With the rainbow guards at his heels, the thief had no time pick up the jewel that dropped from his bag, when he tripped over an old bucket in the darkness near the village well. The jewel bounced, rolled, and was gone in the sewers as quickly as the thief was in the shadows, before the guards arrived.
The imps like shiny things, they fetched the jewel from the sewers and keep it deep in their catacombs since then.
First quest to be. The other jewels will be much harder to find, but I want an early moment of success for the player. What bothers me, is that I still have no convincing design for the rainbow jewels, something that really strikes, even in 64x64 pixel size ...
Since r015, it's been mostly bugfixes and cleanup work. Item prefixes have changed, and the item-color-depends-on-mods feature is currently disabled. Some item graphics underwent some adaptions too, in lightness and size. The new walls are included as well.
Melee combat still is very clumsy, but it works. Right mouse button is bound to a fire nova spell in this release, which is handy to handle bigger groups of imps. Mana costs and mana recovery is in the demo, but there is not limit ... you can continue to cast spells even if your mana is negative already.
Same for life. You can take damage, but your character won't die.
Slain foes drop items now. 50% chance to become a magic item, 20% chance to become a double-magic item, and a 3% chance to become a rare item with 3 or more mods.
In another forum I could watch the progress of someone using GameMaker. She made good games very quickly. Well, she did that for a living, so good tools and speed were important.
I just want to say, GameMaker, despite all the gossip that circulates in some forums about it, can be a very good tool. But there are limits what you can do with it.
For Python, my memory says, there is a thing called "PyGame", a set of libraries or even an engine to help game development with Python. I never really took a look at it, just googled this:
I'm a programmer, so I usually make my own engines. I like Java, but C++ surely is more popular if you look into the wild.
PS: Some people make good games quickly with GameMaker. Others hate the tool. Then there are mid-level engines like Irrlicht or the JMonkey engine. All require some learning. Which would be easiest, I can't say.
Finally, I've made new walls and proper pieces for the different sorts of wall ends and connections. Left to do are matching front walls, but I have an idea meanwhile how to those and replace the current ones.
I'll also have to rework the tunnel walls in the same way. And then I need a different type of brick wall, for a temple environment. Brighter and more friendly looking than these "catacomb" walls.
Finally, I managed to complete the character dialog and related code. It now shows the "real" values instead of dummies, and all the internal calculations should be in place, too. I noticed that there are no item mods yet to affect player stats like strength or intelligence. I'll add those some day soon, hopefully.
Life is currently str+dex, Mana is wis+int. Magic devices skill will be used for "autocasting" items like wands and rods, which have inbuilt spells and "just" need to be triggered. This skill is (int+dex)/2. And I figured that a mix of (str+wis)/2 will be the base resistance against harmful influences, the more you know and the stronger you are, the better you can deal with such. Well, at least it makes a little bit of sense ;)
Stealth is wis+dex, the more you know about the creatures and the better you can move, the easier it is to escape their perception.
I've published a new development snapshot, including the new combat code, basic animation code and some improvements to the character sheet, which now shows the current resistances given by the equipment. Also, a new title screen which is shown while the assets are being loaded.
It's hard to write a good answer, because rationality and emotions both influence such decisions.
Emotion: I've been working on the code for more than a year. I've written quite some code for the project. The idea to throw all of it away and start from zero with the Flare engine doesn't feel good. I like my code, don't want to dump it just so, after having put so much work into it.
Rationality 1: There is a second project being developed with the same code base. It's a Dungeon Keeper inspired project, and creature AI is a big part there, also the interaction of the player and the games world are quite different from an RPG. Still I can use the map code, the display code, some of the persistence code and parts of the UI toolkit for both projects. I'd have top maintain the codebase anyways when I work on the other project.
Rationality 2: Using a readymade engine usually gives faster progress ocne one has learned how to use it.
Problem: Flare is written in C++. I don't want to do any C++ development anymore. So even if I could change the engine if I need a new feature, I don't want to work with the code.
For me the emotional level weights much right now, and the argument with the other project that I develop using the same codebase.
Thanks :) I'm also quite pleased with them.
A new story snippet:
With the rainbow guards at his heels, the thief had no time pick up the jewel that dropped from his bag, when he tripped over an old bucket in the darkness near the village well. The jewel bounced, rolled, and was gone in the sewers as quickly as the thief was in the shadows, before the guards arrived.
The imps like shiny things, they fetched the jewel from the sewers and keep it deep in their catacombs since then.
First quest to be. The other jewels will be much harder to find, but I want an early moment of success for the player. What bothers me, is that I still have no convincing design for the rainbow jewels, something that really strikes, even in 64x64 pixel size ...
I've published a new development snapshot:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/r016/
Since r015, it's been mostly bugfixes and cleanup work. Item prefixes have changed, and the item-color-depends-on-mods feature is currently disabled. Some item graphics underwent some adaptions too, in lightness and size. The new walls are included as well.
Melee combat still is very clumsy, but it works. Right mouse button is bound to a fire nova spell in this release, which is handy to handle bigger groups of imps. Mana costs and mana recovery is in the demo, but there is not limit ... you can continue to cast spells even if your mana is negative already.
Same for life. You can take damage, but your character won't die.
Slain foes drop items now. 50% chance to become a magic item, 20% chance to become a double-magic item, and a 3% chance to become a rare item with 3 or more mods.
This versions almost feels like a little RPG now.
In another forum I could watch the progress of someone using GameMaker. She made good games very quickly. Well, she did that for a living, so good tools and speed were important.
I just want to say, GameMaker, despite all the gossip that circulates in some forums about it, can be a very good tool. But there are limits what you can do with it.
For Python, my memory says, there is a thing called "PyGame", a set of libraries or even an engine to help game development with Python. I never really took a look at it, just googled this:
https://pygame.org/wiki/tutorials
Maybe it helps, if you got the Python way.
Now. Final version of the front walls. The ancient spirits of good looking walls are pleased.
I'm a programmer, so I usually make my own engines. I like Java, but C++ surely is more popular if you look into the wild.
PS: Some people make good games quickly with GameMaker. Others hate the tool. Then there are mid-level engines like Irrlicht or the JMonkey engine. All require some learning. Which would be easiest, I can't say.
I'm still undecided if I want to keep the black top of the front walls, but it's an improvement in any case.
Also, nova is an effective spell against imp hordes. It seems Imps carry a lot of things with them ....
Finally, I've made new walls and proper pieces for the different sorts of wall ends and connections. Left to do are matching front walls, but I have an idea meanwhile how to those and replace the current ones.
I'll also have to rework the tunnel walls in the same way. And then I need a different type of brick wall, for a temple environment. Brighter and more friendly looking than these "catacomb" walls.
Finally, I managed to complete the character dialog and related code. It now shows the "real" values instead of dummies, and all the internal calculations should be in place, too. I noticed that there are no item mods yet to affect player stats like strength or intelligence. I'll add those some day soon, hopefully.
Life is currently str+dex, Mana is wis+int. Magic devices skill will be used for "autocasting" items like wands and rods, which have inbuilt spells and "just" need to be triggered. This skill is (int+dex)/2. And I figured that a mix of (str+wis)/2 will be the base resistance against harmful influences, the more you know and the stronger you are, the better you can deal with such. Well, at least it makes a little bit of sense ;)
Stealth is wis+dex, the more you know about the creatures and the better you can move, the easier it is to escape their perception.
I've published a new development snapshot, including the new combat code, basic animation code and some improvements to the character sheet, which now shows the current resistances given by the equipment. Also, a new title screen which is shown while the assets are being loaded.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/r015/
It's still a long way to a real game.
It's hard to write a good answer, because rationality and emotions both influence such decisions.
Emotion: I've been working on the code for more than a year. I've written quite some code for the project. The idea to throw all of it away and start from zero with the Flare engine doesn't feel good. I like my code, don't want to dump it just so, after having put so much work into it.
Rationality 1: There is a second project being developed with the same code base. It's a Dungeon Keeper inspired project, and creature AI is a big part there, also the interaction of the player and the games world are quite different from an RPG. Still I can use the map code, the display code, some of the persistence code and parts of the UI toolkit for both projects. I'd have top maintain the codebase anyways when I work on the other project.
Rationality 2: Using a readymade engine usually gives faster progress ocne one has learned how to use it.
Problem: Flare is written in C++. I don't want to do any C++ development anymore. So even if I could change the engine if I need a new feature, I don't want to work with the code.
For me the emotional level weights much right now, and the argument with the other project that I develop using the same codebase.
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