2018-04-01 13:21:46

that's really strange. I don't have an option in the file menu to access recently opened files and in the /worlds directory there is indeed the wastes, but it isn't a .mcl file but a folder itself and I am not sure if the .mcl file is somewhere in that directory, but I can't find it.

2018-04-01 14:13:29

actually it does have a list of recent files, but there isn't any .mcl file there. basically my problem is I can't find the .mcl file. the "worlds" directory contains a "the wastes" folder, but I am not sure where the .mcl file is in there...

2018-04-02 04:38:13

@Dragonlee:
You can just create a new world, and once you add the main Wastes plugin to it, type install.
This will set up all the plugins and skip downloading most content, since its already on disk.
Your other option is to create a new temporary world and see where the program wants to save that. This will probably be the same location it put your original Wastes file.

2018-04-02 14:49:28

I've just fixed a bug that would cause a scripting error in some cases where you lose max hp, and the fix will be in the next update (no release timing currenttly planned).
This error doesn't have any active impact on gameplay, so if you run across it, its safe to ignore.
Additionally, if you're familiar with mushClient/Lua and would like to patch yourself the fix is as follows:
replace
<send>if not string.match("%1","Max") then
with
<send>if not string.match(string.lower("%1"),"max") then
As you can guess, the error is the result of casing issues across different cases of losing max hp.

2018-04-03 01:00:35

I've been running into a lot of core crashes lately, and due to the nature of the pack, its rather difficult to track down where the issues are coming from.
If anybody here is handy with a debugger and getting the same crashes, I'd really appreciate any pointers you could give me as to where the game is when its dying.

2018-04-08 02:10:10

As its been a few days, I wanted to give a quick update on development.
I'm making decent progress towards the next update. A lot of work has gone into fixing situations where the client doesn't automatically update stats (such as mountain climbing). Additionally, I've fixed a couple bugs, a scripting error, and quite a few missing periods.
I am actively looking to fix (or hide) the bug where, after unlocking a crate, the game will tell you there's nothing inside and then immediately turn around and display some items.

To any sighted players reading this, I'm also looking into an option that will display the stat display as if you were playing the original game, or at least something fairly close to it. I'm making no promises as to when or if this will be available, but it is under consideration. If you'd particularly like me to spend some time putting it together, please get in touch.

2018-04-08 12:33:32 (edited by LordLundin 2018-04-08 12:34:25)

So apparently you can play this game in mushclient or the like? How do you do that?

I really wanna play this game but I'm having trouble even getting started setting it up in regards to music (being super loud) etc.

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2018-04-08 14:44:29

As the pack says during installation, you can adjust the volume of MushClient's sounds with alt f11 and alt f12. To adjust the volume of the core game's audio, you'll want to use the options menu (type three when you first start the game). To test the second setting, navigate to the music generator.

2018-04-08 15:28:20

A suggestion: If I remember right, quests and the like were planed for the original game. Maybe such things could be included in this Update pack?

2018-04-08 17:24:32

@Niklas:
Adding quests (or encounters) would require the original game's source.
As a rule of thumb, if a change would modify the character's stats in *any* way, it can't be done by the pack.

2018-04-13 18:04:53

hello john,
wierd, i dont know why this keeps happenning but,

Shutting down do to error:
'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x87 in position 13: ordinal not in range(128)

have a nice day.

2018-04-13 23:27:55

@Omer:
Is there a specific point at which this error keeps happening to you? I've seen similar messages before, but never with the Wastes. Are you by any chance using a non-ascii interface language (I believe the wrapper has issues with extended characters)?

Best,
John

2018-04-14 20:13:08

wierd, its still same,

2018-04-15 04:13:16

@Omer:
I'm going to need some details in order to track down what's going wrong with your setup.
Can you specify where exactly the problem is happening for you?

2018-06-01 22:14:21

At long last, I'm going to be spending a bit of time to hopefully release another update to the pack.
If you have any suggestions, typos to correct, feedbac or feature requests (again please remember that I cannot modify the underlying game), do let me know.
This update includes a lot of typo fixes, text cleanup, client processing fixes, and hopefully an option to display your full statistics on each screen of information, similar to how the original game does. Its this last that I'd really like feedback on. My current plan is to simply have the client display the output of the score command. If you think this is too much data, too little, or not formatted correctly (the feature is intended primarily for sighted users) I'd very much like to hear your thoughts.
I'm also hoping to add a sound for dungeon hatches this update. This is actually pretty challenging, since most sound libraries expressly forbid use in this type of project (since its open source and they're available from the web). If you have thoughts for where you'd like to see more sounds added, feel free to get in touch, and I'll see what I can do.

In the long term, the project is nearing the end of the beta process. I'm hoping that one or two more releases will get it stable enough that I can claim an initial 1.0 release. When that happens, I'll be able to remove the limited distribution request, and get the pack out to all the Wastes fans out there.

2018-06-01 23:32:05

Greetings!
My biggest wish for this game is for a functional save system but I understand fixing it requires modification of the base game. Still it would be nice to not have to start from scratch every time I boot it up.
Otherwise game works great, text reads great, kind've missed having stats read too but after digging around i found the commands to call up specific pieces of information and honestly I prefer it this way. In regards to sounds, I'd like to have some movement sounds for entering new places, echoy footsteps for entering dungeons, storm sounds, mountain climbing and falling and lastly mining. Apologies if that seems a bit much.
Really glad you're working on this. Keep it up.

2018-06-02 02:07:57

A storm ambience sound is something I've been thinking about adding for a while. I had no luck finding a dungeon hatch sound (or creating one), so I'll see what I have for storms that'll work.
An entry sound for dungeons is also something that would be awesome. Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out the exact legistics of how to make this work. It is on my mind, and I really would like to see it happen.

I really appreciate the feedback. The more responses I get, the more attention I'll have for working on the pack, so thanks for responding!

2018-06-09 14:40:04

The next update should now be live.
Changes include a couple new sounds, a lot of stat tracking work, and the ability to display your statistics similar to the original game. This last piece is intended mostly for sighted users, and will probably be undergoing some substantial modifications as feedback comes in.
As always, you can type changes to review what's included in this release, and update to download the new content. Once you update, remember that the changes only become live when you navigate to file->plugins and reinstall theWastes, or  on next loading the pack.

I believe the pack should now be stable enough where its safe to spread beyond this forum thread. Its still in what I would term a beta state, and when I make an official stable release I plan to update the base installation script so that new users don't need to download multiple updates. However, if you have anyone (or any place) you think would enjoy the project, feel free to bring them in as well.

2018-06-10 08:55:12

Awesome! I like the title thing, leveling feels cooler now.

2018-06-10 23:12:58 (edited by john 2018-06-20 19:17:03)

Kenshira:
That was definitely a case of "if you want a feature you'll build it". One of the things I always wanted to see when I used to play the game in its original form was the ability to see all of the titles. I'd just level, and not really pay attention to when my title changed. Some of them are really cool, so I'm glad we now have the ability to see them clearly.
Folks who've played the original game may point out that this is especially relevant to the pack, since your name is never really displayed unless you type level, so they were even more hidden than usual.

2018-06-11 03:43:50 (edited by defender 2018-06-11 03:45:53)

You can probably find or adapt essentially anything you could ever need by using the following sites for sound effects.
http://www.freesfx.co.uk
http://www.soundeffectsplus.com
http://www.soundgator.com
http://www.zapsplat.com
http://www.soundbible.com/
http://www.freesound.org
https://www.opengameart.org/art-search- … t_type_tid[]=13&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC


For music, you really can't go wrong with the following sites.
https://www.soundclick.com/business/license_list.cfm
https://www.incompetech.com/music/
http://www.marcelofernandezmusic.com/ro … ree-music/
http://www.timbeek.com/royalty-free-music/
http://audionautix.com/
http://teknoaxe.com/Home.php
http://www.soundimage.org
http://www.nihilore.com/
http://www.twinmusicom.org/portfolio/
https://www.joshwoodward.com/
https://www.opengameart.org/art-search- … t_type_tid[]=12&sort_by=created&sort_order=DESC
http://www.freemusicarchive.com/


Notes:
I've put the largest most consistently high quality resources near the top of each list, but all of them have high quality stuff available otherwise they wouldn't be their, so each one is worth checking out.
Your gonna have to sign up to some of these to download, and a couple have inaccessible captchas with no audio alternative available (ironic I know) so keep that in mind and if you don't have a sighted person handy, than try bespecular or Be my Eyes.
On soundclick.com, you need to choose Creative Commons for your license and press go to get the free stuff.
You should check the licensing for each site before downloading just to make sure your following it (not that the finer points are really important if your not using the material to make money in some way) but hey...
Their is some overlap between soundeffectsplus and soundgator's collections, their owned by the same parent company, and no I don't know why they did it that way.
If you want music similar to what's already in the game, than searching for tags like dark, mysterious, eerie, desolate, alien, ETC, with slower BPM's and in genres like ambient, atmospheric, soundscape, and soundtrack will help allot.


I think it would actually be quite possible to have ambience and music for every zone in the game, as well as every dungeon type and even repeat encounters as well as weapon attack sounds based on general categories, but it'd take time.
I'd help, but that god damned inescapable runtime error that completely ruins the game at random with no chance to even get your graveyard file makes it so that no matter how much you optimize things, your still never going to get nearly as far as you should be able to, with all that hard work and luck.
And since their is absolutely no way for you to restore saves even if you can make them, it just seems like a pointless gesture to me.
It sucks, and I really do appreciate what your doing but I've lost so many level 30 plus characters at this point without even a legacy to read that I just don't even want to play any more...
I really hope these resources help you though, and I understand that it's a daunting amount of material to sort through, but just use good sensible keywords and think up variations that could be easily adapted.

2018-06-11 17:39:25

Defender:
Thanks for all the links, I will definitely give those a look when hunting for new sounds.
The major challenge to finding sound effects for the pack is that I have to be able to distribute them freely without any restriction at all, including a "don't make them available for direct download" limitation. Sounds cannot be encrypted in any way, and I can't place restrictions on the end user as a result.
For this reason, I'm currently limited to the packs that Sonniss has posted for the last several years, or anything I can make myself. I have checked out a few of the websites you linked, and as I recall, they all had some form of distribution limitation (though I may be wrong, as I usually aim for bulk downloads rather than individual sounds). The only restriction I have any shot at meeting would be an attribution requirement, but even that would become hugely complicated if I end up with hundreds of files, each with their own attribution.

As to the runtime error, since I don't ever remember getting that while playing the game in terminal mode, I'm curious if it has something to do with the wrapping process. If you're at all familiar with a debugger (or know someone who is) I would really like to know what's going on when the game dies. If its a malformed line in a file or something wrong in the wrapper, it may be resolvable.

2018-06-11 17:57:00

I've resolved a compilation error in the latest release caused when healing with plants.
If you'd like to grab the change, redownload the plugin from
https://nightvista.net/theWastesPack
and replace your current version.
This also includes a new patch command, which will download the latest version of the plugin for you directly. Note that the command *only* downloads the plugin, not a full update if one has been posted.
In the future, I plan to post more small patches as I make changes working towards an update, so long as no other files (such as sounds) are required.

2018-06-11 23:00:00

that direct download limitation doesn't apply to what your doing.
What they mean is that you can't host them on your site as individual files or a pack, like as a mirror, weather you claim them or not. The restriction free distribution clause covers unencrypted files packaged with the game, because those are part of the artistic medium, and oddly, you often aren't even aloud to encrypt them as that would restrict free use, that part is weird but I think as long as you don't claim them as yours and ask people to download from the original site your off the hook for what ever nonsense they choose to do. big_smile Allot of it is your intent rather than active protection... That's part of why it's freeing.
Anything under creative commons is almost certainly good to go do to that, for instance.
Since your mixing them into a game, and the game isn't specifically based on sound effects, like a sound matcher or a sleep sound app, than your also free of that silly restriction.
It's worth emailing them if your curious, they often say to do that if your not sure anyway.
I've looked pretty deep into the licensing terms and looked up the finer print on it's own and I'm still confused with some of the more complex licenses, but I have a good idea of what they mean now.
And attribution isn't really hard if you just keep track of what your using when you pick it in a text document, or keep a sub folder for each sound mix your creating with all the original sounds in it. Keeping the original names also makes things easier, so you don't have to remember what you changed it too.
Either way, some of them allow you to just say music by (name of composer and website link) for instance, and with the others you can just say something like (sound effects by the following artists, artist name, website link, list of sounds titles, separator, next artist)
Sometimes you do have to put it in the credits of the game rather than an included document, and the credits have to be the type where you can't avoid them either, so it needs to be like on the title screen, but you don't have to list each sound file, and if they don't specify the title screen, than you could just have them show up only when you beat or exit the game for instance.
Even then I've never seen a website that doesn't let you email them to ask for an exception, and since your non commercial I doubt they would have any issue with you using another attribution medium what so ever.
Yeah it's complicated, but the nice thing is that allot of the websites at least use similar custom licensing schemes and they do use plain English.


Now as to a debugger, what do you mean by that, you mean like a C++ debugger? I know nothing about how you would use one of those or even where to get one? I can give you the error when I get it again and tell you the symptoms, but you'd have to hook me up with anything more complicated or at least tell me how to do it, I can't code worth shit but I can follow basic instructions like any good monkey LOL.
I would be freakin thrilled if it was a simple output error...

2018-06-13 16:23:13

Defender:
I'll answer the easy question first: yes, I mean almost exactly a c++ debugger (like the one included in visual studio, for instance). We need to know exactly what code is running when the game is crashing, which pieces of data are being processed, to determine if the error is fixable. I very strongly hope that there's just a single line in a file somewhere that's damaged, and we just haven't found it yet. On to the harder one.

My answer primarily revolves around this:
"What they mean is that you can't host them on your site as individual files or a pack, like as a mirror, weather you claim them or not."
This is *exactly* what I am doing. I could easily give you download links for every sound file in the pack, because they're downloaded during initial install, directly from my server. The reason I use the packs from Sonniss is that I did contact them, and got the go ahead (anyone can freely distribute the GDC packs or sounds therefrom as long as you don't sell them). I've done some minor editing and converted the sounds to ogg. That's it.

You're very right that there's a lot more wiggle room with a project like this than there would be with, say, a commercial game. However, if I wanted to use most of the sites you referenced, I'd have to spend a lot of time ensuring that the project matches licensing restrictions on the individual files. I did this with socketwrap and the various plugins. It was hard, frustrating, and extremely time consuming. I'd spend an hour hunting for an individual sound, and then the same amount of time checking the license. That's just not something I'm willing to do at this point. If there are free packs like Sonniss' I'd love to hear of them, but the effort to work with file-by-file sites is beyond the amount I have available to put in.