Luxor nodded his reluctant acceptance of the truth and their talk turned to Midnight

With the re-release of Doomdark’s Revenge and The Lords of Midnight that concludes the last few fraught years of bringing Midnight back from the mobile graveyard caused by Marmalade getting out of the SDK game.

I won’t deny that it’s been a painful process and not one I really want to go through again… and yet… The release is not without it’s problems. I’m not convinced that there isn’t memory crash bug still there caused by the current Cocos2dx SDK. Thanks to all the testers that have helped out over the last few months, I think I have reduced the frequency but can’t be sure. It might just be down to the length of time you play and the size of device that you have.

But, I think the only way to solve the issue is to change the SDK – and I just don’t have that in me.

So, what next.

First, I need to upload new versions of the Lords of Midnight to bring its engine up to date with Doomdark’s Revenge. There are a few small changes that were added during that release that could do with being released into LoM – just having a few Apple issues at the moment with the upload.

Here’s what will be in that release…

Version 2.0.2 (42)

  1. [desktop] Added cursor sizes (small/medium/large)

Version 2.0.2 (41)

  1. fix crash caused by too many armies at a location
  2. panel_think – adjust page indicator size dependent on number of pages

Version 2.0.2 (39)

  1. Return graffiti easter egg
  2. Add confirm night option
  3. panel_look – Add drag down gesture to moves
  4. panel_look – Add drag up gesture for map
  5. [desktop] Add mouse cursor images
  6. [desktop] Consolidate ESC key across all screens
  7. [desktop] Tidy shortcut keys across all screens
  8. [Android] panel_mainmenu Hardware back button now performs Exit
  9. [mobile] Tweak scale of buttons

Version 2.0.2 (38)

  1. Fixed: panel_think – adjust UI on phone
  2. Fixed: potential memory leaks that could be causing crashes

After that I will take a break from this code base. There are a couple of small things that I would like to put back that are missing but that I didn’t feel were critical for the release. I may well add them over time here and there when I find myself in the mood, but I won’t guaranty anything.

  1. [mobile] Pinch and Zoom on the map
  2. Compass Gadget
  3. [desktop] scrolling indicators on popup pages
  4. [desktop] arrow indicators for scrolling on think pages
  5. [desktop] Next/Previous buttons on scrolling pages
  6. [mobile] Vibrate
  7. Review the guide

There are three things that I will be focusing on from hereon in.

  1. Rewrite the engine under c# – this is a long term project in order to make the engine more robust for the future and to make more options available to me. The first is to just straight take the engine to Unity but the other is to also take it online for multi-player. More details to follow in future posts.
  2. Use the current engine to research and develop the new Landscaping needed for The Citadel. The Citadel needs water. I was playing with this technique a few years back but it wasn’t quite gelling. It works fine in a flip screen environment but not so good when the panorama is moving. However, I think with the changes made in order to release using Cocos2dx I’m keen to get back to it.
  3. The Citadel Novel/Game research. Drew’s roadmap currently has The Citadel slated as a 2023 release so we are going to need to get together to work on the details a little more than we did on LoM and DDR. There is going to need to be far more game research which is needed for the book but also for any release that I intend. For one thing the map needs a lot of filling out with details that were sadly missing in the original release.
The Bloodmarch - Northwest corner
The Bloodmarch – Northwest corner