New Web Site Under Way!!!

Code Ugly has just underwent a web redesign. I started last night and the visuals and the static pages are up. The old site was slow and constructed in an older version of rails, the new site makes use of the 2.0 standards. It is much faster, and looks much better, go check it out. 

Rather than design my own template, for once I did myself a favor and modified an existing template. The excellent template I used was from Free CSS Templates. I plan on modifying the old forum and integrating a blog and news feeds along with it. If I fail I fail, but this is the plan as of now. :)

Inventory and Hexes

This last month has slowly brought some new features up for display in the Aeges Project. As stated in one of my previous blogs, I have put the inventory on a grid as you can see the screen shot below. A little bit of work has been put into implementing day and night, as well as keeping track of days. There is also good improvement in foilage and the level is building really nicely right now which brings me to my next item checked off the list.

I am a constant tester and tweaker, so after building two full 'basic' levels and performance maintained, I decided to try doing a single level. With a little partitioning of spaces things seem to be going well. I didn't any dynamic level loaded like I had planed, but rather I load the entire scene, and let each object add itself into its partitioned space. So far it functions almost as well as the individual layers, and still loads almost as fast. Right now on my MacBook I am getting a 4 second load time, while on my old 1.3Ghz I am getting a 10 second level load time.

Finally, the current project is somewhat undoing a change I made. I made the comment that I was going off the grid, and now I half repent of that decision. Exploration feels a lot better with free movement and not being tied to a grid, but tactical combat was suffering from a lot of silliness because of it. So now, when combat starts the players are aligned to the nearest grid and kept on the grid for the duration of the skirmish.

My biggest gripe with the isometric 2:1 grid for combat was range. Range was always fairly clumsy and the results were a bit unreal, especially when attaching to the East or West. So after playing around with some planning software I decided that a hex grid would be ideal and I could use it with all existing artwork with exception to doors. The results seem to be much more consistent. Beyond this, just more of the same. :)

The Contest is Over

It finally happened, the contest ended. The end result was very fair, I did not win nor was I expecting too. I had far to much on my plate with far too much to learn, and my community efforts were lax and ineffective. The winner did a great job during the contest and ran his project very professionally. You can go check out the winning entry and congratulate him here.  

I was holding off on doing a lot of things until the contest ended, but wound up doing most of it anyway because it was taking so long and I was loosing months worth of work. I seriously needed a name change to separate the project as it is from the project as it was during beta. Beta was rushed due to the contest schedule, and it was terrible. It had a few redeemable features and was based on a good idea, but the implementation was simply terrible. Quite frankly, I am glad I did a terrible release because I have learned a lot about game development through it, and through a lot of trial and error I have found things that work and don't work.

Now that I have messed up royally, I have been laboring many hours to bring those few redeeming elements into a new system with a much improved gameplay. By the first of next year I hope to be releasing an alpha ready for testing. Artwork is still suffering a bit right now, but I have taken many steps including buying new software and going through art lessons. I can already tell a difference and things are steadily improving. 

Finally, Aeges Road is now code named the Aeges Road Project, and will be formerly named when the beta comes out. I like the new name much better and the storyline has lost those convenient little unknowns that leave far too much unanswered. 

PS. Anyone got any ideas on community building? This is my weakest point in the process, and ideas would be greatly appreciated. (I am technically an internet hermit :)

Aeges Road, Dialog, Inventory, Shopping, and Change

This really isn't new news. I have severely altered Aeges Road until it is but a remnant of its former self (as seen on beta testing). Everything from simple movement to combat has been either modified or completely changed. Aeges Road also has some new additions that really have me excited. 

Dialog is something I was working on last week, and all I have left to do is make the interface look nice. I was going to do a comic dialog to avoid having to draw portraits for each character, but now I am content on just drawing the portraits and taking the dialog interface in a new direction. 

I was also only planing on doing simple JRPG dialogs, until I read an article that reminded me how much fun I had with the dialogs in Star Trail and Ultima 7. I have basically hybridized the two interfaces and took the elements I felt would be a good fit for the game. I scripted two main NPC's using the new dialog system and the results are solid, simple, and impressive. I am not placing screenshots because it is a hideous sight right now. 

Once I was done with dialog, there was another item of business to take care of, shopping. I am excited to announce that shopping is now fully functional. It has a nice barter system that makes buying and selling both interactive and stat based.  I am still tweaking the stat basis a little right now, but the possibility of making a profit at the store front is a real possibility right now. 

In the process of doing the store front, I faced my biggest gripe with Aeges Road, stripped the inventory screen out completely, and replaced it with a grid based inventory system. The inventory system itself is fully functional, it just needs some layout improvements. My biggest mistake in the previous design was in trying to put everything into one interface, this interface is strictly for inventory. 

Now that the TODO list is minus two big items, (and all in two weeks time) I have added a few TODO's to replace some current TODO's that just never fully developed into the creature that they needed to be. A class based system has been replaced with a skill based system that awards titles for your choices. I plan on making some quick creation buttons for three basic class types, but leaving the character fully editable afterwards for further tweaking. 

Finally, Aeges Road might not be Aeges Road any more. I have another title in mind, as well as a different angle on the basic story that brings some elements of the existing story into a much clearer context. I have not finalized this decision, but I feel that it is the right move. I will be much closer to a release before I officially announce one way or the other.

Torches, Pitchforks, Action

I couldn't help myself, I kept looking at the dungeons I was developing and never could find myself pleased with the results. So I made a workable solution on lighting for dungeons and caves to give it a bit more atmosphere. I have been pleased so far with the results and continue to tweak the effects and art. 

I have also changed the way walls fade for visibility. Rather than just a fade, I have a different image frame I change to when the characters angle from the walls sort point is greater than the upward angle of the isometric wall. The doors are now the only fading visual obstructions in the scene. This should make combat a little more clear cut.

I would ramble on a bit more, but I have three kids circling me and I can't keep my concentration right now. :-)

The Ugly Project

For more than a year now I have been designing and developing an RPG built on Torque Game Builder from Garage Games. That year was very educational, a lot of things happened, and the project was managed poorly due to time constraints. Things are beginning to change.

The game is still in development big time. The biggest change right now is the push and focus of the game. I have changed the game a lot under the hood these last few months, and have only a few frameworks left to build. Since I am going solo on this project, I try to balance and debug as I go. So I am still finishing the last bit of the combat balance and attacks. By next month I should be knee deep in improving NPC behavior and building a good dialog framework to work alongside the existing one.

So, here are a few screenshots. Yes, artwork is still lacking, but it is coming. A

s you can see, all the characters stay on the screen full time now. I have wanted this for quite some time, but was unsure on how to go about it. Another feature I originally wanted but was unable to debug properly was free movement. For about two months now tile by tile movement has been canned in favor of free movement with distance based combat.

Aeges Road: Another Update

I don't think too many people are still reading this, but I am trying to keep a little bit of information floating around while I work to get this project complete. There is a lot going on right now, but I am not going to talk about much of it until I am a little closer to the finish line. At this point, I am just about to finish up the combat part of gameplay. Today I have been working hard programming all the attacks and manipulations that will be available throughout the game. I still have 13 attacks left to go and the functionality of the combat engine will be more or less complete.

Once this is done, I am either going to tweak the AI a bit or start working on NPC interaction. The AI tweaks I am planning are pretty simple. I am essentially doing away with path finding, and moving more towards a hide and seek approach of searching. Path finding worked well, too well. After a while, the AI just seemed too smart to be realistic. By dumbing it down and making it try harder to figure things out, I think it will have a more realistic feel that will lend itself better to role playing. I'll leave the insane AI up to the XCom guys. :)

NPC interaction is going to be a conglomeration of ideas. I was originally going to do a simple Final Fantasy style dialog and run the story very linear, but things have changed. Right after the contest was over I began playing Fallout and Star Trail on dosbox. Fallout got me to thinking about open ended storylines, and with a nudge from this article at Iron Tower Studio I really started to play with the conversation system in Star Trail. My pen is still on the paper planning, but I think the story is going to be much more open ended, and the dialog system is most likely going to be a simplified keyword system. I will talk about this more when I know more myself.

Oh, I almost forgot. Several weeks ago I got doors working. I want to post screens, but I set up a goal to reach before I did this. I also got the scouting skill into operation, and it is working very fluidly with the environment. I had a really cool manipulation done, but due to a major change that I am just dying to talk about, it is on my todo list once again.