May 2014 - February 2015 Progress Report

Wed Mar 18 2015

Hello, and welcome to another FreedroidRPG progress report! It's been a long while without updates, as our brave devs have been fighting a siege of crazed bots, but a handful of brave messengers have managed to breach the enemy lines and bring us news of the drama that took place with regards to the game:

  • Jesusaves implemented different droid sensor types, allowing some droids to see the player even through the invisibility program. This represents a significant rebalancing of the later game stages, and a step in the direction of more varied and interesting enemies.
  • Work on translations by fluzz has continued, and now languages with wider character sets are properly supported. Thanks to Xenux, Matthias Krüger, Jesusaves, and allejok for their efforts to translate the game into French (FR), Czech, German, Portuguese (BR) and Swedish, respectively. Localization efforts are arranged by GiBy on Transifex - you can help too!
  • Scott Furry added automatic parsing and uploading of the game data to the wiki. This includes levels, droid types, NPCs, quests and ingame items. The task of maintaining the documentation of the game world has thus been lifted from the devs, who may now focus on running away from bots.
  • The lua bindings used in dialogs were improved and expanded, and now cover functions for NPCs as well as the player. By fluzz.
  • Xenux converted the management of skills to lua, increasing flexibility for content creators in defining the in-game programs the player character can execute.
  • The countdown for effects (such as paralysis, slowing and invisibility) can now be configured to appear on the Heads-Up Display, immediately above the player character (Tux). Thanks to Gregory Lozet.
  • fluzz refactored the sound engine, speeding up functions related to positional sound, adding fade-in, and refactoring the sound cache.
  • Amy de Buitléir added the Omega Island to the game world, accessible via ferry to the north of the town. What mysteries do the enigmatic denizens of this cryptic island hold? How do they fit into the violent chaos into which the world has found itself thrown? Even we do not yet know...
  • The graphics for the common 614 security droid were refreshed, enhanced and beautified, thanks to basse and Infrared.
  • Scott Furry constructed a tool to visualize the structure FreedroidRPG's dialog files, the Dialog Node Mapping Tool. As the game's plot unfolds, this tools is expected to provide writers a clearer view of the flow of the player's interaction with the story and the best direction to expand it. Graphs for the current dialogs can be seen here.
  • A bug was fixed involving the in-world mouse position not being updated after closing the dialog screen. This caused the unwanted reopening of dialogs due to too much clicking. Thanks to fluzz.
  • Text shown in the console area at the bottom of the game screen is now wrapped according to the entire width of the area. By fluzz.
  • Bullets can no longer be fired in the opposite direction to that the player is facing, thanks to fluzz.
  • Duon Khang Nguyen improved the game's automake system: third-party makefiles provided by lua (which comes bundled with the game just in case) are properly recognized and used by automake when building. Additionally, intermediate object files are no longer renamed by automake, preventing other issues with lua library linking.
  • Various enhancements and corrections to the game's dialog were made, by Xenux, Matthias Krüger, Kibergus, Jesusaves, Scott Furry and others.
  • Many performance and stability fixes and improvements, by fluzz, Matthias Krüger, Gregory Lozet, Xenux and others.

In total, 296 changes were committed since April, 2014.

And as always, we want to thank everyone who contributed and invite anyone with an idea, feedback or other contribution to contact us, open a bug or feature request ticket, or submit a patch to ReviewBoard and try your hand at bug-squashing. Who knows, you might even find your name on this list!

-The FreedroidRPG Team


March & April 2014 Progress Report

Sat May 10 2014

This is FreedroidRPG's progress report for the months of March and April! Due to an unfortunate mishap involving digits, earlier we released a progress report from the wrong year, but everything's sorted now - these are a few of the notable changes that went into the game recently:

  • The main menu now contains an entry for Languages, giving access to the localization of the game; this concludes many months of continuous work by fluzz. We remind you that translation is happening over at Transifex, and anyone who wants to help can create a free account and start translating here.
  • Ammunition specifications were de-hardcoded by Xenux; this will ease localization for ammunition types, allow greater flexibility and make things simpler for developers and modders alike (in addition to paving the way to easier automatic wiki updates, a WIP by Scott Furry)
  • Gregory Lozet fixed an old bug that caused the game time to speed up after winning or losing the game.
  • Duon Khang Nguyen is working on improving the game's compilation process: the first submitted patch simplifies the build by preventing an unnecessary renaming of intermediate files, avoiding issues involving Lua library linking.
  • A corrupted waypoint connection in John's puzzle was found and fixed, thanks to Infrared and Matthias Krüger.
  • Xenux fixed two issues in the level editor: one that made selecting items on the floor challenging, and another that caused visual distortions under certain conditions.
  • Numerous improvements and optimizations were made to the game's engine, thanks to fluzz and Xenux.
  • Multiple changes and improvements to the game's dialogs were made, by Matthias Krüger.

All in all, 59 changes were committed in March and April.

And now, we'd like to thank all contributors, and remind anyone who wants to become a contributor that they have many options: multiple ways to contact us, a handy bug and feature request tracker for specific feedback, and, for patches, we have ReviewBoard. Who knows, you may even find your name on this list in the future!

-The FreedroidRPG Team


January & February 2014 Progress Report

Sat Mar 01 2014

Hello, this is FreedroidRPG's progress report for the months of January and February! The beginning of the year has been promising despite some erratic weather, and these are only a few of the improvements that were made to the game in this time:

  • After much work by fluzz, support for localization and internationalization of the game has been re-introduced! Work in this area is nearing completion, and anyone who wants to contribute to the translation of the game can create a free Transifex account and start translating here. Translation efforts are spearheaded by Giby.
  • Several of the game's backgrounds have been remade in higher resolution and different aspect ratios, by basse.
  • Jesusaves fixed a bug that caused bots equipped with ranged weapons to cross map level borders in order to fire on targets on neighboring levels.
  • Scott Furry fixed a bug that caused the arena bots to respawn outside of the intended area and kill the arena master.
  • The player now gets a small reward for their pains after clearing the Disruptor Shield Base late in the game, thanks to Jesusaves.
  • The 543 Harvester bots that populate the desert west of the town can now drop standard bot parts. Thanks to Scott Furry.
  • We are inviting Gentoo users to install and play the game, using the improved documentation. Thanks to ZetaNeta.
  • Tutorial Tom will no longer attack the training targets in the tutorial and steal your XP. By Matthias Krüger.
  • Many other fixes and changes under the hood were made by various contributors to make the game's code a slightly friendlier place.

All in all, 168 changes were committed during January and February.

And so, we want to thank all contributors, and ask anyone who wants to become a contributor and get thanked to contact us, tell us what you want to see with a feature request or bug report, or get into the thick of things with a patch. Who knows, you may find your name in this list in the future!

-The FreedroidRPG Team


November & December 2013 Progress Report

Mon Jan 06 2014

Hello, and a Happy New Year! The end of one year and the beginning of another is always time to stop and reflect on the past, as well as plan for the future. Throughout 2013, FreeDroidRPG developed in many areas and saw many changes, and its future is more fascinating and promising than ever before. The world is coming to life with denizens who have more ways to talk and more things to say, flowing rivers and swaying oceans, a strange new plot that is slowly being revealed, and the engine that is driving it all growing stronger and more flexible. These are some of the changes that accompanied the end of 2013:

  • Xenux added advanced logic for the refurbished arena in town: fight against waves of bots in different difficulty modes, and try to impress Mike, the arena master!
  • fluzz added Lua bindings, which will allow for easier and quicker referencing to the various components of the game in the event scripting system and new dialog engine. The first use for this framework is accessing functions used by the player character.
  • Xenux introduced item IDs, which are separate from the item name displayed to the user; this will help with translation efforts and improves code sanity.
  • Event triggers were reworked and are now simpler, more reliable and more flexible, by Xenux.
  • A bug was fixed that caused only the first six slots out of the ten in the quickbar to fill automatically as the player picked up items. Thanks to Xenux.
  • Various fixes and tweaks that make the game's engine a friendlier place were made, as well as dialog improvements, by all contributors.

All in all, 67 changes were committed during the months of November and December. 547 changes were committed during 2013.

Now, and always, we thank you, who read these reports and followed the project throughout its growth. We thank those who took part in that growth, both past and present, and welcome those who will do so in the future. That could be you, and there are many ways to contribute: contact us, submit a feature request or bug report, or a patch. You might even be featured in a progress report this year!

-The FreedroidRPG Team


September & October 2013 Progress Report

Sat Nov 02 2013

Hello, and welcome to FreeDroidRPG's progress report for September and October! As the seasons change, the game grows and develops, and these are some of the changes that occurred during these two months:

  • fluzz rewrote the game's engine dialog. The new engine, which was being developed for quite a while now, uses the Lua scripting language more heavily, and is expected to raise the expressive power of the game's dialogs to an as-of-yet unknown level, projected to be pretty high! Documentation of this recent addition is ongoing, as well as the process of converting the many dialogs currently in the game to the new format required.
  • Various fixes were made to the actual text within the dialogs, as well. Thanks to Matthias Krüger and GiBy.
  • The tutorial was stabilized and improved through a series of changes to the relevant map and dialogs, by Matthias Krüger.
  • The animated water in the game was improved: it flows smoother and is more visually appealing. The conversion from static to animated water with throughout the game world is nearly complete. Thanks to Infrared and Matthias Krüger.
  • Matthias Krüger fixed a bug that caused the positions of randomly spawned droids to be written to a data file when saving in the level editor.
  • Many different improvements and bugfixes were made in the game engine, by all contributors.

All in all, 140 changes were committed during September and October.

As always, we thank everyone who contributed, and call invite anyone with an idea for an improvement to contact us, make it official on the bug & feature request tracker, or show us how you think it should be done on the project's ReviewBoard. Who knows, you might find your name in this list in the future!

-The FreedroidRPG Team