Architecture Over Hacking

Okay, okay! I was saying it to myself and anybody else for many many times: Bros over.. err. Architecture over Hacking and rushed coding!
Don't code when you are tired or worse, exhausted. Don't code if you don't imagine final result in your mind! Spend as much time as you need for figuring out the architecture then you may code for few minutes (yes, it happens sometimes).

It doesn't mean you always get unworking code, sure not, but.. well.
For example, I have 'map validation routines'. This code is stable, relatively fast, but I sweat every single time I have to look into it. Better keep it untouched, 'Legacy Code' as it is. Except, it is Your legacy code. ^_^

The same thing happened.
If you check our Trello board you can find that I am adding Z levels to global map storage, so game can track your travels to slums, generate them and so on.
At first, I thought: 'ah. easy task, do it on fly '.
You think what?
What?
Chicken butt!
Come on, I have been coding it until understood: I am going veeery wrong way.  I made an attempte to hack a way and add a record with a dynamic array to every game location.
Ugh. bad idea! It was hard to work with even during current work! What about halve of a year later? Huh?
Yeah. Take a deep inhale, delete you crappy code and think about Architecture!
Think first, Constantine!

PS
Current task:
Class that will push new levels into self, give them to game and report errors!
Simple and elegant.
Do it!

Art Report #1 - Scavenger Union

Hey guys!

I've just finished the Scavenger Union design, narrowly evading the Lazy Snail that Konstantin sent for me, so let me share what i've done so far (click on the images to see the bigger version with details).

First of all, welcome to the City:

For the next version we are focusing on only one small district, fully filled with content. But in later versions you'll be able to fully explore the City, the world beyond it and maybe even other surviving Cities.

Here the humans hid during the Catastrophe and survived, sealing themselves from the rest of the world. A lot of time have passed, the resources in the City became extremely sparse and it was decided to finally open the gates and explore the world beyond.

For that purpose, the Scavenger Union was created:

We decided to go with the first option in the bottom row.

Since there was an overpopulation in the City and food supplies were becoming smaller and smaller, the government created a new institution - Scavenger Union, tasked with exploring the world outside, bringing back useful resources, exploring good places for the mushroom farms and slowly filling map of the world.
Once a person decides to join the Union, he is given some small starting items and is sent on a specific mission to the outer world. Because this job is extremely risky (most of the members die horribly on their first mission), but there is a small chance of getting insane rewards and money by finding an Old World Artifact like a functioning machine or even an abandoned Factory, it become very popular among the poorest people of the City, who would otherwise just die of starvation.
The Union uses rank system for their members - the competition between the lower ranks is severe, even to the point where some malicious members can kill their competitors in the Outer World, just so they'll have a higher chance to find the Artifacts and bring them back.
The higher ranks on the contrary, consists of reputable gentlemen who managed to survive a lot of trips Outside and became a veterans. It's very hard to get into their ranks, but once you are in, you'll be given a lot more lucrative jobs and have an access to the Union's Quartermaster who sells unique items for reputation points.

The player begins as a newly joined member of the Union, ready to prove himself to the world and find riches beyond imagination!

Here are some props that i designed for the interior of the Union:

And here is the final design of the 1st floor, where the lowest members of the Union hang out, receive missions from the Manager and discuss their recent adventures while sipping cheap beer (other floors will be available in later versions):

Welcome to the Union! Take a mission, drink some beer for the bravery - and good luck!

Next in the plan is the concepts of the City Street and the Slums (which will be our first dungeon). Hopefully the world that we designed will be interesting to explore and atmospheric enough to be immersed in it :3

Thanks for reading and see you in the next Art Report!


Vadim

Weekly report

As I mentioned in a previous post, we have finished save/ load map routines and it took more time than I planed. Doh..
From other hand, it is done, at end of all and future client/server routines will not be so hard to implement, because we will have main architecture done already.
What does it mean to you as a player? Well, you will return to exact level you left instead of new one.

After such an Epic goal I started another epic one, quest mechanism.Quests can break your game with ease, so I spent more time developing architecture then actually coding.
It is obvious idea, well, it would be great if got it couple of years ago. ^_^
Basic quest interface is ready and the next step is creature ranks in groups.
Once it is done you will get this tutorial 'Talk  to Master of Scavengers Guild' quest!

Quest for...

Vadim and I are preparing a major build of Fallen. It is gonna come at October or November.
Despite I named it as major, we plan to turn off a lot of features game currently has and tweak existing.

Wait.. I think you are want me write what was that? Why we didn't post updates for absurdly long period of time. Even Lazy Snail was summoned!
Okay, it was my fault, Vadim was working hard (but he doesn't post anything here! Maaan, Lazy Snail watches you).
I had three reasons, but the number one is that I bogged myself into client-server stuff.
Oh yes, save/load on HDD and potentially get some data from server.
I already have an experience with that and learned one rule, very obvious, frankly, game itself shouldn't know when data comes from and goes to.
Yes, it was harder then I thought, but I won this battle and happy about that.

Well. Back to our work. Vadim will write about graphical design plans, yes, he promised that, otherwise Lazy Snail would come for him too!
We will turn off, temporary, of course: crafting and global map.
We will add quests, Scavenger guild and 2-3 local map levels to explore!

Lazy Snail!

This is Lazy Snail!

It came to kick my butt for bad work 

and 

I don't want it to come again!

weekly report and build

I is interesting. Even if I announced previous week as Gameplay, most of closed tickets were pure technical. - bugfixes, GUI updates and so in.

Our finished list:
1. Four more clothing sprites.
2. Global map is no longer  painful to use. ^_^
3. A portion of nasty bugs were cleared.
4. Config.cfg got more features.
5. Couple of GUI tweaks.
6. Creatures drop specified corpses.

For the next week we start serialization and client/server routines. They are required for  many and maby features (for example quests), but first "feature" would be game saving.

Screenshot from old times!

Ha! Vadim found build of old Fallen. Well. I think we made some progress since then.

Upcoming 'Technical' week (database)

As I wrote on our Trello board, we have two cycles of development: Gameplay weeks and Technical week.
While gameplay weeks take 3 of 4 weeks in a month, technical week takes one. 3:1 is good ration for technical vs gameplay features.
Of course, it is not that bold and technical features affects gameplay and gameplay features have technical and so on, but you got the idea - keep the balance between gameplay and engine/ GUI/ data works.

Concerning upcoming technical week I have one BIG work to be started. Game should be able to keep world data in a client-server database. It doesn't mean, it should be on a external server, of course, but the game should work with it this way.
We need it for:

• game save / load.
• quests. Game can issue a quest, using world data.
• real server routines. It would be nice to allow other players' games to affect your gameplay.

It means that main game may:

• Upload its current state to the database.
• Load specified local level from it.
• Get any information game needs from it. (Do specified level has necromutans? Its seed? or specified workshop? etc)

The most important part, main game doesn't care how database going to do it. Saves it to local drive, keeps in memory or uploads to fallenroguelike.com server.
For the game it would be 'a server'.
The development of game database can't be delayed for any longer.
Nearly all our upcoming gameplay features need it. It is as important as implementation of widgets.

We start discussing its architecture and prototyping. If you have any interesting suggestions, articles to read or very good with databases, you are welcome.
Any advise matters!

Weekly report and build

Our weekly report. This week wasn't as productive as expected.  I even missed refactoring Friday! Shame!
Done list:
1. food gives bonus for eating it (needs balancing).
2. you can create fire using matches.
3. fire can be used for craft (One schematic!!! True achievement, lol.).
4. Item materials (stone, steel, flesh, paper etc)
5. minor fixes for savages.
6. config.cfg got more options. More to go.
7. campfire and pit actually prevents fire from spreading. Also minor fire fixes.

Current work:
Vadim is drawing super cool Casual clothing. There would be numerous variants of colours.

And I have to finish corpses this weekend and start new week sprint.


 

fire as a tool

Take your matches, pile dry wood or garbage and start a fire!
There a couple of balancing issues with fire. It too easy to make an arson instead of small fire and occasionally all town. Well, not all town, but burn down couple of houses is not a big issue.
Also, AI doesn't care about fire and luring enemies into fire works well. Except you don't get experience and their equipment burns.
I have two days to add schematics for fireplaces, like pit or campfire and add fire as crafting tool.
But I'll do my best to finish it today and take another story for tomorrow.

There are two more issues with crafting:
First, game doesn't show you as Player a report about crafting results. Was it successful or not, were is the result and so on. It needs disappearing  pop-up message.
Second, crafting requires you to enter crafting menu, select a schematic, confirm it, select a tile. Doh!
Why so indie? 
Crafting features on tile should be accessible via one click menu. For example: right click on empty tile and select "build" menu, or "fire/effects" menu and so on.
You should fight monsters, not interface!

Material and skin tones are onboard

First of all, Vadim (GoodSir) finished skin tones and hair colours.
It means even more diversity in people you meet and colours mean end to rave  party I have made.
Thanks to colours I have selected at random.
You can not customize your character yet. Yes, of course, it is on the list!

Then all items in the game have material. It wasn't made just because we want material. As I wrote for many times, no features are to be added with no real gameplay reason.
I have found that adding custom fire resistance to every single type of item and map cluster could be very annoying and potentially bugs friendly.
Grouping items into sets by their material saves resources, time, easy to support and also looks nice!
I don't know how about you, but I love to have a longsword made from fine steel instead of just a longsword. Yeah steal longsword and glass monocle rock!
Plus, it makes game code easy to work with. I can change constants for all group in one touch and make game way to easy to understand.

 Why a walls are resistant to fire and a book burns?
When stone wall is obviously prone to fire, unlike paper advertisement pamphlet.
Heh! By the way, these spam pamphlets would be useful at end of all, you can use them to start fire for your crafts or arson. I don't know your intentions.
Then you can make something that will held fire and prevent it from starting underground fire apocalypse. Dig a pit or make campfire from stones, then roast your favorite leg of giant roach.
Also about food, it is useful now!
You will get nice buffs after eating this. Different types of food will give nice bonuses. Yes, eating food of the same type will overwrite bonuses for that type of food, but nothing prevents you to eat canned snail meat, roasted roach leg and mushroom bread, and for a brief period of time became more powerful and defeat Necrotitan!

Of course, food needs balancing and implementing craft of food. err. cooking , yeah. ^_^
But, I think I'll finish it this week.

PS
I want to visit Belgium.
Why? There is my favorite game developing studio!

Weekly report and build

Random picture of a Catman

Week has passed, game build should be delivered and report posted.
As addition to meany crafting interface story, I have finished a portion of small stories. That's odd, but some of them looks bigger then crafting interface upgrade. Unfair!
Also, as a cherry on top, GoodSir closed few graphical stories. He wants to write a couple of posts about Fallen graphical design and his plans about it, so I will not lampshade details and just mention them in this list.
Okay, without further ado, our done list for this week:

• Head hair for men.
• Head hair for women.
• Mustaches and beards.
• New interface feature. Select widget in a list widget as widget. -_o. 
• You can select items for crafting.
• Drag and Drop for Global Map (It was very easy task, surprise).
• Frontier radio got button on game panel and few interface fixes (It is not finished, of course. We have big plans for it!)
  Huge mushrooms can be contaminated by mana.
• Names for savages.
• Roles adjust creature levels (For example guards get few level ups)
• As usual, bug fixing and useful refactoring.

Crafting interface upgrade

I have to confess, it was super annoying task!
A lot of small bugs, tiny problems, sharp edges of legacy code and so on.
But, it is a work that should be done if we want crafting as very important part of gameplay to be smooth and easy to use.

Game automatically selects items as tools and components, shows you what components are missing and allows to change a component.
Last feature is important, for example if you don't want to cut old jacket into straps, but your brand new fancy shirt. Obvious, isn't it?
Also, it took additional day to create new interface feature.
One of the downsides of writing your own engine for roguelike: need a feature, write it yourself.
As I mentioned before, it is highly unwise to create your own engine for a roguelike game.
Yes, there is one big plus in your own engine - you know it well and you can modify it whenever you like add any functionality you want, adapt it to your needs etc.
BUT!
1.  It will take time for your engine to mature and get rid of stupid bugs.
2.  Every hour spent on engine is an hour stolen from game itself.

This issues are eager to combine and wage a war on you togeather.
For example, you decide, my game we have great feature- thunderbolts will paralyze creatures and cook bread!
Nice, but then you get Access Violation for every thunderbolt  targeting iron golem on the left and no clue why does it happen?!

I have to admit, it is a lot of fun to create your own engine, but I would not do it again if I would start my development nowadays.


PS
I need interesting gameplay story to recover from such 'technical' job. ASAP! ^_^
Maybe food or work on radio a bit, or my favorite name generators? We will see, there a lot of interesting stories on our Trello board.

As usual, I'll update build this Saturday.

Procedurally Generated Quests

Let’s discuss this very interesting topic.

How do Quests can be procedurally generated?

I think Quests should be a combination of premade basic scripts, our game situation and random content.

Premade basic script means a part of a task, like deliver, hunt, find, patrol, craft and so on.

Quest will have 2+ basic scripts. For example hunt Mutants, find artefact and deliver it to city.

Game situation means quest maker should respect current game development.
Does city exist at specified location, monster lair or tribal village.  Necromutants activity and so on.

You will get more peaceful quests if situation is calm and more dangerous combat tasks at real frontier.

 Random content is simple - Find one artefact or two carrots.

Okay. Let’s try to generate a quest.
We create quest in a city. It has low necromutants activity, 2 bandits camps nearby and one mana lagoon.

Game randomly selects four blocks for a quest:

•         Defeat # troublemakers.
•         Develiver an artefact.
•         Defeat an Important Enemy.
•         Explore location.

Then game forms a task.
It takes bandits as foes.
Bandits’ important items as artefact and removes “explore location” because this location is already explored by Player (for example).

Final task will be: “We have big problems with outlaw gand ‘Knives Of Aged Minotaur’ from ‘Fearful Caves Sealed By Ancient Ghosts’. You have to go there and  defeat their leader, fearful John ‘Evil Eye’ Beckon. Bring back his log book, because it helds important information. Also we will pay you additional 5 coins per every gang member you will put to Justice! Finish it in a less then 67 days and get additional bonus!”.

Of course, it is just a sketch, but it is the way I see random quests in Fallen.

Burn! Burn! Ahahahahahaha!!!!

I have burned a countless number of cities, trees, items and creatures :-E until fire effect was done.
Fire spreads, grow and dies down if has nothing to catch on.
Living creature can catch fire and burn, especially if fire is very strong. Good new, fire doesn't eat up a lot of CPU time. So burning down whole city doesn't hurt game performance.


What have left:

• Different fire resistance for items, like map cluster have it now and 'power' fire gets from burning them.
• Play with fire constants, so it will act more like real fire.
• Add crafting flag for effects. Cook meat, forge steel, craft mana grenades!
• Ensure that fire vs mana routines work well. Mana should explode when exposed to fire.
• Add 'prevent fire from spreading' to map cluster (ovens, campfires etc). 

Once it is done I can continue to crafting and expand it considerably.
Build a campfire, use matches to start a fire and roast roach leg!

Mana and Fire.

It is odd!
As I wrote in previous post, I have underestimated the difficulty of City Development  story, but!
Today, I have finished not only encounter routines and 5 encounters, but already implemented map effects, like fire and mana.
Fire doesn't exist in game literally, but it is just a matter of time. Mana is reworked to effect.
The most important part, algorithms for these map effects have been done and they are easy to work with and of course, they are animated.


For example mana is no longer a collection of pools on the ground.
It is more like gas. So, once mana bag explodes it releases a small shroud of thick gas, "the mana".
Shroud expands and shrinks based on its concentration (resource), acts like malevolent shroud.
If creature with mana perk founds itself inside it uses its ability if mana shroud concentration is enough for it.
It means: marathoner would be constantly hasted in shrouds, panisher will regenerated like mad, torturer will be enrages and helmint will spawn at alarming rate etc.

Good news! Even if mana became considerably more dangerous now it will evaporates eventually.
Try to use tactics when fighting necromutants in mana shrouds!

So, I'll add fire to the world of Fallen (flamethrowers? Explosions? Grenades?) and will start big crafting overhaul.


PS
You can taste new mana concept. I have updated a build. ^_^

City development is finished, for now. Encounters are to be started.

Nudists? In my Fallen?

I have to admit, I have underestimated the epicness of City Development story.
Some of them are epic on their own, like prisons or gates.
The week I have devoted to this story has come to end and all tasks that were left at the list are going to Idea storage.
We will refine them into full-scale stories and their day will come.
Nevertheless, I like the results. Cities are no longer a bunch of buildings near roads.

The screenshot you see above is about 'nudist bug'. I have added couple of new items, but, occasionally left 'body armour' flag for them. So people were wearing sewing kits instead of jackets and dresses.
I have fixed it, so sorry, no more swinger parties.
 So, this week done list:

• Map development tools upgrade for items and clusters.
• Markets, kiosks, guard posts.
• warehouses (only ugly ones).
• vagrants and their camps.
• garbage and junk. (we need more!!!!)
• creatures on streets.
• parks.
• shops.
• BIG button "exit to global map".
• Refactored crafting. Ready for upgrade.
• Reworked crafting GUI.
• Couple of new schematics.
• Weekly refactoring. Removed old and obscure code of old global map and road map. 
• few really of minor fixes.

Next week will be the week of random encounters and situations. I have wrote about this concept in previous posts.
If I'll fulfill it before the 'deadline' for this task, I'll start cluster states like fire or wild mana.
We need it for crafting (so you can roast meat, burn woos or make other crafts that need heat) and other features like mana contamination and explosions.

As usually, I'll update build tomorrow, on Saturday.

=======

Semi-done ascii mode.

my drawing mad skills ^_^

Craft: small refactoring and GUI rework done, back to City development!

As mentioned, I have refactored crafting interface, so it is ready big expansion I plan for this part of the game and GUI is not longer as horrible as before.
Just a little bit ^_^.

I am back to City development and going to start with poor districts near the city wall.
Also, generator doesn't respect a side of a wall and may place few houses from outer side of a wall.
It is easy to fix, but I am not sure of it. Theoretically, the poorest people may settle outside of the city wall.

Districts near city walls should have guard posts and guards patrols, houses of poor people, vagrants campfires, garbage dumps and so on.

markets and guards

Phew! It took a bit longer to implement markets. It was not because markets are so complicated.
Truth, they are not, just a bunch of people selling stuff from mats. Nah.
I have added couple of very nice tools for city generation. I think they will pay off this weekend, when I plan to finish User Story for cities and I'll speed up future development.
Also, I'll move few items from checklist to separate stories. For sure: radio, prisons, factories, "rogue" buildings and maybe city gates. These buildings need special care and their own story!
Also, I plan to rework crafting GUI, just a bit! It wouldn't be such tremendous facepalm like it now.

EDIT: oh. I just got. I have wrote nothing about guards! They use the same tools I used for kiosks. So, technically guard posts are kiosks that are selling distributing justice for free.
It is not the end, of course. Guards will have big posts near city gates and city watch headquarter.

City progress and procedurally generated encounters on local map

random picture of a catman

NPC roles, subgroups and city feature.

Subgroups? It is tree-like structure, like:

City ==> Noble family ==> guards, servants and workers.

They are an alternative to private property, so mundane citizens wouldn't sell you stuff from nearby shop an prevent servants to sell their bosses' stuff. 
Even then, they were eager to sell you shop signs of their neighbor's shop. I have fixed that, of course. 
Combined with NPC roles, subgroup ended to be to be easy way to handle city population. I mean I can track every single creature, except for vagrants, from very first group of a city. This mechanic is to be expanded to handle quest or track players actions.

But! The most important goal is to create lively looking city.
As I mentioned before, you should be able to play full game without leaving a city.

Good example is “Arcanum”.

I have set a priority plan for city development:

Top priority items include places you as a player interact the most: shops.

Yes, yes. I see what you did here! Buying and selling stuff!

Weapons (melee and ranged), armour and general store for the rest.

Second priority: Quest locations;

Quest givers like “that NPC with exclamation mark”.

And the Third is decoration.  

Includes places that don’t affect gameplay, at least right after implementation, but create atmosphere. Theatres (or musicians meet ups), special shops (like bookstores or fish markets), schools, houses of spiritual guides, forums, groves,
Okay, I have already added parks, but it was done to test item distribution algorithm.

^_^

Of course, I have few small tasks to be done in between.
For example I have to ad BIG ‘leave local map’ button when you come to ancient lift or tunnel location instead of mystery requirement to press enter.

When I am done with at least halve of city features list I will have very tasty tasks “additional features for character” and “procedurally generated encounters on local map”.

“Additional features for character” is very easy to understand. More features for the God of Features!

While “procedurally generated encounters on local map” are a bit more complicated.

I am not going to invent a bicycle if say that huge maps need encounter to be interesting to play. At best - dynamic encounters.

Well. It is fun to meet a giant roach. Sort of.

Fun to meet a necromutant. Yeah, a bit.

It is much better to meet roach fighting necromutants. (it happens rather regularly)

So, I have decided to expand this feature uncontrollably.

I’ll make list of potential encounter. Game selects from 1 to # variants and puts them together in different combinations. Idea is very simple, but can lead us to completely amazing results.
For example our game selected 3 civilians near campfire, 4 guards patrol and necromutant horde of 10 monsters.

It could be interesting on it is own already, but placing it results to different outcome.
For example:
civilians surrounded by mutants, guards aside: guards trying to save doomed civilians.

Civilians and guards near campfire, mutants aside: necromutants attacking guarded camp.
Add couple of pack snails and we have caravan attacked by monsters.
Replace civilians by bandits and we have very odd situation and so on.

As a Player I want Towns to look more like actual towns.

User Story: As a Player I want Towns to look more like actual towns.

 

This is the first step of Town and City generation routines. You can understand from one glance that this City is far from been completely generated.
Central districts have only two types of features - villa and ancient lift. It understandably not enough.

Outskirt districts have no special features at all and the cheapest districts, near wall have nothing at all. City wall doesn't have gates and so on.

Even then it is a huge step forward comparing to older towns.
I want to devote next week to development of city-life gameplay, so you can find activities without leaving town at all.
To achieve it I have to do a lot, but let's prepare 'first mile' features list:

1. Subgroups.
Creatures may be a member of a big group like city and a smaller one, for example: manor, villa, shop, guild, workshop etc.
This feature should be expanded, like group maybe owner of other groups. For example Villa group (read group leader) owns 2 workshop group, 1 tavern group and 6 house groups. It can lead us to interesting stories about wealthy families  or guild influence politics.

2. Creature roles.
Something like RPG "professions", but profession is too narrow meaning. I don't think that "profession" includes Hobbo or Lord, but "role" works fine.
Right now all Human beings are just humans, survivors of the Frontier. Not for long.
Every single role will have:
a.AI setting that will override creature AI settings. So 'guard' will engage the melee, but 'maid' will try to flee. Shopkeeper will try to stay at the shop etc.
b. Item flags. Guards gonna wear helms, bullet-vests and armed with big guns and heavy melee weapons, gentlemen wear top hats,  tailsuts and armed with canes or sword-canes, hobos wear rugs and chip bandanas, armed with  bare hands, sticks or stones.
c. Name. Obvious. You can see that %Person% is a shopkeeper and not a bandit leader.

List of must have city roles:
a. City watch.
b. Nobility.
c. Workers.
d. Servants.
e. Shopkeepers.
f.  Lowlifes and vagrants.
g. Entertainers.


3. City features.
As I mentioned before, cities need different features, including, but limiting to:
a. Markets, fairs, kiosks.
b. Shops.
c. Tavernas and meet-halls.
d. Villas and mansions.
e. Major house or magistrate.
f. Guard posts and prisons.
g. poor huts and wealthy houses.
h. Warehouses.
i. Graveyards.
j. City gates.
k. Workshops and factories.
l.  Parks and gardens.
m. Cultural buildings (theaters, arenas etc).
n. Military building (not guards' buildings; barracks, training ground).
o. "Rogue" buildings. Dens disguised by normal locations.
p. Radio.
q. Scientific buildings. Labs and inventors.
r. City decorations and utilities (statues, bins, benches, flower gardens, wells).

All feature should have different building styles and signs (when it is acceptable).

4. Map objects upgrade.
Map objects right now are mere named location. They should be expanded and do these jobs:
a. Game should be able to get map coordinates from object.
b. Object could be linked to a group.
c. Object may have different polices. Like restrictions to enter. "Don't dare to enter %lords name% mansion, trespasser!".

5. Player's basic reputation.
Game should keep records of players actions to allow NPC to react properly.
This task needs  research.

Hair, weapons armour, accessories and cloth. You can see them on creature in game!

Something we want for a long time. Equipped items are to be displayed on creature!
Along with head hair, facial hair of different colour.
You are no longer would be surrounded by clones!

Trade - check!

Done!
Now you can trade with every single sapient and friendly creature in Catacombs. They are eager to sell you every single item that belongs to their group in a specified radius.
It will be this way until creature role 'Trader' would be implemented.

So, if you find nice, but forbidden item try to lure nearby owner to come closer to it. Don't ask me how. ^_^

Property and Talk with creature

First.  I have finished property and found that private level of property  (items of creature) is a bit of overkill for our game model.
If creature is a member of a group items would be property of this group along with other items generated for this group. It includes its corpse and dropped loot too.
While creature has items on him or her or itself (Yeah, I am 'That' political correct. We should respect undead creatures. ^_^).
So, while creature has these items in a possession.  They are literally belongs to this creature.
All other items are belong to a group. The life in Catacombs is a bit socalistic, deal with it. ^_^

Second: I reworked Talk screen a bit. Removed test features and add one basic dialog.
'Talk' will wait until true world generation would be done, until then, creatures don't have a lot to tell you.
This screen would be a starting point for trade.

Next step is trade with Player. Creatures would be always eager to sell you some garbage!

Creature groups ==> Property ==> Economy ==> Money,Trade and Bounties ==> Profit!

User story: As a Player I want creatures to form different groups and be members of these groups. Like towns or bands.

I scheduled  the development of trade and basic economy (shops, money, rewards and bounties).
Research has shown that I need basic property to be fulfilled at first.
To make property game needs normal groups of creatures.
It leads us to current user story.

At first I have removed very old and outdated 'spawn zones' code. It was nice idea, but it resulted to be very awkward experience for player, so it stayed in game as a bunch of useless routines, eating up CPU time.
Once it was removed the peace has come to world of Fallen, because spawn zones were used to check friend/foe condition in most cases.
But not for long. I have returned friend/ foe recognition by using creature basic fractions, like necromutants, humans, wild creatures and so on.
War, war never changes.

Now I implement creature groups, the higher level of creature organisation, but!
There are a big of difference with old spawn zone system.
First, Creature may be a member of a group, but shouldn't be. Making every single creature to be a member of specified group is a bit of overkill.
For example, Necromutants don't care, do they members of 'mutants company of eastern forest'. They act according to their instincts and not group values.
It is no difference where have you met a Necromutant, their intentions are allays the same: Kill All Humans!
Because of this, most of non sapient creatures will use generic faction rules.
This decision removes a lot of burden to handle literally useless groups of mutants, roaches, rats and so on.

Second. As my previous experience shows, relations between NPC groups, unlike relations of Player VS NPC groups, should be as simple as possible, Reason one, game regularly check friend/foe relations between NPC and NPC, it may clutter CPU time with useless calculations. Reason two, too complicate relations between different NPC groups could be unclear and not fun for player.
That's why I have decided to keep groups relations on Group Values.
And values will have constant tables of friend/foe interrelations. Quick and simple.
For the first version of groups I'll use only one Value - "Law" and I think it would be more then enough for long-long period.
Groups of sapient creatures could be Lawful and Outlaw.
Table is:
Lawful vs Lawful = neutral;
Lawful vs Outlaw = enemy;
Outlaw vs Outlaw = enemy;

As I said, simple. Player would have more complicate relations system with these groups, but player is player.

It allows us to divide our sapient creatures (now humans only) into groups, like villagers of specified town or homestead and different band and ruffians!
Once I'll finish band, necromutants and roaches will not be the only 'meanies'  of Fallen.

Also, groups would handle property for creatures.
For example, some items would be in private property of specified creature, still they would be a property of a group and group will inherit stuff once creature will demise.

Portion of future Epic user stories

It is a collection of future Epic User Stories for our Trello page, their purpose is to help us to achieve our Epic goal:

Create living simulation of underground postapocaliptic world with a steampunk flavor.

Player should be able to take any role in this society from explore and warrior to builder, shopkeeper or beggar.  

==

Towns and Cities.

As a player I want to have access to various activities without leaving town or traveling between towns. I can play game for hours without living city border. (quests, crafts, trades, mobsters, temple and corporate stuff etc)

So, I want towns to have..

I want towns to have different houses consisting from more than one room.

I can meet real home owner. Home owner wants me to respect his or her privacy and property;

I want towns to have shops based on town size and resources.

Smaller towns and homestead would have one general store and / or one specified shop.
When big cities may have even shop district.

I expect general stores to sell different stuff from all categories of items by reselling it without real production.

Special shops would be built near specified workshops.

I want to see:

Smithy - melee weapons and smithy tools;

Apothecary - chemicals and solutions;

Inventor’s shops  - cogwheels, springs, steam engines and other mechanical stuff;

Leatherworker and cobbler – armours, and leather cloth,  boots;

Clothier – cloth;

Gunsmith – firearms, bullets and tools for guns;

Baker, Butcher, winemaker – foods and drinks.

Snailmaster – sells pack snails.

As a player I want to buy or setup my own business in any of theirs categories. Run my own shop, hire and fire workers. Also, I want a competition from competitors.

I want towns to have Taverns and halls (Also they should exist on their own near roads).

I want to buy food and drinks in Taverns, gamble and chat to locals.

Towns should have law enforcement, that will do more job except  killing random necromutants.

Law enforcement keeps records of crimes (including mine).
From one hand they will not attack me on sight if I have stolen a spoon, but from other hand they have to understand 2+2 and be suspicious about me if thievery spree starts right after my arrival.  

Towns should send patrols to fight necromutants and ruffians.

I want towns and locations to keep reputation of other eternities (including me).

It should be Civilization-like relations model like:

We caught you stealing -10;

You killed a lot of necromutants around town +15;

You sold artifact at our town. We appreciate it! + 10;

You own small property in our town. +5

You have made nasty deeds against our foes. We like it! +5.

Total: +25 (warm)

I should be able to find small jobs in town. Some of them are not very heroic.

For the relations with other eternities it would be decided during world generation.

I may expect to be attacked by law enforcements if  wear cloth associated with other eternity they hate.

I want towns to be source of different quests I can solve to get fame, coins or food, if am really desperate and it is really tiny quest.

City watch (law enforcement) should set prizes for necromutants around town if mana wind is strong enough.

Good bonuses should attracts bounty hunters that will not be in town for long.

Big enough towns should have Magistrate.

Magistrate should keep records of people and their lives. Also they should give ‘political’ quests and other various tasks for you to do. They will pay you for cartography achievements.

As player I want to meet interesting people with a history, fears and stories.

People may tell me their stories or refuse if they find me repulsive or unfriendly.

I may gain friendship of people by doing stuff they find good for them. Both for specified persons or whole eternity.

Builder:
I should be able to build house, shed or even manor. Yes, building.

These objects should be properly registered as map objects or even global map objects.

I want to assign a role for this building except for my ‘hero’s lair’.

I may want to build, for example, a workshop, hire people and start working as a smith there.

Wealth:

Making a fortune should be useful for me.

I want to buy interesting items. Especially I want to have a market, maybe black market, of great and rare and utterly expensive good.

I want to hire people to do tasks for me or assign my own quests for NPC.

I should be able to give bribes to people and get their favor or they may refuse it they hate me enough or find it disgusting.

I want to purchase property, hire someone to create property, including monuments in my honor or the honor of my cat.

I want to make crazy things with my wealth, like building ruby houses.

I want to donate my money to development of cities, towns or homesteads.

I want to use my money to corner local economy and buyout towns!

Exploration and explorers:

Mana fluctuation may occur opening rifts to different locations. Even if they close in some period of time it will reopen later.
Because of this local governments pay you good coins for exploring it and bringing back artifacts from these “lagoons”.   

Once you find a lagoon entrance you can enter it and travel there. Your entrance may occasionally close and you will have to find a new one.
With enough skill you may understand when it will close or keep it open for longer period.

‘Lagoons’ are strange locations completely perverted by wild mana.

Novice adventure:

As a novice adventure I want to have a chance to join a guild of adventurers and seek their guidance and help.

World Generation

I want game to create world with a history starting from Exodus (moment when people fled to Catacombs) instead of just placing them.

I want to see and read history of fist conquer of the frontier, met historical locations or monuments.

Underground rivers

I want to find and explore underground rivers and lakes.

Exploring water needs special equipment.

Very specific loot can be found underwater.

Bridges and ferries.

Mana wind

I want mana to be dangerous contamination agent.
It will affect necromutants activity, so they will rise in bigger numbers and be more aggressive.

It have to contaminate living beings giving them strange changes and effects.
Towns should be built in calm places, while interesting locations maybe have high mana level.
I want equipment to help me with mana contamination (like suits).

Mana should contaminate trees (huge mushrooms) turning them into flesh hunting monsters.

Trees:

I want more use of trees (huge mushrooms).

Traps:
I want to experience traps, both natural like quicksand and made by living creatures (sapient and not).

Farms:

They grow food and shepherd snails and roaches.

I want to steal fruits from farms or grow them.

Necromutants

I want them to be a blight of world of Fallen instead of just mobs.

They shouldn’t be constantly aggressive, but if mana level is low they may just wander around without purpose.

Mana they drop should be very contaminating. It should change the look of the level in period of time.

Ruffians

Small groups of villains. They shouldn’t be always aggressive towards player (For example, by default they would be semi-neutral, don’t attacking player inside their camps).
Player should be able to take villain role, lead the band or wipe them.

Villains offer quests that usually bring disorder and chaos to ‘civilized’ towns.

Character creation. The plan was fullfiled.

Oh.Yes! I did it! Now you can literally build your character from Lego-like blocks.

Every single block is a feature. Purchase nice features or get points for 'not so nice'.
Save your points or get more after level up and buy new features!
Click on features to the right and they will go to window on the left and vice versa.

At first I'll put all features in one big heap. Later on, of course I'll have to sort them into in to groups. Also, some features shouldn't be available after character creation, because they describe character history, but not achivments.

So, I have one day+ before Sharing Saturday at /r/roguelikes/.
I have to dig up all features burred in game and add them into a Feature pile!


Cheerse!

Character creation

Current Story: As a Player I want to have a possibility to select stats/skills/abilities and therefore create my own class.

I am in awe with games that have mighty character creation!
For example Cataclysm DDA.
If Cataclysm wouldn't has any actual game after character creation, I am sure, there would be people who play it.
Infinite replayability is one of the results of good character creation and character progression (of course).

My plan is to add good character creation and progression to Fallen.
How is your character to be created and develop?
First of all, Fallen doesn't have creature stats like STR/DEX/CON etc. 
Every single creature has a selection of secondary combat stats.
These stats, as you can guess from their name are used for combat calculations.
Armour, Dodge, Move speed, Melee Accuracy, Melee Damage, Melee Attack speed, Ranged Accuracy, Ranged Damage, Ranged Attack speed.
As usual, all secondary stats, as usual, are based on another creature primary stats, perks and skills.

But! If our character has no primary stats how it would be created and progress?

Perks and features!
You will build your character from features like Lego blocks.

Game will give limited amount of character points to create an avatar.
You will buy different features for your character from a big pool.
Every single feature isn't a skill, perk or stats, but potentially all of them.
For example feature 'robust health' will grant your character additional HP, both as static bonus and per level. Rather classic perk, isn't it?
Another feature 'Internal steam engine' means that your character endured painful surgery and now has mana powered steam engine inside body. It will allow to use steam based abilities and add manometer to game interface. 
You can get 'Steam discipline' feature. It will give your character a steam based ability. I think that player should be allowed to 'purchase' steam abilities even without 'Internal steam engine' ^_^. Nobody prohibits you to learn skills you cant use. In theory. For future purpose, but we will see.

Of course, you can purchase negative features to get more Character Points to buy positive features and so on.

Once you are done, these features would be applied to a character.

I set a deadline for myself to finish mentioned above: this Saturday.

You are at Radio 'Fallen'!

I have started 'Radio' feature and finished basics.
Special gameplay element your player character may use.
It would have two main functions:
1. Radio broadcasts from local authorities or citizens. It will give you brief description of local situation and play advertisement of local 'Special NPC', like traders and so.
2. Broadcast by someone in Catacombs. Distress calls from actual NPC for example or their 'last words' or reports. It will act like message log for most vital events during your travels.

Screenshots of basic radio stuff I have finished already (Of course, it isn't final version of GUI ^_^):