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.