box won't load up the saved scenarios from a Win32 box. I assume that it has to do with using the cPickle routine. It is a problem I have thought about before now. I have considered using a text file implementation for storing data, thus allowing for simple editing without loading Vierstein. ... read more

Finally had time to add a new version. Mainly, it adds scrolling ability to map.

To try this out:

Click on All->Create Scenario
Click Load Scen
On the Basic tab in the MapEdit: Tester dialog, click scrolling and hit apply. It might look a little funky. It's work in progress.
You can "scroll" around right now with the arrow keys in the Map window (will say "Tester").
To try it out, goto the Test tab in MapEdit dialog, and click PlayTest.
Now run around with the arrow keys.
Wasn't that exciting!... read more