Tactical Combat - The Journey Begins

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally managed to get the beginnings of a tactical combat engine working for the game.  It's in its real early stages, but I'm going to provide a screenshot for future reference.  That way, years from now, I can look back and remember when it all started.

Here's the screenshot.  It isn't much to look at.  Ignore the empty blue space around the combat field.  Those will later be filled with information about characters and buttons that allow the player to do things.  For now, it's just empty blue area.

Moving around the battlefield.

There's lots of changes to come.  Should be interesting to see where it all ends up.  This will put the game a little closer in style to the original Gold-Box games, which is kind of what I want.

Fourth Time is a Charm

At this point in the project, I have rebuilt this game four times from scratch (not including the early versions I highlighted in the last post).  This will, I hope, be the last time.  It's no easy feat to scrap everything you've done and start over again...especially when you've done it multiple times.

This last time, it needed to be done.  And there were two reasons for that.

1)  REASON ONE: The Gold-Box Factor

The first reason was that the game had become something I didn't want to build.  While I appreciated the feedback I got from some folks on the Internet, their opinions swayed me away from the kind of game I wanted to build.  As I kept listening to them and doing what they suggested, I was getting pulled further and further away from my original vision.  After a while, I realized that I was an idiot to allow this, and I withdrew from the public for a while to quietly scrap everything and start over.

This game started as an homage to the SSI Gold-Box style games of the early 1990s.  Nobody is making games like that anymore.  You can find a ton of Bard's Tale and Wizardry knockoffs, but you don't find many games that try to copy the style of Pool of Radiance, and I think that's a shame.  That series of games was awesome.

So, I returned to that.  This screenshot (which is a work in progress, so keep that in mind) clearly shows a return to that form.  Anyone who has played those games will quickly see the same style and will notice that it also is closer to my original version of the game from two years ago (when this crazy ride started):

Work in progress screen.

The game now has step-based movement (free movement has been removed), allows for six characters (one thing that a lot of people have asked for) from a total of 12 classes and will hopefully have more tactical combat.


2) REASON TWO: Scaling Issues

The other reason why the project needed a reboot was that I had locked the game into one screen mode (1280x720) and had built around that.  Players would have no choice but to play in that screen mode.

After a while, I came to see how horrible an idea that was and realized that I was going to need to figure out how to scale things properly in order to allow players to play in any screen mode from 1024x768 (minimum) and up.   Now, the game should play in a variety of screen resolutions and scale properly.

For example, the above picture is in the 16:9 aspect ratio.  Here's the same screen in 4:3 at 1024x768 (the lowest possible resolution):

Same screen, different resolution.

You'll notice now that everything scales dynamically.  Folks playing in a 16:9 or 16:10 resolution will have more breathing space, but even folks playing at the lowest resolution will not feel cheated.  Fonts, buttons, etc...they all scale as required.  I test everything in multiple resolutions to insure that everything works.  It adds to the workload, but I think it's worth it.

Overall, I don't have a lot to show, since I'm rebuilding many of the things I've already shown off in the past.  But, I don't like to have nothing to show for my work, so here's a few more screenshots.

The first one shows how the game handles text and pictures when you encounter enemies or friendly folk.  As mentioned above, if you're familiar with the Gold-Box games, you won't see something here that you're not familiar with:

This is an old screenshot.  Notice how buttons aren't properly scaled yet (compared to the above screenshots).

Finally, I tend to always show how the character screens are evolving.  After attempting to use the Basic Fantasy RPG system and realizing that it wouldn't work out as I'd hoped (despite how close to the Gold-Box system it would be), I started working out the details on my own RPG system.  A lot of thought has gone into it.

This screen won't show you everything about it, but just know that I want it to be simple enough for anyone to play.  If you're looking for a game with deep character building options, you're not going to find it here.  This isn't that game.  This game will have tactical combat and exploration options, but characters will be pretty straightforward in the same way that they were in any of the Gold-Box titles this game is paying homage to.  That's just reality.

Anyway, here's a character screen:

This character screen isn't 100% working.  The scores aren't showing up right yet, and bonuses aren't calculated correctly either.

So, I hope some of you are still out there and haven't given up yet.  I don't plan on building this game for a fifth time.  This is it.  This is the final version.  I know what I want to build now, and I'm not going to let people steer me away from my goal.  If they don't like it, they are free not to play it.  It's not going to appeal to everyone, and I can live with that.  I'll just focus on making it the best game I can make, and I'll be happy if even one person likes it.

Until next time.

Quest Systems

I mentioned in my last blog post that I had started work on some of the exploration and quest systems in the game.  As I explained in that post, I have no idea of which systems I might need until I need them (aside from the combat system, naturally).  There's a lot of things that I can't work on until I see how they're all going to work together.

I suppose that means that I'm flying by the seat of my pants on the development of this game, but it's not much different than working on a piece of art anyway.

Since I'm working on the quest system, I figured it was time to go ahead and share some screenshots of what adventuring in "Lands of Adventure" might look like:

Interacting with someone in the town.

Obviously, a CRPG with story elements is going to need a way to talk to NPCs.  The above picture reflects what talking to an NPCs might look like.  Anyone who has played old-school CRPGs will recognize that this is pretty similar to how the Gold-Box games handled dialogue.

But, if I want the dialogue to be more than just straight narrative prose, I have to allow the player an option to roleplay and to make decisions.  So, enter the branching choices:

I'm picking the first answer, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to pick the third one.

CRPGs have evolved a lot over the past 25 or so years.  This game, I hope, will represent the best things about old-school adventuring while bringing in some of the modern ideas that make a game a little more interactive.  In older games, you didn't get as many branching options as you do in today's games.  I'd like to think that was due to limitations of memory and disk space, and less of a design decision.  It's my belief that the game can still be considered to follow the style of old-school and still include this kind of convenience.

Finally, plots aren't always advanced by talking to NPCs.  Sometimes, things happen, or the PCs see something.  Or, maybe they find important notes...like this one:

MMMmmmm....assassination....

There should be a lot of options for players to get involved in things, or to miss things completely.  For example, this note was found buried in the mud.  It's possible a player might miss it and never find out about it...or they might decide to do something besides get involved in whatever is going on.  And I think they should have that choice.

And who knows...maybe someone will ask them to clean some rats out of a basement somewhere...but at least it won't be their only choice.

Video Overview

 

At least one person expressed an interest in seeing a video of some of the things in the game.  This is a short video that I threw together to highlight some of the things in the game.  It does not cover everything and only hits upon certain aspects within the game.  Also, I tried to do it in a way that doesn't include spoilers of any kind.

I mention it in the video itself, but it should be noted that the recording software I used caused a lot of lag with things on the screen.  Text that should have scrolled smoothly and video effects in combat did not display correctly.  (For example, on the combat screen a person who is hit simply shows a brief red flash instead of the full animation).  I think this is due to the recording software not capturing all the frames (even though I set it to capture everything).

Also, sound effects in the game were not recorded.  I had hoped it would capture them, but it doesn't.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy seeing something about the game.

Crafting the Story

With a lot of the systems for the game in place, I have started on what is probably the hardest part: creating a story that is compelling, easy to follow and not dumb.  It's not easy to do when I'm trying to keep this in the style of old-school CRPGs, which didn't always have a lot of storyline to begin with.  Most just had a simple directive to give you a reason to bash monsters...like  the "kill the evil wizard because he's evil" type of plot.

Taking a page from the SSI Gold-Box games (like "Curse of the Azure Bonds" and "Pool of Radiance"), I'm spinning my story in a similar style, through events and dialogue provided by NPCs.  But, while I'm trying to give the story a solid direction and give the player something interesting to do, I'm trying to stay away from overdoing it.

In one sentence, we learn that the goblins don't like intruders...and that their chieftain keep slaves.

I'm not allowing myself to write walls of text and whole books of knowledge into the game.  An NPC tells you what you need to know in a couple of sentences and that's it.  The point needs to be clear and it needs to happen quick enough to get you back to the action.

Sure, I could go into rambling character stories and give tons and tons of information like all those Japanese CRPGs (Final Fantasy, for example), but that's not how the old school computer CRPGs did things.  They were frequently limited on space.  I don't have those same limitations, but there's a real art in telling your story in as few words as possible.

I could have had her lament her troubles for fifteen minutes, but what would be the point?

Somehow, I have a feeling this will probably be the part that takes the longest.

Progress...Forward And Backward

The last two weeks has seen me with my head buried in the combat engine and working with the spells.  The good news is that the combat engine is 99% done and all the spells are fully implemented.  I am very happy with the progress I've made there.

On the down side, though, I discovered that the font I was using wasn't going to port well across systems without some serious work, I so had to rework most of my screens using another font that is included in all versions of Windows.

Here's two screenshots, showing the old font and new font so that you can compare them.  First, there's the old font:

The old font, which I really liked.

And then there's the new font, which looks similar, but loses a bit of the touch that I wanted for the game.  Still, I can live with it:

The new font, which works.

Some screens are undergoing changes.  As I add more systems to the game, I find new ways to do things.  Sometimes, what was once functional gets reworked into something that is both functional and nicer looking.

Take the character screen.  Originally, it looked like this:

The original character screen.

It was functional, but it needed a bit of work.  Looking at it now, I'm glad I changed it up a bit.  Here's what it looks like now:

The new character screen.

As I build more and more functions into the game, I'm also keeping an eye on how to make the game look good as well.  I think it's important that the game has an easily approachable GUI, and that it doesn't look like it was put together by a three day old monkey with a cast on both arms.

As always, any feedback is appreciated.

The Combat Engine

I knew going into this project that the hardest part to creating an old-school style CRPG would be getting the combat engine to work just the way that I wanted.  A lot of complex coding goes into the combat, which has to track variables for all sorts of things.  Here's a short example of what it has to keep track of in the average turn (this doesn't even scratch the surface):

•  What are the stats of the current character?
•  Does that character have a condition we need to know about?
•  If the character is affected by a condition, how long does that condition last?
•  What weapon are we holding?  What armor are we wearing?
•  Can this character cast spells?  What kind of spells?
•  How many Life Points do we have left?

Overall, creating the combat engine has had the slowest development.  The good news, though, is that it's coming along nicely, despite my attempts to get it wrong several times.

So, what's it like?  That's the first question I would be asking.

In order to answer that, I need to go back in time to a game created by SSI, called "Phantasie," which came out in 1985.  I remember watching a friend play that game for hours, and being captivated by the combat engine, which was the first graphical CRPG engine I had ever seen (prior to that, games like "The Bard's Tale" used text to relay what was going on in combat).

It looked something like this:

"Phantasie" on the Commodore 64.

By today's standards, it's a bit primitive.  But it's effective, and it still works well.  I played the game last year, and found the layout to be intuitive (even though the controls were somewhat clunky).  The party was at the bottom, and the enemies they faced appeared at the top.  The look of the combat screen is what I like the most.  It's simple...and that's really important.

What I didn't like, though, was that you had to select everything you were going to do with your characters before the turn started, and you had to hope that you picked right.  If someone got seriously hurt during that turn and you didn't choose a healing spell, they were screwed until the next round began, and you had to hope they didn't get hit again.

My engine, while taking some ideas from Phantasie in layout, allows you to actually do things when your turn comes up.  You don't have to select everything before the round starts.  So, I kept the simplicity, but added in some flexibility.

But, enough of me, let's take a look at it:

We've come a long way in 27 years, but I still like the retro feel...

One thing I will point out about these screenshots is that they don't actually do the combat engine justice.  These screenshots don't show off the animations that happen when you hit an opponent or cast a spell at them.  You can't hear the sound effects.  You don't get the sense of satisfaction that comes when you hit an enemy and kill them and watch them leave the combat.

So, keep that in mind as you look at them.

The flash of healing that is usually present can't be seen here.

There are a lot of systems working already.

Attacking, which was the easiest thing to do, got done on day one.  Both the monsters and PCs are capable of attacking each other.  The game also allows for a chance of scoring a critical hit, allowing a character (or monster) to do double damage on a single hit.  Even better, Scouts sometimes trigger a special attack that gives them double damage as well...and if they critical at the same time, they get four times the normal damage that they would be able to do.

Ouch!

Characters can access their inventories to use items (like healing potions, for example) or swap weapons or armor pieces when necessary.  They can even trade during combat, allowing them to give someone in need a potion of healing or something else of importance.

Of the spells, only the priest spells are implemented (I haven't actually begun coding the Sorcerer spells yet).  In fact, spells are the toughest thing so far.  It takes time to create code for all the special things that can happen due to spells.  And each spell has a sound effect and an animated graphic.

Really, the only button with no functionality is the Flee button, allowing a character to attempt to escape a combat.  But, that will come.

A goblin has been entangled by a spell.

All in all, it's coming along pretty well.  The engine even knows when the PCs win and gives out experience points.  And it knows when the monsters win too...which puts you right back at the main menu (it's a good idea not to let that happen).

I'll add more updates as the engine comes along.  I'm hoping to finish it soon.  Once it's done, everything else should be easier...and I imagine the game will come along much faster after that point.

Healing and Death

It goes without saying that as a player takes their characters on quests in Lands of Adventure, they're going to encounter combats and dangerous situations.  Along with these dangers will come damage and death.  It is unavoidable.

Damage is done to characters in the form of Life Points, and each character only has so many.  When they reach 0, the character is dead.  For that reason, each party should have at least one Priest character, who can use their divine magic to heal members of the party.  Being able to heal is important to the party's overall survival.

But, what happens when the priest runs out of healing spells or someone dies?  Well, the good news is that even death is curable...for a price...

Welcome to the Waystop Temple.

In true CRPG tradition, Lands of Adventure includes a mystical temple where players can have their characters healed and raised from the dead.  Of course, this kind of healing doesn't come free.  The characters will have to surrender some of their hard earned gold in order to get back in fighting shape.

While I don't want the game to be completely brutal, I don't believe that CRPGs should coddle players and never put them in danger.  I think it's okay for characters to die on occasion, especially if a means exists to return that character to life.

Let's take a look at what the temple can do for the player:

Healing, healing, healing.

Light Healing: A character can be healed up to 10 Life Points with Light Healing.  This is useful if a character hasn't taken a lot of damage, or needs just a little bit of healing to get back up to their full capacity of Life Points.

Full Healing: For the right price, the character can also be returned to their maximum Life Points with a single spell.  Of course, this can be expensive.  But, when necessary, it can also be really handy.

Cure Disease: Sadly, characters may encounter all sorts of things when they're roaming around the world.  Catching a terrible disease is one of those things that they probably want to avoid.  Still, if it happens, they can have the disease removed for a fee.

Ressurection: So, you had the misfortune to have a character die during one of your quests?  No problem.  Pay the priest at the temple and he will be happy to return your character back to life, though only with 1 Life Point.

Sounds good, right?

But, what if you don't have a lot of gold and you want to heal your character naturally?

The Waystop Inn interface.

Luckily for the characters, they can visit the local inn and rest.  During a single night's rest (which only costs 10 gold pieces), they will recover a random number of Life Points and Mana Points based upon their level.  It may or may not get them back to full health, but several days rest would probably do the trick.

Either way, the characters can head out and fulfill their destinies without worrying too much about whether or not they have the means to rest or come back from the dead.

Well...unless they all die...

Player Interfaces

One of the things I feel is most important about game design is that the interface used by the player should be easy enough to figure out without needing to read a thick user manual.  In fact, I want Lands of Adventure to be put together well enough that a user manual isn't even necessary at all.  The game is littered with helpful hints and obvious clues as to how it works.  This is not because I think people are dumb or anything...I just think that *I* wouldn't want to play a game with a terrible interface...so I'm certainly not going to torture the people who will be playing this game with one.

Simple and easy to use.

I'm not going to say that the interface I've designed is original by any means.  If anything, I have borrowed ideas from the folks who came before me and wrote all those great CRPGs of yore.  People who have played SSI's series of Gold-Box games will find this layout familiar and intuitive.

Getting a quest from the town mayor.

I think that it's a good thing that I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel.  Paying homage to the old-school CRPGs means taking what worked from them and implementing them in this game.  It's what I hope players of those games will like about this one.  I mean, I personally would have loved it if people had been building games like this over the years...but there are, sadly, not many that I can name.

The overland map, showing the areas that can be visited.

The scope of the world isn't very large.  It takes place in a village called Waystop and the areas that surround it.  When an area opens up and is available for the characters to visit, a "Travel" button will appear.  If a quest is in progress, hovering over the button will remind the player *why* they want to travel there.  In the example above, the mayor has given a quest to go to Darkfell Swamp and eliminate the Goblin Chieftain and his followers, and it's easy to see what's going on.  If a player leaves a game in progress and comes back four days later, or if they have multiple locations that they can travel to, I think this will make it easier for them to make a choice of where they want to go.

And now, for the 3D exploration window...

Exploring the old keep in Darkfell Swamp.

It's still a work in progress, but it's functional.  The player can move around in the dungeons, and events will trigger based on where they are.  The code wasn't as hard to figure out as I thought...but getting the walls to line up right...that was some serious work.

At this point, there's no auto-map feature in the game (there may be one later, it just depends on how hard it will be to implement).  This particular dungeon isn't very big, so I don't imagine anyone would get lost in it, but others may be larger.

Then again, I guess the "old-school" way would be to dig out some graph paper and map the heck out of it....but that was never one of my favorite things to do.  And, since my goal is to program the kind of game I would want to play, we'll see how it all works out.

Encountering some goblins.

Just like games that have come before, exploring dungeons and locales will trigger events.  One of the freedoms I have in programming the game myself is that I can program *any* kind of event I want.  I'm not limited by what can be done like I would be if I used a CRPG development engine (like Unlimited Adventures, Neverwinter Nights, or RPG Maker VX).  The sky isn't even the limit.  I can go really outside the box and do something different if I wanted.

But, even if I do that, I will still keep things as close as possible to the way things were done in those old-school CRPGs.  After all, isn't that the point of this whole project?

Until next time...

Character Generation

Obviously, the first thing that a player will want to do when starting a CRPG is to generate characters.  As I mentioned in my last post, a player can build a party of four characters.  These four characters can be one of four basic archetypes (or classes), that I will discuss in more detail later in this post.

The character creation screen once the game starts.

 
The character creation screen allows a player to visually create their characters by clicking in the boxes to start the generation process.  If they generate a character that they don't like, they can click on the same box again to replace a character they already generated.

The character creation screen with characters after they've been generated.

Once a slot is selected, the player will start by generating attributes.  Being as this is an old-school style CRPG, the rolls are completely random, but I have built the game so that no character ends up being useless.  Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in rolling attributes over and over again while you try to get the best possible scores. Admit it...you did it at one time or another...

Attributes are generated on this screen.

Each character has four basic attributes that are used to help determine how good they are at various different things (like hitting a monster with a sword or disabling a complex lock).  Each one of these attributes is also tied to a class.

Strength -  Warriors benefit most from this attribute, as it grants bonus damage when using weapons.  Other classes can use it as well when they find themselves resorting to melee combat.

Intellect - Most important to Sorcerers, who use intellect to determine how many spell points they have.  A high score in intellect can also lead to additional damage with their spells.

Agility - Scouts need agility to perform special attacks successfully.  They can often get in critical strikes, and having a good agility score will make it easier for them to do so.  All classes can benefit from agility, which makes it harder for the enemy to hit.

Willpower - Priests use willpower to determine how much extra healing or damage their divine spells will do.  It also grants them a bonus on their spell points.  Additionally, all characters use willpower to resist magic when attacked by spells.

Character class selection screen.

As stated previously, characters can pick from four basic archetypes.  Since you may not be able to read the text on the picture above, I'll reprint it below:

Warrior - Warriors are masters of weapons and armor.  They can use any kind of weapon and any type of armor to help defeat their enemies in battle.  They have more Life Points than any other class.

Scout - Scouts excel at moving stealthily in order to sneak up on their enemies in combat.  They can use any sword or dagger and can wear light armors.  They don't have as many Life Points as a Warrior, but they can sometimes deal critical strikes in combat for extra damage.

Priest - Priests call upon the powers of the divine in order to heal their comrades and to smite their enemies. They are limited in their weapon selection and may only wear light or medium armor, but they have a good amount of Life Points.

Sorcerer - Sorcerers bend arcane energy to their will, allowing them to create damaging spells and protect themselves from strong enemies.  They may only use clubs or daggers in battle, can only wear cloth armors, and have fewer Life Points than any other class.

With the exception of picking a picture and icon combination for your character, that pretty much covers character creation.  I wanted to keep things as simple as possible...an old-school style choice, I suppose.

A character sheet example.

Of course, many things in the game are still being developed and could change over time.  But, the basics of the system are in place (a system of my own, since I cannot afford to license someone else's RPG system for this project).

So, until next time, I look forward to your feedback.

LANDS OF ADVENTURE: What is it?

The first question someone reading this blog might ask is "What the hell is Lands of Adventure, and why should I care?"  Those are really good questions.  Luckily for you, I have the answers to those questions and I'm going to share them, free of charge.  Aren't you glad you kept reading?

Lands of Adventure is an old-school style computer role-playing game that is currently in development.  I've been working on it off and on for the past couple of months between going to school for computer programming and doing a million other things.  I have no idea when it will be finished or when it will be available, but I hope that it will be in my lifetime.

Naturally, there are other questions that usually arise when I mention my project, so I will aim to answer them here:


What is 'old-school syle' and what does it mean?

When I say 'old-school style,'  it means that I am building the kind of CRPG that I loved to play in my youth.  The game draws inspiration from the CRPGs that came and went in the 80s and 90s, like The Bard's Tale, Pool of Radiance, Wizardry and Phantasie.  In these games, you built a party of adventurers and headed out to kill monsters, gather treasure and fulfill quests.  The stories were relatively simple and straightforward, the battles were unforgiving, and death came often to parties who were caught unprepared.  Most importantly, they were fun.


What kind of features will the game include?

When I started working on this game, my first step was to think about what kind of features I wanted to include and what kinds of things I wanted the game to have.  What did I miss most from the games in those eras and what did I want to bring to fans of those games?

Right from the beginning, I wanted to include a turn-based combat system.  That's probably the feature I miss the most from modern day CRPGs.  But, I wanted to create a system using battle icons so that players had a visual reference rather than a text-based combat system that games like The Bard's Tale used.  The combat system in Lands of Adventure will be more akin to SSI's Phantasie series of games, which were the predecessors to their Gold-Box series of games (like "Pool of Radiance").

Additionally, I wanted players to be able to create a party of characters rather than just a single solo character.  Party-based adventuring is where the fun lies, I believe.  So, players will be able to create four characters and pick from four different archetypes (Warrior, Scout, Priest and Sorcerer).

Finally, I knew that I wanted some kind of pseudo 3D engine for exploring dungeons and such.  Taking a cue from the games of old, I have created a working 3D exploration engine that will bring back memories of playing Wizardry or Might & Magic II.  Players will use a 3D window to navigate through dungeons and evil strongholds. 


Are you doing this whole project yourself?

No.  I am doing all the programming and story development tasks.  But, the artwork either comes from public domain sources, or from an artist going by the name of Uatu (I assume that is not his real name).  He graciously allowed me to use his work in my program, and I'm thankful for that.  You can find his homepage here:  http://dhost.info/uatu/


How much will the game cost?

It will cost me a lot of time.  But, I suppose that it will be worth it.  As for you guys, it won't cost a dime.  When it's done, or when it reaches a state where people can play with it, I'll release it as freeware.  The feedback I get and what I learn from this experience is far more important than any kind of money.

So, all I want is feedback.  Even before it's released.  If you think it looks great, let me know.  If you think it blows seven shades of monkey balls, be sure to let me know that too.  I can't fix it unless I know.


So, stay tuned for the next installment, where we'll look at character creation and you'll see some screenshots of the game...