TURBU

TURBU version 0.8.0 is out now.  You can find it on the Downloads page.

This update was supposed to be ready last Saturday.  Then I tried to run Everlong through the project importer and discovered a handful of new bugs, one of which took quite a while to track down and fix.  But since the author of Everlong has mentioned several times that he’d like to port his project to TURBU once the editor’s ready, I figure it’s worth taking the time to make sure it will work right.

If you’ve used the project importer before, you’ll probably notice that the map conversion phase goes noticeably slower now.  That’s because it used to only read the map data and disregard all the event scripts, but that’s no longer the case.  Now it will convert the events into the new TURBU Event Builder format, which creates a script tree that you can view in the Map Object Editor box.  You can’t edit scripts yet, but that will be in the next release.

These post tiles are getting a bit predictable lately!  But at least this update took less than a month to get ready.

The new version fixes a few bugs with the way the map objects are drawn, (no more huge, stretched boxes if you’re scrolled somewhere besides the upper-right corner of the map,) and adds some more functionality to the ability to edit map objects.  You can now grab them and move them around, create new ones by double-clicking a blank square, or delete existing ones with the Delete button.  The editor will also recognize arrow keys and the Enter key when editing map objects.  You can also add, delete, copy and paste pages in the map object editor, and edit a page’s sprite.

Now for the fun part.  All the work I’ve put into this engine over the last couple years has been building up to making the whole thing scriptable, and now I have enough in place that I can start working on the scripting system.  I’ll need to work quickly, since in another three months I’m going to this year’s Delphi Live conference to give another presentation on game engine design, and I’ll need to have something worth showing.  So let’s hope I can get a lot done!

Finally, the new update is ready.  It comes with a Run button, which currently doesn’t do anything except turn on animated tiles, and functionality to display the map objects (events) on-screen.  You can edit map objects, to a limited degree at least.  The next update will allow you to create new map objects, move them around, or delete them, which you can’t currently do.

Then I’ll start working on scripting.  It’s taken quite a while to reach this point, but the goal is finally in sight.  Building the scripting system last time took almost a year, but now all the old code is already in place and will mostly still work, so adapting it to the new engine won’t be nearly as time-consuming.

EDIT:

If you downloaded the editor before now, you might not have been able to open it.  The settings for one of the library files apparently got corrupted when I upgraded Visual Studio, and now it wouldn’t run properly on a lot of computers.  I’ve fixed it and updated the installer, and it should work now.

This was supposed to be out last week, but at the last minute I ran into some unexpected trouble with getting the last feature I tried to add to work right.  But it’s up now, and it adds the ability to create new maps, edit map properties, or delete existing maps from the project.  There are also a handful of stability bugfixes and interface tweaks.

This is a pretty major update, from my perspective at least.  I had to modify a lot of things in the code to make Map Properties work, and deletion required a major change to the way I store the map tree in memory.  But it’s working now, so I’m happy.

I also added an error-reporting package.  It can detect if a severe error occurs and prepare an error report file containing technical information about what was going on in the program that will help me fix it more easily.  Hopefully you won’t ever have to see it, but if the error report dialog comes up, please hit “Send Report”, which will attempt to send it automatically over email.  If your computer can’t do that for whatever reason, there’s also an option to save the report to a file.  Either way, please send any reports it comes up with to me so I can fix the bugs more easily.

For the next release, I’m going to work on making the engine actually display characters and events and letting you run the project within the editor.  Most of the code’s already in place from the old Map Viewer, so I’ll just have to adapt it to the new engine.  Hopefully it’ll be ready in a shorter time than this release took!

Well, it’s been a while, but I’ve made several improvements to the map editor since the last post.  I’ll have a new update ready in a few days.  It adds the ability to edit map properties, add new maps, and delete existing maps.  I’ve got a couple issues with setting up the project on other systems to take care of, but once that’s ready I’ll get the new installer ready.

There was a problem under Windows XP where the editor panes wouldn’t redraw themselves if you dragged another window over them.  I managed to trace that down to a glitch in SDL, and I patched it.  So the installer’s been updated once again.

Well, I found the two bugs that had been reported.  One was in a Delphi library that I hadn’t updated in a while, and the update had a fix.  The other was in SDL, which I had just updated, and the update contained the bug, so I patched it.  Then I went to test it and found every programmer’s nightmare: a bug that only happened when the debugger was turned off!

It took me most of the rest of the day to slowly, carefully track that one down, but I finally found it in some old file-reading code I had written a few years ago.  I fixed it, and now everything seems to be working properly.  (I hope!)  So now the download link for the installer is up again.  Check it out and let me know what you think!

I’ve gotten a few reports that the latest version doesn’t work right on Windows XP, and I’ve been able to reproduce the problem at my end.  So until I manage to get it fixed, I’ve disabled the download link.  It should be back fairly soon.

Well, it took a little bit longer than I thought it would to get the details worked out, but the TURBU Editor is now able to actually edit maps!  I’ve got a working map tree, which will take you to any map in the project, and let you edit either the lower or the upper layer.

For the moment, there’s no way to create new maps, delete maps from the project, or access and change map properties.  That’s coming up in the next release, which will hopefully be sometime before the end of next week.  (The Thanksgiving holiday will give me plenty of free time to work on it!)  But for now, the map editor can be found at the Downloads page.

There’s a new installer posted in the downloads section.  I’ve spent the last several months working on getting the map viewing functionality working, and now I’ve finally got something to show for it.  Now when you import a project, it will display the first map of the project in the map window, and the tile palette off to the side.  I don’t have the map tree set up yet, so you can’t switch between maps, and there’s no way to select tiles and place them on the map.  That’s all coming in the next update.  This one has been purely functional:  write the code to make a map display properly.

I’ve written this to use the actual TURBU default map engine in the editor window.  The same code that will run the game is generating the map for you to scroll around in.  It’s controlled with an extra “design interface” layer of code added over the top of it, which allows you to do all the map-editing stuff, but underneath that is the real game engine, which means that when I get a bit more done, designers will be able to test-run the game inside the editor instead of having to launch a separate program.

I’ve also updated the source code repository on Google Code, and the project requirements with it.  The new Delphi 2010 version contains some great new features and TURBU is going to make use of a few of them, so you need 2010 to compile it now.  It’s a bit on the expensive side, priced out of range of most students and hobbyists, but there’s been a lot of discussion in the Delphi community in the last few weeks about getting a low-cost or even free edition released so more people can use it.  I’m advocating and arguing strongly for a free edition on par with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express.  Thankfully, things seem to be heading in the right direction.  Michael Rozlog, the Delphi project manager, recently stated that producing a more affordable edition “is a very, and I do mean a very important area of discussion. I FULLY agree with the need for low-cost-point entry products.”  So we’ll see what happens.

Another update will be coming soon.