Scorpion Engine

[Jack Burton]

Originally Posted by UltraNarwhal

Click the green code button and the zip downlad file will appear.

Thank you UltraNarwhal !

[acidbottle]

I know I only come on here to raise some issue or another, for which I apologise in advance!

Today is no exception but its more concerning as I know earok is preparing to finalise the build.

I have been using a build from late November, usually waiting a month or so before trying a newer build out. I have encountered multiple issues in the latest builds that are mounting up, the last few builds it seems it wont now even compile:

Error: Multiple use of codeblock/label jump

I roll back to an earlier SE build and it compiles but not without issues.

Basically, stuff that works (in codeblocks) on some levels, does not work on others. These issues mainly regard actors not spawning at a specific block co-ordinate. Also, some codeblocks are not activating when the block is activated/collided with.

Spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what I broke but nothing doing will send over a couple of builds to show the issues if that is ok?

[earok]

Hi Acidbottle,

Apologies about the wasted hours. There's a new function in codeblocks called "jump" which does exactly that (make an actor jump), if you've got a codeblock called "jump" you'll need to rename it to something else (and make sure that everything that was pointing to that codeblock points to the new one).

I don't know what the other issues are caused by, but I'm happy to take a look if I can be given a copy of the project with instructions on how to replicate the issues.

[griffon]

I'm still trying to come to terms with the whip weapon (spawing a new actor on atack didn't work at all if I attached a code block on the player actor, and doing it "manually" from the codeblock handling the main player actor didn't go much further - for now I'm using a single actor for everything), but this is more related about possible bugs.

In particular, I'm having troubles with actor positiong on maps, that worked without any hitches on 2021.7 experimental, while they have been giving me headaches on the 2021 final experimental, all versions of it. Also, for some reason, when using the very same actor on a different map, the graphics gets corrupted when I try to move it around with the normal joystick controls. It also leaves part of the corruption on the background after moving. I can upload my project somewhere (please tell me how you prefer to do that, incase) if that can help.

Oh and I already tried with 04 jan update files. Same results.

Oh, and while I am at it... one thing I'd really like to see added is additional support for "crouched" state for the player actor, with the ability of facing right or left and to attack in the crouched state. That'd be sweet!

[Mixel]

Eek. I just got spooked by that but none of my actor positions have changed at all so i wonder what's happening there.. (and the corruption thing! Weird!) Good luck sorting these out.

I had no idea how to share my project when I started and knew nothing about github and Earok suggested that and now it's like the most useful thing ever, as Scorpion has no undo button and Github desktop makes it easy to revert changes, it's saved me so many times. Then you invite the people you want to see your project and they can download your latest builds.

As for crouching, I asked for that initially too but a method Earok suggested works great, and probably makes more sense than having an inbuilt ducking form because its super flexible now. I have a ifcontrol1down=1 and ifactorisonplatform!=false "change actor type to crouched actor" loop running on my player actor on a 0 timer.

[griffon]

Originally Posted by Mixel

Eek. I just got spooked by that but none of my actor positions have changed at all so i wonder what's happening there.. (and the corruption thing! Weird!) Good luck sorting these out.

Maybe it'll go away with the next update. In the mean time, I'll work on other parts of the project, I sure do have plenty of 'em...

Originally Posted by Mixel

I had no idea how to share my project when I started and knew nothing about github and Earok suggested that and now it's like the most useful thing ever, as Scorpion has no undo button and Github desktop makes it easy to revert changes, it's saved me so many times. Then you invite the people you want to see your project and they can download your latest builds.

Ooh, great suggestion, I didn't even remotely think of using git as code repository for SE projects, but it does make a lot of sense, thanks for the heads up!

Originally Posted by Mixel

As for crouching, I asked for that initially too but a method Earok suggested works great, and probably makes more sense than having an inbuilt ducking form because its super flexible now. I have a ifcontrol1down=1 and ifactorisonplatform!=false "change actor type to crouched actor" loop running on my player actor on a 0 timer.

Probably didn't get far enough on the thread to reach the point where you and Earok discussed that yet. So a different actor for crouching... Yes, that will solve several issues in one go! Thanks to both of you again!

[Z-TEAM]

BONNE ANNEE / HAPPY NEW YEAR

May this year be rich with many projects on Scorpion Engine and sharing in this community.

my only wish for this year would be to see release notes with all the modifications/new features in read.me of the daily build of scorpion on github.

too hard to browse the forum between requests for help, example, request for evolution

Originally Posted by earok

@mixel
Update to experimental. I'm getting fairly close to the point where I'm happy to release to public, so *please* feel free to report anything that's clearly broken (if you're not sure if it's the engine's fault or not, please let me know anyway and I'll advise).

when you spawn an actor with a movement cpu_path on a path of the map, it doesn't seem to work on the last build version but valid on the 2021.7 version.

@earok, I don't know if you like that we create issue to track bugs on github project but it would allow to track, see the answers and use the features of github for all, what do you think?

[earok]

Daily check in:

- reworked what used to be the "standard library" into separate codeblocks in the streamingassets folder. This does allow the end (though this could be problematic, definitely don't add any variables in any codeblocks that you put into streamingassets).

- renamed the "jump" function to "jump_actor" (which does fix the Wonderboy compilation issue, though I haven't yet investigated to see if other issues are still present on the latest build)

- reworked loading files due to rare bug with decrunching failing (it seemed to be something to do with decrunching happening in non-multitasking mode)


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@ZTeam I'll check it out the path issue the next few days or so. I don't mind the bugs being reported there.


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@griffon git is definitely recommended for Scorpion projects! All Scorpion project files (excluding 8svx, png etc) are plain text to be git friendly. It's also a lot easier for me to grab a copy of your latest project so I can personally verify and fix any bugs.

Different actor for crouching is a good way to do it. Some engines (backbone) do have native support for crouching built in but I'm hesitant to add to the core engine with things like that, partly because crouching can be managed in lots of different ways (eg, can the player slide, can the player crouch in mid air, can the player crawl etc?), but also because adding more and more systems makes Scorpion more difficult to maintain. Using a different actor gives ultimate flexibility without making Scorpion itself more bloated.

I'd still recommend using melee collision boxes for whips, I take it that it isn't suitable for your project for some reason?

[acidbottle]

Nice one again earok, indeed it does compile though think I had a sound fx called jump which, I think, caused the issue

Am wondering if code is somehow altered when you try out a new build, as rolling back to an older SE build does not resolve some spawning issues. Now I know why I should back up files for specific builds!

[UltraNarwhal]

Latest build has problem with panels that display text, they don't display text and hang the game.

Examples.
In my game pressing P brings up talking panel of blank text for pause until fire is pressed.
Intro screen after title screen cycles text when press fire.

[earok]

Daily check in:

- Fixed bug reported by UltraNarwhal with text display
- New feature: Push and Pop on Stack. Not well tested yet and probably not really that useful unless you're doing something advanced, but at least in theory it could be used for recursive functions.

[earok]

Another check in - I might not have fully checked in the last update, in any case it should all be up to date now.

Also:
- Limit on paths has been removed (no longer 16 nodes max, can be any number of nodes)
- CPU_Path actors will seek out the nearest path even if they're not spawned perfectly on top of a point.

Z-Team, I don't suppose you could verify that paths are working again as expected? If they are not, could I get a copy of the game?

[UltraNarwhal]

Originally Posted by earok

Daily check in:

- Fixed bug reported by UltraNarwhal with text display
- New feature: Push and Pop on Stack. Not well tested yet and probably not really that useful unless you're doing something advanced, but at least in theory it could be used for recursive functions.

Excellent
Is the chip memory remaining displayed on quit correct? I used to have 70K, but suddenly it's gone up to 530K remaining (1MB Amiga).

[Z-TEAM]

Hi @earok
The new daily build of scorpion engine crash with our project when i launch with WinUAE

[earok]

Minor check in to experimental, panels that are not a compatible width for an AGA fetch mode setting will throw an error on compile (rather than have garbled graphics on run)

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Ah, @Z-TEAM that's no doubt to do with the changes I've made to paths. I'll take a look once I've got the repository downloaded.

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@UltraNarwall oh, oops.. that's a bug. I recently rewrote memory management in Scorpion from scratch (basically throwing out all of the Blitz commands in favor of exec.library ones), but it seems I was freeing all of that memory BEFORE reporting the free memory on quit, rather than after. Will be fixed for next build.

[earok]

Minor fix checked in for Z-Team (misalignment with path bug, which I *think* was just because of a recent change to how spawning works but hopefully my new fix won't affect paths on any other games)

[griffon]

Latest update fixed the graphic corruption on the message boxes, yay!

I also was not aware that they need to be multiples of 32 or 64 on AGA fetch modes 1 and 3. Which maxes sense since they are 32 and 64-bit aligned, I think? Now SE got angry with me, cause mine were 16 pixel multiples. Whoops

[earok]

No worries the 16/32/64 wide fetch mode thing was something I overlooked, I had enforced it already for the main game screen but forgot to do so for panels.

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Yet another update:

- Added the ability to change the "panel gap" (black lines between the panel and the main game display, normally 4). This may need to be set higher if the game display has display issues when a top panel is displayed. You could maybe set it lower if you've got a very small palette but it's not recommended.

- Added an "overlap game" tick box to the panel view. This will mean that a top panel covers the top of a game display rather than pushing it downwards. It'd be most useful if you have a talkpad on top of the screen temporarily.

[griffon]

Thanks for the update Earok!

Originally Posted by earok

- Added the ability to change the "panel gap" (black lines between the panel and the main game display, normally 4). This may need to be set higher if the game display has display issues when a top panel is displayed. You could maybe set it lower if you've got a very small palette but it's not recommended.

This.. this is exactly what I neeed! edit: for who, like me, didn't see where you can set that, it's in vm_registers. I assume you can change it there ?

Originally Posted by earok

- Added an "overlap game" tick box to the panel view. This will mean that a top panel covers the top of a game display rather than pushing it downwards. It'd be most useful if you have a talkpad on top of the screen temporarily.

That's another winner for me there Unofrtunately, I have to be the bearer of bad news again Now SE behaves correctly (not altering the map colors AND map potsitioning when the text panels are shown only if:
- the new On top of game display is NOT ticked
- the centering option (Center adjust px) is NOT set
otherwise it still misbehaves. The second problem can be avoided by using a bigger box, but kind defies the point. Would if be possible to have box panels to support transparency? like they were kind of floating windows? That would be great for some games. Maybe they already do in the "on game top" function but as I said it doesn't work correctly now so I cannot tell.

On a totally positive note, with this update the charcter/screen corruption is gone! Yaaaay!!

Oh, and this is totally unrelated to the rest, but may as well interest other people tinkering with SE: how is the command "Level/Teleport to" supposed to work? Aka, how do you configure a teleporter in a map? That sounds like a super sweet feature, for now I'm using teleportation blocks with code blocks associated with them. Which I might keep, since they work pretty well, but doesn't hurt to explore more options!

If I can also add a tiny little request, if it's not too much trouble, it would be a few... debug/troubleshooting features. I have often problems, being probably terrible at this, but I can't tell where the problem is cause I can't get a visual feedback where some code is actually executed. Something silly like, I don't know, screen flashing or a debug text appearing somewhere would help immensibly in debugging. adding a debug-only character X/Y position in some corner of the screen would be a huge help with conversions and the likes instead of guessing and going by trial and error. I hope it's not too complicated/anoying to add, I kinda feel bad for asking this

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by griffon

Something silly like, I don't know, screen flashing or a debug text appearing somewhere would help immensibly in debugging. adding a debug-only character X/Y position in some corner of the screen would be a huge help with conversions and the likes instead of guessing and going by trial and error. I hope it's not too complicated/anoying to add, I kinda feel bad for asking this

^ For that last suggestion you could make a debug version of your game's statusbar panel with a load of variables displayed? I sometimes put a few variables off the edge of my statusbar, but have been meaning to expand it into a more comprehensive thing. (very useful for posting actor/block/player x/y coords for lining up behaviour in codeblocks etc)

I thiiink panels are basically their own "screen", with their own palette etc, its not actually rendering the stuff into the same space at all, so transparency couldn't work? (i have vague recollection of asking about transparency too but.. tbh not sure lol)

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Feature request: Could we get the same individual colour override thing you recently added to animations but for blocks too? a have a few blocks that it'd be cool if i could theme them to different levels without having to make different copies of them.