9-18 days late

Oct. 9
That's it! level map is complete, monsters are placed and they behave as expected. I have two more "special blocks" to define for horizontal pencil spikes (83) and level exit (21). We can break through the "pencil barrier" that lays between the upper and the lower part of the level. Pencils are not the best item here, but I haven't found something that would make more sense. Maybe something made of glass ?

J+9. La map est prête, les monstres en place. Nouveaux blocs spéciaux pour les pointes de crayon et la sortie du niveau. On peut casser la "barrière" entre les deux parties du niveau, mais il faudra que je réfléchisse à quelque-chose d'autre que des crayons. Quelque-chose qui donne l'impression d'être cassable. Du verre ? Allez, encore un peu de code, que 'SchoolTest' devienne enfin plus qu'un test.

Now the focus shall be on the glu code that will make SchoolTest being more than a test, but something that looks like a playable level.
 
Oct. 12

Don't expect anything before 16th of October: IRL interference. However, the welcome screen is now ready, and I have good basis to invite you to progress in the level :) If only those ink droplets could be made more ... visible...

J+12. Interférence de la VTJ prévues jusqu'au 16/10. L'écran d'accueil est prêt et j'ai un début de mécanisme pour encourager à explorer plus le niveau. Penser à passer plus de graphisme sur la couche "background" histoire qu'on voie mieux les gouttes d'encre.

... moving some ground tiles on the BG layer, maybe ?
^^"


Oct. 15

Final touches here and there to make sure there is no hidden trap or non-working bonus. Rewards picture render better and ***drumroll*** I gave the soundtrack a first (successful) test. You should get a release end of the week.

J+15. petites touches de finalisation sur les images-récompenses. eeeeet premier essai avec une bande-son qui marche.

Oct. 17
Fixed a "last minute panic" bug, allowed Bilou to throw Bladors even when jumping or walking and reverted bonus to latin script. I'd say it is mostly done. I'm essentially waiting for CJ's (or Πk's) soundtrack... and I still have to realize the "howto" background to explain how to grab and jump etc.

J+17. bug de dernière minute. Permettre à Bilou de lancer les taille-crayons même s'il et en mouvement. C'est plus ou moins prêt. J'attends une 'zik à mettre là-dedans.

You may expect the release to take place this week-end ^_^

Oct. 18

Everything you need to know gathered on the welcome screen. The rest is to be learned by playing. I hope that doesn't make it too cluttered.

J+18. voilà. L'écran d'accueil qui vous dit tout ce que vous avez besoin de savoir pour commencer à jouer. Le reste, vous l'apprendrez en jouant. J'espère que ça reste assez lisible.

Je viens de recevoir une musique de mon frangin. J'intègre ça et je fais une riliize demain.

Meanwhile, my brother sent me a nice tune to populate the soundscape. I'll integrate that and release tomorrow.

8 days late

Took yesterday evening preparing material for the "achievements" (or so). Blador is now bound to button B and HOLDing one prevent you from RIDing inkjets or spongebops, just like grabbing one's legs to DUCK prevents Fire Mario from SHOOTing fireballs.

If I find some time tonight, I really should spend it on making that hole in the desktop break-able only when Bilou has sufficient vertical speed.

Après une petite soirée passée à vous concocter de petites récompenses pour les plus assidûs d'entre vous dans la chasse aux bonus, je revois suite aux commentaires de Cyril la manipulation des dumbladors. Pour ce soir, ce sera (enfin?) le bouchon-à-casser pour passer d'une moitié à l'autre du niveau.

PS: si ces minis-posts permettent mieux de maintenir la tension avant le lancement du niveau, ils sont par contre nettement moins efficaces pour progresser sur le projet. Pour les outils et les modifications dans la libgeds, je garderai des posts-todo aux ré-éditions multiples faisant le lien vers les diff du svn ...

IPv4 deprecated [options]

Some of the Internet Protocol bits have turned History in last November, without making much noise, afaik. Long ago when I started working in the RUN team, I was impressed by the amount of options described in the IP and ICMP protocols. There was so much a loose source-routing combined with route-record options could do.
I was quite puzzled then to see how many active/programmable networks papers would claim “we propose the following shim layer header between TCP and IP because using an IP option …”. Yes, the protocol claims ‘options’ are available, and yet, packet carrying such options were already second-class citizen in 2001, receiving only slow-path forwarding. Nowadays, they’d likely be dropped altogether by some security/performance middlebox at some point before they could reach their destination.
Well… so is the Internet. At some point, bright ideas converted into RFCs need to be turned into transistors or line of code. At some point, someone will say “no way: we can’t afford the chip that will support any memory alignment for the TCP header. If it’s not appearing 20 bytes away from the start of Ethernet payload, we’ll dispatch the packet in a queue for software processing. Period.” And the person responsible for chip design will know that he might have to find another job if the future customers think the forwarding rate is lame.
So between things that couldn’t be made efficient, those that were supplanted by wider protocols (DHCP vs. ICMP Information Reply (Type 16)) and those that never actually made it to the Internet (IPv6 Where-Are-You (Type 33)), possibly due to potential security issues (Domain Name Reply (Type 38)), https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6918 does not really surprise me, although it’s a bit disappointing to see hours of agreement process turned into “not widely deployed” with no apparent effort to explain why features didn’t took up.
The companion “deprecated IPv4 options” RFC mostly mentions things that were introduced to support experimental side-kick protocols, related to multicast, quality of service, etc.

6 days late

I have level design for the end-of-level sorted out. Blador interaction with other monsters is completed, why-pencils-dont-hurt question is sorted out. RunME is resumed, the level map is 80% complete (it could use some variations, but the basics are present). I still need to ensure that RectoVerso turns back when encountering a wall while jumping and check the design of the bonus rooms.

That-hurts-stars instead of wandering feet when Bilou get splatted by a RectoVerso eraser would also be better.

J+6. Trouvé un design correct pour la fin du niveau. Les interactions entre taille-crayon et le reste des monstres sont terminées. Les crayons font mal comme prévu. La carte du niveau est complétée à 80% (elle pourrait être un peu plus variée, mais le principal est là). Il faut encore que je m'assure que les gommes font demi-tour quand elles rencontrent un mur et que je vérifie le design des salles-bonus.

4 days late

No time/energy for spriting or coding today ... not even mere GobScript'ing. I just barely managed to revise the end of the level ... Hopefully, I now have good ideas (imho) for the bonus cave and the "end of level unlocking".

Pas de panique, cher lecteurs francophones moins à l'aise dans le monde du Cheick Spire: je n'ai pas l'intention d'abandonner les posts bilingue. Il se fait simplement que je trace pour avoir un niveau jouable (et intéressant) dès que possible ... et pendant ces 2 minutes où je vous raconte tout ça, eh bien je n'édite pas mes petits scripts pour faire en sorte qu'on puisse décrocher l'éponge de son clou ...

3 days late

Both pendats and verso may be stunned with bladors, although the feedback is very minimal right now (but funny). I fixed the "inkjet teleporter" issue and I'm trying mostly-harmless spongebops.
Yet, I don't like *at all* those "aouch, ZLIST errors" message I get now in runme >_< (the fix for 130 OAMs in runME wasn't propagated to the svn ^^") ... good news is that it only happens with RunME (again!)

I also got my concept sketch for the welcome/tutorial screen and a nice idea to motivate players to hunt for the bonuses hidden in the level.

J+3. Petit projet d'écran d'accueil qui permette d'indiquer au joueur ce qu'il a à savoir sur les mouvements possibles dans le jeu. Oh, on peut assommer les crayons et les gommes, même si le feedback pour ces actions-là est ultra-minimaliste. Fin des encriers-téléporteurs. Premiers essais avec des éponges qui font "même-pas-mal".

2 days late

Making sure Blador can be used as a weapon, cleaning level ... that shall be done. Quite amusingly, the fact that a testpoint is still needed for monsters because they will FAIL to walk on ground only when they've advanced *past* the last pixel of the structure they're walking on also means that I can set a second test point *deeper* in the ground and force the monster to turn back before encountering "fragile" ground that is only 1 solid-tile-high ... or as in the case of the introductory pendat, artificially introduce "fragile ground" here and there to confine him.

I located and fixed the root cause of "disappearing monsters due to excessive load on the GPU", which was actually only present in runME, and not in the game engine or the game data ^^".

J+2. On peut utiliser les tailles comme arme, et le niveau a été "nettoyé". Ce qu'il y a d'intéressant avec le système des "test points pour les monstres", c'est que si je met un 2eme point-test plus "profondément" dans le sol (disons dans le 2eme tile du sol), je peux alors créer des zones-tampon à l'aide d'un 'creux' sous la première ligne de tiles solides.

J'ai réglé le problème des sprites hardware insuffisants (mais comme vous lisez la version française, vous le savez déjà ;). Si j'ai l'occasion j'ajouterai ce soir les collisions pendat/taille lancé et gomme/taille. Petit sondage: est-ce que les éponges devraient blesser Bilou ou juste le repousser ? (résultat: juste repousser. 100%)

If I manage to find some time tonight, I shall code the reaction of pendats and rectoverso to thrown bladors. Is Cyril right thinking that a Spongebop shouldn't hurt Bilou ? Give me your feeling on the poll before the demo is out!

Poll Outcome: 100% (4 person) voted for SpongeBop that doesn't hurt, but merely bops you away.