Map Forge Preview

[Ballbarian]

I am near completion of a trial run. The final map will be called Highways & Strongholds. Through this process, I am finding some obvious bugs. Once those are squished, I will release an open beta so that you can break it.

The big thing for me is to make every effort to insure that anyone using the editor can rely on not losing hours of work due to a bug. So far the system seems very stable and recovery seems reliable.

Thanks for the supporting lore masters!
Research is progressing...

[NTJedi]

Awesome... thanks for the update.

If one of the concerns is an individual losing hours of work then how about some autosave settings? The best options would be where the player could specify the number of autosaves(max=10?) as well as how often it autosaves. A player could then setup autosave settings of once every 20mins which cycles between 5 autosaves. SpaceEmpires_V provided a similar autosave option. Naturally the autosave file will need to be renamed if the player wishes to restore to a previous date, but it's a nice security blanket.

[Ballbarian]

MF creates a ".ore" file with the same name as the current map. With each and every change the .ore file is updated. If at any point there is a program crash or a power outage the .ore file will remain. The next time the map is opened MF detects the .ore and asks whether or not to recover. It also uses this file to prompt the user to save or discard changes when opening another map or closing the program.

[Executor]

Completely unrelated but, Balbarian, would you happen to know some other artists like Manolo Camp with alike music to what you used in your program?

Oh, and never did thank you for the link to the website. Thanks.

[Ballbarian]

Another that I really like is Edgen.

[Foodstamp]

Hey Ball,

Hold off on releasing this for a another week please. I've got two important tests coming up and I don't want to fail!

[lch]

Hi. This really looks awesome, Ballbarian.

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

It is being developed in VB6. I strongly considered Python, but Boa (for GUI development) felt very awkward after about 12 years of experience with VB. Since VB has been around so long, I would assume that most of it's features would be supported by crossover software like Wine.

I can only speak for myself, but Wine is awkward. I'm a supporter of Python-based GUIs myself, and I'm somebody who still constructs all those dialogues with a text editor instead of ever learning to use an IDE for that, but I can of course understand that a project as ambitious as this is a bit much for a new start in Python. Here's an idea how you might make it halfway towards the new technologies and learn something new in the process: Try to develop the program in C# or VB.Net with Visual Studio. Those are the new revamped versions of those programming languages and they're really a blast to develop because they have a lot of really cool features - I never ever did Basic but I've been programming a couple of tools in C# and it's really nice. And the Mono Project has been working to get Microsoft's DotNet family cross-platform compatible, too. So in case you have a .NET program, you should be able to get a Mono-compatible version out of it, which other people can use with Mono.

The difference between Wine and Mono, as far as I am understanding it, is this: Wine has to reproduce the Win32 API so that programs can run, and a lot of the internals from Microsoft are undocumented. The .NET platform consists of new programming languages (C#/VB.NET), a .NET runtime and a set of classes, and those are standarized. Programs written in those programming languages contain bytecode which is being interpreted, like Java bytecode is being interpreted through a Java virtual machine. (But since this really is only superficial knowledge, somebody who has more of an insight in the matter may correct me on all that I'm saying here)

In any case, big props to all the work you've done. I hope that you'll find some pointers so that even old dogs can learn new tricks, too.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

Sometimes to get things to work in linux you need a PhD in computer science

This is true for any operating system, I'd say. Give a smart kid a system with any OS on it, and it will reach an amount of proficiency in using it in the same time as a similar kid with another OS on it. Once you stop "playing" you'll demand that things work like they always did, of course.

[Sombre]

Long time no see lchtyosaur.

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

Hey Ball,

Hold off on releasing this for a another week please. I've got two important tests coming up and I don't want to fail!

I'll give you a week and raise you one.

(Hope your tests go well!)