... Sit down (well you must be! unless you're reading this on an iphone or something), raise up your right foot and draw out clockwork circles. Then try to draw out the number 6 with your right hand. Took me ages to do that!
Right. Well I thought I'd test out Tormi with HWA last night.
It was smooth but the graphics just glitched out, quick backdrops would resize, gradient ink effects still don't work, alpha channels vanish (replaced with the ol' Transparent channel). And where did that motion blur come from? I mean it does look ace in motion but I'd like some control over it! Guess theres still a long way to go.
But it doesn't end there, say hello to MMF2 v249! Qualifiers have been epically ballsed up. Gone are reference numbers for qualifier groups, in are names and icons. Well done! That didn't need fixing, or if it did all we needed was to edit the names. Anyone with half a brain would have made notes about numbered qualifiers.
I mean in Tormi now a water torrent (previously Qualifier 37) is now a "Background Scenery".
A light source (previously Qualifier 29) is now "Areas"?!
This was not broke Clickteam! The only thing that was broke was the lack of custom naming but trying to fix it this way is not a good idea.
Breakable Object (42) is now... Uh... "Empty"? That sounds like a bug right there.
So now if I want to add an object to a group I can't just browse the qualifier list, ordered by number. Now I have to search out each qualifier taking much longer made worse since they're not even in alphabetical order!
Sorry. It's just super weak and I'm off back to 248. Lets use a picture as a break and start anew.
So! As I said before. Torrents. These have been a right PITA for, well, ever! They worked just fine when the PMO was controlling the player but for the diving engine I had to come up with a new solution. Which opens the flood gates on lots of new water areas.
In place of entering a name for each save file the player now creates a little icon where they select from 4 backgrounds and 8 graphics, but they were just 3am ideas and the finishing game will have many more. It's not important but does add a morsel of customisation to the file select screen. Plus: I like drawing 32x32 monochrome graphics.
The new mine section is based off caving areas Blue John Cavern in layout and the mining design off the Wieliczka Salt Mine (Poland). With a secret bit to the south based off Speedwell Cavern characterised by a network of underground rivers.
Any chance you could send us your MFA so we can look into the problems? It is still a beta after all and there is still a lot of work going on.
Or you can just continue to complain on the web and wait till its in final release and hopefully the bug you are having has been corrected. Comment edited by Jeff - Clickteam on 3/13/2009
Sort of like my request to keep numbered Groups (at least with an option) I thought it would fall upon deaf ears. I've PMed you the MFA though, funny thing is it only has 1 line of code in the whole thing which sets up the screen size and position.
Oh and I found a fix for that graphic glitch MMF2 sometimes presents - http://create-games.com/article.asp?id=1964 . If that helps any future versions. Comment edited by Dr. James on 3/13/2009
It's all in frame stuff, just warped and broke. I like fixing these bugs myself but this one is just odd, it starts off at 640x480 then shrinks to the corner leaving them artifacts. Comment edited by Dr. James on 3/14/2009
Runs perfect at 60fps with everything set to full on my oldish 2ghz C2D machine. I don't need HWA but it would be nice to get even older computers playing at full, rather than have them turn settings down. Comment edited by Dr. James on 3/16/2009