To anyone who still have hopes for Land of Strangers, apologies for infrequent updates are not something I'm going to give. The year hasn't been booming for LoSt, but the project is simmering, and I can at least say a new release is in the works.
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| still doin' the work of the lord |
Some refactoring had to be done, including porting to updated versions of the Python tool chain, so version #14 will have changes to the engine and interface. Last week I had a fit and added basic terminal support, which went as well as could be hoped. I'm confident that that it will be doable to add more UI tweaks later.
For the terminal mode, the greatest challenge was how to make the hexagons, and how big … in the end I chose the smallest resolution (with each hex 1 line tall and 2 columns wide), to fit as much of the map as possible in a terminal window. With that decided, input and output was easy to implement. Rather than using external libraries, I wrote the functions using ANSI escape codes directly. It's a solution that's portable across major OSes, and workable as long as I don't get too fancy.
While LoSt has been ported to Python 3 and a saner architecture, work on content has been on hold. Ideas are not lacking, and I'm nearing the point of adding stuff back in, as I will get to world generation and NPC behavior, two big topics with pending redesigns ;) It's a really big piece of the puzzle, but necessary to populate the open game world of LoSt.
In short, once the new engine is off the ground, I can concentrate more on adding content and fun stuff to the game. Current mood is optimistic regarding a working release in the near future. At that point I might make a github repository for LoSt, although I don't know if it interests anyone except myself.
As always, Minotauros
