Thanks, everyone for the comments.
I'd had the idea to put the next version together for the anniversary, and while I'd wanted to fit a couple of extra features in, I ended up spending most of the time dealing with some last-minute bugs instead.
NY00123 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 24, 2021 14:19
I don't know if the ACTIONS files support more than in Omnispeak v1.0, although there was some work back in 2019.
Regardless, v1.1 clearly adds more on top of v1.0.
The big change for the ACTIONS file parser is mostly done, but not yet really used in v1.1: the goal is to have a general variable system so that, for example, the text in the game can be edited in a
separate STRINGS.CKx file, and other things that are episode-specific can similarly be moved to files.
lemm wrote: ↑Sun Jan 02, 2022 17:24
Do you have any more big plans for omnispeak (like modding, multiplayer, or something like that) or is it just going to be bugfixes and portability?
Bugfixes and portability are the main goals, but I do want to do something to help with modding. The variable system mentioned above was the original plan for that, and probably would be fine for level packs and simple mods, but the big source-code mods probably would need a bunch of custom C code anyway. (The possibility of including either a scripting language or a quake-like DLL system is there, but just adding them as new episodes in C in a "mods" branch or something is probably simpler, particularly seeing C source already exists for AR and RTTS.)
I'm also a bit more open to adding some basic graphics/sound enhancement options than I was, now that there's K1n9_Duk3's reconstruction for the absolutely vanilla experience. They'd still have to be optional, but the thought of playing with something like stereo sound support or work towards supporting other resolutions has crossed my mind. Or maybe just something crazy like CGA support — ReflectionHLE already supports CGA for Keen Dreams.
As for multiplayer, I'd love to do it, but probably would treat it as a separate project from Omnispeak, albeit one which shares a lot of code. I did experiment a bit (quite a long time ago) with just grabbing the NETKEEN and Omnispeak code and merging them together, though life got it the way before anything actually worked.
Of course, these things all require a fair bit of time, so don't hold your breath: the next few months will still probably be just bugfixes and some more support for
weird AdLib/OPL2 hardware, which is what I'm currently working on.