Wednesday, April 30, 2008

MaraDNS update

I have four unanswered MaraDNS support mails in my mailbox. I hope to be able to get to them tomorrow. I just am in a really bad space right now and am in no mood to answer MaraDNS email. :-(

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

MaraDNS update

I have answered a good portion of the MaraDNS support mail that has been backlogged all month. I hope to answer the rest tomorrow afternoon.

I apologize for the delay; I will try not to have such a delay the next time.

Monday, April 21, 2008

I'm really sorry for the delay replying to MaraDNS email

I'm really sorry for the delay replying to MaraDNS email; I just have been too busy at work and only finally got a bit of time today to reply to my personal email.

However, I did have some free time Sunday night (at home, no internet at home) to make a couple of minor updates to ObHack.

- Sam

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

ObHack update; MaraDNS support status

I've done a lot of little updates to ObHack:

Oblige.lua updated to about over 40,000,000 usable seed numbers instead of only 500,000 or so usable seed numbers (instead of incrementing an index and resetting the RNG every time we can't build a level because we couldn't place a stair or what not, we just don't reset the RNG)

x_heretic.lua tweaks: E6 now has ten, not three levels, in a loop. This happens to work with Deng 1.8.6, but may cause problems in other source ports. E6 is not clearly defined, and I like the loop of levels (Note: The original DOS Heretic crashes when you enter E6M5)

We now never have the firemace in levels (it's a poor weapon for anything but deathmatch, and there's issues with the firemace not appearing). I also tweaked monster.lua to allow a non-weapon to be placed as a "weapon"

E5 is now a mish-mash of themes, instead of just the very loud "garish" theme. Slight tweak to outdoor "Pharoah" theme to make it look nice (no more ugly grey-and-red; now it's a much nicer yellow-and-red)

Planner.lua improvement: If a level is too small, we take one of the quests in the level and make that quest a little longer; this stops ObHack from slowing down when a level isn't big enough.

I have also tweaked things so "puzzles" affects the maps, even at the tiny and small sizes. Deciding number of keys/switches/etc in small levels redone; fixes "no weapons" bug for small levels.

Tiny levels tweaking: Quests will not be longer than three units (this guarantees that tiny levels are smaller than small levels). Tiny levels now always have two things; either one puzzle and one goodie (weapon/item), or two goodies.

Tweaked rare: Now, in a map with "rare" outdoors, there will be no more than two quests that are outdoors

ObHack is available here



I have answered a simple RTFM question someone asked me about MaraDNS. This leaves me five more emails to answer, which I have downloaded and will hopefully answer this week. We'll see.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

ObHack and Solstice updates

I have updated Solstice; not only have a refined the bitmap rendering of the font, I have also improved the metrics of the italic version of the Solstice font. The metrics aren't perfect--getting perfect metrics is impossible without resorting to kerning--but they look better than they did before.

My update can be downloaded here



I have also updated ObHack. Tiny and small levels now have more goodies to pick up; small levels also sometimes have both a key "quest" (find the key; open the door) and a switch "quest". Before, tiny and small levels always had one item to pick up, and small levels always had precisely one switch or key quest. Now tiny levels can have one or two items (but no switch/key quests); small levels can have up to three items.

The ObHack levels generated are not any bigger; I have tweaked things so that the tiny and small levels now have fewer "cells" (places about the size of a room) without any items or keys/switches. I have also reduced the number of non-item cells in medium sized maps a little.

It can be downloaded here



The MaraDNS support email is piling up. I haven't answered MaraDNS email for over a week. I apologize for the delay getting back to people.