Remake for Star Story

I am currently working on a remake for Star Story. The video above shows you a test of a very pre-mature setup for this. Please note, much of the stuff the full game should cover was not yet coded when I filmed this, and for that reason the enemy won't strike back, and you will even be able to see me calling my debug console which will NOT be accessible in the final release.

What is gonna be different and what will be the same?

1. First of all,the LAURA II engine will be ditched completely. Because the Vanilla BlitzMax compiler refuses to work on me, I can no longer maintain this engine. The BlitzMax NG compiler refuses to link, which is also a very essential part of the compilation process. All in all, LAURA II is dead. And besides when I look through the LAURA II code I really wonder what I was thinking when I coded that crap, so good riddance anyway. So I created a completely new game engine in C++, which uses the SDL2 framework. This is the Apollo Game Engine. When this game is done, I am considering to throw the engine and instructions how to use it here on itch.io, however this will take awhile, so this won't be any time soon, as RPG games do take a lot of time after all. The production of this game allows me to bugfix Apollo too.
2. Now the underlying core is still Lua, but in order to be able to script the game faster and more efficiently I created the Neil Programming Language as a kind of shell over Lua. Neil takes care of some "issues" in Lua I don't like making scripting easier on me. I was a bit inspired for this by MoonScript and TypeScript and CoffeeScript. The latter two enhance JavaScript, the former also Lua. Now I do think MooNScript was a nice project, it is however set up to do very little typing and I don't like that, as it makes the code harder to read. Something I also hate about some sources in JavaScript lately. Neil combines the stuff I like about C, C++, C#, Lua and Pascal. Yes, the stuff you see in the video above has all been written in Neil... Well the script part, which is actually a high crapload of code, and the full game will have over 10, if not 100 times more code in Neil than Lua and C++ together....
3. Apollo does unlike LAURA II not need a launcher to start up, so you only got the engine itself. This may also void some trouble with some programs that act like the malware it has to protect you against, by deleting exe files without asking (only malware does that in my book), as the game will now only have one .exe file
4. I will try to keep the gameplay as much the same as the original as possible, however there are a few technical constraints that will keep me from doing so. The code of the original game was pretty crappy (an understatement I admit), and doing this better does always have a few effects. Also the support of larger screen modes does affect the game in some ways.  A few changes are planned though. The AP accumulator works differently now, and I am planning to either produce an ARM based on the water element for Crystal or to add this as a spell for Xenobi. I did get some complaints that the original game didn't allow the heroes to attack with water based attacks even though some enemies did have this for a weakness. The reason for this is very silly... I forgot about them. And that's something I wanna fix up here.
5. Maps will remain the same. Since the original Star Story game was the first game ever to use the Kthura system for maps and Apollo also using Kthura, I had a very very easy way to go. The point is though that the original Kthura did support a few things that I removed from Kthura when I recreated it for C# and C++, but I could adept all the maps for this.  It is possible I'll add a few extra sidequests, but that is not yet a promise.
6. The scenario will remain the way it was. If you see changes it's mostly only some fixes of grammar errors or typos. Of course, if I do find real plot holes or continuity errors along the way I will look for a way to fix those, but I expect none, but hey, you can help me there. :P
7. Translating the game to any language I don't know will also be easier now. Only the scenario can be localized though. System messages, spell  names and item names remain in English always.
8. Savegames will not be compatible between the old and new game. I am investigating the possibilities to make a transfer tool which will try to convert the character database and your inventory, however the game will always start at the first dungeon.  You will likely be a bit overpowered then, though.
9. The Game will very likely be unlinked from Game Jolt's trophy API. So if you want them, be quick with playing the old game, if your computer allows you to.
10. The user interface has been entirely renewed. This should not make the game any easier or harder, but navigating through the interface should be quicker now. As I am also investigating the possibilities to compile the game to Android and WASM (although no promises there yet) the UI has been built that way that the right mouse button would be obsolete. Where the old version needed it, it will still be supported (for our desktop users, who do remain my prime target audience), but there will always be alternatives for the right mouse button, because on touch screens, things would be a bit nasty otherwise.
11. The Mac version is henceforth deprecated. I am however investigating the possibilities to port Apollo to Linux. The real work on that will only start once the game is about to be finished making modifications to Apollo unlikely. A Linux version is not yet promised, but if I can do it without going into total disaster (which is always an issue with Linux in general) I will try to get that done. Once the game is done, Apollo has an open source license, so people who want to get a Mac version of Apollo working, will by then be welcomed with open arms. I just won't do it myself. I don't have a Mac anymore, so testing is an issue. That's why.

I will be posting about this remake on a regular basis. Once the remake is getting into beta, the old version will be officially discontinued and even be removed from both Itch.io and Game Jolt.  If you really don't wish to wait for months to see stuff working you can be granted access into my secret test labs, where my unfinished stuff is regularly updated. Please note, I must require that you are able to use the command prompt (I prefer PowerShell, but cmd will do), since the way stuff looks like while still in my development lab is completely different from the actual releases (which is not so odd in game development in general).

See ya, folks!

Jeroen P. Broks
General Blogs:  https://trickyjeroenbroks.tumblr.com/
Indie Reviews: https://jeroensindiereviews.tumblr.com/
Game Classics Reviews: https://trickygameclassics.tumblr.com/