Like King of Dragon Pass, Six Ages logs all scripts, which helps show exactly what happened and the state of the game.
Right now a lot of my time is spent fixing bugs in the code. Given that the game is large and complex, it can be hard to know just what happened that led up to a bug. So we keep track of everything important.
This is actually something that we did in King of Dragon Pass. Shawn Steele was implementing our scripting language, OSL, and wanted a way to check that things like conditionals and calculations worked. So he came up with a way to log this to a file. You can see his focus from some of the options:
kAllBranches = 0x01,
kListSizeing = 0x02,
kTraceOSL = 0x04,
kTraceMath = 0x08, // Extra COSL::StartMath debugging information
kSetVariables = 0x10,
kTraceFixed = 0x20, // Extra CFixed debugging information
kLoadVariables = 0x40,
kGetStrings = 0x80,
kTraceTribes = 0x100,
kTraceOSLVariables = 0x200, // CFixed::PrintFileDebug should print OSL Variable Names the hard way
kTraceMathResult = 0x400,
kTraceList = 0x800, // Attempt to show list content
The output shows addresses and opcodes, showing its focus on debugging the language:
OSL 0xd8b694 Running from 0, fRunDepth 0:
-------------------------------------------
0000 : 0202 019E Picture "scene018"
0002 : 0203 0001 Position 0001
0005 : 4005 E
Loading Variable 4005 (E) 0.000 (gValue)
0006 : 0800 =
0007 : 068D RandomElement
0008 : 0480 (
0009 : 070E ClanMembers
000A : 0841 - (subtract)
000B : 0718 RingMembers 7ffa0000 -- P00000000:0021a700 (gValue)
Result: 7ffa0000 -- P00000000:005e18fe (gValue)
000C : 0481 ) -- gValue = 7ffa0000 -- P00000000:005e18fe (gValue)7ff20001.0000 : Brenna (gValue)
Setting Variable 4005 (E)
Result: 7ff20001.0002 : Brenna (gValue)
000E : 4021 otherClan
Loading Variable 4021 (otherClan)7ff30017.0000 : Blue Jay (gValue)
000F : 0800 =
0010 : 068D RandomElement
0011 : 0480 (
0012 : 068A NeighboringClans
4 COSL::Neighbors:
Clans:
9 Boskovi
15 Blackrock
18 Greydog
23 Blue Jay
0013 : 0481 ) -- gValue = 7ffb0000 -- C00000000:00848200 (gValue)7ff30012.0000 : Greydog (gValue)
Setting Variable 4021 (otherClan)
Result: 7ff30012.0000 : Greydog (gValue)
0015 : 4012 R
Loading Variable 4012 (R) 0.000 (gValue)
0016 : 0800 =
0017 : 0600 FALSE 0.000 (gValue)
Setting Variable 4012 (R)
Result: 0.000 (gValue)
0018 : 0212 01A4 Saga "<4005> told us we should take in Orlkensor Bronzebones, a warrior outlawed by the <21>.plural."
Loading Variable 4005 (E)7ff20001.0002 : Brenna (gValue)
ReplacePlaceHolders...7ff20001.0002 : Brenna (gValue)
Loading Variable c321 (otherClan)00000000.0000 : Greydogs (gValue)
ReplacePlaceHolders...00000000.0000 : Greydogs (gValue)
001A : 0201 01CF Music "IsItAdventure"
001C : 0A00 NewChoices
Once OSL was reliable, it turned out that the log was useful to help debug the OSL scripts themselves. If something weird happened, you could see what code branch was taken, and what some of the variables were. For example, the output above shows all the neighboring clans
And we output other information to the log, such as the scene queue, some of the clan decisions, and more.
The debug log can grow quite large (a quick search shows one at 7.7 MB), so the game makes a new one every time you launch. But if you had to relaunch because of a crash, that would mean that any evidence would be deleted. So actually, we rename the log, and actually delete the previous one.
While I reworked OSL for Six Ages, I based it on Shawn’s work, and wasn’t so concerned about debugging the language itself. Instead, I wanted to focus on the scripts, since that seemed like where most of the bugs would be.
<OSL: 0x170194ec0> ® 2 Affiance her to …
-----------------
: Saga "We affianced her to <.an> <ourClan> groom." {a} {C_1 Arrowstone}
: (ourClan).commoners {277}
: +=
: # 1 {277} {278}
ourClan.commoners ← 278
: ChooseYesNo
: (
: String "Do you accept the 10 cows?"
: ) ↖︎ = Do you accept the 10 cows?
sendToCurrentScene: kNewChoice
… exploded
Restarting OSL (self.result=kNewChoice)
This is more compact (thus easier to read): more values are shown on the same line, and it doesn’t bother to show addresses or opcodes.
The next post will talk more about how to make use of this.
The game is still missing a bunch of assets (both art and music), but the user interface is basically complete. There’s a first draft manual, and the game has been winnable for some time. So we’re starting to look at tuning and polish.
This set seems particularly hard to choose between. They work in a purely functional sense (i.e. they can be covered with text and still read well). But each has some nice elements. For example, alternative 1 has a closeup, which is nice. But alternative 2 is good for showing the extended family. And I particularly like the children in all three.
Tonight I received the final two pieces in the “otherworld” art style.
The pie chart shows where we expected to spend our budget shortly after starting. The bulk of the expense (44%) was projected to be art.
I’ve been working full time on Six Ages for over two years, but it’s still not done. How far along is it?
If the art needs hadn’t grown, we would be completing the scene art this month. But there are more scenes. And on top of that, since it’s a different game than King of Dragon Pass, we can’t reuse some art in the same fashion. So there’s still a bunch to go. On the other hand, we have a lot of really good art.
in the process of working on the game’s tutorial.