I think I'll go with "cp" for the currency. That is short and abstract enough not to spawn any arguments.
So, finally one can place items on the shelf. But before I configure all the item boxes, I should work on a shop background that is final in so far, that the box sizes and locations don't change anymore. It's quit tedious to write down the coordinates of all the boxes ...
The item data comes from an older RPG project of mine, so many of the attributes like material or item class are just there.
But you are right, they are quite irrelevant to the shopkeeper. And unless one has hundreds of items in storage, filtrering the list won't be neded (and even then, filtering with so many aspects isn't fun).
And - duh - indeed, the most important thing, the price tag was missing. So I've redesigned the dialog.
Two thoughts
1) I feel uncertain how to price magic items - such with elemental resistences, or bonuses to player attributes. This calculation is important for the customer "AI", how much they will pay for magically enhanced items.
2) "copper" seems to be a stupid label for price tags. The currency needs a name. Now the question is, what sort of name should it be? A variant of an old real world currency name, or something totally fictional?
I've started to make a dialog to select items for the shelf. You click an empty box on the shelf, the dialog appears and then you can select an item for the box. You can filter items by class or material.
The item list on the right is the older code. There I decided for bright text on dark background. The left side is new. I didn't spend much thought about it, and the default for the controls is black text, so that's why the text is black there.
Now, the question is, which side to adapt - should I go for bright text on dark background, which is found often in games, or black text on white background, which is often advised by UI design guides?
Edit:
Added a slightly improved version. White text, dark background, list with alternating bright and dark entry backgrounds. I think this should be usable. At some point the scrolbar and the checkboxes will need more game-type artwork.
"oh, can i use your game design to create my own game?"
Yes, why not :) It might be interesting to see the two projects evolve, similar yet different.
I think I'll keep the shop in this project a one-stop-adventuer-shop, which provides everything that an adventurer needs. Maybe even such small cannons on wheels that you can lug behind you. Well, if I find suitable artwork :P
Contracts with craftsmen I have planned, but I'm unsure about quite a lot of details, also about the interface design in the game for them.
Well, the problem only exists because I started with about zero knowledge about Blender, and each time I render a model, I seem to learn new things, so the new results are different from the old ones. I wanted to learn Blender since a while anyways, because the tool that I use in the past years is a raytracer that mostly works on mathmatical object descriptions and not polygon meshes (although it can do those too), and it's pretty incompatible to the toolchains used in game development these days, while Blender fits there much better. It won't be a big problem to render all the models once more with consistent settings but I'll wait with that till quite late in the project, at the moment many things are only placeholders and likely to change.
Technically the shop view is 2D. Four layers, shop background, shopkeeper, counter and customers. It's all just bitmaps, I don't use any 3D technology inside this project. I want to keep this as simple as I can.
I have problems to get a consistent lighting with the different models, though. Blender is still quite new to me, and the settings are confusing. Most likely I must redo all the customers at some point, when I am better at Blender and make them all with the same light settings.
Thanks for the pointer! I read a bit about the game on Wikipedia and it gave some helpful insight how such a game can work :)
I didn't made much progress with this project though, I made some item artwork, but didn't do any programming or game design work. And I'm a bit uncertain about the UI design, the parts for the "back office" tasks - the parts that I have done are quite abstract at the moment and not looking very game-ish.
And I'm still struggling with a good shop image. I'd like to paint that instead of modelling it, but my painting skills aren't very good, and I'm worried it will clash with the rendered graphics for the items and customers. I'm no good at painting at the computer, so I'd do it on paper - I can add a lot more details this way, but there is a technology clash when tranferring and using such for a game. I must see what to do about it.
I'm quite sure there must be even more games of this sort, the idea isn't new at all. My motivation for this project is a mix, to make use of the assets that I once made for a bigger rpg project, then I like to create graphics for items usable for rpgs and lately there are times when I'm just bored and this is a sort of toy to make use of that time.
Quests will work in reverse here, at times a captain, headman or the like will come to the shop and ask for equipment for a group of soldiers, adventurers or maybe even robbers. You as shopkeeper will have to buy or order items for e.g. 5 complete sets, armor, weapons and maybe things like rations. Payment will be good if you can complete the sets, but there might be a penalty if you fail (e.g. a refund for the customer who can't start the job now duie to missing equipment).
Yesterday I've imported a lot of graphics for flasks and flacons, which some day will become magic potions. I don't like this sort of work, 48 times the same routine, import the image, configure image meta data, add the item data ... luckily this shouldn't happen too often. Worst so far were the gems and the potions, which each came in so many variants.
I think I'll go with "cp" for the currency. That is short and abstract enough not to spawn any arguments.
So, finally one can place items on the shelf. But before I configure all the item boxes, I should work on a shop background that is final in so far, that the box sizes and locations don't change anymore. It's quit tedious to write down the coordinates of all the boxes ...
The item data comes from an older RPG project of mine, so many of the attributes like material or item class are just there.
But you are right, they are quite irrelevant to the shopkeeper. And unless one has hundreds of items in storage, filtrering the list won't be neded (and even then, filtering with so many aspects isn't fun).
And - duh - indeed, the most important thing, the price tag was missing. So I've redesigned the dialog.
Two thoughts
1) I feel uncertain how to price magic items - such with elemental resistences, or bonuses to player attributes. This calculation is important for the customer "AI", how much they will pay for magically enhanced items.
2) "copper" seems to be a stupid label for price tags. The currency needs a name. Now the question is, what sort of name should it be? A variant of an old real world currency name, or something totally fictional?
Slowly the shop becomes a shop ...
I've started to make a dialog to select items for the shelf. You click an empty box on the shelf, the dialog appears and then you can select an item for the box. You can filter items by class or material.
The item list on the right is the older code. There I decided for bright text on dark background. The left side is new. I didn't spend much thought about it, and the default for the controls is black text, so that's why the text is black there.
Now, the question is, which side to adapt - should I go for bright text on dark background, which is found often in games, or black text on white background, which is often advised by UI design guides?
Edit:
Added a slightly improved version. White text, dark background, list with alternating bright and dark entry backgrounds. I think this should be usable. At some point the scrolbar and the checkboxes will need more game-type artwork.
Nice! A while I pondered to make a texture generator myself, but I was too lazy to actually do something. So this comes in very handy :)
@Raymnond Eternal: Just had time to watch the video. That is very nicely made, and inspiring. Thanks for the link :)
"oh, can i use your game design to create my own game?"
Yes, why not :) It might be interesting to see the two projects evolve, similar yet different.
I think I'll keep the shop in this project a one-stop-adventuer-shop, which provides everything that an adventurer needs. Maybe even such small cannons on wheels that you can lug behind you. Well, if I find suitable artwork :P
Contracts with craftsmen I have planned, but I'm unsure about quite a lot of details, also about the interface design in the game for them.
Well, the problem only exists because I started with about zero knowledge about Blender, and each time I render a model, I seem to learn new things, so the new results are different from the old ones. I wanted to learn Blender since a while anyways, because the tool that I use in the past years is a raytracer that mostly works on mathmatical object descriptions and not polygon meshes (although it can do those too), and it's pretty incompatible to the toolchains used in game development these days, while Blender fits there much better. It won't be a big problem to render all the models once more with consistent settings but I'll wait with that till quite late in the project, at the moment many things are only placeholders and likely to change.
Technically the shop view is 2D. Four layers, shop background, shopkeeper, counter and customers. It's all just bitmaps, I don't use any 3D technology inside this project. I want to keep this as simple as I can.
A new customer, the mudeater from CDmir, has joined the games world.
http://opengameart.org/content/mudeater-animated
I have problems to get a consistent lighting with the different models, though. Blender is still quite new to me, and the settings are confusing. Most likely I must redo all the customers at some point, when I am better at Blender and make them all with the same light settings.
Thanks for the pointer! I read a bit about the game on Wikipedia and it gave some helpful insight how such a game can work :)
I didn't made much progress with this project though, I made some item artwork, but didn't do any programming or game design work. And I'm a bit uncertain about the UI design, the parts for the "back office" tasks - the parts that I have done are quite abstract at the moment and not looking very game-ish.
And I'm still struggling with a good shop image. I'd like to paint that instead of modelling it, but my painting skills aren't very good, and I'm worried it will clash with the rendered graphics for the items and customers. I'm no good at painting at the computer, so I'd do it on paper - I can add a lot more details this way, but there is a technology clash when tranferring and using such for a game. I must see what to do about it.
Very nice :) Thanks for the link!
I'm quite sure there must be even more games of this sort, the idea isn't new at all. My motivation for this project is a mix, to make use of the assets that I once made for a bigger rpg project, then I like to create graphics for items usable for rpgs and lately there are times when I'm just bored and this is a sort of toy to make use of that time.
Quests will work in reverse here, at times a captain, headman or the like will come to the shop and ask for equipment for a group of soldiers, adventurers or maybe even robbers. You as shopkeeper will have to buy or order items for e.g. 5 complete sets, armor, weapons and maybe things like rations. Payment will be good if you can complete the sets, but there might be a penalty if you fail (e.g. a refund for the customer who can't start the job now duie to missing equipment).
Yesterday I've imported a lot of graphics for flasks and flacons, which some day will become magic potions. I don't like this sort of work, 48 times the same routine, import the image, configure image meta data, add the item data ... luckily this shouldn't happen too often. Worst so far were the gems and the potions, which each came in so many variants.
Pages