They think I am a foolish old man with a hopeless dream

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Rorthron

A spring release for The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge. Version 2.0.8 has hit the stores. There are a number of LoM changes but it’s a huge DDR update. Check out the last post for full details of all the changes. Last thing for me to do with this update is to get it back one GoG.

Unless there are any problems then this will be the last Cocos2d-x release. Don’t worry – there is a replacement plan…

As you will be aware if you’ve paid attention to my many troubles with development over the years, I moved from Marmalade SDK to Cocos2d-x a few years ago due to Marmalade getting out of the SDK game. It’s been two years since I managed the v2 release which was the first under Cocos2d-, and. it was six years ago that I managed my last Marmalade build.

Well Cocos2d-x is pretty much no longer supported. After they released v4 they have not done any updates in 3 years. As we all know, mobile platforms move forward very quickly, and there is always the chance that either Google or Apple will change something enough that the games don’t work anymore, and then even though it’s open source you’ll need to be luck enough that someone fixes the problem for you, or you are deep in to it yourself. However, changes are usually just small fixes, if Apple decide something fundamentally needs to change in the system, low level c++ SDKs are going to need a lot of work. There are already bugs in the Metal implementation that have dogged my port since I released it that have never been addressed.

Luckily, there is a new supported fork of Cocos2d-x called Axmol. They’ve pushed the SDK forward and fixed a huge amount of issues that existed in Cocos2d-x. I’ve been eyeing it for a while but I finally took the plunge earlier this year and have ported to it. It was a relatively smooth transition as far as most of the engine was concerned. Because it’s based on Cocos2d-x it was mainly about getting the project setup file correctly formatted and not much about the code. However there were a number of issues with the OSX port, which is the one I started with, that were probably unique to me. I say that because I suspect at this stage not many people have released Mac games fully through the App Store with Axmol, or indeed Cocos2d-x to be fairl. But the team were fantastic and we got them all ironed out relatively quickly.

I just have some tweaking on the Windows version which is more to do with building with multiple assets, (my projects are setup to be both LoM and DDR which is not quite the expected process for Axmol). But I expect to be fully operational across all platforms very soon.

I’d like to get test versions out soon, and will likely start that process in the next month.

With the move to Axmol I believe that the games will be safe on the current platforms for at least a few more years yet. I actually think it’s remarkable that it’s been 11 years since I originally released LoM on iOS.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the latest updates…

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.

I fear Doomdark may get untimely warning that the Wise are awake

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Rorthron

So it’s no secret that I have struggled with development of The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge since the release of the remakes in 2012/13. Part of this because at the time I think I was driven by a sense of duty to get the games released in honour of Mike. The amount of work I did on those two games in such a short amount of time in order to support seven different platforms was frankly quite astonishing.

After the release of Doomdark’s Revenge I took a short break and developed a children’s game Timbles – which never got released. I then supported the two games for the next couple of years but never really got in to any swing and was unable to move them forward. This then became exasperated by the whole Marmalade SDK fiasco which stopped the games in their tracks.

I slowly started moving toward a new SDK and picked Cocos2dx. I then spent a few months rewriting many aspects of the UI to make it work. I finally put the project back down because I was struggling under the new SDK to make it work across multiple screen resolutions.

Last Christmas after over a year of not working on it, I picked it up during my one work break of the year. The reason for this is that I suddenly realised how I could solve the resolution issue. Inspired I got a test release together for iOS, OSX, Android, and Windows. However by mid January I was back working and even more busy than the year before. Another problem that cropped up is that the Cocos2dx SDK appears to have a bug with its Metal implementation that means its either leaking memory or causing a threading issue. This appears to be a random issue that I am some how triggering and have been unable to find.

Over the following few months I spent more time working and eventually I found myself in a situation where I could can no longer sit at my computers without working. I made an association with my study and my computers with work and haven’t touched any none work projects through the majority of 2021.

At the beginning of October I changed my main client to Sky. What this means is that I am no longer working additional hours whereas working with PureGym I found myself working longs hours or working later and intermittent through the day.

A few weeks after joining Sky, I found myself slowly spending more time at the computer… and I started finding a rhythm.

So here is where I am. I am not making any promises because I don’t want to break them, but I am back on a plan. I have been rewriting the Midnight Engine in c# – part of this is to facilitate a move to Unity which will open up better long term support for LoM, DDR, and facilitate Citadel. I just don’t believe that I can stick with the c++ engine and Cocos2dx anymore – I am already bothered that their c++ SDK hasn’t been updated in 2 years and their time milestone release is also 2 years overdue.

Mentally I have committed myself to The Citadel in 2d and some campaign changes. I also have a list of features that I want to add to allow a few game variations. My intention is to get a Unity project up and running “The Midnight Chronicles” and LoM, DDR, and the Citadel will all be campaigns within the one game. I also have my eye on Nintendo Switch and some other things which I won’t discuss here yet.

The new engine also means that I am getting closer to having better tools to handle the data allowing me to start modifying the maps etc for alternate campaigns. The original data was held in an Access Database with a binary export. As I’ve been Mac based for so long now, Access is no longer part of my work flow. So I’ve been using the unmodified binary files for some time. To give you an example in order to release Revenge the first thing the code does after loading the binary database is modify all the data that was incorrect previously. I can’t continue that way.

Where I am right now is that I have what I call “The Midnight Engine Database”. This is all the core objects required for the games. This is in a slightly more open format. Shortly I will be able to load the binary data and export/import to a more open text based format. The map is stored in Tiled format and all the other data is just CSV files.

I have also started exploring a new architecture to allow the engine to be even more open. I am trying to move away from the current object oriented approach because ultimately it’s too limiting and confining. I am also resisting the text so that it can be better localised.

So, where does that leave the current c++ game… well I intend to get LoM and DDR released I just don’t know when I am going to start on it. I am hoping that I can use the momentum of working on the new engine to get me through a release. So please bear with me a little longer…