the skins i use aren't working in 43a. I've been using Rich Nagel's TGM skins (which by the way are awesome, thanks for the skins Rich) but when i downloaded 43 i kept getting messages when i open it up that it can't find the bitmaps, jpeg and music. i've tried moving the skins to other folders and changing the skins but they still wouldn't work. i re-downloaded 41(i think it was 41 but i can't remember, it was an older one) and they work fine in that version. What am i doing wrong? I really want to play 43 but i love using those skins. I'll try to get them working tomorrow. if anyone has any ideas of what i should do, help would be greatly appreciated.
As far as I remember, the big thing you need to do to get old skins working is change the paths inside the .skin file to be relative to the folder containing the .skin file. I'm away from my development PC right now, so I can't test this.
All of the skins in my TGM skin pack (as well as all of my other previously released skins) work fine on my PC with v0.43 (short of my previous discussion about the new LJ version). Have you edited any of the original ".SKIN" definition files that were contained in the ZIP? Also, the original skin files in the ZIP are dependant upon finding all of the various skins' resources within a subdirectory of your main LJ installation directory. i.e. "CLockJaw\Skins\Tetris The Grand Master Skins", with all of the images and music contained within this subdirectory. Also, for the above to work, all of the various ".SKIN" definition files must be located within your main LJ installation directory on your hard drive (i.e. "CLockJaw"). Note that the skin files could be edited to reflect other paths/directories of where the skin resource files are loocated, but the originals in the ZIP should work as above.
I've found a logic flaw in Drill Attack, at least when cascade gravity is on... Gimmick: Drill Attack Line clear gravity: Cascade Well width: I don't think this matters, but the flaw is easiest to see in a 4-wide well, because there's a bigger chance that it'll happen. Anyway... Sometimes, the holes in the garbage might completely surround an area of garbage, cutting it off from other areas. And, therefore, making it fall on its own once the cascade gravity kicks in across the whole field after the first line clear. If this stray garbage clump should happen to fall into and clear the very bottom line, the game counts this as winning Drill Attack, despite any garbage that might be piled up (possibly quite high) above it. It obviously seems that the game only checks for "is the bottom line clear?". I think one way to fix it would be to check for "has the player cleared (however many the game started with) lines of garbage?" (and add to this number if level 1/2/3/4 garbage is also on).
I'm addressing this in a patch I'm writing for bug 0024. As for Drill Attack, it has a count based on the number of garbage lines that you have left (that is announced as a countdown), but I believe (without looking) that it does this somewhat on the fly.
Some spontaneous suggestions we came up with in #arika. I just want to list them down here before they're forgotten. 1. Customizable conditional background/music change (e.g. level, line, score, time, Rhythm BPM, etc. increments) 2. Separation of skin.INI components into different .INIs. It may be more streamlined to mix and match components, especially for skins that contain many of the same parts.
You'd be right. In Drill Attack, if you clear a line on row 6, the countdown is set to 6. Obviously, this results in a win (countdown == 0) when the bottom row is cleared. But then Tetris 2 (for NES, Game Boy, and Super NES) had the same rule: clear all the (flashing) viruses at the bottom of the field, and you win. Sounds like bug 0076. I'm not sure what you mean by this. You can have multiple .skin files in the same folder, referencing the same bitmaps. Now that the PC version has scenarios, I will be reworking much of the look and feel of the GBA version to match it in capability.
Bug 0076 only refers to sections. This is more broad in terms of what can be set. That's true (one problem solved). The other inelegance is when you want to mix and match components like the block image and the background. You have to make a whole separate skin file if you don't want to overwrite the existing one. It's not really hard or anything to manually edit the INI, but I think it's a cleaner method to just make it more modular.
Hopefully the DS version will get the same overhaul, too... ...and I've been thinking of trying a PSP port of the PC version sometime. It'd be pretty close, if not exact, save for the screen resolution. (480x272 vs. 800x600)
In my opinion, the concept of a section is the only thing that the different speed curves have in common. (Even Exponential can be thought of as having sections: one for each doubling of gravity, which happens roughly once every 60 pieces.) Otherwise, if you use an NES skin with a TGM speed curve, you're changing backgrounds after each piece. Another problem is the issue of a momentary freeze while the program loads the new backgrounds from disk and decompresses them to RAM. Or should all images associated with a skin, not just the current one, be loaded into RAM before the game starts? You're assuming that all the components have the same blkW and blkH, right? It will. The new GUI framework is already compiled in parallel on the DS and GBA, with a big fat #ifdef to paper over the minor differences between the platforms. I press one button, and the compiler automatically builds the .gba and .nds files, copies them to a CF card, and ejects the CF card. Then I stick it in my GBA Movie Player and put that in my three test units: one launch GBA with the dark ass screen, one silver DS, one white DS Lite. It's hard to get the gradients and the blinking highlight to look right on all three screens: unless I get real lucky, either something is too dark on the GBA, or it is too washed out on the Lite. That will need blkH <= 12. You can prepare your skin in the PC version and test it using Code: scrW=480 scrH=272 But then who sells the magic battery with serial=-1 so that my little cousin can flash his PSP? If I can't test the patch, you'll have to maintain it yourself.
I'm pretty sure there's a battery sold by Datel out there that does it... That, or there's always someone on eBay who has one. I was fortunate enough to use one of the pre-Pandora downgraders, so I never had to worry about looking around for the battery. As for the memory stick, I believe there's a utility somewhere that should create it on the PC for you. Have you checked his firmware version and what UMDs he has, too? It may be possible that you don't need the battery...
This page says it's $40, and I'm guessing that shipping and sales tax are extra. I take it you don't live anywhere near me By "PC" do you mean a PC running Windows XP? Or does the user need to download, burn, and boot from an Ubuntu CD? I know using a Nintendo USB stick to boot homebrew on a flashed DS needs Linux (and not Windows). He has the slim PSP, so it's probably not the <=3.50 that works with Lumines, and he has some Sonic the Hedgehog game (I think it was called Sonic Riders) and Me & My Katamari. He got rid of Daxter after having got stuck despite walkthroughs. And he has no money for extra games or extra batteries. He has only two weeks of income per year: one in February and one in December.
I'm over in PA, so not really. :/ Win2k or XP, I believe. Not sure if it's working on Vista or anything earlier, though. Nope... they can only run 3.60+, though running Despertar del Cementerio allows installation of custom firmware. It can't run 1.50 kernel programs without an addon (fat PSP only, to at least allow slims SOME compatibility), so you'd have to develop for the 1.0(?) kernel. ouch. I get about $10 per week yearly. I'm still trying to find a job, though... if I ever get a good enough one, perhaps I could somehow donate money towards a fat PSP to test on?
is it possible at all to customize the default sound effects in any way? i'd like to be able to replace them with different sound sets and be able to change the volume levels.
Per LJ's Readme.html file, you'll need the Allegro "Grabber" utility. Dunno what's currently up with Allegro's site (I can't seem to currently surf to it), but you should be able to download it here -> http://www.allegro.cc/depot/Grabber (when their site is back up). P.S. The more recent versions of LJ store all of the sound effects files within the included "Sound.dat" file (not the "LJ.dat") file. (Edit) Seems that Allegro's site has magically popped back up... on the afore-mentioned page, here's the Grabber utility that you'll need -> http://www.allegro.cc/files/depot/144/grabber.zip
This is true, and I've done it this way before... but the PSP is the only handheld capable of really reaching closer to the PC version, hence why I brought up a possible PSP port. :/
Cheers Rich, completely missed that bit in the readme even though I've skimmed through the skinning section quite a few times.
As I had previously posted here -> http://www.tetrisconcept.com/forum/view ... 5005#15005 , I think that using sections for the switching would be a great idea. Something else that would be quite nice would be having the option to change the music as well (also from my previous post) I figured that there would be a slight pause when loading in the new background/music files, but if there was a way to load in all of the image and music files before the game starts, that would be super Although, one possible problem with this might be the amount of RAM that LJ requires to accomplish this (might be a problem on lower-end PCs with relatively small amounts of RAM?). Maybe you could add a user-selectable option to LJ (something like a simple "On" or "Off" within the options menu) to either load in the files on demand (which would result in a loading pause), or load them all upon startup.
