OK, after doing a ton of AI work in the old Aeges Road I was thrown a curve that just said opportunity. I had been trying to save up for and justify Unity3d for over a year or so, but hadn’t quite convinced myself that I could finish a game any faster in 3d rather than sticking with 2d isometric. Development speed has yet to see an increase, but art speed is amazingly faster, one of the major hang-ups with the original Aeges Road demo. So I am going to introduce the game and show a few early screenshots of this revamped RPG/SRPG hybrid.

The Visual Stuff

In the editor

This first shot is just an editor shot showing a bit of the progress so far. This is my first time actually working with C# and I was pleasantly surprised at just how java-like this language is. I am also doing a few of the scripts in javascript which breaks up the monotony a bit. But I have spent only half my time scripting, and most of it playing with art to come up with this style of level design. If I were doing this in 2d, and this is in no way an insult to my former engine, I would have never gotten it to look like this without hiring an artist. The art reality of this project is what basically sent me looking for another project to complete in the first place, but art has been easy so far in 3d.

Approaching a bunch of angry looking pinkies.

I debated a bit, and tested both perspective and orthographic projections for the game. If anyone has ever followed any of my development blogs you will know I prefer a 2d style of graphics and game play, so naturally I found orthographic to be more appealing for my purposes. I also played around a bit with some detail mapping, but none of it has fit with the overall graphics scheme yet. Another complaint I commonly have in 3d games is the amount of work a camera makes you do in order to play the game in a 3rd person perspective. So rather than leaving the camera free, I did something similar to Final Fantasy Tactics and Jeane De Arc, and gave the camera 4 snap positions rotating around the characters. There are a few areas in a map where this is not good enough, so I also added some “peek” functionality where you can sort-of peek around the corner.

Peeking around the corner

I still do not have a fully animated character, only 8-13 animations exist so far and I am currently trying to finish the design doc before adding the final animations and creating more characters. I am using Cheetah 3d so character animations are a breeze right now. I tried IK’s once, and liked them to a point, but I was constantly spending hours ironing out the fine details of joint constraints just to watch two identical joints behave completely different. It was too much for my brain, so I decided to go back again and animate them using simple keyframing. A lot of these animations already existed, and I was able to add two swimming animations in less than 20 minutes. In my first rough level design test I did have swimming, I just haven’t designed a water area yet in the new design style.

Shot showing combat grid.

Finally on the art side of things, I got the grid projection working. I am still trying to refine the look, but if history repeats itself I will be doing this until I ship the product. But I have noticed playing games that a grid is hard to mess up visually. Usually the biggest complaints of a grid is that it gives too little feedback on attacks and movement. While I don’t plan on making pretty little arrows that show the path chosen, I do plan on highlighting ranges and effect areas. Highlighting, range finding, and path finding are coming up real soon on the todo list. There is also the topic of slopes, and the debate on whether or not the characters should be able to jump off cliffs or not. Personally I would like to tighten up movement and reject death defying stunts, but then I get into the debate of jumping onto things being a cool exploration element. I imagine I would be better off waiting until after I have play tested combat and exploration before making a final decision.

Fun With Math

Early graphics

RPG rules are a lot of fun to play with. I have several design docs where all I have done is play with stats and rules. The original Aeges Road rule set was a bit hard to test and design. What it lacked was an easy way to write things out then go hack it out, and it used a very advanced TOHIT/Defense forumla that was hard to balance and made huge gaps in stat levels and gameplay. So, every since the game in a year contest ended, I have been studying PnP rules from several different systems and looking into ways of making my game PnP accessible. Now, if I am not missing a design doc, this game marks my fourth stab at a PnP RPG system. Each time I learn something and I have been trying to boil it all down into something that is just as simple as it is advanced.

Earily swim graphics.

On my first stab I just went free for all. No hard rules, just something I could test paper. This game never balanced out. The second game I decided to do in a GURPs mentality and only use 6 sided dice. It almost balanced, and the third set of rules was more or less a major revision of the second. But the third set of rules didn’t really work with this project, but worked well with a modern combat RPG I had partially wrote up a year ago, so it actually found a home.

Finally, the fourth PnP set, still in development, is based on a single D6. No roll at any point in this game should ever need anthing but a single D6. I am sure this has been done somewhere, and really it is not that stellar an idea, just a natural evolution sort of thing. I am sure D&D players are all saying “Hell No” right now, but the ease of development this affords me is gold.

Sample weapon and damage

The idea for damage is quite simple. Each weapon has a set number of attacks available for it. Each type of attack has 6 different summed damages based on the extent of a dice roll minus the stat level below proficiency. Armor is quite the same, with the exception that padding is not summed up, it rolls to static values. For those who simply want the quick basics, it is as simple as 6-14 damage, and for those who want to get into the details and risk management there are plenty of numbers to crunch. I might also abstract weapons from attack types in order to offer more flexibility and faster development. It might also be fun to abstract special attack types to skills or perks.

Other Projects

I did a long post because it may be a while before I post another. There are a few other projects I am trying to co-develope. One is finally getting around to marketting my iPhone game. The game release was chaotic and due to the appstores sporatic approval system my game immediately started at the bottom of the pile effictively killing my original marketting plan. I am also job hunting, so I have considered doing an AJAX version of my PnP system as part of my resume. Finally, I need to do something with this wordpress template. I like the look of the site, but I would rather customize it to look more like one of my old templates.