Category Archives: Coding

Above, the towering clouds simply melted away and the bright stars gleamed in the sky once more.

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After having a conversation with Drew a couple of weeks back about the future of the novels, I came to a stark realisation that I was now unable to build the special version of Doomdark’s Revenge that he would need to allow him to freely wander the Icemark as part of his research. This was something that I did for him with The Lords of Midnight and it helped greatly.

However, the problems that I have had with the building of the games because of the loss of the Marmalade SDK are still plaguing me. I was slowly coming to the acceptance that I would soon be removing the games from the Apple app store as each new release of iOS and new devices makes the game unobtainable. This will likely follow through to Android and Windows.

All this has been compounded that my general motivation has been through the floor for a number of years now.

The upshot of this post is that this week I had a self imposed break from work and I’ve been working on the game and have made great progress already. The main menu and surrounding screens are all working. The main view is mostly done bar a few niceties and features that I don’t yet need to give Drew the functionality he needs. Today I’m working on the Think screen, but the main missing screens are the Select and Map screen.

  • Main Menu
  • Continue Story
  • Landscaping
  • Actions

The way was obscure but he moved onwards…

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The ersh has finally settled on the whole Marmalade Licence Issue. My licence no longer works so I cannot build LoM or DDR anymore, and the new company who I know nothing about, nor what their long term intentions are, require $600 for a one year bridging licence.

I just about managed to get the new 64bit build out for iOS and Android, but never managed to update Windows, Mac, Windows Phone, and Amazon. I’m a little disappointed by this, but I think I can live with it.

However, the iOS version of Doomdark’s Revenge seems to have a little bug on iPhone7 where it doesn’t always show the splash screen and the main menu backdrop. The rest of the game works fine. This can be fixed by running your phone in Zoom mode. I wish I’d managed to get the fix out for this in time. What this actually means, is that this fix would cost me $600.

I’ve though long and hard about this, and I’ve decided to let it go. GMO Internet group Japan, who now own the Marmalade Tech, have said that they will be changing the technology in 12 months. Currently their bridging licence is a no support, no update licence. So come a new iOS or Xcode, both which will happen in September, then there is no guaranty that it would continue to build after that. Then there is the little issue of the compatibility of their new tech, should they make it available, and the new cost.

I don’t honestly think the DDR bug will affect that many people, after all, there are not that many people playing it. Should the problem become a real issue, then then, and only then, might I consider buying the licence to allow me to fix, compile, and release.

Until then, I need a new plan.

And here it is…

My next game was going to be Timbles – my children education title that has been kicking along for way too long. This is also written under the same system and thus I can no longer work on it. I cannot currently bring myself to port it to another system, therefore it will be shelved until some future time.

My intention was to move my system to Cocos2d-x and I have started working on that. But, I have decided that rather than spend time in the past again, porting to another system, I am going to start a new game that will allow me to familiarise myself with Cocos2d-x and build up the system I need, and then after that I will take Timbles, The Lords of Midnight, and Doomdark’s Revenge across to it. If I can get another game out, then follow it with Timbles, I am strongly leaning to spending time on The Citadel.

It’s worth point out that I have over the years ported The Lords of Midnight from a Z80 code base that I hand disassembled and crafted to 80×86. I wrote a Visual Basic version, and C version. Developed the Midnight Engine in c++ for Windows, then took this across to the Marmalade system as the base of the current releases. Timbles was developed under Visual Basic 10 years ago. Then moved to DirectX. Then rewritten in c# for Silverlight to run in a browser, before finally being coded in c++ under the Marmalade system.

I think you can see why I am a tad reluctant to revisit these code bases right now. 🙂

In the mean time I will update the GitHub repositories to include the full final source.

The Moon Ring lends us the power to change our plans

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For those of you that do not follow my personal blog, I thought I’d update you on a few issues that have been plaguing me… for those of you who have, you can skim down to nearer the bottom…

About six months ago I received an email from Marmalade detailing their intention to withdraw from the SDK market. Marmalade is the system I used to develop The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge in order to facilitate the cross platform nature of it. Using Marmalade gave me the ability to target iOS, OSX, Android, Windows, Windows Phone, Kindle, and Blackberry.

A month or so later, Marmalade confirmed that the SDK had been sold to another company, and that further support may become available from them.

That process has now taken place. I have less than a month of my Marmalade licence left, and they have not turned off the Licence server to I can still build and continue to work. However no future support will come from them. The new company are offering a 12 month bridging licence at $100 more than my previous licence fees, but this also comes with no support. I’m also not convinced that they intend to be around for the long term. The main reason they appeared to by the Marmalade system was for internal development.

A few weeks ago I received an email from Google. Doomdark’s Revenge was now in breach of one of their policies and needed to be resubmitted or removed from the store. A quick recompile and the problem was solved.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Apple. The Lords of Midnight was due to be removed from the store in 30 days. This is due to them culling old apps that were not being updated and/or were not 64 bit. If the App is removed people who currently have it will still be able to play it and re-download it, it just won’t be able to go on any new devices or be updated.

In theory, a recompile would solved the problem, and as I had slowly added some new functionality, this should gain me a stay of execution for possibly another 5 years.

Over the last few weeks I’ve ben wrestling with a Marmalade SDK that is not supported and an inability to build a new version. Eventually, after a lot of heartache and pain, and getting close to just giving up, I have managed to get a working build, however, there is a catch, it doesn’t work on iPad1, iPad2, and iPad Mini 1. iPad1 is no surprise, I can’t target anything lower than iOS 6 anymore and iPad1 only goes to 5.1 The iPad2 and iPad Mini is more of a problem. The issue appears to be the Marmalade system incorrectly reporting those devices as Retina devices even though there are not. I’m still trying to fix this, but it’s proving difficult without current access to any of the devices. So, I might have to make a decision. The deadline is under two weeks now and in order to stave of the executioner, I might have to upload a version that doesn’t support those devices. And this is where the real catch is; I can’t exclude those devices without going iOS10 or purely 64 bit, or both.

Using iOS10 would allow me to target iPhone5 up, and iPod Touch6G, iPad4 up, iPad Mini2 up. Going 64bit would be much more restrictive.

It hurts to think I might lose iPad2, iPad3, iPad Mini1, and iPhone 4, it seems harsh, especially as I have an iPad3 which it does work on! I have no idea how many of these devices are currently playing the game, Apple don’t break down the numbers to devices with that amount of granularity.

To be fair, I don’t have a current enhancement plan for the games, so it’s not like people who currently have the game will be losing out much, but it just feels wrong.

I’ll have to make a decision early next week in order to upload LoM and DDR and at least stop the rot. However, once those versions are up, I don’t know how much longer I might be able to build them again for.

Long term, I need to look at porting the games to another platform, and this is something I have spoken about before…