Tag Archives: Lords of Midnight

We must reach the Tower of the Moon by tomorrow

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It’s been 15 score and 7 days since I last posted about The Lords of Midnight. Things have changed a little since I decided to make the games available for free on GoG and to remove them from the Apple and Play stores. Firstly my working situation didn’t change. This was mainly because the government shelved its implementation of the new IR35 rules that were coming in to effect in April 2020. The reason for this was the same reason that has turned 2020 topsy-turvy; Covid19.

During this time I still haven’t done much work on LoM deciding to keep to my self imposed exile. I did visit the land of Midnight time-to-time and managed to break the back of a number of issues, and I enjoyed my time there for the first time in a long while.

I have have finally pretty much completed the Cocos2dx port. I only say “pretty much” because until I produce a release with it, then I’m not sure of any issues that remain. There are some known Desktop problems and I haven’t looked at Android at all (other than it’s under Cocos so should work mostly).

I have also satisfactorily resolved the resolution independence problem that has increasingly gotten worse with Apple in particular going hell bent for leather to release as many different resolution phones as they can managed over the eight years since I original brought the new LoM to mobile. Some of you may have already see the wide screen screenshots that I have posted on Twitter.

With those two issues at hand, I believe I am very close to being able to bring The Lords of Midnight back to the Apple Stores soon. My intention (but don’t hold me to it) is to get the game in to TestFlight testing in January and get it in to the stores proper as soon as possible after that. There are a lot more Apple devices to test on this time around!

After that, I will look at resolving any desktop issues so that I can get the game into TestFlight for OSX in February.

If these two milestones can be achieved, then Android and Windows release will follow very shortly after.

This is the last few remaining issues that I would like to tackle before I push to TestFlight. Not all of them are required to push to TestFlight so I suspect I will attempt an early smaller test release just to go through the process.

Only Luxor remained with a thousand riders of his Houseguard, waiting for news.

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Just an update of how things are progressing at the moment.

The move to Cocos2d-x is now almost complete. I have the full Lords of Midnight running with every screen implemented. Which means it is fully playable, however in order to hurtle through to completion I chose to priorities and simplify certain things.

For example. The select screen allows you to do just that. What is missing is the grouping functionality. Which means you can play the game and select all the recruited characters, you just can’t utilise grouping.

Here is my current TODO: list…

  • Landscaping – armies
  • panel_look – direction arrows
  • panel_map_detailed
  • Mouse Images
  • panel_look – shortcut keys
  • panel_look – show following character
  • panel_look – compass
  • panel_think – select character
  • panel_think – Post/Recruit
  • panel_look – help pending
  • panel_look – Landscape – keyboard control
  • Load XML Project Config
  • landscaping – mist
  • landscaping – grafitti
  • panel_select – Grouping
  • panel_select – shortcut keys
  • panel_select – drag and drop
  • DDR panel_gameover
  • DDR uicommandwindow – give text
  • DDR uicommandwindow – select face with name
  • DDR panel_look – Tunnel View
  • panel_advert – multiple adverts

I’ve been doing all this work with the MAC build because it’s easier. The next step was to make sure I could get the project working on iPhone, again because that’s the next easiest most logical step for me. I fixed up some cosmetic issues caused by multi-resolution support and added in support for the Safe Area of the iPhoneX range of phones – basically the notch, the curved corners, and the home indicator. This will also help with any potential AppleTV version that might come later. With the safe area I chose to allow the background to fill the full screen, but make sure any UI components are within the safe area.

The next thing is to get Windows32/Windows10 variants building, which for me unfortunately means spending time in a Windows VM. I also enjoy using Visual Studio less and less… but hey, needs must.

Once the windows version is building, at least the win32 version, I will swap back to Doomdark’s Revenge. I will make the changes required to get DDR running in the same way LoM is. The main thing will be tunnels, mist, landscaping and ui differences. The reason for this is so that I can have a version to give to Drew that will help him with the novel research.

After that, I will start pulling on the straggly strands together. I haven’t decided for definite yet, but I am thinking of releasing this version under the monicker “The Midnight Chronicles” and having both LoM and DDR as selectable campaigns, rather than releasing them as two separate apps. This wasn’t really possible when I first released LoM 6 years ago!

I am also considering In App Purchases. The idea is that the main game will be free, but you can pay for additional scenarios and graphic sets. It is likely that The Citadel will be released as a scenario rather than a new game. Some other scenarios might just be playing with the map or the game conditions. I like the idea of a scenario that more closely resembles the way the Novel plays out. I don’t intend to add IAP for functionality or gameplay, so there will be no in game currency for example!

The minstrel’s songs were old ballads that everyone knew well

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I’ve been having a few conversations with Wayne Britcliffe about making his Midnight inspired music available. Two of these pieces of music I used on the game trailers. The Midnight Overture was used for The Lords of Midnight, and The Icemark was used for Doomdark’s Revenge.
When I say having a few conversations, I actually mean I spoke to him about it three years ago, and completely forgot to do anything about it. Now that I have finally remembered, I wanted to ask if there is an appetite for these pieces of music to be made available.
I’d appreciated it if you would take some time to fill the form in so that we can gauge interest on releasing the current music or potentially more music.

The Lords of Midnight Trailer
Doomdark’s Revenge Trailer