Survival

Hey!
You know that FFHtR planed as sandbox roguelike?
well, at least you know it now. Of course, we would have story and drama, but it wouldn't be center of gameplay.
So, survival is cornerstone of such type of gameplay.
What it would be:
Food, temperature?
Any ideas?

Update:
From one hand, it easy to create survival, make player to collect branches for fire, finding clean water, keep in mind temperatures etc
well, Such basic survival sounds good for the the start of the game, but later, you know, such micromanagement doesn't fit well future epic adventures and would become simply boring.
We should find some nice mechanics to fight it, and to my mind it simply impossible or
we can allow player to "overgrowth" such simple needs, when character progress at levels.

I vote for the second one.

28.10.11 Camps

Camps bugs were defeated and goblins stays near campfires now.
They need some containers and items near them, of course.

28.10.11

I think that It would be nice idea to post here development "diary".
It can keep us motivated and would give you some fun.

well...

"Inventory patch" programming finished. Right now GoodSir finalizing and polishing hi-res inventory canvas and Psiweapon drawing inventory icons.
There are lot of this icons, but you will like them, I assure you.

Because of this, I got some "free" coding time for future work.
So, I re-factored pathfinding code, as I wrote before, and started "Quest patch" schedule.
Of course, none of the random quests can match old good hand made quest, but good selection of random quests makes game interesting in field of replayability, so we should keep it balanced.

Random quests would be our first goal.
Game would be analyzing global map interrelations, its used right now for random encounters, and would form quests.

If we speak about current work, I have tried to rework cave generator, so intellectual creatures wouldn't be scattered around cave, but would group around different items, like campfires. It revealed lot issues and doesn't work right now. -_-
Also, I managed to reproduce font "color mess bug", maybe it can help to get ride of it.

New posting?

Maybe I should post more often about game development progress?
I'll try it tomorrow.

Future Patches

Lets see, our new, patch oriented development schedule works well. It gives all of us short ranged goals to complete right now, so, it means steady development speed.

So, we would utilize this method for the future development.
Some critical features missed last version, also, there lot of unfinished issues, because of of world wide development plans.
So, this is approximate table of future patches.
Inventory Patch - currently in progress. Crippled and monstrous inventory reprimands greatly.
Magic Patch - We should put magic back on tracks.
"Abilities Patch" - It is a bit boring to fight without of them.
"Quest Patch" - We need some gameplay.

Later patches:
"Faerie Patch" - The Fay would be playable.
"Undead Patch" - Legion of D'tish and other undead would be playable. Different aspect of undead gameplay.
"Puppeteer Patch" - fixing up removed puppeteer.
 

Pathfinding

While working on inventory patch, checked another "bottle neck" of the game - the Pathfinding.
It is really nasty algorithm, you know. It has dozen of repeating iterations, and this algorithm should be run for every active creature (of course, it can be simplified, if monsters can be grouped into units and they would use short ranged pathfinding up to group center, but we have roguelike nor strategy game. -_-).
So, pathfinding is real bottle neck of every roguelike project.
I check mine and started refactoring.
Refactoring isn't finished yet, but algorithm works at least 5 times faster then before!
It means that Inventory patch would also be performance patch, nice ^_^!

Inventory Patch, future looks.