Update correction - April 13 2008

The last update had some flaws that I corrected as soon as I knew them. A new file is ready for download at www.darvexgames.com

- The tutorial did not work.

- Could not load "samarauus.ars" game.

Thanks to sylvain, who informed me of these problems.

There is still a problem I cannot find a solution right now. It does not do it on my computer, so it's hard to work on it and understand. Yet I will check it out and try to correct it.

- The image of party characters, on some computers, become strange when they enter a second map, and for the rest of the game. I think this problem is appears only on windows vista OS, or with directx 10 users.

New Update - ( April 11 2008 )

This update fixes an error that was in the previous version of ARS : the "Walls" directory was missing.

There was another bug it took me a long time to repair, the "create" command didn't work well in previous versions, now it works perfectly.

Also, the player can now change the size of the maps in a game. Smaller maps are often much more fun to play, you don't waste time searching for your enemies.

I added two small games for players to try an ARS game right away.

Other small things were improved in both game engine and editor.

New update

This update of ARS is quite small, but it repairs some things that can be quite annoying.

- Characters sometimes stopped moving in a battle after they cast a spell. Really strange bug because it appeared after the last update, the program line that did this bug was half erased. Really strange.

- The editor had a little problem with mouse alignment. It was because of the windowed program, and I also used a command that is quite inaccurate for mouse, now I corrected it and the precision of the mouse is perfect for everything... I hope.

Send me your work in progress

If you are working on a game, please send me what you've done. Just copy the directories of the graphics and music (2Dobjects, 3Dobjects, Buildings, Characters, Faces, Monsters, Party, Music) and the file and directory of your game into a Zip file and send them to me at davePelletier@darvexgames.com. I can't wait to play some games from ARS users. If you wish your game could be placed on the site for other users to play.

ARS update

Today (february 7 2008) I made a new update of ARS. It fixes bugs and improves some annoying things, mostly in the game engine.

Corrected bugs in game engine:

- The game no longer crashes when a character is resurrected with a potion and his image remains in the screen. Now I'll have to erase it when it remains in screen (rare but it happens).

- Resurrection cost (when the whole party dies) was way too high. I lowered it by half. Soon I will make that you will decide of the cost (% of the normal cost) in the Editor.

- Walls did not touch the ground, now it does.

- Some other bugs too hard (and long) to explain :P

Corrected things in Editor :

- Global map improved, and the possibility to save, load and quit when checking the global map.

Bugs remaining that I know of :

- Music doesn't seem to work. I first tought it was my stupid computer that refused to play the music, with good reasons to think so, but I changed it and it remains. This bug is a pure mystery to me, since all seems to be programmed correctly. I will work further on it in the next days. It might be the program i'm working with that is the problem, Darkbasic Professionnal. This program, while it may have a few problems, is excellent to program games, in my opinion. I really like it.

- Some characters, when they die, don't disappear, yet it rarely happens. Now it's not really a problem since it will not make the game crash anymore when you try to resurrect them with potions.

Repairing bugs again...

I've seen while playing to one of my small games I created that there are still bugs with ARS. It's hard to program a game editor alone as I do, but I correct the bugs very rapidly when I see them. But sometimes I just don't see them, or I don't use my program for a while, that's why I would like that players who see the bugs tell me where they are, it would help me a LOT. You can send me a short message to davepelletier@darvexgames.com with the message title "Bug" and a short description of the problem, where you encountered the problem and if there is an error message, the text of the error message. I can repair most of the bugs right away if I'm not lazy ;) and if you have registred to ARS, send me the key number and I will make anything to get the bugs cleared as soon as possible for you, probably even the same day. To those who have registred, I will also help you a lot with anything you need with the editor : if you need a new condition or command to be created, I will make it as soon as possible (if what is asked is reasonable of course, if not I will try to make something similar but easier to program). Thank you and I hope you will help me :)

Editor - terrain tutorial video

I made this video to show how to make terrains with ARS editor. It is very small, sorry for that, but you can understand with where I click what I am doing. I will try to make it bigger soon.