kinda OT: Pentagram

[gruck]

I have been following the development of Pentagram for some time and judging by the webpage/changelog there has been leaps and bounds in progress lately. I am just curious if we could have a progress report regarding how close Pentagram is to actually reaching a playable (ie. finishable) state and what major issues still remain. Thank you for your time.

[wjp]

Let's see... the main unimplemented things are:

combat AI: monsters will currently just attack you if you're standing right next to them. Shouldn't take too long anymore to remedy this.

sound effects: only the decompression code is done, currently.

scaling: no code yet, although we've talked about it a fair bit recently. (And of course the scalers themselves are already available.)


Then there are some minor issues, such as:

compressed savegames: saves are just a bit on the large side currently (500-600Kb); compressed they'll be more like 200-300Kb.

inverted screen: there are some levers around that flip the entire screen. This will probably be implemented around the same time as scalers.

start/endgame sequences: somewhat working, but not quite correctly.

avatar control: not working perfectly yet. Mainly hanging/climbing still need work.


and probably quite a few that I can't quite remember at the moment

[Tristan de Inés]

The game is worth playing as soon as the mushroom-LSD effect is implemented.... everything else is secondary.

[Colourless]

And that is implemented.

There is also another more severe 'drug' effect... but the Items used to do it are not in the game.

[Gerry]

What effect is that?

[GuJiaXian]

Any chance of Pentagram setting up some official forums? I check the webpage every few days for updates, but some forums would be awfully nice.

[Dominus]

I guess once we have an actual release we will also set up a forum. Or maybe whenever someone feels like setting it up (/me looks at wjp)

[wjp]

I don't really see a need for a pentagram forum at this point, to be honest.

[Gradilla Dragon]

Yea, whenever a forum is set, people doesn't read the FAQ, Documentation or anything and assumes the program will work as they expect (usually expecting the game to be "fully playable").

[Dominus]

No, Gradilla, you got that wrong
Whenever a forum is set, people don't read the FAQ (which I really should fill with somewhat more useful information) and Documentation, but assume asking in the forum would bring more results
The good side is that this way I could actually find out what the frequently asked questions ARE.

[Gruck]

"inverted screen: there are some levers around that flip the entire screen. This will probably be implemented around the same time as scalers."

I know I wouldn't complain if these were "broken by design"

[Gradilla Dragon]

Sometimes some funny questions arise. In my project, I recently got asked: "Will you port it to the Zaurus? How hard is it going to be?". We're not even in the pre-alpha stage yet, so how am I to know how hard it will be to port it to the Zaurus?