SAD, Hnefatafl & Portal demos available. Project M, Axe Parser & others progress

Omnimaga has been very busy in the past few months in terms of programming. Despite a few people being away during Easter break and school projects and studies coming in their way, programmers have continued working on their projects anyway, giving updates (and screenshots) whenever they can, and three of our staff have managed to release demos of their respective games.

First of all, a S.A.D. (Seek and Destroy) was released for public by Hot_Dog! While you cannot defeat any enemy and there isn't much control on where you can place buildings, you can still move around the map with the cursor ON or OFF, place buildings from the build menu and admire the graphics.

The download is avaliable here!

Project forum: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=60.0

Secondly, a while ago Zera, who designed projects like E:SoR and others, has come to us with an interesting puzzle/board game idea: Hnefatafl. Despite the name looking a bit like the word "fatal" prefixed with a term that designs adult anime, this game, also known as The Viking Board Game, may remind you of Chess and Checkers, altough it is kinda different. {AP} has written the multiplayer part of the game while Jsj795 is doing the version with artificial intelligence. Here is a screenshot:

It is not finished yet, so the AI may be buggy and there may be some errors, but the demo download is avaliable at this location! Make sure to read the game rules first, though, so you know how to play. The rules are avaliable on this website.

Project topic: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=1766.30

And finally, a demo of Portal X, an Axe Parser 2D clone of Valve's popular puzzle-FPS, has been released by Builderboy. The screenshot should describe it all:

A Youtube video also shows it in action in higher framerate at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdnV35jog1A
Demo download is available here!

Project sub-forum: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=87.0

As for other major projects, Project M has seen a lot of updates recently and now even feature sound! Listen to a WAV sample recorded from his calculator here! In addition to grayscale and parralax scrolling, the game now also features water and you see the score pop up from enemies when killing them. There are many more things that were added since the project resumed a short while ago. A video of it was posted on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR0wqzD9mF8 .

Check for more updates at the Project M sub-forum!

And Axe Parser is still progressing quickly, with regular builds being released in this topic. A community-wide beta is apparently coming out soon, on ticalc.org and in Omnimaga downloads section. Many commands were added since we last posted a news about Axe Parser, ranging from easy ones to more complex ones, adding more functionalities to Axe language, such as data management allowing external save files and highscores. Since February 1st, the Axe Parser sub-forum grew by 1950 posts, which is 17% of the entire board activity during that period, so it may be a bit hard to find some stuff there, but documentation is alerady available, included with every build, as well as example programs. Don't hesitate to start a new topic if you need help and cannot find anything there.

Link to all Axe Parser builds: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=1463.0
Project sub-forum: http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=71.0

Before the beta of Axe Parser is released community-wide, Quigibo is trying to write a more elaborate documentation file in PDF format. If you want to contribute to the documentation, visit this topic and let him know.

After the beta of Axe Parser comes out, there may be an Axe Parser programming competition, altough we haven't decided of the theme nor the rules yet.

Don't forget to check our forums for more updates on these projects as well as many other ones not just by staff!