Revenge of the Sky Lords 1 Star Map

My next game was going to be Timbles — my children education title that has been kicking along for way too long. This is also written under the same system and thus I can no longer work on it.

I cannot currently bring myself to port it to another system, therefore it will be shelved until some future time. My intention was to move my system to Cocos2d-x and I have started working on that. If I can get another game out, then follow it with Timbles, I am strongly leaning to spending time on The Citadel. I wrote a Visual Basic version, and C version.

Timbles was developed under Visual Basic 10 years ago. Then moved to DirectX. About six months ago I received an email from Marmalade detailing their intention to withdraw from the SDK market. A month or so later, Marmalade confirmed that the SDK had been sold to another company, and that further support may become available from them. That process has now taken place. I have less than a month of my Marmalade licence left, and they have not turned off the Licence server to I can still build and continue to work.

However no future support will come from them. The main reason they appeared to by the Marmalade system was for internal development. A few weeks ago I received an email from Google. A quick recompile and the problem was solved. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Apple. The Lords of Midnight was due to be removed from the store in 30 days. In theory, a recompile would solved the problem, and as I had slowly added some new functionality, this should gain me a stay of execution for possibly another 5 years.

The issue appears to be the Marmalade system incorrectly reporting those devices as Retina devices even though there are not. So, I might have to make a decision. Going 64bit would be much more restrictive.

Long term, I need to look at porting the games to another platform, and this is something I have spoken about before…. Back in January I had a bug reported to me by Simon Foston, I managed to get some save games from him and just needed to find some time to look at it. I checked the original code and it looked as if the bug was there too, however, I then found that the isDead check was happening later in the process. Strangely what it means is that battles at a dead lords location are processed as part of a dead characters turn, and not as part of other characters in the location.

This causes a problem in the AI logic for a character choosing to follow their liege. The AI goes something like this….

See a Problem?

The code ripples up the liege tree until it finds someone to follow, or bails and decides to hunt down Luxor instead. When the bug occurs it follows the tree and finds a liege who is dead but they are also their own liege, and thus we get stuck in an infinite loop. There are only two places where the liege can change, the aforementioned follow liege routine, and being recruited. I stuck some debug info on both cases and set the game to run on automatic to see if the issue triggered, and it did.

Anvarorn starts with Fangrorn being his liege. Fangrorn gets recruited by Anvortheon the Barbarian, and thus his loyalty changes to the barbarians, and his new liege becomes Anvortheon. Anvarorn decides to follow his Liege, who is still Fangrorn. When he gets to the same location as him he notices that they are not the same loyalty and thus tries to recruit him. So we now have a circular liege issue. I went back and checked the original code, and this issue can happen. At worst the character would end up following themselves and end up not moving. This is something that has been mentioned as possibly happening in the current version.

Thus no infinite loop. This would possibly occur with characters following their foe. If their foe is dead it walks the liege tree of the foe to find the next foe.

It had just a project name then, and I had to sign a whole host of documents before I was even told watch the service was, and then another whole host of documents when I agreed. Before deciding that I would, I thought long and hard. By having the Midnight games as a full purchase game, it has probably stopped it from being installed as many times as it might have been when free, indeed I have seen the spikes when the game has been reduced in price for promotion.

But even those extra sales have not amounted to much in the way of cash as the price reduction has obviously hurt. Android sales of the games are well under a 3rd of Apple, but they appear to have a So, as we hit the tail end of sales, I wondered if the Amazon pay-for-play where they pick up the tab, might be an interesting approach for some additional Android sales.

Amazon pay a fraction of a penny per minute played. And those who do, have either already bought the game, or still have the option to through Google Play, or Amazon Store proper. I just need to keep an eye on whether the Amazon Underground sales hurt the Android sales, better them, or just become another small income stream.

1. Doomdark’s Revenge;
2. Walkthrough Menu.
3. Path of Revenge.
4. Les Dieux Antiques (French Edition).
5. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)?
6. The Video Game Atlas - NES Maps.
7. Travels With Marie.

I am interested if free. We both liked the way that the sun pops up from behind the mountains and sprays across the lake on the original image. So I asked Jure if he could adapt the sketch to take that into account. Jure sent a new image, but he felt that the switch of the sun made the right side of the image, and therefore the front cover, too dark.

We agreed with him and so asked him to create the final artwork based on his sketch. To be honest, I could have just gone with the sketch! This time however, we might give Jure more time! This was something that I did for him with The Lords of Midnight and it helped greatly. However, the problems that I have had with the building of the games because of the loss of the Marmalade SDK are still plaguing me.

I was slowly coming to the acceptance that I would soon be removing the games from the Apple app store as each new release of iOS and new devices makes the game unobtainable. This will likely follow through to Android and Windows. All this has been compounded that my general motivation has been through the floor for a number of years now. The main menu and surrounding screens are all working. At heart it has a female protagonist on a quest with a female antagonist, but after that, what is it really about…?

At this stage we already have a few ideas that link all the stories together, we had to discuss them right at the start of this process, but for the actual main narrative, I for one look forward to finding out…. One side effect of this is that I now absolutely need to get the games up and running again. As much as my life has become entwined with The Lords of Midnight, it has also for similar reasons become linked to the solstices. Now I live about 25 miles and have made both the summer and winter pilgrimage many times.

Lords of Midnight uses two concepts that align with Stonehenge, the winter solstice and standing stones — the henges. So it seems apt that today at the Summer Solstice I have hit another Lords of Midnight milestone — the release of the novel. I must make it clear that I am not the author of the novel, that role was taken on by Drew Wagar.

I still have some way to go before I manage to tick off my author goal. The original game publishers promised a novel that never happened, and 34 years later, Drew , Fantastic Books , and I have delivered.

Firstly the novel came about because of a chance twitter conversation. Let that sink in a little, I have to. Unfortunately that sword is double edged as this is only possible because Mike is no longer around. Secondly I worked closely with Drew to keep the novel accurate not only with regard the original game, but also when considered as part of the complete Midnight saga. The Lords of Midnight can no longer be considered in isolation.

The original game and novella were written without any consideration for the future, and after its release more games and stories became available. Therefore, when setting out to tell this tale, it was imperative that the necessary adjustments and corrections were made. Somethings we just needed to link up.

In part that reflects the original game story and for all of us to have played the game to death, we all know how it ends, so there are no surprises there. My job was to assist Drew with that in any way I could. Part of that was reading the story and commenting on it. This just involved me often saying, yes, no, or how about.

• Va la T.I.A. y se pone al día (Spanish Edition).
• Die Vaterschaftsfrage in Lenzens Hofmeister (German Edition).
• Biblical Stewardship?
• Rogue Knight (Knights of Zardonia III).
• Laltra cavalleria: Storia degli Ordini non europei (Mythos) (Italian Edition).
• COLOMBO: História do Mistério, Censura e Invenção (OS PONTOS CARDEAIS Livro 1) (Portuguese Edition).

The other area would be me making suggestions based on my knowledge of the saga lore either up front of in reaction to something Drew was working through. And lastly, the cover. Drew and I commissioned the cover from my long term Midnight collaborator Jure. We took some ideas based on work he had already produced and created a mock-up concept of something we would like. Jure then created a quick concept sketch that we discussed and then went on to produce the lovely final piece. So today has come.

novels everyone must read: Science Fiction & Fantasy (part one) | Books | The Guardian

I hope that Mike would be as proud of it as I am. Physical copies to follow at the official launch in September. The Lords of Midnight official novel is available to pre-order via Amazon in ebook form which will be launched on the Summer Solstice, June 21 Paperback copies are due in September. The survivors battle hardship, famine and war; having beaten back Doomdark, the Witchking, in a battle that lives on in legend.

But now, at the Winter Solstice, neither the Lords of Midnight nor the Fey of the forests can resist his greatest weapon, the ice-fear. Their only hope rests in ancient lore, the myth of a long lost house and the legend of the Moonprince. Drew has delivered the first draft of The Lords of Midnight Novel. Obviously, I have read it during the writing phase, made comment where necessary, and am overall very happy with the story. However, a novel is not generally written in one pass. The story made be told, but it still needs to be crafted and refined. Things that were written at the start of the tale may need to be revised, information that we want to impart as an aside, or for future continuity and foreshadowing, may need to find a home at the correct place of the story.

So, as Drew gets out his polishing pen, I shall be printing out a copy, and sitting down to read it from start to end for the first time.

Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)

First draft in the Chronicles of Midnight. I initially decided to park the games and start on something new to get me going. As it happens that the new thing was The Citadel. I then worked on the Landscaping technique. Happy with that working, I dragged the Map data out of The Citadel and started rendering that.