After a few weeks of learning both C# and XNA, I’ve just about got The Tenth Crusade back to where it was, only running on both PC and XBox 360. Going this way is going to mean some changes, of course; I’m aiming for a January release, so the original design is being trimmed ever so slightly. In return we’re getting networked games though, so it’s a fair trade-off in my opinion.

The other big change is the distribution. You can’t have free games on the 360 (which is a good thing, really) so The Tenth Crusade is going to cost a little bit of money. But only a little bit, and if enough of you buy it then there’ll be a sequel with all the trimmed features put in.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to the PC version, though. I’ve currently got the PC and 360 versions networking to each other, which is very handy. But at the moment I can’t legally release a PC version that can use the network feature, which is a bit rubbish. Hopefully that’ll change soon, but in the meantime it’s a bit of a bummer because I can’t release anything for you to test. Still, to keep you going, here’s a picture of the current version.

I’ve been beavering away on Target; 2008 for most of the last couple of months, and it’s been coming along reasonably - apart from this last week. Would you like to know why? Well, take a look at this here screenie…

Nothing you haven’t seen before, of course. Just a couple of dull-textured helicopters. What you can’t see, of course, is that the second helicopter in the picture is being controlled by player two. Player two is using an XBox 360.

That’s right folks, The Tenth Crusade is going multiplayer and multiplatform. It’s also being rewritten from scratch. Arg.

With the back-end stuff all taken care of, things can move a little quicker as I write the actual game. Those of you with the installed version have probably already got this installed, but for those of you who prefer zip files, here’s Release 9.

For those of you who haven’t downloaded any of it, here’s a little glimpse of how things are:

Well, after a fairly productive week we’re at the point where we need some actual AI. And it’s here that we start making a significant break from Desert Strike.

In that venerable old game players were given a set of objectives to achieve on each of four levels. In this game the battlefield will be totally dynamic; at this point I’m not convinced that there should be any way to see a ‘game over’ screen without dying (and possibly not even then). For this to work there will need to be an AI system overseeing everything, picking up on situations as they emerge and assigning missions to the forces under its control, including the players.

Obviously this isn’t a trivial task. What’s really interesting from my point of view, though, is that this isn’t a task that I can use an existing library of code for. (There’s no LibAI around that I’ve seen, or even a LibBattlefieldAssessment.) What’s doubly interesting is that at the same time that I’m writing this routine, I’ll be writing the AI for individual Non Player Characters. Y’see, it’s a bit tricky to come up with a way for NPCs to achieve objectives when I haven’t come up with a way to either represent or assign objectives, so the two have to be developed simultaneously. (And that’s why I haven’t made the NPCs do anything more complicated yet than fly in a circle.)

I’m still at the pseudocode stage for now, and I’m not expecting to actually write any more code now until Monday. But next week those of you with the installer package should be checking for and downloading those updates; there’ll be as much happening then as there has been the last few days…

And about bloody time, eh? Default controls are WSAD to move, arrow keys to turn, QZOP to rotate the camera and right CTRL to fire, but you can redefine the controls to use keyboard, mouse or joystick. Controls aren’t saved yet, though that will change soon.

release8.zip (7.4MB)

Tenth Crusade (6MB installer, needs to check for updates and download on first run)

…for a new release, that is. It’ll be totally overshadowed by the start of this year’s Retro Remakes competition, but still, it’s coming. Look! I even solved my stupid animation problem!

This release really is the toughest, though, which is why it’s taking so long to do it. I’m getting all the horrible, tedious back-end nonsense as done as I can in the hope that it’ll make adding the little things, like new graphics and AI, a bit easier. From your point of view, it won’t be worth the wait until a week or two after it’s done.

I love the idea of games that are playable by anyone, regardless of any physical disabilities. I mean, in a virtual world we’re all equal, right? Well, no, sadly. If you can’t operate the controls quickly (or at all) then you’re in trouble. You’re not an equal in a world you can’t hear or even see, either. And there’s no real need for any game to be unplayable, no matter what the disability that needs to be worked around.

Now having said that, I’d like to be the first to point out that my last game made no concessions for anybody at all. You couldn’t even modify the controls! Well, that, at least, is fixed in The Tenth Crusade. The mouse is usable, and even the menu is mouse-operable now, which should allow for use by headtracker software. (Should, but I’ll be looking for somebody to test it.) The player’s weapons will track enemies automatically, similar to the way they did in Desert Strike, and there’ll be an option to hand over all the weapon control to a computer co-pilot. Voices and sound effects will have captions, just as soon as I do some research into conventions for displaying them (and get some voices and sound effects, of course!)

The only big problem I can see is adapting the game for visual limitations, in particular complete blindness. Part of my design doc for Contact Sam Cruise suggested adapting the game into a sort-of text adventure, with a text-to-speech routine for describing things and a multiple choice method of advancing through the game. I’m not sure that would be so effective for this game. (”You are at grid location A-12, facing north-east. There is an enemy tank in front of you. Do you want to 1. attack the tank or 2. move on?”)

I could, of course, be barking up the wrong tree entirely by wondering how to adapt a fast-paced tactical shoot-’em-up into something that’s not fast-paced, not particularly tactical and not entirely a shoot-’em-up. But still, it’s going to bug me until I come up with a solution.

So I’ve finally got around to linking in some memory management code, just to make sure that I’m not doing anything silly with all your gigabytes.

972 memory leaks found is not what you want to hear, ever. You especially won’t want to hear it when it’s your job to fix it all. Nine hundred and seventy two… It almost makes me want to go and review some more Spectrum games. Still, the flood isn’t entirely without value: get a load of this beach..

I wouldn’t mind going there for a spell. If it weren’t for that bloody great tank.

And let’s also celebrate Akismet catching it and dumping it straight in the spam bin! Hurrah!

On the game front, I’ve updated and completed the ‘launch’ program and will be having it tested tonight. There’s also been a bit of progress on the menu front; the controls are now redefinable! (And that’s a little bit of code that’ll be getting transferred across to Target; 2008, too.) Still no explosions yet (or at least, none that look any good) though, so no release just yet…

Not really, obviously, but still - here’s a little look at the latest build. Still haven’t got the explosions looking right though, so no new release yet - those tanks have got to blow up good…