Hey interwebs!

Midnight progress post again, for yesterday, of course. I worked on finishing up the introduction sequence and then making the background for the interrogation room, and integrating the already scripted interrogation sequence between Francis and Gabriel (whom you’ll get acquainted with when the game’s release, wink wink.)

It turned out there was a small portion of the dialogue tree missing, which was an easy fix. I then worked on splitting up some (way too long) sentences, putting pauses where appropriate and such. So, basically, the first interactive scene is now in the game. Yay!

It’s just a few days of work time left for the project, so I’ll try to get some stuff done during the weekend. If I just work at the same pace as I’ve done before, the game should be properly finished without problem.

That”ll be all for now. Now, I’m gonna play some Amnesia!
Sadly, I haven’t run into a shit-pants-moment yet in it. Fingers crossed that there’ll be one during this play session!

Marcus out.

Another day of work!

Today, I worked on a puzzle design for the game, where you have to enter a sequence of numbers accompanied by directions to turn a dial on a safe. It was originally meant to be a test, but the design worked so well that it’ll probably work its way into the final product as it is, accompanied by some illustration though. Right now, it’s just a text box convincing you that you are in fact turning the dial on the safe.

I worked on integrating the first draft of the dialogue trees into the game as well today, which turned out to be a pretty painless task. I tested my way to where to put line breaks so that the dialogue lines didn’t become too long. I also integrated the dual perspective dialogue tree into the game, where you control two different characters and their responses. I was afraid it would be too confusing at first, but it turned out to flow pretty smoothly. There’s only a pair of choices for the second character, so I might try to break up the dialogue into a few more choices to make the player more involved.
After all, the lines that are currently in the game are just from the first version, I suspect there’ll be a few things to change along the way to really get all the emotion and character traits in there.

I also worked on a background today, trying out a new style. It involves both 3D modelling and 2D painting, a mix of both worlds, so to say!

This is what’s in the game so far, visually. Please note however that the characters are just placeholders I did way back for the prototype.

That’s all I have for today. Tune in tomorrow for another episode of ‘Adventure Game Development Shenanigans’!
Or, you know, come back tomorrow for another semi-interesting blog post?

Marcus out.

Mellow evening to you all! I bring forth another progress report on the 2D RPG work in progress!

Today, just like yesterday, consisted mostly of background coding. I can finally say though, that the battle system is actually underway now. For real!

The battle initiation code is now properly handled, and so far it processes the enemy type and the amount of that enemy to place in the battle scene. All these enemies are added to an array which I’ll later use to populate the list of available targets from which the player can choose his victim, given that the player party is alive and that it’s the players turn, of course.
That’s another thing added today; determining which side starts first and letting them take action.

I’ve also added a feedback box at the top of the battle screen, which will be used to present textual feedback for the things happening during battle. Nothing too complex, but very helpful in further setting the mood of the battle.

Presently, the player can alter between the three choices of commands; attack, magic and flee. Currently, they don’t do much, the cursor isn’t even moving yet, but it’s a small step on the way. It looks as if though a general battle command script is the best method of calling what kind of action is taken against whom, so hopefully the action itself in the battle won’t take too long to code.

Lastly, I’ve also added some basic equipment system for the characters. All characters can equip weapons and armors, but are limited to certain types of them both, depending on what proficiency type they can equip.

That’s all for today’s update, at least all the details I can think of. Hopefully I’ll have something a bit more visual to show before the week’s end.

Until next time!
Marcus out.

It’s that time again, belated-progress-report-time!

So, just like the last post, this is a progress report for what I did yesterday, since I forgot to write it then. I blame hard work for making me forget!

Anyhow, so yesterday consisted mostly of ‘background coding’, i.e. a lot of code that works behind the scenes but isn’t necessarily visible on screen. Most of this background code is related to the still in progress battle system, which is taking a whole lot longer to code than I initially estimated. Still though, the prolonged development of it shouldn’t present that much of a problem deadline-wise. So long as it works before the end of the week, It should be okay. Fingers crossed!

The battle initiation code works somewhat all right, but I might have to rethink my method of calling it. Currently, I call it through a script through which I can throw in the battle background, amount of monsters etc., but since the battle scene is in a separate room, it might be best to initiate the battle through the battle scenes creation code instead. I’ll keep the script though, to alter some global variables that I can access when the battle scene is created, to determine what scene and monsters you meet there instead.

Most of that might not’ve made much sense, but it’s good reference for me if I get lost in all the code and forget what I’m doing. It tends to happen every once in a while. I blame that on way too little caffeine!

Another thing which we did yesterday was testing out the template male character sprite in action, throwing him into the game and making him walk. He’s kinda bare since he’s a template character, but it looked great already! I can’t wait to see what it all looks like when we’ve got all the sprites for the characters working.
Unfortunately though, I can’t let you all in on a sneak peek just yet. I’m still using a placeholder tileset (containing borrowed graphics) for the test map. When we’ve got some basic tiles in there too, I’ll post a little peek at it.

So, in short, yesterday mostly consisted of making boring background code (like checking array sizes and a value representation lookup script) in preparation for the battle action, which I’ll tackle today. Best get started, there’s lots to do!

Until next time,
Marcus out.

Good evening, internets!

This is the first official progress report of the 2D RPG project I’ve mentioned earlier, temporarily referred to as “Dungeon Fantasy”, since it’s sort of a tribute game to both Dungeons & Dragons and Final Fantasy.

Last Friday, me and two of my classmates (from the Graphics group) joined forces, so the game is now a group project. Today, we’ve mostly been doing planning in relation to the games graphics and visual style. We’ve decided to go with a Gothic-inspired visual style for the game, while still retaining the originally planned fantasy setting. It sounded interesting in theory when we were discussing it and I’m confident it’ll be at least equally as interesting in reality. As the Duke himself said; let’s rock!

Code-wise, the party customization system (that’s right, featuring an entire party now!) is more or less finished. You can choose between the four characters and customize them to your liking, and it all works smoothly without any nasty bugs or disappearing values. Yay!

Visual evidence of the 4 character party alteration system in action. The bright bar on the left is a placeholder for where the characters' portraits will be.

Other than that, the Intelligence and Wisdom stats have been merged together into one stat instead, called Psyche. This both saves me some time when doing checks based on such things as spellcasting, since both the Wizard and Cleric classes now depend on the same stat instead of one each, and it also saves a bit of energy for the player, since it’s one value less to keep track of. Some might call it simplifying the system, but I call it a Flow Decision (an alteration in the games design based on enhancing the flow in the game slightly.)

The Charisma ability has been cut completely from the game, since we decided that the characters’ alignments will work more than well alone in its place. Such things as civilian characters’ disposition towards the player will be based upon general alignment checks instead of charisma checks. We’ve just discussed its possibilities so far, but we might go as far as have the party’s general alignment affect the outcome of the game entirely. Of course, we’re not revealing any details on that just yet, you’ll have to wait and see for yourselves, in-game!

That is all there is to say today. Tomorrow holds further coding work for me, hopefully I can get started on the battle system (finally!)

Now, I will enjoy the last sip of my compulsory 20th birthday beer. Cheers!

Marcus out.

I just got back from playing some Pac-Man Championship Edition: DX and some Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1.
PCEDX is a great example of an old game receiving a complete overhaul in design, while still retaining most of the core elements and goals (and adding new ones.) I’ll admit that I am a very, very shitty Pac-Man player, but Championship Edition DX is so thoroughly redesigned that you don’t need to be good at the original Pac-Man to be pretty decent at scoring a good amount of points. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking to pick up a Live Arcade game that can be easily picked up and played occasionally, while still being interesting enough to keep you occupied for hours as well.

Sonic 4: Episode 1 on the other hand, goes back to the series’ roots and looks to recreate the feeling of the original Mega Drive/Genesis titles while still being a completely new game, and it succeeds at it in most aspects. This is not going to be an in-depth review of it, but there are a few things worthy of mention, those things being awkward movement physics (that are much too different from the physics of the first three/four Sonic games on MD/G) and an awful abuse of phaser-ish synth instruments in the music. Other than the aforementioned flaws, it actually is a good Sonic game. Levels are very well designed and the game is fun to play.

One major point that is bugging me about the time attack mode though (uh-oh, rant incoming), is that there are no checkpoints. To me, as a player, it is a horrible punishment to have to go back from the very start of the level, should I make just one simple mistake in my effort to beat the level as fast as possible. From a designer point of view, I think it is a bit of a poor decision. Having checkpoints and adding five or ten seconds as punishment when you die would be a lot friendlier. Or, why not even just leave the checkpoints in there? If you restart from a checkpoint, you’ll be starting at a full stop anyway, so by the time you’ve accelerated back to full speed, you’ll have lost a few seconds time.
A few seconds is all that’s needed to be bumped down several spaces on the global leaderboards, so that’s a punishment in itself if you’re aiming for being nothing but the best. But, if that’s your aim, you’re already wasting your time, since there are apparently people who’ve cleared the levels in as little as 0’00”00!

Yes, I do realise that those records are hacked. It’s pretty obvious.

Enough ranting though. Now, I’m going to get back to working on my essay on ‘implementation of Dungeons & Dragons-systems in officially licensed D&D video games.’
Which basically means that I’ll get back to playing Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon and get started with playing Baldur’s Gate. Sometimes, homework is kind of awesome.

That’s all for now, take care and play games!
/ Marcus