Updated Character Screens

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been doing a lot of changes to the graphics in the game.  I want everything to look great.  My initial intention with this game was to go "old school."  While there are a lot of "old school" ideas in the game, I see no reason to use pixel graphics or anything silly like that.  Layout is quite important when it comes to finding things and being able to read things easily.

With that in mind, I have redesigned the character screens.  The redesign allows it to use up most of the space while still allowing for some separation of the information.

For reference, let's look at the old screen from a screenshot that's at least a year old:

It works, but it's ugly.

The screen is functional, but that's about it.  Let's see how things have improved over the last year, just so you all know I've actually been doing something...

Easier to read, more information.

 I'm pretty happy with the final version.  I think the layout is a lot better.  Please be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think.  You guys have been awfully quiet out there.

Health and Mana Bars

This will probably be another short update, as I'm only able to work on the project in small doses.  The most recent update hashed out all the issues with the Health and Mana bars and got them working as they should.  In addition, characters who do not have spells will have their Mana bars "greyed" out, indicating that they do not use or need Mana.

Here's a picture of this in action (because, you know how much I love pictures):

Picture not in high resolution due to me working from my laptop today.

In addition, there are some other changes to account for the six person party that you can't see.  This includes being able to view the additional character's stats and inventory and interact with their portraits.  Still a lot of work to be done in this area, but most of it is pretty simple and should come along easily enough over the course of adding new things.

More updates soon.

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.

Updated Character Screens

Even though the updates to this blog have become less frequent doesn't mean that progress on the game has stopped.  In fact, I've been working pretty hard.  The problem is that there is very little that can be shown.  Working with code and rebuilding systems from the original version of the game is an essential step...but leads to some very boring blog reading.  I'm sure you don't much care to hear how I revamped the item class objects or worked out the steps to make text print just the way that I want on the screen.  It's interesting to me, certainly, but I'm likely the only one who would find it so.

Still, some progress has been made.  I like to show off the progress to keep those who are interested up to date with how things are coming along.  This time around, I don't have a lot of visuals to show off, but at least I have something to prove that I haven't been sitting on my hands the last month and a half.

This time around, we'll look at the new version of the character screen.  But, before we do that, let's remind ourselves what the old version looked like:

The original character screen in all its glory.

The updated version includes all the same information, laid out in much the same way.  But, it looks a lot nicer.  A whole lot nicer.  Let's take a look:

Updated version.

There's still some work to be done.  The "Continue" button at the bottom shouldn't be showing.  When the character panel loads, it should be turned off.  It's not a broken function or anything, I just haven't coded it yet.  Some of the numbers need to be aligned correctly as well.  They look sort of crooked to me.

I'd like to think that the new, more colorful version of the character screen shows that the game is keeping its roots while updating it's look. 

But, there are many things that can't be seen from just this one screenshot.  Since the last posting, I have updated the number of classes available in the game.  We have gone from four to seven (Warrior, Knight, Scout, Ranger, Priest, Sorcerer, Battlemage). 

Decisions are being made about how to handle the combat in this game as well.  I want to increase the tactical options, but still keep it simple enough that anyone who has played games of this nature will be able to pick it up without a manual or a tutorial.  It's not easy, but ideas are starting to form about how it will all flesh out.

So, if you're following the development of the game, stay tuned.  There will be some exciting stuff coming.