Less opaque UI + horrible AI debugging

Not too much this week; I lost the last three days to Wizard World Austin comic-con, reppin' Rocksalt Magazine and Bad Mother. Here's what was done:

Made the UI system way less opaque by adding fun help text explanations about what my opaque icon glyphs are. (This involved slightly revising and improving the way the UI system draws to the screen, which knocks a couple things off my long-term to-do list)

Began coping with the terrible task of one day figuring out how to debug the AI. If it doesn't work right at this stage, when all we're dealing with is single variable-to-constant comparisons and checking which flags are set, good luck getting it to work with what I intend this system to eventually be. So next week is mostly going to be wading through these hideous v3.log files and figuring out exactly where the logic errors are, and figuring out once and for all how I'm going to handle flags.

Not a lot of work, but it was at least an hour, so this is a solid "C-" Gruedorf update.

Hitting Things

Here's some stuff I did this week:

We started with this screen shot on 10/14/12

We fixed some bugs. THIS ISN'T HOW IT HAS TO BE ANYMORE

We achieved this minor milestone

We revised our script substantially

We got to this point before I got totally sick and couldn't write coherent code

Everything is still bugged out with the AI file parser but it's really close. A couple more days of work and some stuff like adding placeholder SFX & music plus a title screen and I'll be done with WOL 1, cut a quick not-for-release demo to The Bosses, and ready to expand into WOL 2. "Now with interesting content."

Someone else post Gruedorf stuuuuuuff

AIiiiiie

A lot of work since last time, but not enough! I've gotten to the point where I need to code AI stuff, and there's a terrible niggling bug somewhere in the way the program loads AI strings into structures. I'd hoped to figure it out before posting this, but no luck, and I gotta do other stuff now. Here are some shots:

This is the prototype for a game design that hopefully can be made into something with maybe commercial legs. Since it's more important to get the central systems right than to do something super polished, I decided to approach this as a series of short games with progressively more complex designs. The first of which is pretty easy, basically a puzzle/tutorial, but getting it working requires having a lot of basic systems at least sort of operational. This image represents the ENTIRE MAP for the first game, and the ENTIRE CAST.

Here's new concept art via character artist Xerxes Verdammt, dropped wholesale into the game. Note the new big red arrow indicating which menu thing you've selected.

There are still a lot of bugs, however.

Stuff remaining to do on WOL 1 before I call it "done":

• finish the rest of the AI string loading
• debug the existing AI string loading
• finish writing, revising, and AI-coding the dialogue so the game is "complete" start to finish
• add whatever art comes in to the game
• make fun Pac-Man style title and ending screens

Then I think of a more complex design to make for WOL 2. I don't know how many it will take before I figure that the design is (1) done, and (2) fun. But right now it's enjoyable to work on!

(Oh, for those interested, I got interviewed. Mostly it's about like Scientology and Tarot cards.)

Rainbow Dash

I've been away, moving apartments, working on paying freelance projects, working on getting some really overdue creative stuff to various agents/associates. So here is some more of Mystery Project WOL. Not that much is impressive looking/visible, but some new stuff:

Slightly better use of old Chocolate Sauce tiles; brightening up the test map!

Why is there a menu full of random colors? What is this supposed to mean?

And finally, COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS CREATIVITY. Some kind of status menu, or possibly battle screen? What is this game going to be?

OH HEY ALSO: I've published a novel since last post! You can buy it here from the publisher, O/R Books! It's about quasi-Scientology cults and girls in love, and Eileen Myles likes it.