Reclaiming the Time

What a week it has been. Path finding on multiple levels has become a success, giving Aeges Road a 3d-ish feel. There is also a bit of AI programmed now which allows a character to wonder somewhat predictably. There are several next steps I had planned to work on, but needed to make some serious decisions before doing any more scripting. While making these decisions, reviewing past progress, and re-enrolling for college, reality has sunk in.

After some implementations I have come to realize (and somewhat anticipated) that the time is not available to accomplish all of the goals set by the design document. So, in order to reclaim the ability to finish, many things are being scaled down. My once 19 character professions has been narrowed down to 9. While I have almost as many skills, they are no longer the juggling act they were trying to balance them out to 19. The stats have not changed, and luckily, my once completed character creation system just needs some minor modifications to reflect the changes.



I have been wanting to post more screenshots of what I have been doing, so here they are. This first one shows the height values of the isometric terrain. A full height change takes a value of 2, making a change of one a half change that is traversed differently in path finding. I want to make the transition of a half change a hop, but have not gotten around to it yet.




This is the original profession tree screen within the original idea of the character screen. While I was happy with how it was beginning to look, I wanted a different look and ultimately dropped the entire idea. However, being the pack rat I am, I kept an entire copy of this in case I decide to make a darker themed game in which this would be appropriate.




Aeges Road 2 may feature all of these professions, but for the sake of completion, they have been narrowed down to this. This is also getting very close to the look and feel I want to accomplish. I always like the Secret of Mana style menus that would swirl around the players head, and loved the way Cronotrigger traversed the different character screens. I have tried to perform a mix of the two with a bright theme to get something that should capture the personality I want this game to have.




And this last one is a just a quick traversal demo I made of the base stats in no particular order. Since skill development is directly linked to professional choice, I made sure to keep the options open on the base stats. While each profession will experience different costs to increase on each stat, any stat will be affordable at any level with any profession.

Sure, there are a lot of features I would like to see, but I would much rather see them in the next release than to push release back too far or to fail to release. I am actually quite happy with the results. My design document is now more complete than ever, and by next weekend I hope to have a design document that is truly ready for moving forward into a more productive development cycle.