Compileable version of Alien Breed 3D II - The Killing Grounds

[abu_the_monkey]

the latest commits are all good regarding the boarder stuff

[Karlos]

Soon this thread will be a year old...

[amipal]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Soon this thread will be a year old...

...and marvel at what you've all achieved!

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by amipal

...and marvel at what you've all achieved!

I was thinking more of an Anniversary Release

[Buldozer]

you are doing a great job..thanks for that

Originally Posted by Karlos

I was thinking more of an Anniversary Release

[Karlos]

I've identified another historic defect. The upper floor and ceiling texture scale factors are ignored and the equivalent values for the lower floor is used. I've confirmed this defect in the original Team17 release.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I've identified another historic defect. The upper floor and ceiling texture scale factors are ignored and the equivalent values for the lower floor is used. I've confirmed this defect in the original Team17 release.

When you reload your level in to levelEd does is still show the correct scale you set for the upper level floor and ceiling?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

When you reload your level in to levelEd does is still show the correct scale you set for the upper level floor and ceiling?

It does, it just isn't reflected in game. To be clear. I'm pretty sure it's an engine bug.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

It does, it just isn't reflected in game. To be clear. I'm pretty sure it's an engine bug.

good find, I never made any mods good enough to see this bug

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

good find, I never made any mods good enough to see this bug

You're welcome to join in with mine

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

You're welcome to join in with mine

I hardly have time to look into the bits I tinker with at the mo, and besides, Your doing an amazing job already

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I've identified another historic defect. The upper floor and ceiling texture scale factors are ignored and the equivalent values for the lower floor is used. I've confirmed this defect in the original Team17 release.

have you raised this as an issue on pippers repo?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

have you raised this as an issue on pippers repo?

I haven't yet, tbh.

[Karlos]

Meanwhile...

[Karlos]

I thought @pipper would've posted by now, lol

[pipper]

Post what? The only news I have is that I merged the C migration branch (with rudimentary RTG support) back into main :-) Thanks Karlos, for the review!
So from now on we'll build both variants at the same time. The C build needs to catch up with the assembly one in terms of HUD. And then we'll have to catch up with the original build as well:
* onscreen messages while playing
* level intermission texts/endgame scroll
* red-tinted palette for damage visualization

I think another low hanging fruit should be clean exit from the game. That should also help with turnaround times when testing stuff. I guess for that to work we need to reactivate Abu's Quit menu item. There's still some hardware registers that the executable is directly writing to... but I think that's mainly audio related. We should allocate all channels via the OS at startup and release them on exit.
To truly multi-task, the keyboard and mouse input still need to be revamped. Ha, so much to do, so little time!

[Karlos]

I think that's pretty momentous; getting the C harness back into main and with functional RTG to show for it.

How feasible did you think that was when you started?

[Karlos]

Regarding sound, it would be awesome if we could just replace it all with a proper software mixer that can stream it's output to AHI or Paula. AHI itself can do that but I have found it very variable in its performance from version to version. What we need here is some relatively fixed number of soft channels that have attenuation and pan based on the origin of the sound relative to the player.

[pipper]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I think that's pretty momentous; getting the C harness back into main and with functional RTG to show for it.

How feasible did you think that was when you started?

I always thought it was possible but it felt too daunting to start with. Only when I had enough time at hand in the past weeks to really dive into it, I thought "now or never"
What surprised me, though, is how selective we can be in replacing only certain parts - the back and forth between C and asm worked out quite nicely. So hopefully there will never be a situation where we face a giant wall of code that can only be replaced monolithically and thus we never even dare to touch it. Though, I haven't messed with the menu system yet...

And again, thank you guys in particular, for carrying the torch this far! I had lost a bit interest in meantime and without your ongoing efforts I may not have picked things up again. This was exactly I was hoping for with my first post almost a year ago!

[abu_the_monkey]

@pipper

no worries chap, it's been a fun experience tagging along for the ride thus far, for the most part (bit of a struggle sometimes to wrap my head round how everything works, a few head aches), can't wait to see where we go next

almost a year already time flies when your havin fun I guess