[ANN] Guardians

> I thought I'd give it a try.  I downloaded guardians.0.82.zip and
> unzipped it to C:\Apps\Guardians.
> Double-clicking on Squeak.exe gave me a message
> and upon opening says "WARNING: This Squeak does not have real 3D support"
> and "LoadLibrary(C:\Apps\guardians\Squeak3D.dll) (998: Invalid access
> to memory locations).
> There are no log files.
>
> Platform...
> C:> ver
> Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.345]
>
> I had an intuition to experiment with a few security settings but
> didn't really expect a change and didn't pre-record existing settings,
> but as best I remember from review the final state...
> Windows Defender Settings > App & browser control
>    Check apps and files - changed from WARN ==> OFF
>    Exploit protection settings >
>       Control flow guard (CFG) - changed ON by default ==> OFF by default
>       Data Execution Prevention (DEP) - remained Use default (ON)
>       Force randomisation for images (Mandatory ASLR) - remained OFF by default
>       Randomise memory allocation (Bottom-up ASLR) - changed from Use
> default (ON) ==> OFF by default
>       High-entropy ASLR - now disabled "requires Randomise memory allocations"
>       Validate exception chains (SEHOP) - change Use default (ON) ==>
> OFF by default
>       Validate heap integrity - remained Use default (ON)
>
> Those changes required a reboot, so I did that and when I re-ran
> Guardian's Squeak.exe
> a rotating landscape appeared. So probably fixed one of those changes,
> if not the reboot itself.
>
> cheers -ben

Wow. Thanks for the feedback. It's hard to make sense of, though. I am
also using Windows Defender (on win 8.1) and has no similar issue. I'll
try on other computers/systems...

Best,

Stef

Hello,

Thanks to all the good people that helped having a working Squeak3D
plugin for recent VM, I am pleased to announce the release of a game I
started in 2005 and then let kind of forgot, a remake of The Sentinel
from 1986 (I used to play this one a lot). It is a Wonderland
application, and it works in a 5.1 image. Nice:)

So here it is:
http://www.zogotounga.net/comp/guardians.htm

Still in beta, since I have experimented a fair share of VM crashes, but
very much playable. See the above page for instructions.

 > Some feedback on the gameplay.

Nice!

 >
 > 1. After transfer to a robot the view direction is reversed so you are
 > looking at the robot you just came from to make it quicker to absorb.
 > But it doesn't reverse the height vector, so if you build a high tower
 > of boulders, its annoying and time consuming to arrow down to view the
 > previous robot.

Yes, it is annoying. But this is part of the gameplay. Consider this: at
times, what you want from a high-level position on a stack of boulders
is a fast view on another high spot (such as, obviously, the sentinel).
Once transferred, you just have to press the arrows or U (do not
underestimate the importance of a fast u-turn) to get that. If you were
looking down, it would be a problem.

 > 5. A key to look directly at sentinels would be nice.
 > After transferring to a new robot the first thing I want to do is check
 > my visibility to the sentinel.
 > If the transfer was steeply up/down it can be disorientating and time
 > consuming to find the sentinel.

This is definitely intended. Every action from the player has to be
expensive to some extent. And no help for automatic orientation should
be provided.

In short, I have attempted to recreate a game that I know well and that
I played a lot in my youth. I believe I succeeded in the sense that the
feeling and atmosphere I get from Guardians is very close to what I got
from The Sentinel (with a different balance of features and performance
though). So I would say give it a chance and let it grow on you. It is a
very peculiar game.

Now overall do you enjoy the game, or are those annoying parts actually,
well, annoying?