Welcome back everyone! Thank you all for the kind words in the previous blog posts this week; just like the previous week I dedicated to URR a month or two ago, it has been tremendously rewarding (and productive!) to do the same this time around.
These last few days have continued to clear out the minuscule number of remaining issues. I’ve sorted that problem with some NPCs not knowing where their homes are sometimes, and I’ve conducted extensive tests on the executable version of the game to make sure it works correctly at all points. During this process I’ve found a number of further crash bugs, all of which I’ve now fixed, but this process has largely soaked up the past few days. Specifically:
- The game no longer freezes when you try to enter a Mint in a city centre.
- The game is now generally better at fixing problems with internal pathfinding instead of freezing in various contexts, not just the above.
- The game no longer crashes when asking guards of embassies about their homes and homelands.
- The game no longer crashes when you talk to certain NPCs about their religions.
- Castles no longer sometimes crash if you have a particular set of policies in that nation (which influence what should and shouldn’t spawn there).
This was all important stuff to do, of course, but not things I anticipated having issues with a few days ago; so while there has been a lot of work and progress, it’s not quite ready to go yet – but the game is in a far more stable and playable state as a result. This evening I spent a while working on removing some of the substantial number of debug messages still stuck in there, so that’s good progress along that path.
So: when I last posted a few days ago, there were 4 remaining objectives: fixed this bug I’d found around homes, check things work correctly in the executable, remove the debug messages, and remove the console. 1 is done, 2 has been extremely done (although I will continue checking for more crash bugs as I go along), and I’ve started 3 (and 4 is trivial). Again, I’m not going to set a date for release: I’m just going to keep working on these in the evenings, and keep updating you all every few days, until they are done.
Now, Monday and Tuesday are teaching days. If I get some programming done on those days, that’s great, but don’t expect it – online teaching is extraordinarily demanding. Expect the next update late next week, probably – but again, I cannot guarantee health and all that. But I’ll be back very soon. I’m not letting this momentum go. This is the time to get URR 0.8 done and out there. Thank you all SO much for the support this week, and I’ll get back to coding the moment I can (i.e. probably Wednesday). See you all soon!
I keep lurking and reading your updates and forgetting to congratulate you on your progress and thank you, too. So consider this a hearty congrats and thanks! So much has happened in the past year, but seeing you get back onto this is definitely a good ray of sunshine. 🙂
Wow, thanks Conor! That’s super kind of you :).
Thanks for the update. I have been spamming F5 on your site hoping this weekend would be the ticket, so it’s good to know I can give the keyboard a breather for a few days. 😀
Looking forward to the big day, and do take care of your health.
Haha, thanks Shannon! Yes, a few more days, but just chucked up another big update. Maybe the last, or at least the penultimate?
Why is it important to remove the console?
CJ, it just looks inelegant and it’s very much a bug-fixing thing for me!
It is such a pleasure to observe your work in progress with your self-inspired zeal in your project. I wanted to wish you luck at the finish line, but with your professional approach no luck is needed; it’s about perseverance and attentiveness that you show everyday.
BTW, is it just me, or 0.7 has got an issue with page up/page down not working when scrolling screen in history section of the encyclopedia? Tried it with numpad on/off.
I’ve just played a bit more with the keyboard and found out that it was just my problem indeed – the Lenovo notebook that I’m using has got a Fn (function) key and for some reason in URR scrolling with Pg up/down works only with pressing this key AND numpad turned on. Never encountered this before. Sorry)
Just another question, maybe – during the world generation it says ruins, but I have never came across any ruin on the map. Is it that they are not shown on the map?
Thank you Paul, that’s super kind of you! It must be said – the zeal has been lacking from time to time in recent years – but I think a final burst of zeal at the moment should be sufficient to get things down. As for the PgUp/Dn thing, I didn’t know about that! Glad you fixed it though. Ruins actually denotes a range of generation elements so it’s not really super-accurate. I should probably rename it…
Part of the reason I made a comment was exactly the fact that you should see that people still enjoy you project and the number of URR followers grows steadily. That is the reward and motivation you need! So thank you very much for the work!
I have asked about the ruins because I’ve just finished the 0.3 version with ziggurat puzzles (got it via the Wayback Machine from the old site) and I presumed that 0.7 also contained ziggurats. Have to say that it was really fun, actually. Reminded me of the Einstein puzzle, but more about the use of linguistics and visualization than general logic. That was absolutely awesome how you managed to make a procedure that generates puzzles and the clues to them, and they are actually solvable! That just blew my mind. I do understand why you discarded the puzzles in the later versions, though, but at the same time I very much enjoyed the more traditional elements in previous URR incarnations, such as cyclopes, dragons, wolves and puzzles.
Well, Paul – thank you. Seriously. And for the kind words about the puzzles! Yeah, I rather liked those as well. I honestly might add them back in to some later version if I feel so inclined; I was pretty happy with the puzzle generation at the time (and the visuals that went with them). The game has definitely changed a lot…