Entry posted by SpiceWare
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- applied Reposition Kernel optimizations from Omegamatrix which freed up 105 bytes
- created a sector editor for user submitted Delta levels.
- revised the pause screen to show the blinking starfield instead of a black screen with text
At the moment there's 408 bytes free of ROM.
I'd originally planned to try to write the Sector Editor as a web app and put it up on my site. Harvey put me a bit behind schedule, and since I've not written a web app like this before I decided a command line program would be more expedient. The program's called dracsec. To run it, download the draconian.bin file and put it in the same directory as dracsec. Also in the directory is a file called sectors.txt which can contain up to 4 sector layouts. dracsec will patch the bin file, to run it you'll open a command prompt/terminal window and executive the following:
Linux & Mac:
./dracsec draconian.bin sectors.txt
Windows:
dracsec draconian.bin sectors.txt
Note: you'll use draconian_20170913.bin for this build. I had to modify the level data so dracsec could locate it, so dracsec will only work with this and future builds of Draconian (and won't work anymore once the final 16 Delta levels are in place).
The text file's in a fairly simple format. You'll have a line specifying the initial X and Y location of the player's ship, followed by 1-8 lines for station locations. The station starts out with the Orientation followed by its X and Y location. You can repeat this sequence up to 3 more times for a total of four sectors.
Allowable X and Y values are 0 to 255 to position the station within the sector.
Additionally you can use -1 to -8 for the X value and -1 to -16 for the Y value. These values refer to the radar pixel locations and will be converted to the appropriate 0-255 value to light up a specific radar pixel. In radar pixels -1 -1 denotes the top-left corner while -8 -16 is the bottom right.
For the stations the Orientation is H for Horizontal and V for Vertical. The orientation denotes which direction the E-Type missiles will be launched from the station.
Blank lines and anything following an * will be ignored.
Example:
* sector 1-4 -8 * player positionv -1 -1v -2 -2v -3 -3v -4 -4v -5 -5v -6 -6v -7 -7v -8 -8 * sector 2-4 -8 * player positionv -3 -8v -5 -8v -4 -7v -4 -9 * sector 3-4 -8 * player positionh -3 -8h -5 -8h -4 -7h -4 -9 * sector 4110 118 * player positionh 9 0v 40 17h 233 240v 200 225h 9 240v 40 225h 233 0v 200 17
So please give dracsec a spin and let me know if you run into any problems - don't forget to change the QUADRANT to Δ (delta) to playtest your levels. I plan to post a topic this weekend for the sector design contest.
dracsec builds:
dracsec_linux.zip
dracsec_mac.zip
dracsec_win.zip
For Harmony or Stella (requires Stella 5.0.2 or newer)
draconian_20170913.bin
Source
draconian_20170913.zip
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