What is Aeges Road

I have recently realized just how vague I have been with the game play on the blog. Months ago game play was still in testing and still is to a point. However, at this point only the finer points are still in debate and the game play is pretty well locked in. There was also heavy experimentation and learning in the graphics department. I am no artist, so a lot of my early work was discarded. There were lots of screen shots early on because I was trying to discover whether I could pull off my vision or if I needed to shift gears before it was too late. Luckily, I got close enough with the art.

Of course, Aeges Road is an RPG. I doubt that I have been as experimental as I think I have with game play, but a lot of focus was put on bringing a lot of elements together into a game that I really felt needed to be build. I enjoy old school cRPG's probably more than the new ones. I also enjoy many of the JRPG's, both old school and new.

JRPG's to me always had the deeper story and graphics that were more to my taste. They also had a clever approach to humor and character development as things unfolded in the story. If they were books, you couldn't hardly wait to see what happened on the next page.

The old school PC RPG's that I really enjoyed were very flexible. I got to handle stat and skill increments as I leveled up. I really enjoyed the depth and complexity of these games. These were games that it was very easy to screw up a character and wind up hopelessly stuck. The risks and chances involved in level up decisions were very exiting and added to the game play.

The problem with old school game play is that it really has to be a great game to hook someone. So for Aeges Road, I wanted to step away from some of the more extreme complexities, but still have those elements in there. In turn, I have added a few complexities to the combat engine.

Combat is done in a turn based fashion, but is dependent on time like

most of the latter turn based RPG's. The more you do during a combat turn, the longer you wait for your next turn. So if you move and attack, you will wait longer than if you just attacked. Of course, it works the same for the enemy. So the idea is for the player to learn to leverage this and other combat rules to their advantage.

Combat is done tactically on a grid and based on range. There are many different attacks and manipulations that allow multiple hits and a variety of effects. Enemy movement happens fairly quickly, but there is enough pause between decisions for the player to be able to keep up with what is happening. I think this is important for the player, it helps with strategy.

This game is party based, with three main characters. Members of the party who go down during combat will be revived with 1 hit point following combat. If the entire party dies nothing is truly lost except a little progress. All experience, gold, and items are kept, including what was earned during the combat you were defeated in. Only during the beginning of the game can a game over situation occur. I have made this period very brief so the player can get into the more complex parts of the game very quickly.

Dialog is going to be mostly static. The main point of the dialog is to unfold the story and build the characters. There will choices in the game, some that make a difference and some that do very little. It really depends on the NPC.

The stats in the game are handled through class choices. Each class has certain stats that are increased with each level. Multi-classing is encouraged and uninhibited. If you want a Warrior/Rogue/Monk/Priest/Druid/Knight/Assassin/Ranger/Paladin be my guest. I can't guarantee it would be a good combination, but the option is open to you.

Skills are free-form. Any class can raise any skill, though there are extra

bonuses that match back to class choices. For instance, a Warrior can become quite good at Nature Manipulation, but will not be as powerful with Nature Manipulation as a Druid with the same Nature Manipulation skill level. There are also resistance bonuses that can be effected likewise.

Ranged weapons have a greater basic attack range than manipulations. However, certain manipulations have a damage effect range that extend farther than ranged weapons. These wide ranges are usually weaker, especially in the lower level manipulations.

Inventory is slightly sorted to simplify management. Armor and equipment were kept simple for this game. There is a weapon slot, shield slot, helmet slot, and armor slot. All three pieces of equipment are modifiable via gems. The number of gems depends on the equipment, and the effects vary.

There is currently not a release date set, but my guess would be late summer or early fall of 2008. Very little programming is left to do. Most of the work left is artwork and content. The final game should be about 20-40 hours of gameplay and for sale here on this site and hopefully from other affiliates.

Finally time to show off a bit of what I've been doing. The screen shot here is a soon to be finished starter dungeon. I got sidetracked yesterday trying to finalize dialogs and didn't get any level design done. I did get a few small frameworks for level design finished though. Dialogs were working at one point yesterday until I decided I wanted there to work another way. Then I decided I needed multiple types of dialogs so I got the old one back to working and started working on another. Hopefully today I will get to put some actual gaming script into actual dialogs to kick off the first level of the game.

As evident, there isn't a lot of decoration, I haven't had time to draw object level decorations yet. Also, the character is just a template, I haven't gotten the main characters drawn yet. There is just too much to do, and I want enough playable content done by the middle of February so I can work out what I consider a few alpha level bugs before March testing begins. Once this is done, I will begin designing the main characters. I do however have a few simple monsters on the way, it gets old battling the clones. I mean, c'mon, I put a sword blank in the blank guys hand, what more could you want. :-)

Aeges Road, Paving the Way

This week has been slooooow. It has been mostly back to the graphics which takes up a lot more time than programming, at least for me. Outdoor graphics have been my main focus until this week when I began working on some dungeon tiles in order to start work on the first level of the game. With the exemption of the main fringe set I just started modeling the starter dungeon a few hours ago. So this next week I will most likely be showing off a few shots of some finished levels minus full character art and dialog.

Dialog is going to be a crash course I take later this week. My thoughts on the subject were to skip creating a frame work and just use the overly simplified event framework currently in place. Hopefully I will be able to just script dialog for each level via a few simple function calls. Sounds great in theory, and at this point I have to get moving on content or I am not going to make the deadline. :-)

I also got to do a bit of programming this week. I mostly just spent a few hours trying to clean up the path that the path finder returns. For some reason there is a hick-up on the first tile searched, then it all smooths out. This last bug in path finding is going to have to wait for beta testing, at least it's stable. Now I just have to find some time to do this illusive website and get a forum going. Oh, and just a side note, I think I am going to try and offer a fully graphical strategy guide on pdf for this game.

One more side note for kicks, here is an emotional representation of where Aeges Road and I currently stand.

Music: 50% disgraceful

Programming: 20% of non-grey hair lost

Graphics: 80% frustrated and 60% humiliated

Storyline: 70% contradictory with a slight hint of ignorance to my own story

Website: 100% in denial of it's almost complete lack of existance

Overall: I am about 90% done with this project (cough) :-)

Aeges Road Weekly Update

While Aeges Road hit a few roadblocks this week, some good progress was made all around. Most of my troubles came from a recent TGB upgrade. I was still using some deprecated functions calls and so on. Almost all of my programming right now is either simple content, tweaks, or bug fixes.

Among the new content, the locks mini game is mostly working. The biggest part of my time has been spent making animations for the locking mechanisms. There are a couple more mechanisms that need animations, and I also need to tie it in with the character skills.

Dialogs are still in development. I have the template and artwork finished, so it looks good on screen, it's just absolutely worthless right now. This is what I was working on before I got annoyed with some old bugs and started tweaking on the path finding system. It's still not perfect, but it is slowly coming around and it hasn't caused a crash in weeks. Perfect paths might be game patch #3. :-)

Level transitions and auto saving now works. I even have a temporary version of game keys working so the game can keep up with who has talked to who and what creatures have been killed. I have to say, it is nice to play test on multiple levels.

Aeges Road's First Weekly Update of 2008

I hope everyone had a good holiday season. I enjoyed myself. My only regret is that it was so busy that I was unable to complete a milestone I had hoped to hit on the first. Fortunately, I have found some time this week, and might finish it up shortly. The crunch right now is that I return to college work next week, and need to get as much done as possible. Luckily, this new class has not been as difficult as my last, and I was able to work on Aeges Road.

Aeges Road is almost in a fully playable state. It doesn't look very pretty, but that will come. Combat is nearly complete, I recently disabled the enemies attacking me so I could balance out some stuff. These last two weeks have been very exciting for me. I have been working on this game in chunks, so all the combat has been based souly on base stats and pre-programmed attacks. This is actually the second time I have written combat for the game, the first write was unbalanced and almost impossible to make quick adjustments. The new combat code is much cleaner, and I have been tweeking it for the last few days.

I have also been working on gui's for the game since the contest began. I have developed four different gui's for stats and skills, and two inventory gui's. There were also other odd gui's I played with, either to test out TGB or I don't know, it's been too long, but the codes still there. :-) I finally got the inventory system working either in late November or early December. It wasn't until this last weekend that I finally got equipment tied in with the stats system and the combat system. It was very exciting, and quickly showed me a few problems that have since been eliminated.

Yesterday was also an exciting day. For the first time since the contest began, I have a skills gui and it is tied in with the stats and combat system. On paper, it was difficult to see how well skills, stats, and equipment would work together with balance. It was pretty lame at first, but with about 3 hours of playing around with it, it seems to be pretty well balanced. While there are still a few odds and ends skills to tie in to their system it shouldn't take too long to tie off loose ends. One loose end was the locks and traps mini game, but I had a brainstorm last night that fixed an idea I have had for a long time. This weekend I hope to start on and complete the locks and traps system. The idea is very simple, and will make obvious that fact that I am a fan of David Bradley's games. I thought about posting concept art, but I would rather just post a screenshot of it in action. The graphics should be pretty simple for it.