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August 10, 2000 - Confound it all!!

    Oh well, if you don't already know what happened, its just a minor bug in v2k that has MAJORLY affected my willingness to work on DFFBS2.  It regards the readvars(); function that doesn't work properly in v2k, (grrr, damn beta versions! SOMEONE FIX THIS!!!) so I couldn't get a save system working.  I could have continued working, and started on the BS, but this problem just destroyed my ambition to do so.  (the lack of graphics is another distant factor)  This all hit when I was coding the save/load system, the final step before starting on the BS :(

    What are my plans now?  Well, I think I will add a few things to the FF engine, ( a shop system perhaps) and release everything on the new Verge Source.  I only have about 10 days of VERGE-dom left, so I'll try to make the most of it.  I'm sad to say that the BS will have to wait until next summer.  I may get a start on it during winter break, but I'm not counting on that.  Hopefully by that time there will be an "official" v2k to work with, and with more goodies to work with.

    I will update this site again before the 20th, and release all the stuff I finished.  (which is a good 5500 lines of coding)  Perhaps I'll write some HTMLized docs too :)

 

June 27, 2000 - *sigh* Another broken release date

    That always seems to happen, if you set a release date, somehow someway you cannot get it out in time.  The reason was that the engine (and its improvements) are taking longer to code than I expected as well as a 3 day vacation in there too.  The improvement will be well worth the wait however.

    As for progress, Its almost done!   All I have to do is finish the equipment menu, which is 80% done, then convert and improve the save/load menu, which may take a while since the one in version 1.9 was rather unstable.  I intend to add some graphics and improve the appearance somewhat too.  This should all take about a week at most.  Wish me luck.

 

    June 08, 2000 - Status/site update

    Okay, i've added some screens of the current working version (1.95) of DFFBS to the "Screens" section of the site.  Check it out!   I've also updated the Specs and Files section of the site.  (the bad downloads are now fixed, i'm not sure what happened to them)

    As for progress, I'm about 70% done converting the FF engine to version 1.95.  Since the last update, i've finished the main menu interface, added some nifty font functions, a gradient editor to the options section of the menu.  The party system is nearly done.  The world-clock is also back in.  All thats left is to reinstate the item, equip, stats, and the save/load sections into the main menu.

    I will have a links section up in the next update.

Here is a list of the next version numbers/discriptions and projected release date *shudder*

version 1.95            Basically the FF-engine Tech demo              A week or two

version 1.99            Full, working alpha demo of the BS              Late July

version 2                The long awaited Beta version                      Mid-Late August

    *End of Briefing*

 

June 04, 2000,   DFFBS lives!! + New site design

    Yup, I've officially restarted the project.  It's gonna be better than ever due to v2.5.6.1!  I've decided to switch to 512x384 hicolor graphics mode.  This mode is perfect for the battle system, I would use 640x480, but it would run much too slow when you have 4 graphics layers going.  The switch to hicolor means that I will have to rewrite all the code for 16-bit support.  Right now, I'm about 40% done porting the Final Fantasy engine.  After I finish that, I can start a complete rehaul of the BS.  How far will I get, I don't know.  But I have until Mid-August until I return to collage!

    What is going to be new now that I'm using V2.5.6.1?  First of all, there's 16-bit image support, so you can have hicolor monsters, menu backgrounds, icons, and best of all, hicolor battle backgrounds!  If I can, I intend to eliminate the battle mapswitch too, thus eliminating the worst problem in the previous systems.  Over the past 5 days, I've completed an awesome in-game window gradient generator.  It can generate simple color gradients like FF6 or complex ones like FF7, and can save up to 10 of them to disk and reload them on the fly.  I will have screens of this and a few sample gradient files up in a few days.  All the file I/o functions work the same, so any system files you may have made will still be compatible.  The new version of verge may be unofficial, but I've not had any major problems with it yet.

    My ultimate goal would be to get up to the point where version 1.5 was when I discontinued it.  

    Hope you like the new site design.  It sure beats the old one.  I will have a new update with BS links & screenshots within a week, promise! :)

 

May 08, 2000,  Back, finally

    I'm back for the summer.  Now I may be able to restart this old project, if I find the time to do so.  I will make a bigger update when I make a decision.  My, how things have changed...

Dan's Weather Page (my personal homepage)

 

January 09, 1999 2000, Welcome to the 21st century!

    I'm back!  Well, for a couple of days perhaps...I'm heading back for my spring semester tomarrow after a 3 week break.  I'm sorry to say that I've gotton nothing accomplished (Vergewise) until the last three days. Mostly because of the uncertain state that V2 is in right now, and partially due to the laziness produced by semester break.  I have decided to halt my progress on DFFBS2 until a new, more stable form of the V2 engine is released.  Working with the current "less than perfect" build is futile.  The fact that V2 will not work properly with the upcoming Win2k is destressing. (Ahh, no ZSNES!!!).  I hope this doesn't mean I have to wait for a Windows port of V2...  I think once I finally get around to restart this project (during summer break probably), I'm going to rewrite the main BS engine to enhance the speed and proformance.  I have also decided to start writing documentation on how to use my FF engine, along with the list of functions I promised a while back.

    I've begun to document all of the functions I wrote for my FF engine.  It's in the form of an html file.  Check it out (links below).  As of right now, it's incomplete, with only 2 catagories complete,  but I **should** be able to finish it within the next week or two.  I think you will like this document.

    Collage has been more fun than I had ever dreamed.  That's way I've been vertually non-existant on the Verge scene for the past several months.  On this front, I would like to apollogize to all the Vergers that have sent me e-mails.  I just didn't have the spare time to reply.  I will probably disappear for another 4 months (after I finish the docs).  I will most likely be lost in the world of calculus and physics and all that stuff required of a Meteorology major.  In short, I will be very busy for a while.

    I've added a files section to the site.  It's below the news section.  Go there and check out the new stuff.    later!

 

August 20, 1999: Off to collage! & revised demo

Yes, I'm off to Penn State Hazleton tomorrow. This is bad news for my Verge work, since I will not have access to the net and possibly my computer for several days. Also, I will have about 1/10th the amount of time I used to have to work on this stuff, and any progress will be very slow indeed. This is rather bad timing, since my BS is in somewhat bad shape and I may not be able to fix the errors I created very quickly when I do have the time away from collage activities.

I am releasing an updated demo, version 1.91. It has the following new features:

Get it here: Version 1.91 (759 Kb) and be sure to pick up mosaic.zip if you haven't already.

Unfortunately, I did not have the time to implement anywhere near the number of features I wanted to in this release. The unfinished features list can be found in the main BS doc, DFFBS2.txt included in the zip. I didn't get ANY work done on the FF engine either.

As far as this site goes, It won't be updated for a long time, say several weeks perhaps. Maybe sooner IF I can find the time, just don't expect any updates soon...

Until then, this is FireWarrior, signing off.

 

August 15, 1999: Minor update

Since the mosaic effects turned out problematic, I've uploaded mosaic.zip. It contains a mosaic.tbl that works correctly with and only with the verge palette. Read the included text file.

Get it here: Mosaic.zip (24 Kb)

I've made a 2 improvements with the BS. I fixed a problem that would cause the BS to crash at loadtime, and the monster name display now update when an enemy is defeated.

 

August 13, 1999: Site opens, with alpha/demo

Get Version 1,9 here! DFFBS2 alpha/demo (866 Kb)

This is the first release of DFFBS2. Included in the demo is my Final Fantasy engine. Look further down the page for information on the battle system and engine. Here's what works int he battle system:

There is a small demo to show the features of the Final Fantasy Engine. Be sure to read readme.txt for more details on this.

The next update should be here before August 21st. With a few more features.

Some site related stuff, There's a DFFBS history section below, along with more information on the FF engine and BS further down. You can also get both of my BS/party utillities (Monster data editor and character.dat file creator) down there as well. The appearence of this site will improve over time, since i'm new with websites.

*Demo Note: The mosaic effects may be messed up. In readme.txt it says that restarting the game will solve the problem, but it might not. If it doesn't, then you'll have to bear with it until the next version.

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