Sunday, May 31, 2015

Friday, May 22, 2015

Conversations

I spent some time implementing the ability to talk to NPC's along with the corresponding data structures. There's a bit more work to do to tie these into the game's plot but it's fairly straightforward.


Saturday, May 9, 2015

Back from hiatus

I've been on a Burning Plague hiatus and was working on another go-nowhere project which was effectively a Goblin Camp clone, which was itself a Dwarf Fortress clone. If you're interested in what I was doing there then you can take a look at my progress in this thread in the Bay 12 forums: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=147372

But, I plan on being back working on this project again for a while after I burnt out on it last year.


Saturday, March 15, 2014

Fida'i - Completed 7DRL

The finished game can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/fidairl/





Today was a relaxed day where I finished a few things to do with the visual pre
sentation of a couple of elements of the game and spent a bit of time trying to do what checks I could for terrible game-breaking bugs. I squashed a few of them and no doubt there are a few more left, but all in all it seems to be working well. 

I've got about 7 hours left so if someone finds any bugs, please let me know asap!!!!!

Fida'i - End of day six



Today was a day of bug fixing AI and attack routines. I also put in caltrops in the quickest and dirtiest fashion possible so you can throw these in front of your enemies to hamper their movement speed. I also worked on a few aspects of the UI like the menus and the information in the help screens, along with playing around with balance.

I think I'm just about done with a day to spare. I'll work on prettying up my main menu screen tomorrow along with a final victory screen and once I've got that done I'll package it all up with an executable and get it uploaded.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Fida'i - End of day five

Today is the day that my game transitioned from tech demo to actual legitimate game.



Gone is the debug mode showing the whole map and what's left is the claustrophobic field-of-view cone which means that the player needs to turn behind them to see if the enemy lurking up nearby is a threat or not.

The introduction of a narrative was the critical change from a bunch of stealth encounters which didn't mean anything. You are asked to perform a series of missions with just a handful of tools and whatever you can find in the town around you. There's a bunch of different ways to go about it - dumb luck, hoping that you'll find your target unguarded and unaware; all out aggression, hoping that you can win a fight where the numbers might potentially turn against you dramatically; luring away bodyguards from your goal to take out brutally; or better yet, luring your target away from his servants so that he can be dispatched without incident.

Neutral people become hostile if they see you do something evil, so if you're not careful then the rest of the town will quickly become gripped by panic, and that's particularly relevant as you try and escape the town to get to safety and your next mission. You can't access your secret escape route while being seen by a hostile person, so you'll find yourself either hoping to not be seen, or trying to shake a pursuer, or maybe even making creative use of smoke bombs for a dramatic and mysterious exit.

What's left is polish with respect to title, help, and inventory screens. I actually plan on putting a fair bit of detail into the help system because without knowing what the game is all about then it would play like a horrificly difficult death simulator as players try to melee bash their way directly through all fights.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Fida'i - End of day four

This was a day where I got a fair bit done but not as much as I'd like as I became bogged down in technical AI issues and other bugs which popped up along the way, not to mention having to hold down a real job in between somehow.


The practical and interesting things was the finalising of the bodyguard AI so that they pathfind after your assassination target and which means that they're a constant threat while you're trying to close in to make the kill.

But I spent a bit of time while on the AI of those guards implementing the simple sounding 'gold coin' item. This is an object which for some reason is ignored by the ordinary townsfolk, but anyone who is tasked with guarding the town or a person simply can't resist walking over and picking one up when they see it. So you can throw a coin and try and lure your target over to it and hopefully away from the bodyguards. Or throw it in front of the bodyguards and hopefully they'll take the distraction leaving their charge alone. That's combined with the stone item for distracting noises and the smoke bomb for cover ups or get aways to fill out the assassin's kit at this stage.

Also, the map is bigger and I implemented a whole bunch of new vaults to randomise the map in "wang tile" style. That's actually probably the most significant change but it was one which isn't all that interesting to  me because it was already programmed and just needed me to sit down and populate the data file.