Fireworks...
The past three weeks have been pretty good. Many animations got
done after the creature graphics finally appeared out of the paint
brush. Since then, animations such as health bar, dialogue and even
the area animation got to a point where I could erase them from the
to-do list.
Although there are some fireworks on the image below, it's not
quite that time yet. The code for them is about 95% done but there's
only 15 out of ~230 particle effect prefabs available at the moment
(yeah, it may take a while).
Orcs and undeads...
Well, now I have all the textures I need to finish a bunch of
graphics code that have been 95%+ done for a long time and I can
soon get the game running again.
All creatures are now done using hi-res textures that are scaled
down to one third when they are shown on the map. This allows me
to use the same textures in dialogues and other parts of the game.
Creature anim...
Here's a sneak peek what the new humanlike creatures will look
like. I still need to draw an orc and undead and then all old
creature graphics have been redone.
Some new stuff...
So, about 90% of strings have been ripped from the code and replaced
with getString methods that fetch the contents from my localization
implementation. I decided to take a break from that after doing it
for a few weeks because there are some other things that need to be
done before it can be finished.
As you may have noticed in the earlier screenshots, there are some
new inventory slots and that means there will be a bunch of new items
as well as crafting schematics. All armours are now considered as item
sets and they will have some set bonus when completed. These common
set bonuses are not very strong but I'm sure there will be something
more powerful at some point (and with multiple set bonuses such as
2, 4, 6 instead of 6 to allow some mixing between sets).
Since the player can now gain 4 more enchants than before, all NPC's
will receive a buff of some kind. I've been thinking about making the
end game a little more challenging anyway because there are all these
overpowered mages running around.
Always pays his debts...
There's this thing called technical debt that this little project
has accumulated in the past and some of it has been paid now.
There was a source file called 'TownScreen' that was not exactly
the best code ever. It was more like a hard coded blob of bubblegum
with a lot of copy pasted bandages to keep it together.
It was almost impossible to add any new features in it because
everything was somehow linked and changing one thing broke two
others somewhere else. It used to be a single file with ~4800 lines
and now it is seven files with ~1850 lines combined.
The new implementation does everything the old one did and some
new things as well. Anyway, one of the biggest 'trolls' on the
way is now dead, chopped to pieces and properly barbequed...
Getting there...
Here's some of the things that have been done in the past 6 weeks
and some that were done a long time ago. I'm almost done with the
in-game windows, screens, boxes and other user interface elements
and have finally managed to start making the necessary tools (which
will also be in-game) as can be seen in the top left corner.
There will be 4 tools in total. Dialogue editor, dungeon editor,
quest editor and a "localization" editor that can be used to export
all text strings and create a localization file from those strings.
I can tell at this point that any localization created with this
editor will not be perfect because some of the strings are embedded
in the UI-textures and I'm not going to separate them to make it
perfect.
The other reason why this will not be perfect is that English
seems to be somewhat lacking in words compared to some other
languages. For example, "... shoots a man..." and "...a man shoots..."
use the same word or form for "a man" while other languages can
have a different word for each case. Those two sentences in some
other language, such as Finnish, would read "...ampuu miestä..."
and "...mies ampuu..." and using the wrong word can change the
meaning or sounds wrong. You can see the problem when the string
is in the form of "...STR_MAN shoots..." and the game replaces the
STR_MAN with "a man" or "a woman" when it is displayed.
I'm not entirely sure how to fix this yet but I'll probably add X
number of strings for the other forms, i.e. STR_MAN1, ..., STR_MANX,
and let the localizer sort them out.
Other things that I can tell at this point is that the tile size
has grown from 48px to 64px. Minimum game window size is 1920x1080.
There are three new map sizes available in addition to the one size
fits all (31 by 31) that was used before. The new map sizes are,
63 by 31, 31 by 63 and 63 by 63. I'm not exactly sure whether
those new sizes will appear in random dungeons because they might
be too large without some sort of cartography/mini-map talent.
No more pain...
I had some back pains and other issues and progress has been quite
slow in the past few months. I'm slowly getting back on track and
here's a little peek what I'm working on at the moment.
I'll try to post new stuff more often from now on and perhaps I'll
even show some images of the item sets that can go in those new slots...
Server down...
Hopefully will be back up soon, but could take a day or two
depending on the tech guys.
Work never ends...
Long story short. A new version of the game is coming hopefully
sometime this year. This time it's not just a patch but something
slightly different. Those of you who have been around long enough
and have some technical knowledge about the game can instantly see
what has changed and why it's going to take some time to get this
done.
You may have to save the image that pops up and take a look in
some image editor to be able to see it all.
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