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 :)

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.

Getting Things Done vs Getting Things Decided

Well, I guess it's time to make a report of what has progressed since my last post. I have been working on both graphics and the stats system. So far, I have a fully working character creation screen, still needs some UI tweaks and character graphics, but for now, done. I have had to add one stat since turning in my design doc, and made a few other changes as I began to realize just how boring the system plan was. I discussed it on another blog, http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/ and felt pretty good afterwards about the consequences of a design doc change.

The biggest change was going from having no character professions, to having 19 character professions. While I still have not finished balancing each class, I have gotten the starting 3 professions like I want them for creation and level up. I am very excited by what I was able to achieve, and a friend of mine told me that he had never seen a class tree quite like this one, so I hope it might be different enough just to have the appearance of being something new. :-) That would be cool!

Unfortunately, this is the only thing I have made fully functional. I have made a semi-working inventory and equipment system, a semi working level up system, a semi working character screen, and 3 partial test levels with 3 different partial sets of test graphic styles that I have been working on. I also have one character semi-finished on paper, she still needs some work, but I am getting closer. Art was not my strong suit, but hopefully my hands and eyes will quickly learn to get along better. I have been drawing characters out of how-to books for the good part of a month in my free time.

There are two new graphics applications that I am testing out right now that may speed graphics development considerably. If I decide to use them I will be posting them soon. They both have free versions, but I would want to use the updated commercial versions if I use them for the game.

History

OK, I have missed a few days posting, I am trying to get this game planned out. For several weeks this blog will probably not get daily updates. Any how, here is the history behind my upcoming game.

The Shree were an ancient culture of unknown origin. Unlike humans who are carbon based, the shree are purely water based. They have no initial form so they usually take on a similar likeness to the creatures around them, they said it made social acceptance a much smoother process. It wasn't long until the humans and the shree forged a common bond and worked together.

As time passed, a long drought took the land, and both shree and human life were in danger. The shree needed fresh water to lay their eggs, and the humans just needed fresh water. An idea was suggested and work began. A plan to turn salt water into fresh water and channel it inland.

Much of the land near the sea had been reduced to dessert, so the first part of the plan was simple. They needed a shallow flow of water downward for several miles in order to sift out some of the salt. This area soon became known as the Dead Flats. An army of humans gave their lives in the process of digging this massive shallow river.

While the humans were working on the river, the shree were busy constructing an underground cavern. The cavern was covered in an undead organism much like coral. The coral would quite literally eat the salt out of the water. The water would then flow through various caverns until it landed in one of many hot pockets, in which the water was heated and shot to the surface. Together they had saved the land, but something did not feel right.

Things changed. Gem stones would now fuse with their wielders giving them power to manipulate matter it self. The shree had spoken of this before, but humans had lacked the capability, until now. And now that the quest for water was over, the quest for power soon began.

Mining sites cropped up all over. Huge gem stone rushes and clan wars were breaking out everywhere. The shree along with several human clans were forced to play the part of the peace keeper, but not with much success. Two civilizations were forged and immediately went into war with the powers of the gem stones before them. The Western Civilization was beginning to crumble when an unknown wizard showed up with a solution derived from some very special stones none had seen before. These stones proved powerful, and the East was soon crushed. But that was only the beginning.

The wizard had discovered that fresh water shree eggs would crystallize when salt was introduced to their water source, making powerful new gems called coral stones. He had ordered shree eggs stolen from their nests and brought to his lab for processing. This angered the shree and another war broke out. The shree fought only long enough to reclaim all of the coral stones, and with the help of a small group of people led by a young woman named Aeges, they forged a new realm and sealed themselves away from the humans. They did however leave a key, Aeges Song. Only Aeges singing this song could break the seal to the realm of the shree.

When the wizard heard of this, he devised a plan. He tricked Aeges and her husband into entering a dimension he had created for the sake of preserving their lives for all time. Upon entering Aeges was turned to evil and her husband was left trapped there for all eternity. The wizard wisped Aeges away to the sealed gate, but her song failed to open the gate. When the wizard corrupted Aeges, the song was corrupted along with her. She nor the wizard were ever heard from again.

The Programmers Art

I know for me as a programmer, I have always wanted to develop large video games. The problem has always been the fear of having to do my own art. For this reason I have spent a few years programming more along the lines of business applications, but the barrier is slowly dissolving.

Artwork has always been hit and miss for me. Some days I seem to do decent, and others it seems I should never insult the paper again. :-) Of course these are the same frustrations a person goes through with any new thing they are learning. Anime and Manga have long been a favorite art style for me, and I have tinkered with them before, but never to the degree of diving into them for a productive purpose.

I have looked for software to simplify some of this, but none of it seems to fit my needs. I would love to become a good artist, but find myself lacking the time to truly master the art. I can draw some semi-decent characters, but they fail to look the same from drawing to drawing. If anyone else has found successful techniques in anime and manga style art, I would love to hear suggestions from you.

My Game in a Year Entry, Aeges Road

A Little About the Game

With a very busy schedule, there is little hope that this will be done in a year, but a little hope out ways no hope by refusing to try. Personally, I have found that deadlines imposed upon me, motivate me. My first imposed project was a small desktop application contract. It took a while, but persistence brought it to completion, and taught me a lot along the way. I was also able to finish two small games in a months time for the 2007 4k Java competition at http://www.javaunlimited.net.

With my newly imposed deadline Aeges Road, a turn based rpg, is the intended outcome. Aeges Road is going to feature a hybrid approach to the turn based battle system. None of it looks truly revolutionary, but rather a new spin on many theories surrounding turn based rpg combat. My goal is not to be revolutionary, but rather to bring forward a game that is both fun and intriguing. Too simple a combat and stats system will bore a veteran RPG player while making it too difficult will scare away the new comers. It is important that I find that fine line between a fun game, and a game you can't wait to play again.

I have purchased Torque Game Builder for the game, and am currently working on it in linux since I already have compilers set up. I have been a Java programmer for the last 2 or 3 years, so I am very rusty on C/C++. In fact, the name Code Ugly was inspired by my attempts to brush up on C/C++. Good thing too, my previous web hosting service quite literally, and quite legally stole my old domain which I had owned for a total of 3 years and built a small business on, so watch out for leased domain names when you sign on with a web host.

A Little History

Ever since I was a kid, I have dreamed of making video games. I was mesmerized by my first gaming console, the Atari 2600. I started out with three games, Jungle Hunt, Donkey Kong Jr, and Joust. Soon after getting my feet wet with the Atari, I had a chance to watch a friend of mine play The Legend of Zelda on his Nintendo (he had the robot too). That game sparked an interest in me, and in the fourth grade I began designing game levels on wide ruled with a No. 2 graphite when I was supposed to be doing my homework. Not much has changed. :-)

When I turned 15, I was finally introduced to the game that would change my view of video gaming forever, Final Fantasy 3. I had never played an RPG before, I had seen them and they looked boring. No dancing mushrooms to jump on, no aliens to shoot, nothing. Well, as the story began to develop the hook sank deeper. The game play may not have been reflexive, but it was addictive, and the level growth added to the excitement. We played the game into the late hours of the next afternoon, could not go to sleep, and still today, an RPG will turn my wallet inside out faster than any other genre.

As we played more games, we got the urge to try and develop a game. We had some success, but we all got bored, and none of us were great artists, least of all me. Two of us could code C++, but not to the extreme of designing and bringing together an entire graphics and gaming environment. We eventually adjusted to mostly talking about making a game with little progress toward a final project (yes, I am very guilty). School caught up with us, and we eventually parted ways on the game design frontier.