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Milestones are fun, part 2

Jul 4, 23:34

Yay, e[X]perience screen now works as it should – player can [M]ark and [U]mark his skills. Also, improved [I]nventory item selection to be more user friendly. If friendly is defined as “not trying to piss you off”.

Okay. Gui code is kinda messy and it spilled over to Model (and what is now called model is in fact controler anyway.) Plus, User input handling is getting kinda italian.

So, next up is code cleanup over there and while we are at it, improvement to gui: I would like to support tilesets and have more abstract sense of graphics (so, sword will no longer be tied to ‘(’ symbol but rather “sword” graphics which can happen to be anything, but will likely end up looking like “(” anyway.). I shall mercilessly cut some Dwars Fortress tilesets to provide graphics I guess.

And, since it will have some passable grahics, basic sound effects will be added too. Just bleeps when interacting with menus or so.

Zwei

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Milestones are fun.

Jul 3, 18:34

Okay, monsters now attack poor player, and player can regain health by [I]-[C]onsuming runes ( “&” symbol ) that are lying on ground.

That was fun, quick and easy!

So, what’s next? Marking and Unmarking attributes/skills, so that they work as they should work.

Zwei

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It lives!

Jun 28, 22:45

Oh my, I actually did something! See proof at foh demo site.

I got back to old proof-of-concept java applet, retrofitted it with Java 1.6 guts and added experience processing to the mix (‘X’).

Its turns out that typed collections and enums are exactly what was needed to be able to write ‘beautifull code’.

Hmm, now what. Guess it is time to set actual milestones. Dwarf Fortress was actuall inspiration for this, but being much less of megalomaniac, I choose to set up much smaller and fun milestones.

Okay, for now it should be simple:

* Player can now run around and attack completelly untreatening foes. That needs to change. Guards shall do more than swarm PC: they should attack in melee. * Since player will loose health, it is time to implement ‘U’ing for items. For starter, healing potions.

Talk about impressive goals!

Zwei

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Music as gameplay element

Jan 9, 15:01

Music is in games by default. As developer, you are expected to have it there or you loose points.

Great tool for setting mood (or breaking it), tool for standing out (or for being gray average). Sometimes even worth listening to on its own (or turned off asap).

But its mostly just part of environment like those flickering torches and shadows they cast.

What if we make it more? Little experiment: turn up music with some beat and start your favorite action game. Soon, you find yourself trying to play in rhythm. Attempting to “dance with game”.

This alone can be turned to awesome games aimed at casual audience. Dance-Dance revolution. Guitar Hero.

Now we can sidestep. What can make online game pure hell? Lag and lagspikes. Inability to react can break even best team and guaranteed defeat.

To be continued.

Zwei

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World Building, part 2

Oct 22, 15:47

Okay, we have rough world map and we got all those pesky technical stuff like average temperature of desert of death right.

That would make interesting map for exploration and whatnot, but it is somewhat empty … there are no people.

Here comes second step: Again, we will play games (weeee!). We want to simulate “History” of world now, so there is no better choice that game from civilization series or its free clone.

How it is played is obvious: Load up map editor and replicate map you got from sim earth, place resources and starter cities. You want to watch so put playable faction on some far away island (possibly surrounded by impenetrable mountains) and cheat to get techs that will allow you to watch everything (i.e Satellites), take notes :).

You will eventually end up with more than enough background lore for your world.

Inspiration here is obvious: Generate world and get it right. Imagine MMO where each server would be unique and would have rich, detailed history. Imagine one-man show MMO where hours of new, unique, content consisting of new continent filled with towns, kingdoms, npcs and quests, unique items, maybe even skills and monsters. All added “simply” by clicking button.

Zwei

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