ALLEGRO FILE IS UP
Aside from the changes outlined in the beta 2 progress thread (My list of changes is here. The first post has the rest of the changes) the following you need to be aware of:
1. The Link Tile Modifiers have been reverted to their 2.10 ways (I hope). This should only be a temporry measure while DN and I implement he ability to edit Link's tile references altogether. We apologize for any inconvinience.
2. New security measures: To prevent cheating and stealing of passwords, several security measures were taken, one of which is the heavy encryption of the quest password. In fact, DN did such a good job that not even I can see off-hand what the password to a quest is. (and from what I can see, DN didn't allow anyway for us to do that). However, a backdoor has been provided for those who forgot their passwords. When loading a quest and typing in the password, a challenge hash will appear. If given to one of us developers, we'll be able to provide a 'backdoor' password (all dependent on the original quest password) for one-time entry that will give the opportunity for the quest maker to regain access. Make sure this works correctly, and that all existing cheating programs don't work.
3. New BS-style subscreens! These aren't complete, though DN is working hard on them. Try out the four different styles when editing a quest in ZQ.
4. To activate preview mode, press X. Most of the instructions are in the thread linked above, so I won't repeat them here.
I believe that's all. If DN has anything more to add, he'll post here. Also note that this is the windows build only. If neccesary, either I or DN will compile DOS distros either today or tomorrow, though we are trying to get to the point of depreciation on that :P As for Linux or Mac distros, don't ask me. That's DN's department completely.
FINALLY, REMEMBER TO BACK UP ALL FILES YOU USE FOR ZC IN CASE OF CORRUPTION BUGS. ALSO NOTE THAT SAVE FILES FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS WILL NOT WOrK WITH THIS BETA.
Without further ado, here's the windows distro:
http://jman2050.armageddongames.net/Moldrums/zc211b2/zc211b2w.zip
Make sure to use this allegro DLL only
http://jman2050.armageddongames.net/Moldrums/zc211b2/alleg42.dll
Remember to report all bugs in the bug forum. I guarantee there will be quite a few of them.
Aaah, excellent work. I applaud you, we have something to do!
But, it won't run for me. It is looking for alleg42.dll, which I can't seem to find anywhere. Any idea where to get this?
Wow... I certinally wasn't expecting it. I'm downloading it right now! 😃
I saw this, and burst. Damn you.
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I can't wait to test it. 😊
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Man, you've worked so hard on this. 😊
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We definitely owe you could a bit, man. We'll test so hard, ...
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XD * Hits Computer *
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XD
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- -.' ... Heh. I know what I'm doing today. Anywhere in particular you're concerned about finding bugs?
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Okay, so, concerning the mid bug, jman, was it Allegro which was affected? Or ZC itself? Because A few PZC'ers have been asked to look for Allegro 4.2 for the testers. 😛
Also, try hitting F1 in ZQuest for a preview of a new text edit thing I'm working on.
I have to leave in less than 30 seconds, but BH4 brings up a good point. DN, mind distributing the alleg42.dll file we specially compiled? Not sure if using the standard DLL will bring back the midi bug or not.
See ya in a few hours.
PROBLEM!: "( X ) This application has failed to start because alleg42.dll was not found"
all I have is alleg41.dll
Settle down, the link to the alleg file is up (just got back). It should be fine once you get the DLL
Wouldn't you know it? I posted this message as soon as you put up the link to the DLL.
Bug reports to come.
Holy crap, right when I return from being super busy for a month and a half, a new beta comes out for me to test out. I'll dig into this as soon as it is downloaded... Which'll be over 20 minutes.... 21.6Kp/s sucks...
Pressing "X-1-2" is a whole lot easier than manually opening the tile and side warps in order to test warps to and back. 😛irate: Im sure I'll find some other uses for the preview mode.
By the way, could you make the preview mode check caves/items rooms/shops too? Nothing too fancy, but enough to help you when you want to make sure of where youve placed items and such.
Dark Nation wrote:Also, try hitting F1 in ZQuest for a preview of a new text edit thing I'm working on.
Sweet! Rather than editing zquest.txt,though, it should edit (or create) questname.txt. This would be excellent for keeping notes, and would totally beat having to run notepad next to a windowed Zquest.The more that can be done with ZQuest, the better. 😉
EDIT:By the way, what happened to "Scroll To Combo" ?
Due to this being accidentally editing by bigjoe, i am banning him from this moment... or, I could just summarize and say I like the notepad-type idea and that you should talk to DN about 'scroll to combo', whereever that is.
OOOPS! I accidentally edited your post rather than hitting reply! SORRY.
Heres what I was going to post:
"More to that idea, maybe you could like place sprites from the quest into the text file. like have some kind of indentation or code that looks normal in notepad , but in ZQuest it looks like a sprite!"
EDIT: dude I nearly pissed my pants!
jman2050 wrote:FINALLY, REMEMBER TO BACK UP ALL FILES YOU USE FOR ZC IN CASE OF CORRUPTION BUGS.
This is quite real this time (err... I guess it was before too... but I didn't actually run into it then). :blah:
I was messing around with a random quest file to test some of the new features (having saved a few 20 times or so before). I opened ZQuest back up a few minutes ago and now that quest has a header error (O_o) and won't open.
I wasn't doing any serious work... but that's just a warning for anyone considering such. :blah:
Anyway, I managed to play around with the preview feature. I simply love it! Such a feature makes life a lot easier when messing with secrets and combo cycling. I'd like to be able to preview pound and lock block combos, though. Pound seems a bit trivial, but I don't think it would hurt.
If you still have the quest, can you e-mail it to me at [email][email protected][/email] so I can look at it? Thanks.
Ah, excellent. I'll grab it this weekend once this week is over (last week of summer school) and start checking everything in it.
Love the new BS subscreens. One cosmetic annoyance though, was that there were some alignment issues between the screens(like in the modifed one I think, the B item was a bit below the frame it was supposed to be in, and I think in all except the BS complete screen, the unusable items weren't aligned right but then again, the BS omplete screens had the usable items misalgined). I'm gonna dig some more into this, great job you guys.😊
Dark Nation wrote:Also, try hitting F1 in ZQuest for a preview of a new text edit thing I'm working on.
That was SO cool! I was able to edit the help file in ZQuest. Where do you plan on going with that?
Sweet, Sucks I have to wait for the linux release. While the linux release is being worked on. I am in the process of building allegro 4.2 debian package. hopefully it goes well.
That was SO cool! I was able to edit the help file in ZQuest. Where do you plan on going with that?
The 2.10 help file is about 2 threads below this one. I bumped it when I noticed this beta was still using the beta 182 help file. 😞
I don't see why we need the dos builds anymore. I think that would save a lot of time with that.
Were the Z values for items taken outta this beta? If so, why? If not, where can i find them cuz they're not in the sprites editor or anywhere else for that matter?
The Z Values are there, just not editable yet. Not a big deal, seeing as the Z values don't actually DO anything yet 😉