>3 Roswell - Diary Of A Game }4 {4By Andy Gibson >2 {0 }1 January 1996 (Mid) After messing about with GRAC V1.1 and the GRAC User Disk, I decided to upgrade to GRAC V2 to see what it had to offer. Not fully content with it, I managed to obtain the source code direct from the author, Edmund Clay at the end of the month. (or there abouts :^) January 1996 (late) Started to code the intro for the game! I know this may sound silly, but I prefer to work on the intro before I work on the actual game. It gives me a goal to work towards I guess. I required a new AGAS logo and worked on that first. I the needed a neat Roswell logo and simply used a Bitmap font along with DPAINT'S perspective commands. The font filled out and all that was left to do was fill it in with shades of grey. Next I digitised a few alien pics from my vast UFO video collection (yes, I do have lots of UFO documentaries on video). While I was at it, I also digitised a piccy of Jesse Marcel. I then took a colour digi-pic of a crashed UFO from one of my vids (UFO's The Evidence). This gave me the idea to work on an animation of a UFO flying towards the Earth. Looking at a past issue of CU Amiga, I learned how to animate a spinning globe. I then simply drew a small UFO and had it move towards my (now) spinning Earth. Great! But my background looked like puke! A quick search through some gfx sorted me out with a rather sexy starry backdrop. (I think it came with DPaint, but don't quote me on that :) Going to plan so far. Some text about the Roswell Crash was typed up and I thought it would look nice if it scrolled over a picture of an alien. Hmmm, Amoszine to the rescue methinx! Yip, Scroll Text Over Planet source code looked as if it was just what the doctor ordered, so I meddled about with it until I got the results I required. I started putting the whole thing together and eventually I realised that I needed some neat music to back it up! Aminet here I come.... After many hours of listening to hundreds of music mods, I picked one that suited the intro. It's looking/sounding good now. Jesse Marcel and a neat Amiga logo were stamped over an overscan background and some text added and that's about it! February 1996 (4th) I've drawn up my main character and grabbed him into the GRAC editor. He's looking pretty shitty just now though! Got the gfx for the first room done also and the first puzzle up and running. Gee! This grabbing of characters and objects is a real pisser! Not happy with my main character, I decided to work on him until he was looking good. After a good few hours and a few grabs, he was complete. Bud is his name and all I have to do is add extra frames when and if I require any. I noticed that I couldn't `Look At' any items in my inventory, so I messed about with GRAC until I sorted it! Now the first room is complete with Bud walking and talking and being able to pick items up and use them etc. February 1996 (7th) Second location gfx drawn up after a good few attempts and Bud can now walk about here also, but that's about all. A couple of fonts were required, so I converted a few from my Fonts: Dir and added them to the floppy. Shit! Due to them being different sizes from default Topaz, Bud's speech was no longer neat on-screen! Had to alter all his strings - again! February 1996 (18th) Not done much to game due to work on other projects such as DMC Update and also Amoszine issue 11! Still, the first FIVE locations are coming together and are looking good. Had a problem with perspective though. My path went too far into the distance to allow Bud to walk into previous screen, so I simply added a foreground object (part of a tree) to cover far distance. Now Bud walks behind this and it's a good effect. No real puzzles done, but Bud can look at various objects etc. Still learning how to use GRAC properly also! February 1996 (various) I have now improved the GRAC source code (which was limited due to it being the source code for the demo version of GRAC!). Some changes made are: Mouse Pointer now stays On-Screen during game. ie. It no longer vanishes off the sides of the screen. All filenames altered. Now fully compatible with files packed with CMania. Fonts no longer read slowly from floppy or HD :-) GRAC was far too slow at reading the whole fonts directory (especially from HD), so I simply made it look for only the fonts required. Character files now saved with my own protection code. This will (maybe) stop people from stealing my character files. Editor can now run RTDD from button on main menu :-) This means I can now switch between Editor and Game without quitting/re-loading the Editor. Altered all the In-Game keys as the F-Keys were annoying me! No more Ctrl-C to quit games! New requestors added for disk accessing such as Loading/Saving games etc. I simply added some Power Procs for all requestors. Separate game (xxx.Grac) file saved which will eventually be compiled in final code. This will stop people from loading my game into their own GRAC Editor. Grac Player now updated to ask for correct disk with an IFF piccy (only when loading first time). ie. Put `Roswell_Boot' into df0: and load the game. When the disk named `Roswell1' is required, you'll be prompted for it. Player now looks for all my new filenames also. Editor can now load my own files and also original GRAC games. Editor now prints any script to a file. This is great for de-bugging bad scripts. Various other little changes have been made also.... No doubt by the end of the game, my GRAC code will be altered quite a bit more. Still, it's fine just now. March 1996 (mid) I've now written the HD Installer and started writing the actual Game.Guide file also. (Why so early?) Another GRAC bug fixed. The music was being interrupted slightly each time Bud walked into a room! Sorted! Talking of music, I've now snaffled a mod to use in-game. Sort of Monkey island style. I don't like it though as it's a huge module. I mixed it about a bit and even cut it down and flushed all unused samples, but still it's a big file! I'll search for another module later. March 1996 (late) Nothing really done to game due to other projects and commitments! I'll have to seriously think about getting into Roswell full time and put all other projects on hold or I'll have nothing done. April 1996 (early) Death in the family means that nothing done on any Amiga projects at all. Sad time as you can imagine. April 1996 (mid) Decided to get more work done to Roswell this week. I've drawn up another two characters and had to alter Bud's palette as I had no green colours in it! This meant that ALL locations had to be re-mapped and grabbed back in! I hate grabbing character frames. Still, all piccies and my three characters are working fine. After a few hours of messing about, Bud can now talk to one of my new characters. (Jack the woodsman) Shit, just noticed that each time a room loads, an object bank is loaded also. Since I only have one at present, all three characters are assigned to it. This means that each time a room loads, not only are a whole load of objects loaded, but also my THREE characters! This can't be good on low memory Amiga's! So I'll have to sort this out with some new object banks for certain rooms I guess. Shit! Wish I had realised that sooner. Had to re-write my HD Installer (parts of) as the game is now on 2 disks. Disk 1 holds all the essential files (boot stuff) and disk 2 hold the game files that I've created so far. The intro has been updated now also and I wasted a couple of hours writing a neat routine to scroll a `LOADING' screen with Amal! I forgot that Amal is frozen when disks are accessed! Barst! Still, I made good use of the routine on the F1 logo screen at the start. Originally the scrolling screen was scrolled diagonally, but when I used Dual Playfield, it jerked like Hell! Amos, huh! The intro now tidied up and just about final I think. Apart from a new section showing credits and instructions. I also added an option to skip the intro and it now checks for low memory too. April 1996 (late) Wow! I've now managed to get a few things sorted and the first few locations are working well. Bud can now interact with Jack. Three options are thrown up as replies to Jack and it took me ages to get it to work! (Don't ya just love GRAC?) I also managed to get a few sheep walking about a small patch of grass! (don't ask me why I did this. Just something to do I guess) (I didn't know you were into sheep Andy!-Ed.) I've drawn some caves and I'm impressed with the results. I've just had an idea for a couple more puzzles too. Jack has a small shed in the woods, but Bud cannot enter it. Well, not until he talks to Jack and then follows him. Jack will leave the door open and Bud can then enter to get some tools. These will be required in one of the caves to remove some wood that is covering an exit/entrance to another cave! 16 locations fully drawn up now. I've added a stream to a few of the caves and decided to give it the cycle treatment. Firk! Grac's Cycle command isn't what I expected! I'll have to use Flash instead. It shouldn't be too hard. Shit! I need to input hex values. No probs, but what are the correct values? Grac doesn't let me simply use a selector to input the values so I'll either have to guess which ones to use, or better still, I'll load my screen into Amos and get them from there. Sorted. I'm not totally crap with Hex values, but if I just guessed the values to use, I bet my water would have ended up looking like slow moving slime! I don't know how non-coders will make use of Grac's Flash command. After all, nobody can be expected to know the correct Hex values for each colour off the top of their head. (non-coders probably won't understand Hex values at all!) Yeah, sure you can say that Blue is roughly $009, but it has to be perfect if it's to look good. April 1996 (very late) Last stages before I send out a preview copy to a few of the playtesters. Just tidied up some scenes and text etc. Bud can now also remove the wood from the blocked cave exit/entrance along with some samples to accompany his knocking about. I've removed the in-game music mod also and replaced it with a new one. I've also managed to combine three mods into one (using the same samples) and now the in-game music changes at appropriate parts. When Bud talks to Jack, new music, when Bud enters the caves, new music etc. It's sounding good so far. I hate putting music mods together coz it's so time consuming don't ya think? Still, without it, the game wouldn't be as atmospheric! May 1996 (2nd) I wanted Bud to look at a sign and in-turn this would load a piccy displaying it to the full. Shit! can't get it to work! I had to alter my `Look At' script to allow scripts to be executed in order for this to work! The only problem is, now when Bud looks at some objects, he also says `That's not important!'. After a while I wrote a neat script to sort it all out. :-) If there's one thing I really hate about Grac, it's the editing of scripts, saving the game and having to load it to test it all out. It takes ages to keep doing this time after time. May 1996 (6th) I've taken a break from working on drawing the caves in favour of some new locations. (Bored drawing caves ya see) I badly need a small forest house for part of the game and I did attempt to draw one, but it looked like shit! Then I had an idea! (that's not like me!) I popped my CD's in to my Zappo (cheers Mal) and had a look for some B/W ClipArt. Thousands of the phukkers! After about two hours (no kidding), I had a small selection of B/W clipart pics on my HD. I eventually worked on one of the pics (forest-house.iff) and coloured it in and touched it up etc. If you've ever tried colouring in B/W ClipArt, you'll know how much of a pain it is to do. Still, it's there to use and it's far easier than having to draw it yourself! Oh yeah, I've been taking breaks to watch the Snooker over the last few days and I was glad when Hendry won. I think Peter Ebdon gave him a good run for his money though! Hendry was playing pretty crappy and Ebdon probably deserved to win, but at the end of the day, Hendry pulled it off. Nice one.... May 1996 (7th) Added a few more frames to Bud. These are simply for fun as Bud now pulls his trousers down and shows his bum! This will only happen when he first looks at the stream in the caves. Cheeky :-) Had a good play at the game today and fixed out all little bugs and niggles. I've checked the game from every angle and tried every possible action to make sure everything is working 100% So far.....so good. That's all for this issue. Hopefully the next diary installment will see more work to the game, but Amoszine Issue 12 is just around the corner and I'd better start work on that soon. I've also got some more work to do to the new release of DMC GOLD. I have already re-wrote the manual and updated the code, but I've still a few new ideas to add to it before release! I'll see how time is and try and get some projects out of the way so I can get into Roswell a bit more. End.