Depot Games: Marduk

Current Version: 1.5 debug

Project Status: Early Development

Links: Web Site

Category: Role Playing

Developers: The Master

Number of Players: 1

Ports: Windows

Source Code: Not Available

Author's Description: This is an RPG engine that I've been working on for a while.

I've had some major issues in the past, especially with compilers and APIs. But I've started rewriting the engine again, and solve a LOT of problems that were present in early releases. If I keep up my pace, I might actually have something to show for this project!

What's New:

1.5 debug
Commenced an engine rewrite.
- Displays a debug command prompt, which will allow me to test new functionality in isolation from the rest of the engine.
- A functional Lua VM has been implemented, and is undergoing testing.
- A new UI architecture based on MasKING and other GUI libraries I've looked at. Currently present is a dialogue box which displays a face graphic, and supports different styles of box and text display.
- A resource manager. This loads bitmaps, music, animations, etc, from a single datafile archive. It also prevents multiple data loads by incrementing reference counters for each resource when it is loaded more than once. Very good memory management.
- My always-efficient sprite animation class has been upgraded to include animation controllers which work in correspondence with the resource manager to provide multiple instances of the same animation without further memory usage.

1.5
Changes:

- Database loading.
- Dialog controller updated and some debugging done.
- New dialog objects registerable.
- Parser updated to include global variables - Scripting system thrown out for lua; now all event actions are scripted.
- New map format supporting lua.
- chipset allocation handled by the vector class rather than linked list; map rendering is now faster.
- Event code is now complete due to the new script class.
- New MardukResource class, which allows management of resources and prevents multiple data loads.
- others, that I will most likely have mentioned on my blog.

There is also a build of this version using MinGW32.

Future work:

- Export allegro, as well as Marduk functionality, to Lua.
- Throw out the transition and logo code and replace with lua.
- Add database support for scripted items, weapons, etc.
- Add map editor support for scripts, such tha a custom initialiser for each map may be specified.
- Test everything and fix bugs.
- Build the combat engine.

1.1
Has somewhat of an actual story this time, although it's really half-assed.