Have been doing Engine tinkering and also some progress on actual game side. Planning that the game will have 2 main modes: "adventure" and free "sandbox" mode.

Did also initial (and crappy looking) title menu where game mode is selected.

 

Started to develop a game based on my falling sand experiments. Let's see how it goes.  Also player character is a part of "sandbox", i.e. same rules apply also for particles that are part of player character.. More on this shortly. Meanwhile, here's a screenshot of player character in gamemode (horrible programmer's art again).

Dev update:

Added now "gamemode", where you can control player character. You can switch between "game mode" and "edit/free mode" on the fly. "Physics" are fully running in both modes.

 Falling sand experiments have been continuing. I have now basically a working engine which supports currently

- static ground and grass

- sand, snow water and "gas/vapour" particles

- freezing / melting between water<-> snow

- water boiling to gas (due to fire)

- fire particles

- every pixel is simulated :)

- scrolling map where all of the above can happen. Screenshot below, with "progammers art" :)

Long time has passed after previous update. Mars 2400 development has halted "for an indefinite period".

Playing with "Falling sand" stuff. It is very interesting how very simple rules yield sometimes to very complex behavior. Maybe more to come as I proceed with some experiments...

Digging again the Mars2400 from the "drawer". Lets see how this will continue..

Also, thinking about reviving my old top-down racing game, Z-Racing, way back from 2003 as I found my source codes for that(!) That was originally made with MSVC6.0 and SDL1.2. So conversion to mingw and SDL2.0 needed.

Got stuck last winter with linux version and gave up..and then spring&summer came with other activities..so nothing has happened for a year. But project is not dead..

Setting up build environment for Linux version of Mars2400.
Installed SDL2 on Linux..now starting to building SDL2_mixer from source distribution. Didn't find ready-build development libraries anywhere..
UPDATE:
Mars 2400 Linux Build successful, but execution of binary not..realized that smpeg library is missing. Now trying to find source codes for building it for linux..seems to be hard case as svn does not want to work for me

Planning now to start building Linux version of the game..

Christmas is near, so having a Chrismas break now. Merry Christmas to everyone!

Mars 2400 version 0.13b released.

Download link:
Mars 2400 0.13b

Changes:

NEW features:- Story arch building started, news can be read from solar news screen..Not real interaction yet
- In-game help (F12 key)
- special rewards for killing pirates
- more credits from scavenging
- number of missiles now visible also in main screen

FIXED BUGS: - Not possible to exit Solar news other than TAB
- Bug of ship factory go back selected being displayed in wrong place after screen size updates
- INCOMING alert is displayed continuously after missile locked to player ship but player escapes
- missionCount (number of completed missions in player statistics) was not updated for delivery missions
- delivery mission bug: if player gets fine for smuggling illegal items and after that mission times out, crash seems to occur. .=> crash fixed, STILL TODO mission status must be displayed as failed until it is purged from the list (once every 24hrs of game time)