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Chris H.'s Ultima / ACS-style game development system!

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Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.220 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There's now a 3.220 patch available for download.

The biggest change is that you can now set regular spaces and obstacles so that their graphic can be set when they're placed onto the map (and can be different for each occurance) ... and they use tiles from the "secondary" set. You know, the one that used to be usable only for "animation" tiles, meaning that you generally ended up with 200 or so unused tiles in that set. Well, now you have a way to use them -- and use them without having to create a new object for each new tile.

To use them:

When you're choosing the graphic tile for a normal (not custom) space or obstacle, at the bottom of the screen it tells you to hit "P" if you want to set the appearance when you place the object on the map.

Objects set this way will appear with a "question mark" tile in the editors. But when you place them on the map, you'll be prompted to pick a tile from the "secondary" set (I can't call it the "animation" set anymore, since we're using it for this now too)

They'll show up in the map editor as a question mark (I'll fix that later) but when the player sees the object during play, it will show up as the tile you chose when you placed it. You can place it each time with a different tile, of course.

The catch: these objects can't be animated. They will have a static appearance as the tile you have chosen.

You can, however, change their appearance during play with the macro MAPSETD command (that's where it keeps the tile number.)

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.221 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

I've finished implementing the new graphic feature from 3.220 in the map editor, so now you can actually see what you've just made. I've also updated the MANUAL.PDF so it properly describes the new feature.

I'm happy, because now this means there are essentially 480 tiles that can be effectively used, even if using them all is a little awkward.

Another new feature in 3.221 that I'm happy about is that there are now "save game" slots. Meaning now you're not just saving over "the saved game" (and in a pickle if you need to go back to some earlier point), but now you can save your game to slots 1-9 and even add a short description.

(Stay tuned -- I'm pretty sure these new features are all stable, but being new, there's always the chance that I'll need to chase them with a bug-fixing patch.)

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.230 patch, already?

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

People have been asking for quite a while for "transparency" -- allowing items and creatures to not have a huge black background around them, but instead to have the terrain graphic show smoothly around them.

I've finally been able to add this feature, although I'll still call it "experimental" -- feel free to play with it if you want to, and let me know how it works.

It's not described in the manual yet, so here's how to use it:

To turn it on, select a color in the graphic tile editor's color chooser, and press Alt-T. You will be asked whether you want to enable transparency using that color: press Y to turn it on. (Or press N to turn it off.) That color now becomes the mask color -- it will show in a checkerboard pattern to remind you that it may be transparent.

During play, if there is a creature, item, or even stack of items, then you will see the top item/creature with the terrain graphic under it. (You will not see intermediate things within the stack)

For terrain graphics, if you are using the mask color it will still show as a normal color; terrain is not transparent.

Three places where transparency *doesn't* work: First, transparency does not appear in the map editor. You will see the tiles just as they appear in the tile editor. Second, transparency does not work over the new "set graphic later" objects introduced in v3.220 - it will get placed over a blank tile instead. Third, animation works with transparency (assuming all the frames have the mask color set properly) BUT animation will be disabled for "darkened" tiles if you use the transparency feature.

Enjoy, and if you try out this new feature, let me know what you think.

You can download the patch at: http://www.80sgaming.org/ack/ (This is the new address for ACK patch files.)

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.231 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There is now a 3.231 patch available for download. The changes are very minor.

* Manual has been updated to describe the new transparency feature.

* Macro interpreter now clears the keyboard buffer before PAUSEK, WAITKEY, and GETKEY commands, in case you had been holding down a key and didn't expect a macro to run.

* New operators for macro SET and IF commands: & (bitwise and), and | (bitwise or).

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.232 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There's a 3.232 patch uploading now, fixing a minor bug with the new transparency feature.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.233

Post by Chris H »

Another patch: 3.233. Yes, it's another bug fix with transparency. :)

It also fixes the bugs with obstacles, brought up in another thread. (Obstacles now always block ranged weapons, like it says they do in the manual.)

A few other very minor changes and bug fixes are also included.

NOTE: You may want to hold off on this patch, I think I've introduced a bug w/ NPC attacks. I'm finding creatures that attack themselves or don't attack at all. I'll fix this ASAP.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.234

Post by Chris H »

Okay, the problem introduced in 3.233 is fixed, there's a new 3.234 patch up. It also makes a small improvement to NPC AI.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.240

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There's a new patch up, with a bunch of new features:

* You can have lots more creatures than you could before
* Another text export, with data about regions
* Creatures no longer try to shoot if they don't have a clear shot
* And several misc. bug fixes.

The UPDATES.TXT has the full story. Enjoy!

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.241

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There's a 3.241 patch available, fixing a bunch of bugs, and adding some options for limiting creature movement (you can confine them to a single terrain or you can allow them to fly)

As of this release I will also start releasing the source code -- more to satisfy peoples' curiosity than from any realistic hope that anyone will do anything with this. So if you're curious (and masochistic enough to try to decipher badly written Turbo Pascal code) then the download page now has a link to the source, as well as to the patch and other stuff.

http://www.80sgaming.org/ack

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.242 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hello everyone,

There is a 3.242 patch now available: there are some bug-fixes here, one with picking up money on worldmaps, so this is an important patch.

This patch does include a very handy feature for those of you using transparency: look in the graphic tile editor section of the manual for the "auto-edge" feature.

One change in this patch: the ball/line weapon effects were previously hard-coded "white" or "gray", now they use the "mapcolor" setting of the weapon object. You may have funny colored projectiles until you go in and set those values.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.243

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

The patch for 3.243 is up. It includes quite a few bug fixes, and a sound volume option (Control-V now lets you set volume, and the music-muting is working properly now)

The patch can't edit files outside the ACK folder, but you might consider editing your ackmod.conf and/or dosbox.conf and using the following settings in the [mixer] section:

blocksize=1024
prebuffer=1000

This is certainly not required, but I find my sound skips a lot less with the larger prebuffer. Your mileage may vary.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.245 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There's a 3.245 patch up, with a few more bug fixes: vehicle exit macros work properly, % values for armor and ammo work properly, and a bug with portals in room maps was fixed.

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.250

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There is a 3.250 patch available for download, with a couple more bug fixes. You will need this patch if you plan to play the new Ultima parody, which is also being released today.

The website for the Ultima parody: http://www.80sgaming.org/ultima-parody

Enjoy!

Chris H
Posts: 272
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 4:07 pm
Location: California, USA

3.251 patch

Post by Chris H »

Hi everyone,

There is a 3.251 patch available for download. There are three bug fixes in this patch:

* The sound skipping problem has been fixed.

* Step macros were running more than once per step sometimes: this should be fixed.

* The "use" command was taking more than one turn, this should also be fixed.

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