It turns out King’s Field II monsters exceed the limit Sword of Moonlight imposes. I feel like the limit doesn’t make much sense, but From Software saw fit to limit it to 128 so-called enemies for a given level in your project’s video game. KFII treats its characters and monsters identically, and caps them at 200 on each of its two-story zones. SOM had a layer system that was disabled before it was published. I’ve since restored it, some time last year I think. It would have allowed each layer to have 128 more monsters, in which case its limit may have been 256 for a two-story level, which would have exceeded KFII’s limit.

When I restored the new layer system I decided to limit it to level geometry, so that layers don’t bring in new elements like monsters. That’s a better system because I imagined layers can be used to tackle the artistic limits of SOM’s grid based level design. I suspect not many game systems use grids any longer, but it’s something I feel is a great strength for SOM. I think there is lost wisdom in many of its anachronisms. By putting monsters on layers it isn’t clear what happens when they cross between layers or if that would even have been possible in the original system that got disabled. By artistic limits, I mean things like, you might want a layer to just be a ceiling for example, so you can have a lower ceiling on some section, or just have the elevation of the ceiling be independent of the floor. If you can’t do that you have great limits in design possibilities since the only other way to do this is to make new tile models for every combination of floor and ceiling. The new layer system can represent many things like a plane of water or mist or fog or just plug holes in the existing tile configuration. Anybody who’s ever worked with SOM runs into these limits.

Continued: Unleashing monsters

For a very long time I’ve pursued a side project of developing art productivity software to support Sword of Moonlight. For many years I’ve worked on developing COLLADA as a format for storing “3D” art for use by game projects.

Since mid-to-early last year I’ve been busy developing an actual application for artists to use in place of popular 3D modeling packages like Blender. That’s taken up most of my time, and I was doing it in preparation to work on my personal game project to port King’s Field II to Sword of Moonlight.

Continued: Making "modeling" software

I’ve been itching to write a post for this blog ever since my last, if not for a subject. If I had staid course I think by now I’d have a release of the 3D modeling software I’ve been developing ever since earlier last year. But I have something better since not long ago I heard from the Moratheia project it’s back on (this was posted sometime earlier, complete with a new image) which shortly put me to work on Sword of Moonlight!

I’ve not put out a new release since mid last year, and hadn’t intended to release this one now after just 2 or 3 weeks except I want to write a blog and publish an unplanned fix for the PlayStation and Xbox trigger buttons I’d rather not sit on.

Continued: Every part of the controller

Damn! it’s been 3 months without an update. I guess I should put something… here.

Continued: Not dead! King's Field II

I feel like there should be a lot to say about this, but I am perhaps too exhausted to say it. So, in brief, some months ago (I can’t recall how many) I began to notice some mysterious code within Sword of Moonlight, that I thought must indicate something was removed, to do with playing more than one level at a time. I thought it could be “layers” or a corridor between levels, or both of these things. I looked into it once or twice since. I even felt it may have been a load balancing system.

A month or so ago a person appeared who was working on figuring out the contents of King’s Field II’s disc for the PlayStation. Speaking with them got me to take a look myself, since it’s something I’ve been meaning to do. I wasn’t much help, but I did notice that there is two layers on each of the game’s zones. The other layer is interleaved with the first. I realized that’s the only place it could be, going by the size of the files that remained. That was a few weeks ago or more. Ever since then, I began work on making a layer system available to Sword of Moonlight, starting with its strange code from before.

Continued: Layer feature unearthed, now restored

A major release is now available. Also, the Windows 8/10 spellchecker service is enabled. PlayStation VR came a long way since the the last blog post, but is and will remain a demonstration.

This release adds an entire new dimension to Sword of Moonlight’s tools, by integrating new, full-featured profile editors into the main tools. The new editors replace the old model viewers, and while they remain a little rough around the edges owing to exhaustion, have a lot more character, since they have lighting, and pose characters, and also they use the same graphical pathway as the game player component, and so have access to all of the same visual effects, including the antialiasing extensions.

Continued: Things to come