Code Ugly

Revisiting the Graphics

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:37:00 +0000

I think I am starting to see some light at the end of this tunnel. Scripting is almost finished, programming could be done unless I decide to port some more scripts in, and level building is getting much easier and faster to the point that it finally feels like a typical workflow rather than poking a badger with a stick. With this much work under my belt I am running out of excuses to procrastinate re-modeling and re-animating the characters.

To the right you can see box man. His political appearance today is to signify our dedication to better character graphics for the Aeges Road Project. While I liked the old characters to a point, their bodies were more awkward than cute and they never seemed to animate well. My second attempt at a template body produced some decent animation, but it was still pretty lacking and didn't quite fit what I was looking. Finally, I decided to try some different 3D software and landed on Cheetah3D. I got Cheetah 3D on Sunday, just before I learned of my website trouble, did a few tutorials then started on boxman who will soon become my character template. The new software has made editing much easier and it has yet to really try my patients. I have actually found myself enjoying modeling and animating for a change.

As for the goal of the graphic, I am still pretty intent on giving it a bit of an anime tone. I am going a bit more realistic than last time, but the deformities are still there and hopefully will come across much better than the last time.

I am also trying to save myself steps and time where ever I can, so rather than model then animate, I decided to do an abstract, animate, then model and tweak the animation afterward. From there I hope to create a male and female template the several humanoid templates such as werewolf or goblin. If my fingers are crossed just right, I many only have to do a handful of new animations from scratch after I finish box man. So far box man can walk, run, wave, and beat me in every staring contest.

Experiencing Technical Difficulties, Please Stand By

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:32:00 +0000

If you are looking of the actual web site it is there but the server isn't completely configured yet. Sunday I got an email stating that my host had changed my server. I did part of the reconfiguration Sunday night and it will most likely be this weekend or next weekend before I bring it back up. Depending upon how much trouble this, I may recant my plan to consolidate everything in rails until a time when I can work on this full time and not just in my spare time.

Another Light Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:46:00 +0000

The phrase, "There's nothing new under the sun" seems to be relevant in every area of life. I am finding RPG's to be no different. While new ideas are introduced to the genre, it is usually a hybridizing practice that is often times found offensive to the hardcore players. So while trying to breath new life into the RPG it is very easy to repulse people with your morning breath.

So the new (or rather altered) project is aimed toward a more mainstream audience. I am finding it is poor form to push JRPG elements into the genre, and while a few may carry over, I assure you it is being done as tastefully as possible. For instance, every character comes with a fixed class. However, your main characters class is more of an ability rather than a specialization. The other characters available to your party are more on the restrictive side as they have already chosen their paths long before you met them.

I am ready to spill details, but I am trying to hold myself back until I get the new site completed. Most of it is functional right now with a admin interface to boot, but there are still a few bugs remedy and some basic security needs to be implemented on the off chance someone does decide to be malicious. I thought it silly a small timer like me getting attacked once, but a few years ago my entire site was hijacked and changed. Good times. :)

New Web Site Under Way!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:03:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:06:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:47:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:14:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:49:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:06:00 +0000

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.

Aeges Road in July

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:22:00 +0000

I haven't posted in a while, and don't plan on keeping posts up every week until I near the end of development. Since the last post, a lot of things have changed, mainly with the level editor to help speed things up. I am currently back to building levels and content which will hopefully result in a good demo of Aeges Road within the next few months.

There are a few issues I will eventually need to work past on level loading. Some of the levels now take as much as 18 seconds to load. I have already profiled this and found the cause. It is some post-processing I do to some of the sprites that is slowing things down. So I am either going to move that code into C++, or I am going to backtrack to a compromised stance on path finding performance.

Aeges Road Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:02:00 +0000

Things are continuing mostly as usual. There was not a lot of feedback with Aeges Road so I put a few things on hold until the end of June when we here back from the judges. I might change things if I need to in order to make this a better game such as basic combat mechanics and mobility throughout the game. I am hoping the game is liked enough to avoid this though, but will take the criticism to heart.

I am also looking to change the level up scheme. I didn't even finalize it for the release because I knew the system still had its flaws. It works fine at lower levels, but the growth seems a bit large and gaps growth too much. Before my last revision, the profession determined base stat growth. I think I am returning to something similar.

The story line will not change. So story lining has been the main focus for the last few weeks. It is shaping up pretty well. It is very tempting toward the beginning to give away too much, so I have had to be careful not to this. It is also hard to do a proper build up to, and resolution of the end. I have found this to be the most difficult aspect of it all. Even with all the visions of how it should be, the story has to match up with the media.

Artwork is being improved. As I have said many times, I am no professional artist. I have been practicing and stumbling through this all year, and every now and then I feel like I am making some head way. Of course, I usually try to find programs that let me produce generated content, and just get picky with the results. I think a tree in Bryce once took me 3 hours. I had an image in my head, and I kept tweaking until it was a close resemblance.

Finally, I have been debating a HUD. I slapped some artwork together real quick and tested the look. I am going to leave it like this for a few months as I continue building, and see if I like it better. I don't know why I originally wanted to stay away from a HUD, but with combat, I found it to be the best solution rather than overhead health bars.

There are several more todo's that I don't even want to think about right now. I have truly flopped at community, but I have never really been much of a community oriented guy on the internet. So like Spongebob, I think I have finally gotten my shaky sea legs. :-) Despite what I said with my first post after the contest, I decided after a week that I should start frequenting other communities more and learn the ropes. :-)

Aeges Road Character Quest

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:10:00 +0000

In a constant attempt to get this RPG off the ground, I have been locked in an epic struggle with digital art. I have spent several weeks now reviewing other artists work and critiquing my own against theirs. It has been both educational and humbling. I also broke down and bought a Wacom tablet. It is among the most useful purchases I have made since starting this project.

So to get right down to what I am doing right now, I am undoing several shortcuts I took in order to deliver something by deadline. Of these shortcuts includes the character models. At first, the models were working great, until I tried to decorate them. That is when everything went downhill fast. I had built them wrong thinking I could save time using multiple segments, and essentially shot myself in the foot. I was also disappointed in many of the character animations. The short legs and arms really didn't bring things out in a visually appealing manner. So I scrapped the models and started from scratch, this time with better tools and more experience. The end result is much better. I am playing with animation cycles and working with the model in order to decide whether this is the keeper or not. I like the fact that the model is still cartoon deformed, yet has enough length to accent movement.

Here is a rendered model I have been scribbling over trying to get an idea for the final Illindey. I originally pictured her with a deep brown hair, but decided that green fit her profile a bit better. I also decided to go with a baggier clothing look, basically because I thought it looked cool.

So I suspect that for the next few weeks I will be scribbling on characters and fine tuning animations. I will also continue work on the storyline. The storyline is progressing rather nicely, and I am able to get full digital prototypes for dungeon floors very quickly now. I am debating working a few simple puzzles into the exploration once I get free of some other to-do's. I think once I get past working on character art, I will get doors rendered and functioning in the game. :-)

Games Have Attitude

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:42:00 +0000

It's been more years than I would like to admit. Hanging out with my friends, hacking on an old Packard Bell trying to get shareware games to work. I don't know whether it was a good thing or not, seeing as I wasted a lot of time on this one, but we got Doom to work. What made me think of this was an announcement at IGN about Doom 4 being in the works. Now I know Doom 3 caused quite a stir, but the spoon really didn't get into the cup with me. It was an excellent first person shooter, but something was missing.

Doom was an incredible game. Among the best FPS's ever made, and still to me a better game than most released today. Now I am far from a retro-only gamer, but there is just something to those old games that is lacking in most games today, and I think it is the attitude of the game. The face of the character said it all, especially when he picks up a chain saw. I know there is a story behind this game, but the attitude of, “I'm just here to kill something” would have been enough and is more or less the central theme.

I have not spent the time on the Ultima series that they deserve, but I have been impressed by everything I have seen of them. Ultima 7 especially, was the Curious George of video games. I don't think I got anything right in that game, and I had a blast. “Oh, a cannon, I should wait until the guard walks in front of it to see if its loaded.” It was as if everything in that game was just crying out to me, “go ahead, touch it, you know you want to.” Mischief was afoot, and the only thing that kept me from finishing that game were the glitches.

Finally, I want to touch on the JRPG scene of the SNES era. Some of the most brilliant story-based rpg's came from this genre. They were able to add that kooky attitude and still deliver a solid story. Final Fantasy 3(6) and Chrono Trigger were incredible and overshadowed a lot of other good games such as Lufia 2 that carried this feel.

I could go on for a while talking about Contra and Double Dragon and how the presentation just came across so well. Or how much fun I had playing River City Ransom with a friend, but hey, it has to end somewhere. The attitude of a game is an important concept. Attitudes and eccentrics make it easier to get into a character early on in the game. An attitude has been the driving force behind many games, past and present. Attitude might not be the most important concept in game design, but it can certainly add a pleasant flavor to the game.

Aeges Road, Outside the Box

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sat, 03 May 2008 13:33:00 +0000

It is amazing how different a person functions in and out of pressure. I handled the pressure of the contest deadlines poorly and made a lot of simple mistakes. All in all, I am glad I finished what I finished, and thanks to the timelines, I now have a stable base to continue development on.

Now, on to the heart of this post. As soon as I turned in the final deliverable I stepped back to try and figure out exactly what went wrong, and why I failed to finish what I felt was reasonable.

Mistake number one. I made too many platform switches. I spent the first month trying to get the community supported TGB working properly on linux with little success. After failing that, I finally made the upgrade from Windows 98 to XP (no more Fallout 2) and worked on it from there. It had been over 6 years since I worked with windows on a regular basis, and it took a while to break back in and find a productive workflow. Unfortunately, as the game got bigger, errors were harder to recover from, and I spent most of my time trying to reclaim the OS from runaways. I was finally able to afford one of my two platforms of choice (Mac, Linux) that was actually supported by TGB, and I was finally able to find myself truly productive on the project as the game went into alpha testing.

Mistake number two. I spent far too much time learning new technologies. I had never heard of torque until I saw this contest, and thought it was worth a go. Torque script wasn't too difficult to learn, it was just difficult to debug. I bought Torsion about halfway through the competition, and it greatly simplified things. Ruby on Rails is a web application frame work that I have wanted to use for a long time. It is an excellent framework, easy to learn, and surprised me by taking less time to learn than I expected. There are far too many graphics applications, and not enough art talent on my part to deliver a good judgement on viability. I reviewed too many, and got too little done. Finally, I am not an artist, and I am still learning art. This has chewed up a lot of time, and continues to chew through it.

Mistake number three. I allowed too many axis of influence to enter in to decision making. The more I read on RPG theory and expectations, the further I strayed from original design and story. This mistake compounded all my frustrations and made it very difficult to focus.

Getting Focussed (Again)

Ha ha, OK. Now that I am no longer trying to gauge time with task, I have begun to find my center on this project again. One of my big focuses on this project was story, something I failed to truly deliver in the demo. I only provided myself a rough outline, and worked up the first act. The first act was not complete because I did not have enough art content done to deliver properly, so I made the demo too basic in my opinion.

Another focus was on the style of the game. The style I wanted is difficult for me to describe, so here is my best attempt. I wanted to mix a jRPG with a western RPG. It is something I have wanted since I played Wizardry 7 and Realms of Arcania prior to Final Fantasy 3 (6) on the SNES. In my opinion, western RPGs offer better game play while jRPG's tend to deliver the superior story and character graphics that are more to my liking.

There were a few things that I wanted to see in the game, but I am taking a step back from them and getting a bit more traditional. Locks will no longer have a mini-game, just options based on stats. I want to get this game done soon, and my current game needs too much work to try and squeeze it in.

I am currently filling a graph pad with the first Chapter of the game which should be coming soon. It is taking a slightly different direction than I wanted, but it fits the story better than anything else I have come up with. I am basically making a game guide, just with a full story line.

I am spending this weekend reading the last of my favorite blogs for a while. I am going to isolate myself from other influences until I get the story and other core elements finished. I found that many times after reading these were the times I truly got way out in let field trying to please everyone. I just hope I can hold myself to it. :-)

I had made mention in my previous post about possibly doing a side project. I might eventually start this, but in review I determined that finishing Aeges Road would be the best route from this point on. So for the next few weeks, I am going to try and get the story line to a completed state, then go back to work on code and level design. It may be about a month, but I plan on continuing with public alpha releases as I add the remaining elements of gameplay.

Aeges Road Core Demo Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:09:00 +0000

A demo for Aeges Road has been released. It highlights a few of the core features and gameplay that will exist within the final version. A final release will not be available for some time.

This demo is an opportunity for anyone interested in the game to voice interest and opinion in the direction of the game. I have big plans for this, but if interests are low, I plan on sidestepping the story based RPG for a time and working on a sub-path of this game until my art skills improve. No amount of programming can advertise a game like a nice looking graphical presentation.

Aeges Road Alpha 10

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:43:00 +0000

Aeges Road is being sealed up and readied for a contest release. A few weeks ago I mistook the deadline and had to back track a bit. This gave me a little bit of time to squeeze in a few more features that should have been there.

So alpha 10 is out, and this will most likely be the last alpha before the contest release. Once the contest is over in June, alphas start popping up on the site again. I was thinking a summer release of this year was possible, but things have proven me wrong, and now I am just shooting for this year. I hate pushing this back, but at least some of the most frustrating things are behind now.

The only thing I am still dreading is that there is still a lot more art to be done. The more I do it, the easier it gets, but it is still slow go for me. What will speed this up, is that I now understand the artistic side of an isometric engine, and I am not running blindly trying to piece it all together. Try as I might early on, I just could not get the dimensions and ratios right. :-)

I could spend a lot of time talking about what is working right, but I could spend even more time talking about what I have yet to add in the game and what still needs a bit more polish. Until June, what's there is there for now. Afterwards, I will be revisiting the inventory system and the NPC framework. I might have been able to include the NPC's to finish out the starter level, but it would have been too buggy and too much to get done in time. Overall, I am glad I decided to stick with core components for this release.

The Mandatory Mini-Game

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:55:00 +0000

Mini Games in an RPG can be pretty fun. I personally remember getting fairly good at Triple Triad in Final Fantasy 8 having a near complete collection. I also remember doing poorly in the arena at Final Fanatasy 6, but having a good time despite the fact. Extras like this are great, and can really add to the overall quality of the game. But more often than not, making these mandatory can send a bad vibe to the gamer, and Square Soft is on of the worst offenders.

I believe it stems from that fact, that for years they spun their magic and successfully defied this, with Final Fantasy 7 being their crowning achievement in the mandatory mini games. Both the motorcycle scene and the chocobo race had a well rounded difficulty, and the latter led to an amazing mini game that many of friends took pretty seriously. And I may be crazy, but it has been a while since I have enjoyed the magic of a mandatory mini-game.

Last week I broke down and bought Crisis Core for the PSP. I loved the story line in the sequel (original), and wanted to see if the game did any better than the movie. I have been very impressed with the story, and surprisingly very impressed with the game play. What really strikes me as funny is how much better the voice overs are for the game than they were for Advent Children. :-)

As far as the true highlights of the game, I would certainly go with the story line. While it can get a bit choppy and confusing at times, it all seems to play out pretty well. As far as annoyances go, it took me a while, but I found one. But before I go into it, I want to hit on the source of this frustration, and how this game at least made up for it.

When I played FF XII Revenant Wings for the DS, I somewhat enjoyed it for a while. There were all kinds of cool weapon building things I could do listed in the manual and that had me pretty excited. I was a big fan of this in Vagrant Story on the playstation. The magic was lost when it took me days of battling through endless repetitive and borderline un-interactive combat. When I finally got there and went to use it, the weapons I could craft were weaker or equal to the weapons I had equipped. I haven't played it since.

But in the journey through a boring game to unlock a feature I had imagined as being fun and rewarding, and quite possibly even making the game worth playing, I had to pass through a mandatory mini-game. This mini game involve stealth where there really wasn't anything to hide behind, and whether or not I was actually hidden from the enemy was a matter of trial that wasted several days of me trying to pass through.

I was beyond irritated with this, and since nothing else interested me in the game (and the fear that I would come across another level like this) I just put it up and started playing Final Fantasy 6 again. :-) With Crisis Core, I came upon a very similar level and cringed. However, this time, there were things to hide behind, but I never pulled it off successfully, and each time I got caught the enemy took what was in the treasure chests. But the ability to brute force my way through this mission far outwayed my curiosity of what was in those boxes, verses the unavoidable frustrations of trying to play through another square stealth mini-game.

Now, I am not against stealth in a video game. In Never Winter Nights, I only play as a Rogue/Shadow Dancer. I have yet to find another fun class in that game, and I have tried most of them. What I am against, is a game forcing me to learn a new game on the fly with vague instructions leaving me to trial and error my way through frustration in order to advance the story (or an attempt to get me to buy the game guide?).

To me this is a bad design decision for pretty much any game. While true, I might have been able to brute force my way through the stealth mission in FF XII, it would still have taken me days in my 20 minute intervals. And while I have enjoyed some of the mandatory mini games in the Final Fantasy series, more often than not they are a low point in the game. I actually enjoyed the motorcycle mini-game in FF VII, but level of difficulty was pretty simple in comparison. It does however, make me wonder how many people were truly irritated with it verses how many of us thought it was the best RPG mini game since Chrono Trigger.

So please feel free to express your views on the mini game.

Aeges Road Weekly Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:12:00 +0000

Well, last week was certainly one of my embarrassing moments. After the post, I began to reread the rules to ensure I was finalizing things properly when I realized I still had another month left for development. So, development is not yet forking, and Keszin will be in the final contest deliverable.

So, I finished modeling Keszin and got him plugged into the game. Next is Jade whom I haven't started on yet. Aside from art, I got a few new things plugged into the game. The bow now has a new “Stun” attack which renders an enemy useless for a round. Stats and skills have been tweaked a bit for improved balance, and the difficulty has been turned back down.

A few more UI improvements have been made, but these have been temporarily halted due to a technical error on my end. I have also found that cave walls won't work for house walls in open terrain, so I will be working this out soon. Enemy spawning is on the agenda for this week, as well as making V-sync optional in an attempt for better G5 compatibility.

So this week, there will once again be no new alpha, I wrote more bugs than I fixed this previous week.

Aeges Road Weekly Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:52:00 +0000

As an opening note, we had child number 4 Tuesday morning. Babies are always fun, and make things crazy around the house for a few months. :-)

April is nigh, and it is time to fork development. I have spent this week doing clean up work and trying to make the game presentable. It could use a bit more TLC, but as far as the contest entry, it's about as good as it's going to get. I have Keszin's character close to done, but needs more décor, he looks pretty drab. I did not have time to address all the requests, but that will probably happen within the next few weeks.

Does this mean it is finished?

Sadly no. Aeges Road still has a few more months of development ahead of it. This is just a release as part of the competition I am in. I plan on keeping an open development routine going on so I can get feedback from interested gamers. What's nice is that this deadline looming over my head is gone, and I can now concentrate on what I need to do, rather than what I have time to do.

This month I am trying to decide on a format for a weekly blog article other than the Aeges Road development article each week. I want to keep it RPG related, probably something in the retro realm or in the indies since I have not been keeping current with modern PC RPG's.

I have a question for some older Mac users. I saw a game for mac only that was released probably around the same time as Lord of The Rings. It was a top down adventure, possibly an RPG, and you could mount horses and had other such features. I have tried to track it down, but have been unable. I would appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction.

Aeges Road Weekly Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:04:00 +0000

This brings us to Alpha 9.

This has been a productive week for Aeges Road. This weeks weather gave me a couple days off, and I was able to get more done than I expected to. The most exciting thing this week is that I got to remove a character blank and plug Illindey into the artwork. I have also begun rendering the final versions of the gui interface.

Character creation is finished. You can now modify your character for combat. With this inclusion I tweaked the AI a bit, and quite honestly made the game harder than the final version will be. I just thought it might be a fun challenge to test stat tweaks on. Also, the character creation screen will also be the level up screen once I get there. I also have yet to clean up the inventory gui, so further stat tweaks for testing are still available. Just as a note, the rogue has two skills that are not programmed in yet, hide and locks. So don't throw away you points on these.

I whipped up a rough track this morning before church and plugged it into the game. I have another specific place for this track, but thought it would be a nice change of ambience. This track actually helped me to remember the importance of music for setting the mood. If it wasn't for the score in Final Fantasy 6, I don't think this would have been as great a game as it was.

On a side note, I got dos box working on my new mac, and noticed something. All these years I have been running on the cheapest hardware I could find, including soundcard, and I never realized what an incredible music score Star Trail has. None of my previous sound cards would play the luminance behind the leading melody, and all I ever heard was the simple midi melody lines. So a real favorite of mine is shining brighter than ever.

Aeges Road Weekly Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 19:54:00 +0000

I will make this quick this week. There is finally progress in the art department. After a long week and a half of frustration, I gave up on variable height terrain. I just couldn't make it look right in the art department. So now that I am behind I did a few things to speed up art.

Yesterday I programmed a tile maker and splicer in java. It takes a texture, turns it into an isometric tile, batches a directory full of masks, and outputs a nicely formated png full of tiles and fringes. It essentially turned 2 hours of work into about 5 - 15 minutes depending on how long it takes me to process a texture into usable form. I am calling it UglyISO right now. After the first of April, I plan on extending its functionality to do wall tiles and overlays.

Once I am done with the game, if anyone is interested, I will put some error handling on the thing and release it for free download. It is nowhere near the caliber of programs such as World Creator, but I can stay in my Mac environment to do it. There is also a new java project working on making such a utility. It will probably be much more robust, and will probably beat me out. I need to find that link again and post it here.

As soon as I get the starter dungeon reworked, I will release another alpha that will mostly be art improvements. I personally haven't run into any new errors with the application. The only big problem I am aware of right now is an AI glitch that leaves them suspended there doing nothing until you kill them. If anyone finds another error, please let me know.

An Aeges Road Exclusive: It's Rant-tastic!

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:09:00 +0000

You might be wondering what I am ranting about, well, me. Me and my inability to produce a decent tile set. So I am throwing in the towel on multi-height terrain, and sticking with that pure old 2:1 isometric goodness. I have wasted about a third of my time on graphics for this game, over 3/4's of that time trying to get these multi-heights to looking good and ready for final release.

What was I thinking? Multi-height sounded like a good idea, with a few nasty little script tricks, it became a reality in the invisible world. Unfortunately, it was the visible that proved to be the greater adversary. I don't completely regret the time, because I have gotten much better with graphics. Just not good enough. I just could not get everything perfect, it was too great a give and take. Every time something got better, another got worse. When I finally got as close as I could, the pixel patterns of the rendered output was dull and lifeless, and I was unable to liven it up to satisfactory with further processing.

So now I am going to use many of the textures I have created and generate tiles through a process that has given satisfactory results almost every time. While this does skew the vision, and possibly brings me at odds with my design doc at too late an hour, I might be able to finish the game within 2008.

Other than multi-height disappearing, there is not much that is going to change. I am going to add narration. I thought my art skills would have improved faster, but now I realize I need to stick with my existing strengths, and I do much better with words. So western RPG fans should be happy about this. I am actually happy about this. So I am ready to return to some productive work. So now if I can just find that usb pen drive so I can finish transferring files off my old laptop. :-)

Aeges Road Weekly Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:30:00 +0000

Not a whole lot to report this week. Alpha testing is going on right now. If you want to help just download an alpha here and report bugs through the links listed. Alphas are available for Mac and Windows. Several bugs have been impounded.

It will probably be a slow week. There are still a few features that need implemented to finish a full on demo, good graphics being one of the major features. I did manage to implement the manipulation interface last week, still needs some work, but it is functional to play with. Since finals are this week with college I am just going to stick with bug fixes.

Aeges Road Alpha Update

noreply@blogger.com (Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500)) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:42:00 +0000

A couple of scripting errors have been fixed that should help with a number of errors. The latest update is available for Mac and Windows on the Aeges Road page. There is also a partial manual available for download. It currently contains basic instructions for combat. I am also working on shrinking the zip file size to make things faster.

Fixed:

There was a path following error that allowed the player to loose position for a single frame. The code is now in-lined properly and keeping position constant

Current Bugs:

The windows version does not load the ambient audio for game play
The windows version does not always load the sound effects
Both versions offer an escape from dialog lock at the beginning by rolling over the bag before the event begins
In both versions the AI tries to run for no apparent reason at times

Feature Requests

Have the dialog progress itself

Finally, a big thanks to Cucumber for getting things started in the test forums!