Hey!
Yes I've been doing great, thanks. It has been some time now and long over due for an update.
Life:
As I mentioned before I have started my own business and I have been extremely busy doing that. So busy in-fact that I am hiring an employee and they start tomorrow! Woo! This is exciting as I'm hoping that my 16-18 hour days will be a bit more manageable, leaving me with some more free time to work on this and finish my first Elden Ring play-through. lol
Tech stuff:
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Memory overloading issues resolved. - With so much scripting (currently over15,000 lines) My program couldn't handle it and memory started leaking, causing instability and errors. I have since resolved this but there is still a little leak somewhere but only appears if you continuously run the game through the app without closing it. Ram usage just keeps going up but only a few MB at a time so it's really a non issue right now. I do have a solution for better memory management, but will take a while to implement and I will tackle that later.
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Created a Custom Language in Notepad++ - Now I can more easily see what the heck I am doing with so much scripting the ability to fold lines makes it much easier to scroll through and find what I'm looking for.
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Debugging Fixed - I was having so many debugging issues making it hard to track down the memory leaks I mentioned above. I ended up switching IDE's and from using cmake to build SDL, ASSIMP, etc... manually to using msys2 to install like I would on Linux. This introduced it's own set of issues as my old IDE and compiler just let me make mistakes and run the program but the new way was more strict, so I had to re-write a lot of the code. But, that has all been done and now I can build properly again!
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Fonts are Broken? - After the above change, SDL_TTF now outputs garbage, not sure what the problem is here but is not a huge issue as I don't really need fonts for this app to work.
Loader:
More stable that ever! - With all the changes it now works very well and in my testing has not had any real issues with not linking to WC1 or anything like that.
Progress - I am half way through Venice and only Hell's Kitchen remains!!!!!!!
Com's - For enemy and confed ships they all use the same dialog but have different names. (Franthi, Ranthi, Tigers Claw, Transport etc...) I have tested a way to delete the Names off the com and just read the line itself but have yet to implement it. Plus the com's have a lot of audio editing to do so I'm going to hold off until Phase 2 for those.
Testing - I have stopped testing as much as it is getting hard to try and play the missions to get every line of dialog to test for every contingency, especially now that I'm in the endgame. Plan to just push through and update accordingly as people report issues.
Issues:
- I have been trying to confirm lines the best I can by using WCEdit and the Story Guide, insuring that every line is correct. In some cases however, I have audio where the script does not. The Script only says "We nailed her, sir!" while I also have audio for "I nailed her, sir!" Makes sense to have that line in case your wingman is dead, but it is not only thing. Some times Kilrathi Ace's are referenced in the audio but not the Story Guild or in WCEdit, so I have to guess the games exact grammar (Which can be spotty at best) and hope that they are not out of place on the SegaCD. (Which it has been before and took me a while to find the missing lines) Plan to put them where the SagaCD version has them and if someone comes across the real placements while planing I'll fix it then.
Current Timeline:
- I plan to have the missions done by end of May as I think that is a reasonable time-frame, then figure out how to make a release build. This will not include in-flight com's (Excluding Angel and Paladin as they are already done), but it will be on your systems soon.
Release Plan:
(Near Future)
Wing Commander Loader v0.5 - All Sega CD Mission Voice Overs added and SNES intro for SM1. - (In the next month or two!)
Wing Commander Loader v0.6 - All Sega CD In-Flight Com's added. (TBD)
(Far Future Plans) - Currently just a dream and not in the works yet. Will start after the above is completed.
Wing Commander Loader v0.7 - All Super Wing Commander Voice Overs and Com's Added (WC1)
Wing Commander Loader v0.8 - All Super Wing Commander Voice Overs and Com's Added (WC1SM1)
Wing Commander Loader v0.9 - All Super Wing Commander Voice Overs and Com's Added (WC1SM1.5)
Wing Commander Loader v1.0 - All Super Wing Commander Voice Overs and Com's Added (WC1SM2)
While the Super Wing Commander audio is trash, I still want to have the option in all games and now that I know it is possible.
This is way in the future and I have no idea when I'll even start it but it my goal never the less. I have all the Mac's audio and once the main work is done it should just be a matter of replacing audio pointers, at least for the main game. Fingers crossed.
That's it for now! It's been an exciting ride and I do appreciate all the encouragement and patience from you all.
