Back in the village

23rd Nov 2006

... and back on to MR3. I made a start on the last new feature I intend to program for the game engine. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it so I took it slowly. It is starting to shape up now though.

I had a great time but it's nice to be back!

Going away for a bit

14th Nov 2006

I am going to London tomorrow for a week. So today I was mostly packing for that and organising stuff around the house.

Be back on Thursday, see you then!

New Map Guide added to Docs

13th Nov 2006

I did a new guide today for people who have downloaded the map editor and are wondering what to do with it.

The guide has been added to the Open TMB Docs file which is available from the downloads page.

Here is a direct link.

It has enough in it to get you started at least.

Good luck!

First draft Map Complete

10th Nov 2006

I finished the first draft of the new map last night. And since this week's update was quite small I found I had time to playtest it somewhat today.

It went quite well, there were a few screens where I'd forgotten to put any monsters, and a few more where enemies weren't attacking each other but overall it seemed quite fun, and that's got to be a good thing.

I played about a third to a half of the map, there are many minor tweaks to make and I want to add a new game mechanic type feature before I continue playing.

More Map#2

9th Nov 2006

I've been kept really busy for the past couple of days with non-MR stuff. I didn't even manage to post yesterday.

I did manage to do some more to the map though so things are moving forward.

More Map

7th Nov 2006

Did some more to the map today. Don't want to talk about it too much ;) but things are progressing.

I've been getting some contact messages from people trying to use the Map Editor. I'll answer them individually on Friday, just to say here - you do need Director MX or Director MX 2004 to use them.

You can get a trial version of Director MX 2004 from Adobe's website but you need to give them your email address to get it.

go here:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/alphabetical.html

Scroll down to F-I and just above that header you'll see Director MX 2004. Click on 'try'.

One of my future aims is to try to make a version that doesn't require Director, but that might take quite some time.

Early map, fixed a bug

6th Nov 2006

Got quite a bit done today. I was mainly working on the map, made some new screens and gave the whole thing a ruddy good playtest. My immediate conclusion was that it needed to be easier, so that's what I did.

I also sorted out a bug - the one where your guys sometimes continue to run after the enemies are dead. So that was good too.

I am being far more careful about the level layout this time and the order that you come across different enemies. I want to avoid the sharp changes in difficulty level that happens in the current beta.

I probably won't get it perfect, but it'll definitely be better.

Goblin NPC

2nd Nov 2006

Didn't get much done today as my hand was playng up. But I added a goblin NPC to the map. He comes running on at the end of one the scenes.

NPCs

1st Nov 2006

I returned to work on MR3 today, and added a couple of in-game scripts. These are mostly just to let new players know how to do stuff.

It stikes me that the Army Summon is quite a complicated spell to use, especially if you're new to MR. So I don't think it will do much harm to explain it all - if you already know it, you can always walk away!

Merlin 3 Open Released!

31st Oct 2006

Well after a lot of fannying about it's finally here. I don't suppose very many people will be all that interested in it what with the prohibitive cost of Director etc. But at least I'm not preventing anyone from developing MR if they should wish to.

There's not much documentation to go along with the files at the moment, but you should find that you are able to get the game and the map editor running inside Director without too much bother.

Building shockwave movies (and exes) requires a few more steps than usual and I will provide documentation for how to do that if anyone asks for it.

You can get the files from the Downloads page