Death and story

Not quite a week, but I've got pretty much everything done that I wanted to get done this week. Here are screen shots first:


That dirty bitch, Chocolate


Life is hard

I tried to take more screen shots, but for some reason my textbox function doesn't let Fraps take shots properly during cut scenes, so that one shot was done through horrible hacked-up PrintScreen means. I should really solve this problem somehow.

So, apropos of previous goals:

- Tack is laid out externally and all but about four houses internally. Most of those houses just have entities that say wacky things, plus the game's stores, which do no good since I haven't coded any kind of item or money system yet. Not that many "clutter" tiles, but a few more than I had before. I coded the first three story sequences of the game and a hacked-up title screen, so the game now has a big eight minutes of "gameplay" if you know where you're going. Most of that is watching characters yap at one another so I can't quite count it, but it's fun to see the story sort of come to life.
- Made a sprite for the town guard... and that's it!
- Battle system works much better in that you can get your ass kicked and see a "game over" screen now. I changed up the commands some, taking out "Run" and "Magic" and adding a few new character-specific commands. There's a little bit of cool strategy already--a VERY little bit, but it's not completely a button-mash affair. No new battle backgrounds, but the code is in place to load them once I make some.
- Font is done. Not sure how I feel about it, but there it is.
- Also worked on the map spells system. You can load a mouse cursor and click on stuff and nothing happens yet.
- Put in two songs from musical mastermind Long Dao.

So that's it for this week. Next week's goals?!

- All story in Tack done. Done! Get on with your lives!
- All layout in Tack done, and at least the inn/restore facility working because it's totally easy to do so. Game basically done, barring graphics/refinement, up to the point where you leave town.
- At least a sprite for Cass done, since he's a major character and stuff. I keep saying I'll do the man with the hat and I keep not doing it, so I'm not even going to say it this time.
- Map spells system basically done, barring some graphical refinement. You can click on things and have other things happen basically. This also involves setting up the menu so you can choose your active spell (should be only like two or three in this release so not that hard--the hard part is setting up the "hotspot" code.)
- Two more commands in the battle system: Items and Chocolate's "Knack." Make those work. I'm not even sure which will be harder at this point.
- Some headway on an items system. This will involve overhauling the menu system, long overdue.
- Any monster art that's done in the game and new monsters created to match it. It'd be a good idea to test a monster on the map coming up and messing with you as well, but I don't really care if this doesn't happen by next week.

I didn't quite get as much as I wanted done this week since I stupidly took a day or two off--really arbitrarily too. It completely kills your motivation when you don't work on something every day. Keep moving, keep plugging along

screenshot #3 -- not doing this daily anymore btw/ftw

This is the last of the daily screenshots for a while, just because I don't want to clutter the Gruedorf aggregator every day with minor updates. Rest assured that I'll still be working to the best of my ability/schedule every day, though. This will just give you a whole week to worry about what I'm doing, and how far you are falling behind. Fear is the heart of the Gruedorf, just as it is perhaps the heart of its primary participants.

If all goes well, I can have a first release ready probably at the start of September. The key is to resist the demo-birthing urge until the game is actually done. Since all told it'll be a pretty modest game--like two, three hours start to finish--I think I can manage this.

As far as yesterday went:

- I did make a new sprite, but not the dude in the hat--just the basic evil priest. Now the world is entirely populated with ciphers, teenage girls, and evil priests. It is much like the real world in this.

- The charge times work for a maximum of four party members, one enemy. The first release is probably just going to involve one enemy, even though it wouldn't be hugely complicated to involve more than that I guess. Fight also works pretty much as it'll eventually work, even if the damage calculation needs revising.

- Blackwood is basically laid out. Still need to make a bunch of "clutter" tiles, beds, empty glasses and such--one or two things a day and we'll be good.

- I worked out the plot scene by scene for the first maybe fifteen-twenty minutes. Stupidly though I decided that the first scene had to happen in the town rather than in this elaborate Blackwood map, so the next job is to lay out an entirely different map with different tiles. Then I can actually start, you know, making this into a game with story and things.

- Started reworking the font to be more like my comics handwriting (http://fictioncircus.com/mwhf). You can see the letter A in the screenshot (the rest of the font is just swiped obviously.) Also, I learned that Verge has a basic function called "EnableVariableWidth", which means I can stop frantically trying to design a function to enable variable width fonts. This is sort of like the time I realized there was a function called "SetEntitiesPaused", huh

- Overkill warned me about getting involved in his rivalry with SDHawk and Thrasher, so I guess all of them have to be my arch-enemies now. Backing down would be a craven act, more suitable to a low beast than a man. Clearly my manly pink textboxes will be the banner of victory in this match.

Goals for next week:

- Lay out Tack entirely and code at least those first fifteen minutes of story. Make some basic town tiles suitable to a horrible desert. Keep making "clutter" tiles for Blackwood as well, beds and beers being the most critical of these.
- New sprites: town guard, guy in the hat. Sheriff if time.
- Refine the battle system yet more: implement spell and item menus and make all of the basic battle commands work. Drop "Run" from the commands list (cowards!) Also make it so that MapInit always loads scene-appropriate battle backgrounds, even if I do love that Dragon Warrior thing.
- Finish the new font.

So: weekly now. See you all Saturday next.

officially in gruedorf -- BS commands finished, some new art/maps

Daily screenshots:




I got everything done that I wanted to get done yesterday, or thereabouts. I didn't do the upstairs section of Blackmoss, but I did do the downstairs area (part of it.) The nice thing today was that I managed to finish some tiles to replace the total bullshit disco floor placeholder tiles from hahn01.vsp. It's getting there, even if the corner tiles are pretty much ass.

Tomorrow's goals:
- New sprite (the dude with the hat)
- Implement the charge times in the battle--if time, make "Fight" do something other than pop a message/register a "hit" to the enemy that does jack
- Actually finish laying out blackwood.map's upstairs
- Draft a full script for the opening sequence and think about coding that
- Decide on an archenemy (leaning towards SDHawk since he needs new archenemies anyway)

Screenshot #1, 06/19/2008

Screenshots hopefully daily. TBD today:

- Finish "template" animation for entities
- Create working battle system command input
- Lay out the rest of blackmoss.map using horrible tiles from hahn01.vsp