ENIGMA Development Environment

The time is currently 14:30 EST, GMT -5 for myself and Josh, giving us another 3.5 hours to finish up enigma before fire and brimstone hits. Unfortunately we've lost TGMG, as it's currently 19:30 over there, presumably he ascended, which means that ... [More] we'll have to make due without the Android port, since he was never able to get OpenGLES to work.Josh is currently working on something about macros while he waits for the religious folks to fly into the sky giving him a much needed chance to loot and orgy until he gets struck by some act of god or October 21st, when God pulls the plug completely. I'm of course atoning for my sins and spending my last couple of hours with my family. I'm happy with the state of LGM right now, and think ENIGMA should be able to continue over the next several months without continuing improvements to it. [Less]

At some time between 2011-04-23@02:18 (when I last saw it working) and 2011-04-25@19:14 (when someone reported the problem), a fatal database corruption took the life of our wiki. We have submitted a ticket with our host to fix it, which may mean ... [More] performing a rollback to an older backup. We'll let you know how it all goes, and hopefully we can have it back and running without too much work lost.Thank you for bearing with us in the meantime. [Less]

I don't write many newsposts anymore, but I have some news for a few of those involved in the project who don't frequent the IRC. The rest of you who are interested can thank them for not showing up, because otherwise I'd have no reason to post this. ... [More] These are our standings:In the last three revisions, I have drastically changed a couple of the systems behind the compilation process of ENIGMA, largely for the sake of TGMG (though also for freezway, who wanted access to the widget functions before they are finished). These include the following:In the Compilers/ eYAML files, the following are now honored by ENIGMA: resources: Where to write the resources. $exe = The executable module. I might change this to $game. Maybe. Build-Extension: The extension of the output file; this is recognized but not really used yet. Run-Program: What program to invoke to run the game. $game is the game file. Run-Params: What to pass to the above. $game is the game file.It is up to IsmAvatar to implement this one: Run-output: Where the game is built for the Run function. "[Temp files]" will let LGM pick.Furthermore, ENIGMA now passes a "Compile Path" to the makefile. What this comprises is the current platform name, and the target platform name, separated by a slash. For instance, Linux/Linux, Windows/Windows, MacOSX/iPhone. This can be accessed as $(COMPILEPATH) from the main makefile. It will be up to TGMG to use this to include a makefile from SHELL/Makefiles. They will be largely redundant, yes, but this will allow him to get complete control over the make process for iPhone and Android.Unfortunately, I am quite sure the latest changes have broken Windows. I'll be on Windows myself in a minute to assess and fix it. In the revisions before this, however (around r698 or so), fonts were implemented. You no longer need to use font_add_... [Less]

Though I didn't intend to post any announcements on the matter, since some of our contributors don't tread on the IRC, I think it's better to say what's been going on, with all that is ENIGMA related.- IsmAvatar is still working on the options panel. ... [More] We think. The options panel will be what allows users to compile for different platform.- I added a set of functions to ENIGMA's interface that allow LateralGM to retrieve function lists, so now even new functions will have some parameter list to fall back on, though it is apparent that we will need our own function manual to reference first (some of the parameter lists are ugly and unhelpful).- IsmAvatar added those parameter lists to the function lists, but only one overload of them. She'll probably do something else with them later.- Ism and I started LGM's own text editor, since we can't seem to find a competent Java editor that's self-contained. You can see more about that in other threads across the forum.- A lot of bugs have been fixed from the tracker, and a lot more have been posted. Most of the new ones are trivial and make my head hurt.- A List of Little Things that Need Done has been created on the Wiki. If you want to help, that's a good place to start.- ENIGMA now exports font info to the game, but not glyph metrics, which will be appended later. Fonts should be completely done before this thread has five posts.- I have begun work on a new coercer for the purposes of array bound (in the [] ) safety (they need casted to int for C++ arrays) and switch statements. The coercer is necessary for switch() because I need to spawn a temp variable for iterative comparison, and am not prepared to use C++0x for 'auto' in one place.- Ism has made some 4200 bugfixes in LGM as Polygone continued to point them out.- TGMG got ENIGMA a little closer to working on Mac out of the box. He and I are both waiting on Ism to finish the options panel.- Ism removed the forced 'Metal' theme in LateralGM; now us... [Less]

So after four people in less than a month struggled to install ENIGMA, I've finally begun redoing ENIGMA.exe. It will automatically call mingw-get to install necessary files; the user needs only to specify a drive letter (if he or she is dissatisfied ... [More] with the default, being the current drive). I was actually looking for a function to prompt for drive letter, but couldn't find one and so abandoned the notion.In other news, Gary has added unix names to all user accounts. As new users sign up, they will be given a unix name (or can edit it themselves). This name will be used in the Wiki shortly enough, and for user upload directories and whatnot later on.In what may be old news, ENIGMA is only three functionalities away from being able to run the official GM platform example perfectly. The three include instance_deactivate() and co, dialog functions (for showing and logging high scores), and tiles. We'll see about those three ASAP. (But after the Windows installer).With any luck, the provisions I am implementing in the Windows installer (new organization system for compilers and makefiles) will mean, once and for all, simplicity of adding devices for which ENIGMA can officially compile. Also with this addition will come the ability to use ENIGMA portably if configured on a USB drive.Wish us luck. [Less]

Since these forums have been dreadfully quiet (although the IRC has been jumping), I figured I'd give an update on some of the changes that I've been working on for ENIGMA.Of course, you could just read the revision logs between r550 and now (r574) ... [More] and the LateralGM revision logs (r462 to r473), but this gives you an in-depth overview and the technical stuff you need to know without getting into the technical stuff that the revision logs need to say.As I'm the main developer (and currently only developer) of LateralGM, I'll start with that.First, I rearranged the sound frame a little as it was badly in need of a makeover. I think you'll approvehttp://img9.imageshack.us/i/soundframe.png/Next, I added a Sprite Load-From-Strip button and corresponding dialog. You won't need a screenshot of that because it looks just like GM. I'm still working out a little kink where the preview insists on being massive for large images, rather than obeying/using the scroll panel.Also, many of you will be happy to know that you can now override the GM preferences (e.g. which sprite editor to use, and other settings inside preferences.properties *inside the jar*) using Java Preferences. Although there isn't a GUI for it yet, I'll explain how you can do it by hand in footnote 1. This means that you don't need to keep going inside the jar and fixing preferences.properties every time we include a new LGM jar with enigma.After that, I realized that I'm apparently the only person in the world who knows Java, and am the only one working on LGM, at which point I slit my wrists.After I got back from the hospital, I started work on Enigma, since other people are actually working on that too, even though I despise C++ (and now I'm re-learning why).Most of my work on Enigma has centered around the collision system. Most of you have probably already seen my bbox collision functions which you could copy-paste into the Definitions, along with a hacked-together is_solid function since Enigma didn't support solid. Well, that code isn't th... [Less]

This r/coderaid business has made me realize that ENIGMA's site is not ready for the same kind of jumps that ENIGMA itself is ready to make. While the engine is scalable in the sense that most of the systems are completely modular now, the site is ... [More] based off of SMF, which has a very sad excuse for a user name system.We now have a bug tracker -and- a Wiki to contend with as far as users are concerned. Since a2h wrote the tracker himself, we haven't had issue with it. But the new Wiki requires an entirely new user base, and it just isn't compatible with SMF. The crossover that was written for it does not comply with SMF 2.0; from what I can tell, the database system between 1.2 and 2.0 is -very- different. They are similar enough that I think a port is possible, but then we have a new issue: user name content. "Josh @ Dreamland" isn't exactly a Unix name. However, Wikis don't agree with underscores or dashes, either. That's difficult to work around with our current layout.We have two options.1) Change everyone's login name, leaving the display name. This means I will have to log in as JoshDreamland from now on, but you will still see me as Josh @ Dreamland on the forums. Score_Under will have to log in as ScoreUnder. I don't have figures on the matter, but from what I can tell, the number of people affected will be approximately a lot.2) Add another field to the SMF SQL table for Unix names. This puts less strain on the users, but more on the web developers trying to port bridge modules such as SMF-Wiki. What I mean is, a2h or myself will have to custom-tailor bridge code such as the code that enables MediaWiki to use SMF user names. Also, we have to modify SMF's account creation process, and run a script on our current SQL tables to generate Unix names for the 350 existing members and check for conflicts (this is the easy part). I don't personally have the web experience to make the former change to SMF, and I'm not going to volunteer a2h to do this.This is here as an FYI for what might happen. If a... [Less]

It was brought to my attention just this morning that ENIGMA is ranking for consideration on r/coderaid, meaning a possible influx of developers (and of the competent variety, no less!) working on ENIGMA.The page on the matter, given to me by Enkiv2 ... [More] (I presume; Freenode nick "Enki-]["), is here. (Full link http://www.reddit.com/r/coderaid/comments/e4bui/project_suggestion_enigma_game_maker_foss_clone/).So, if you have an account there, and feel ENIGMA could use a few more helping hands, feel free to vote.I'm going to write some introductory pages to the documentation for people who really don't know what the project is all about (I love the description justyellowboy gave, but I need to convey what the project looks like on the inside).I'll be writing. Peace. [Less]

As usual, we've been trying to get all our ducks in a row. It looks something like this:More specifically, it looks like this:(Or more recently, this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1052740/enigma/screens/fonts/Screenshot-Untitled%20Window-2.png)And with ... [More] that, here's what's been happening.ResourcesENIGMA has gained two new resources lately, namely backgrounds (courtesy of HaRRiKiRi and TGMG) and fonts (my own doing). However, fonts must be added via font_add_sprite(), and backgrounds must be drawn manually. Ism is working on giving me a compression method, which I will use to re-zlib the font glyphs after I pack them. Also, before I ever got to post news on fonts, HaRRi added all the font functions (they still need finalized once it is convenient to test them; it's nothing more than 20 minutes of work, if only the issue I have foreseen now afflicts them). Maybe I'll do something about backgrounds soon... To tie up a couple questions, by "pack them (the glyphs)," I mean stick them tightly together to conserve VRAM and increase the likelihood that they'll work on, say, the iPhone. I wrote a rectangle packing algorithm, which in the outdated screenshot above is packing the font glyphs a little too tightly. That has since been fixed, but what you see is the packed result of what was once a 256*256 font sheet.SystemsAs pictured vaguely above, r9k has been working on triangle-based collisions. These will evolve into polygon-based collisions with a little TLC. Thanks to some other changes mentioned later in this post, r9k was able to get simple triangle-triangle collision class, Triangle, working from within EDL.CodeI fixed a few problems with the syntax checker and parser, and here's what they can do now:Code: (EDL) [Select]list a; var b = 10;a.push_back(b); show_message(string(a.size()));rect* a = some_rect_function();a.left = 0;If that doesn't... [Less]

More and more people have been taking an interest in helping with the ENIGMA Project lately, and I believe I need to recognize that.TGMG sort of waltzed in one day and added support for three new operating systems, as most of you are aware. Since ... [More] then, he has taken to improving ENIGMA full-time; adding functions, testing for bugs, and contributing to the system as a whole.I am unsure whether or not r9k has an account here, but he worked with Ism on polygon collisions, online functions, and, independently, d3d_* functions.Though dazappa is not a very active member on the forums, he has been trying to help Ism out with some Java aspects. He researched rendering font glyphs to pass to ENIGMA, and more recently has begun writing a YAML parser for Ism to use (apparently, porting my 200-liner to Java is a lost cause).HaRRiKiRi, with a little help from TGMG and even less from myself, coded several graphics functions, including draw_sprite_tiled*, draw_sprite_general, and draw_background*.As for myself, I've been working more with my network of YAML files, trying to make extending ENIGMA as simple as copying in a directory. I've also fixed some things in the syntax checker, but I'm pretty much always doing that.I've also been up to something different. ENIGMA needs an exception written to the GPL. The problem is trying to define officialness. The reasoning is simple.1) ENIGMA is GPL software.2) ENIGMA links your game against its engine.3) The engine is also GPL.4) Therefore, your game must be open source, GPL software as well.5) Game Maker doesn't require this, so something must be done.6) Two options to correct this:      a. Use a less restrictive license, such as BSD      b. Write an exception to the GPL.Opting to write a specific exception to the GPL just for official ENIGMA copies is, to use TGMG's words, "a good idea so a whole load of GM's don't pop up." But don't assume our motives are entirely selfish:  This exception grants an additional right to ENIGMA's users. The idea is that by NOT [... [Less]