TURBU

Version 0.8.7 is here.  Hopefully it’ll work right for everyone.  I fixed a handful of bugs and added a new feature:  Map zooming.  There’s a trackbar at the top of the screen that wasn’t there before.  Dragging it will change the map’s zoom level so you can zoom in and see more details on a local area, or zoom way out to see a lot of a large map. (more…)

I thought I had the next update all ready.  It fixes several bugs and adds a new feature: the ability to zoom the editor window in and out, like you can in RPG Maker.  Then I tested one last thing and all the zoom code fell apart.  It’s a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, especially because I already implemented resizing and the way it’s done doesn’t work well with zoom.

I’ll probably have to rip all of the resize code out and replace it sometime tomorrow.  The new update should be ready by tomorrow evening.

There’s a new update up at the Downloads page.  0.8.6 is a bugfix release for 0.8.5, fixing several issues. (more…)

Well, no sooner had I posted the last update when I got a few emails with a bunch of bug reports.  I’ve been working on them and got most of it stable, but there’s still a nasty issue left where the video memory can get corrupted and turn tiles all white with no warning.  As soon as I manage to track down what’s causing that and patch it, I’ll make a new build.  Hopefully it’ll be sometime tomorrow morning.

I’ve been sidetracked by various other concerns lately and gotten way behind on TURBU development, but here’s the update that should have been out about a month ago.  I’ve started working on developing event scripts, and I’ve created editor windows for the first few script commands.  There’s not much yet, but there will be more in the next update.  Hope you like it! (more…)

Yeah, I’m sort of breaking my more-or-less monthly schedule.  I’ve been really busy lately with getting ready for the DelphiLive conference next week.  I’ve got two hour-long sessions to present and it takes a lot of work and concentration to get them ready.  Plus, this next update involves getting all the event-builder dialogs created and working, and that’s really work-intensive.

Since it would take way too long if I waited to update until I had the whole thing finished, I’ll post a progress release once I finish the one I’m currently working on.  That’ll probably be the first week in September, after the conference is over.

A feature as big as making everything animate and move properly is bound to have a few bugs in it.  There were a couple issues where moving map objects could cause a crash.  Those have been fixed, plus a few more minor problems.

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The next update was going to be about scripts, but since so many scripts have to do with the party and other map objects, I decided to make it possible to place a party on the map first, and make the map objects able to move.  I thought this would be ready by last night, but I ran across a difficult glitch in a code library someone else had written, and it took me a while to track down the root of the problem and hack up a fix for it.

Animation was added a few months ago.  There’s a Run and a Pause button on the top of the editor, and Run turns on tile animation but never did much more than that.  Now it does.  Any map objects with movement assigned will walk around now.  Also, if you right-click the map while in Run mode, and it’s on a tile that a character could enter, it will create a party and place it on the map.  It uses the graphic defined for hero #1 for this, so if your project leaves that one blank, like a few do, you won’t see anything.  (That will be addressed in the next release.)

I’ve also added a handful of minor fixes and tightened up the code for drawing water tiles considerably.  If you were having slowdowns on world maps or other areas containing lots of water before, it should be working better now.

One minor issue with this release.  When in Run mode, sometimes the program won’t close. I’m not sure what causes that, and I’m working on tracking it down.  But you can quit just fine if you hit the Pause button first, so it’s not a major problem at the moment.

Thanks to some more bug reports from Everlong’s DJC, I’ve got another bugfix update ready over on the Downloads page.  This fixes several issues with Event Builder, a couple in the Database viewer, and several graphical glitches when drawing water tiles.  Hopefully things are stable for now and no other serious issues will come up.

Yesterday I uploaded the 0.8.0 installer, and I mentioned the Everlong project in my post.  This morning I got an email from the author of Everlong.  He was able to convert his project in the Project Importer, but when he tried to open it he got all sorts of errors.  Oops!

He sent me some very useful information, and I’ve been able to fix a handful of glitches and build a new installer. 0.8.1 is up now.