Rotten Doomdark magic

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Rorthron

The Spring equinox release didn’t quite go as smoothly as hoped. It was a big release because the Axmol upgrade but a few issues meant I’ve had to push a hot fix. Actually being truthful, I’ve pushed a few… the latest 2.0.11 (56) is rolling through now. The Windows update will be a little later – just because of build delays.

Build (56)

FIXED: LOM – Crash when seeking and finding an object that can be picked up

Build (55)

FIXED: LOM – Crash at startup after previously chaning scenaro to LOM_NOVEL
FIXED: DDR – Friendly Lord ‘prepares For battle’ at friendly fortress after being recruited

Build (54)

FIXED: LOM – Crash when after Moonring wearer dies
FIXED: Incorrect hours remaining shown after finding guidance
FIXED: Problem with shaders on older devices – Black rectangles around characters

Build (53)

FIXED: ANDROID: Start new game crash – stop proguard stripping axmol utils.

Here’s what happened.

Android build messed up only for the Play Store build. So had to immediately push a new version. This is to do with how the build process removes unused code etc. It had tagged some parts of the engine as not required which would cause a crash on creating a new game. So I pushed a new build just for Android.
Shader problems on some iPads (potentially other devices). A divide by zero issue that has been in the shader code – forever – caused the outlines of terrain to be funky, but more importantly the characters were sat in a black box. Not sure what in the process caused this to show up now, but thankfully the Axmol guys helped located the issue. It’s one of those – doh! moments. That said, it’s been fine for 12 years!! Also thanks to Gareth Jones for helping test the fix.
There was a crash in LoM when Luxor died. When the Doomguard who follow Luxor try to to locate someone else to follow, the game crashed. This was because in implementation of the Novel scenario, I had inadvertently turned off the Moonring feature!! This and the shaders warranted a quick release.
I had a small guidance bug brought to my attention which I had fixed, so I though I might as well push it with the hot fix.
New crash at startup – in fixing the Moonring issue I introduced a different crash. This is what happens when you try to rush releases and don’t cover your fixes with proper unit tests!
Has also fixed a small prepares battle reporting issue.
Crash problem caused when seeking and finding an object that you can pick up – Sword, Moon Ring, Ice Crown. This was caused by the guidance bug fix – see previous comment about tests.

Hopefully this is now all settling…

In the meantime – I also started the process of getting the GoG releases updated. The stores should be up to date with the new release later this month. I’m holding off for a little while longer due to these hiccups…

The dawn did not linger but hurried on its endless journey

Posted on December 20, 2021 by Rorthron

3,287 (or 164 score and 7) days have passed since I released the first version of The Lords of Midnight remakes on the Apple Store. Over the next few days, weeks, year I would release both The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge for iOS, OSX, Android, Amazon Fire, Amazon Underground, Windows, Windows Phone, and Blackberry.

As you all know the choice to continue the remakes was difficult after the loss of Mike, but in the end I felt the need to keep these games in some way alive on modern devices. To that end I chose to keep the game look and feel very similar to the original and just apply a light refresh or paint job.

You will also know of the issues I have had with the SDK that the games are built on. Without going too technical, the games are native c++ but in order to reduce the workload for me, I used a thin amount of an SDK called Marmalade to help facilitate the cross platform support that I needed. But Marmalade got out of the business and I had to move to another SDK, Cocos2d-x, which has taken some time.

About this time last year I almost finished the migration after having bitted at it over the previous few years and I was making really good progress until life kicked in and completely floored me when it came to any personal projects and development. Basically the increase in workload brought about by the Pandemic just made sitting in front of a computer in my spare time – a misery.

I finally started picking up again recently, and here we are…

So I am glad to say that The Lords of Midnight is now available again for iOS, OSX, and Android. Windows will be available just as soon as I work out the best way to distribute it as currently the old versions are still available on GoG. These games are now completely free and will remain so. (I may add other purchasing options later for additional content). Doomdark’s Revenge will follow very shortly. The game is fully running I just need to do a lot more sanity checking.

The frontend of the games have been completely rewritten so some things may feel a little different.

There some known issues…

There appears to be a random crash bug that I have been chasing down for a while. As far as I can see it has something to do with the graphics rendering of the SDK but as of yet I have not been able to pin point it. I will keeps chasing this down.
Incorrect sizing of filter buttons on mobile
Android back button doesn’t give option to close the game from the main menu

There are some missing features…

The compass has been removed. This will be replaced shortly.
Some of the gestures have not been recreated yet.
1. Pinch and Zoom on the map
2. Quick access to the Map from the look screen
3. Drag to move
Button to revert scale to normal on map screen
Use of haptic feedback on mobile
Next and Previous buttons for desktop on think and select screen
Cursor image on desktop
Escape key usage on desktop
Shortcut keys on desktop

And a few features I wanted to add which I will try to get in soon…

Add filter for ‘Hidden’ on Map and Select screen
Add option to disable ‘Are you sure” for night prompt
Add in game option on Tutorial popups to mute/unmute tutorial

There will likely be a new build in the next few days as I made a couple of changes during the Android release that needs to ripple through to all versions, I just didn’t want to mess with the current release schedule by submitted the latest changes to all variants.

Moving forward I am not 100% sure what approach I am going to take. I am already aware that Cocos seem to have downgraded the importance of their c++ engine as there hasn’t been any updates in the last two years. I’m already starting to move to a new system – this time Unity – I think this might have more future proofing. The only problem is, this becomes a complete rewrite in c#. In the end this opens up much more opportunities for the future direction of the games. It may be that the current versions are kept ticking over as they are as I focus all my energy on rebuilding the new system.

Anyway, apologies for the delay, but I hope you can all enjoy The Lords of Midnight and look forward to Doomdark’s Revenge in the New Year.

It is better to know your comrade’s mettle before the real battle begins, is it not?

Posted on December 21, 2020 by Rorthron

I have finally managed to get The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge ready to return to the stores. Yes I know it’s taken a while and in reality it’s been a labour of love, but we are almost there. I have had both games running on iOS, iPadOS, OS X, Windows, and Android.

I am hoping to release the games during January, I have put a lot of work into this rebuild of The Lords of Midnight and for that the game will now cost a total of NOTHING! I initially intend to keep a price on Doomdark’s Revenge, although if you’ve already paid, you won’t need to pay again. But I also intend to include some In App Purchases in the future.

Right now, I would just like to get as many people testing them to make sure that they are behaving as expected. I am sure there are a few little niggles, and I know there are a couple of small UI features that I removed; awaiting a rebuild. I just decided not to hold up the release because of them.

To start testing The Lords of Midnight…

iOS/iPadOS – Apple store link.
Windows – Download
OSX – Download
Android – You need a Google Account to join. Send me your email through the form at the bottom of these page. I will then add you to the testing group and you can then Join from Web. Join from Device.

To report any issues either use the links supplied as part of iOS/Android testing system, visit my issues page on GitHub or fill in the form at the bottom of these page. Please provided as much information as possible, screenshots if it helps, and details of your device.

Some of the things removed.

~~Detailed map needs the ability to scale.~~
Desktop – Cursor images need adding
The compass gadget is missing from the look screen
Desktop – Some keyboard shortcuts are missing
Mobile – Some gesture shortcuts are missing
~~Desktop – Only runs in a window. Should open a window in 16:9 at about 75% the hight go your desktop resolution.~~

Known issues

~~Splash and Credits screen crop badly top and bottom~~
~~Desktop – Direction number keys are mapped incorrectly~~
Scrolling indicators/icons missing from think page and popup info pages
~~Names on the map collide with each other~~
~~Options screen has incorrect options on it for platform~~

Some of the changes.

There have been some UI changes that I have added either for flourish while I was rebuilding or out of necessity.

The landscape view now adapts to your screen resolution much more dynamically. It keeps the same aspect ratio (1.3333) of the original for the height of the view but allows the width to grow. The affectively gives you a wider field of vision or wider devices. I did feel originally that this was an unfair advantage to those on with resolutions closer to the original, but in the end I decided that the advantage was minimal as most people look around them anyway,

The Think page changed a little. The first is that the text now scrolls vertically if it gets to long. Again this was to help with certain resolution issues. But also each think page now scrolls horizontally in a fashion more akin to scrolling pages on mobile devices. Note the page indicator at the bottom of the screen.