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Crystal Towers 2 - NVO Conversion Done
Aug. 14th, 2007 02:11 pmSurprisingly, the conversion to NVO has been going faster than I expected - after doing the saves I got started on the game's data files. Virtually everything is stored in comma-separated value files now rather than INIs, and they can easily be changed over to encrypted files by changing a couple of global events when the time comes. I've started writing a save game editor as well, so that saves aren't absolutely unmodifiable by me if I need to test them again. The only thing I'm worried about is the synth list, which works well enough for the most part but I'm fairly sure that it can't remove blank entries correctly (they can be set to 0, but can't be actually deleted from the file and will still show up in the count). Still, that can be dealt with later on as they only affect one frame.
The only things now remaining in unencryptable files are the list of players (which I'm not too bothered about because there's nothing to be gained from modifying it) and the little INI file that tells the game who the last player was, which just isn't worth converting over because deleting it will do absolutely nothing. The change was a good thing in the end because it allowed me to go over things again and correct them if I'd done them slightly stupidly at first. Little things like the synth items relying on their direction to decide what type they were instead of storing it in a real value, and so on. And now that the conversion's done, I've been experimenting with allowing score sheets to be uploaded through a mildly insane conversion algorithm I put together - I'll link to one once I've got the page neatened up.
And with that out the way, I've finally got down to doing some planning of the way that the player will take through the game, when to introduce certain elements and what will be offered as rewards for completing each level. The OpenCalc file (or whatever it's called) has been growing larger by the day, and it's got to the point now where I would have no idea what I was doing if I didn't have a record of it all, so I have to be careful to keep the changes in the game in line with what I have in the plan.
I downloaded TFM Maker the other day, by the way, as recommended to me by Nim in the Clickteam chatroom - I'm trying to go for an authentically Genesis sound for the music, and even adding the drum samples from the Sonic games has brought an incredible mood to it. (Trouble is they're very quiet and I have to double up the channels because ModFusion doesn't understand VST effects...)
There sometimes seems like there's so much to do that doesn't visually progress the game in any way. But this time, things are definitely going ahead - I think I'm fairly safe to add a few new levels before the testers get their hands on this new one.
The only things now remaining in unencryptable files are the list of players (which I'm not too bothered about because there's nothing to be gained from modifying it) and the little INI file that tells the game who the last player was, which just isn't worth converting over because deleting it will do absolutely nothing. The change was a good thing in the end because it allowed me to go over things again and correct them if I'd done them slightly stupidly at first. Little things like the synth items relying on their direction to decide what type they were instead of storing it in a real value, and so on. And now that the conversion's done, I've been experimenting with allowing score sheets to be uploaded through a mildly insane conversion algorithm I put together - I'll link to one once I've got the page neatened up.
And with that out the way, I've finally got down to doing some planning of the way that the player will take through the game, when to introduce certain elements and what will be offered as rewards for completing each level. The OpenCalc file (or whatever it's called) has been growing larger by the day, and it's got to the point now where I would have no idea what I was doing if I didn't have a record of it all, so I have to be careful to keep the changes in the game in line with what I have in the plan.
I downloaded TFM Maker the other day, by the way, as recommended to me by Nim in the Clickteam chatroom - I'm trying to go for an authentically Genesis sound for the music, and even adding the drum samples from the Sonic games has brought an incredible mood to it. (Trouble is they're very quiet and I have to double up the channels because ModFusion doesn't understand VST effects...)
There sometimes seems like there's so much to do that doesn't visually progress the game in any way. But this time, things are definitely going ahead - I think I'm fairly safe to add a few new levels before the testers get their hands on this new one.
