Firing up the engines

After about three months of being mostly on hiatus, I'm getting back to work. I'm currently making a detailed plan of what exactly I'll be putting in the rest of the game, mainly what new enemies to make. I'll post my detailed task list when it's done for anyone who's interested.

The most important thing is for me to remember that this is meant to be a beginner project, and it's okay for it to suck. Hopefully it won't, but I just need to get it done in any case. My perfectionist streak is part of why I've been taking a break. Gotta fight that.

Version 0.900, and a real web site

Sorry for the radio silence lately. It's way past my bedtime, so details will have to wait, but for now: Version 0.900 is out. Head on over to the new web site and try it out.

Week 39: Life intervenes

I've been sick and busy, my wife's been sick and very busy, and our poor doggie's been very sick. In short, I haven't done much on the project lately and haven't touched it for a few days. All I've done is some planning, and made some design decisions I'd been putting off. Most notably: No healing magic; various potions for healing and other effects, bought with money, no inventory limit, so balanced by money resource instead (this means I'll have to balance the player's money carefully, but that shouldn't be too hard); arrows cost money per shot but have no stock limit (like in original Legend of Zelda). You may notice that in all cases I've chosen the easiest and simplest design option out of the ones I've considered. Yep. No time to make things any more complicated than they need to be.

Week 38: Slime and Boomerang

Kind of a slow go on Wings of Albero this week, not helped by some general time-wasting on my part. I added a new enemy, a slime, and the first item ability, a boomerang attack a la Legend of Zelda. And a couple of new functions that aren't worth talking about.

So now we have slimes. I wanted them to split when you hit them, but ran into some nasty problems with TGB's collision physics response. Once there were several slimes close together, when a new one got placed they'd all go flying around like crazy and sometimes warp through walls. Not good. There are a couple of ways I could work around it, but I'd already wasted a couple of hours messing with it and it wasn't worth it. So, no splitting enemies this game.

The boomerang is the first item you'll probably find, in the jail cave. It normally stuns enemies for a couple of seconds. Some such as the knights are immune to it. The slimes are weak to it and actually take high damage from it, whereas your other attacks aren't as effective against them. (This is my substitute way to make the slime type interesting now that the splitting idea is dropped.)

Now I just have to make a way for you to actually GET the boomerang, and I'll be ready to move on to shopping, arrows, healing abilities, and I'd better get started on the further areas of the game soon....

Week 37: Smarter enemies, second alpha

Huh, guess I should make my official Week 37 post here. As everyone reading this has probably already seen, I put out the second alpha release this weekend. Most of the work I did was making the enemies smarter and aggressive rather than just random. It's been an interesting challenge figuring out how to make fun, varied battle gameplay with this contact-attack battle system I've chosen. I'll probably have more to say about that as a post-mortem once we can see how well it turns out in the end. =) Now it's time to charge ahead with more features -- chiefly sub-weapons and other items, shopping, and equipment upgrades -- and more content.

Alpha 2 released, and we've got forums!

Alpha version 2 is out. There is no additional content whatsoever in this release. *pout*

The main change is a drastic change to the behavior of all the enemies, making them much smarter and more aggressive. See what you think of the battles now and please share any suggestions. Also please tell me if it's too hard now! Remember, this is still the early part of the game, so I want the enemies to be interesting and to seem like they're actually trying to fight you, but not to be terribly dangerous overall.

Other changes:

• your shield blocks shots only when standing still
  
• you now bounce back slightly when attacking an enemy
• changed damage formula so that damage starts falling off more slowly once it's below 1/4 attack power
• various uninteresting bugfixes (note to self: if you're going to put in temporary code, mark it to be fixed later)

The alpha testing page with the game download has been moved to here, a post on our spiffy new forums. Enjoy! (I hope.)

Update: Video!

Wings of Albero (action RPG): smarter enemies (alpha #2) from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Money

I've been thinking about ways to avoid that weird RPG tradition where everyone still charges you money even after it's clear that you're the only hope to save the world, etc. I've been thinking over systems where the villagers will help you for free, but you need to find the materials they need to make you equipment, potions, etc. Problem is, everything I've thought of so far is, on further review, either too restrictive to be interesting (you find some iron; would you like to use it to upgrade your sword, armor, or shield?) or functionally equivalent to money except more complicated and annoying to handle (you find an iron ingot and can turn it into some iron arrows or save up several for an iron sword, and also you find various herbs that you can turn into potions or save for magic training later, blah blah blah).

So enough. I'm now working on talking myself into giving myself permission to use a perfectly ordinary, perfectly serviceable money system. This sort of thing is difficult for me....

Week 36: In which nothing much happens

I've been busy with work work and catching up on all the things I neglected with the house during the push to alpha #1, so haven't made any progress on the game lately.

One of my friends brought up a tricky issue with the magic system I have planned. Your magic resource will be a fairly small stock that recharges quickly when you're not using it (already roughly this way in alpha 1). The desired gameplay result is that you'll be free to fire off a few spells when you decide that you need a boost in battle; you'll have to wait a bit between rounds of magic, so you want to choose a good spell at a good time and make it count; and you recharge fast enough that you might easily fire off two rounds of magic in a normal battle.

The tricky issue comes in if I provide any kind of healing magic. If your magic is unlimited and recharges quickly and you have a healing spell, then you have full recovery after each battle, which I don't think I want. But how to avoid that dynamic? I currently have these main ideas:

• No healing magic. The obvious and easy solution. Your health recovery is limited to a consumable healing item or limited stock thereof.
  
  
• Healing magic causes some kind of longer-term resource drain. I'm already considering having a "fatigue" penalty that you accumulate when you use your entire magic charge at once, probably something like making your magic recharge more slowly. Healing magic could always cause fatigue. Or another effect such as reducing your maximum magic charge until the next time you rest in town or whatever.
  
  The general idea is to add a downside to healing magic so that one wouldn't always want to heal up. But having the downside be some effect that weakens your character doesn't appeal to me so much, because I want you to feel free to use magic frequently without worrying about a long-term strategic resource (such as MP in typical RPGs), and in general I want to avoid the "dungeon of attrition" model that many RPGs follow.
  
  
• Healing fully will put you at risk to get attacked by more enemies before you're done. Maybe if you sit around for a certain time period, there's a continual chance for enemies to appear from one of the area entrances (with the certain time period such that it takes you longer to heal up from serious injury). Or, if you take some kind of fatigue penalty for magical healing, you can rest to recover from fatigue, but there's a chance for enemies to appear every time you rest.
  
  
• I just thought of this one, so it's totally not thought through: Healing magic temporarily reduces your maximum health each time you use it (or, healing magic becomes progressively less able to restore you the more you use it, to think of it that way).

I'm also thinking of how to restrict healing items (assuming I have some). I just want to avoid the "99 Heal Potions on the wall" syndrome. I keep thinking to limit your inventory space in some way. One thought is that you have a limited total capacity for consumable items ... which are basically "healing items and arrows" in this game, so making a pooled carrying capacity doesn't add much interest here. Better is to just limit how many healing items you're allowed to carry, probably by you having only a certain number of potion bottles (see A Link to the Past).

I've also thought of making you find ingredients for potions ... but that can suck if not handled well, and is really a way to substitute for money rather than an effective way to limit healing items.

No new alpha this weekend

On the off chance that someone is obsessively refreshing the page waiting for the next alpha version, I wanted to announce that it will not be out for this weekend. I've been too busy for the project lately, and I want the next alpha to have fixed up enemy behavior and hopefully some more content and features. So probably the weekend of the 14th.

Why does Albero give you Fire magic?

It occurs to me that because alpha #1 doesn't include any of the backstory, I should explain just why it is that the evil tyrannical wizard Albero is nice enough to leave the Fire magic lying around for you to pick up. Briefly, he was originally a good wizard and a good ruler, but his heart was captured by evil and desire for power. But long before that, he was wise enough to recognize that one day he or a successor might succumb to evil. So that the people would be able to fight against such evil, he left many magical items and powers scattered around the land. (His greatest magical item is the eponymous Wings, which allow a hero to fly to the floating tower that is the center of his power.)

(I may rework the story to make the villain be Albero's successor instead of Albero himself. Haven't decided for sure.)

Week 35: Alpha testing begins, Griffin takes a nap

I mostly took a much-needed rest today after working pretty hard to get a decent alpha #1 put together. I'm pleased with how it's going so far, but I have a lot of work to do.

It's become clear -- I was feeling it as I finished up the alpha version, and I've already gotten some feedback agreeing -- that the enemy behavior needs to be smarter and more aggressive. Currently, they all just move randomly. I thought that would be enough, considering that I do want these early enemies to be easy. Well, if this were a game where touching an enemy hurts you, then randomly moving enemies might work. But in this one, not at all. They're just not interesting or fun. So this is my #1 major task, even ahead of adding the rest of the planned content (of which there is a lot left to do).

Seems like there were other things that I wanted to ramble about, but I can't remember them and don't really have the energy anyhow. I'll leave you with a video of various clips from a playthrough of alpha #1.


Wings of Albero (action RPG): clips from alpha #1 from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Alpha testing open!

I've released the first alpha testing version of Wings of Albero. The alpha test is open to the public and everyone is welcome. The alpha testing page with the game download is here.

It's missing a lot more than I would like, but it's got enough that I'm (barely) comfortable releasing it for alpha. The main gameplay is there in something like its intended final form, even though it's short, with most of the planned game not open to the player yet. More details tomorrow.

Onward

Forging ahead. Here's my hasty but passable art for castles and caves, because I felt like sharing:

Week 34: First area done (pretty much)

Major crunch time here. Did I mention that art takes a long time? It does. In fact, everything takes a long time. I'm going to have to scramble to get a sufficiently semi-complete game together for alpha testing next week. So I'm cutting myself off in this post. That's all. Goodbye.

Well, first, here's a video of the first area, complete aside from some gameplay details that need to be changed or filled in.


Dev 5: Forest path (first area) from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Week 33: Art takes a long time

So yeah, art takes a long time, even though I'm just doing pretty simple colored-in outlines. For the player character, it ran me about half an hour for each frame. Now, being the player, that was unusually complex and I spent unusually long fine-tuning details, and I'm sure it'll get faster as I get more practice and nail down my workflow ... but it's taken a long time so far. I'm now trying to figure out all the ways I can cut corners on art requirements (e.g. rather than a typical character having one standing frame and two or three walking frames, maybe I'll just have two walking frames always cycling (the classic NES RPG "guys walking in place")).

I'm pleased with the results so far, at least. It won't win any awards, but it's quite adequate.

There'll be a video along soon as soon as I get the first area all presentable. To hold you over, here's one of my art files for a sample. Yes, you're a standard spiky-haired hero. Why mess with success?

Week 32: Crunch time, crunch crunch

It's clear that it will be a near thing whether I can progress fast enough to start alpha testing next month on a reasonably complete game. This is despite having cut (well, "de-prioritized," let's say) a lot of features, and looking at probably losing some more. (For example, I really wanted to include a simple version of the flexible ability-up system I have in mind for the full game. But I'm realizing that it's just not as important as a lot of things I initially had prioritized lower. My stand-in "generic level-up" system is by no means bad if it comes to that.)

I'm currently hustling to get the first area put together with its real map, real enemies, and real graphics (that is, the best I can manage for a quick job -- hopefully they'll come out passable) for everything. I've got my three enemies acting right, subject to change. You've got the hoppy one, the stabby one, and the shooty one. (They're all currently recycling my existing animations, making them appear to be horrible misshapen shapeshifting knight-slime things, which is one reason I won't post a new video for a bit. Yes: I'm using my stand-in art as a stand-in for proper new stand-in art.)

I uploaded all of my videos to all of the several video sharing sites I've tried, as planned last week. Sure enough, they've each already picked up a dozen or so views from random people. I have no idea if anyone's clicked through to the blog from a video, much less started following the project. If you're such a person, welcome! Stick around, tell your friends, etc. This video thing really drove home to me that I have to get my art in order. I can write whatever disclaimer I like about stand-in art, but there's no substitute for a good impression.

Finally, yesterday I got my act together to set up proper version management for the project. (After getting mugged by the collision system the other week, I wanted to just roll back to my previous version. Fortunately, I could, from my manual backups, so it wasn't really even a close call, but it could have been troublesome if I'd had a larger problem.) I'm using Subversion, and liking it very well so far. Easy to set up and use, and seems efficient with operations and space usage. Shoulda done it a long time ago.

Week 31: It's a game! It's an RPG!

I had some good, productive time this weekend. I put in a rudimentary ability-up system (just a plain-vanilla "level up" system, which is not what I want for the real game, but it works as a stand-in), which really made the whole thing come together much better and was a great morale-booster for myself. It now classifies as an actual RPG in my book. Sure, it's very short and simple, and the implied plot is, "Kill the slimes, then kill the red slimes, then kill the knights, then finally go and wipe out the horde of yellow slimes that's grown up in the meantime." But it's a genuine rudimentary action RPG, so it's an exciting milestone for me.

I also added a basic GUI display of the character's condition. Oh, and I also spent a couple of ultimately wasted hours messing with the collision detection, which I'd rather not discuss. >_< Also the yellow slimes now shoot at you rather than always to the right.

So for the contest, the game will definitely be just a long demonstration of the battle system, with as many additional things as I can fit in. At this point the "optional features" list includes things such as "people to talk to," "more than one weapon," and "plot."

Regarding publicity, I had a brainwave this afternoon (that seems embarrassingly obvious in hindsight). The other week I tried a few different video-sharing sites to choose which one to use. So today I logged in to Revver to check something technical. Lo, my test upload ("Knights") had 15 views, and I know those weren't all me. So, brainwave: Why don't I upload all of my videos to several sites? No need to choose only one. And -- hey! -- instead of assuming that everyone goes from this blog to the video, why don't I link from the videos back here too?

Finally, here's a full walkthrough video! Yay! (I'm embarrassed to admit that I got killed twice trying to take this video. I blame the lag caused by the video capture process. Actually, I think I forgot a setting on the knights so that they can hit you rapid-fire if you get stuck against a wall.)


Dev 4: A real, simple action RPG from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Notes--
0:35 - I run because I'm not strong enough to fight the knights yet (did you see my 0 damage?).
2:40 - I'm beaten up enough that I go back to the red slimes before the knights get me.

Week 30: Griffin filibusters

I was on vacation last week, so have no progress to report, but wanted to post to keep on my regular posting schedule. So I'll ramble on about the main design issue I'm struggling with.

I'm still waffling over exactly how much action and how much RPG I want in my action RPG.

Consider those knights I recently added. Currently, if you run into the sword side, you take a hit, and the knight is unharmed; if you run into any other side, the knight takes a hit and you are unharmed. This is an action-oriented gameplay mechanic [ADDED:] because you have to perform an action-gaming feat to win the battle.

There's another possibility that I've been thinking about a lot, but haven't (completely) implemented (yet). It would work like this: when you and the knight (or other attacking enemy) run into each other head-on, each combatant has a chance to hit the other and/or block the other's attack. I envision that you'd usually parry each other's attacks and bounce back, several times, until eventually one of you won the encounter, and the other took a hit and got knocked backwards.

If you hit the other from the side or back, you always make a hit.

This is a more RPG-type mechanic [ADDED:] because you don't have to perform any action-gaming task except running into the enemy, and can still win; it still has an action element in that outmaneuvering the enemy gives you an easier win. It makes the player's action skill much less important. It appeals to me. But I'm afraid it would wind up feeling like a MMORPG or FF12, only faster, which does not appeal to me. That's why I've been leaning more towards action-ish battles (more towards the Final Fantasy Adventure end than the Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3 end, to reference one of my touchstone series).

One complicating factor is that one of my sub-goals is to make an "Easy" level that really is easy -- easy enough to be accessible to non-gamers. Action gameplay is a major obstacle to that. I need to figure out ways to make it easy to win and progress even if the player has no skill for the action elements of the gameplay. So making it more RPG-like would help with that.

So. Waffling.

[edited 20080128 0710 to clarify what the heck I'm talking about]

Week 29: More slimes, with reactions and attacks

I added a couple more battle features and cooked up two more test enemies to demonstrate them.

First, by popular demand and to honor video game tradition, red slimes. They react to the player's presence by attacking when you get close (rather than acting randomly as the original ones do).

Then I started adding the capability for combat creatures to "shoot," which encompasses short-range attack moves as well as projectiles. Demonstrating that, we have yellow slimes who make a sparky-looking attack but have no relationship whatsoever to Pika***.

(The shot should be aimed at the player, but it isn't yet. And I have more work to do getting the collision detection right, and the configuration data setting is a mess and needs to be cleaned up, but I'm out of time for this week.)


Dev 3: More Slimes from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Week 28: More basics, now with knights

This week I got some good things done behind the scenes (i.e. they won't be obvious from the video, but they were important). The big one was tracking each character's orientation and using that in evaluating hits. The upshot of that is that now you have to actually run into the enemy to attack (rather than before where the slime would get hit even if it ran into you from behind).

I also created a second test enemy to show off the orientation functions: a knight, which you have to attack from one of the non-pointy sides. =)

(Also some small fixes, such as the slimes no longer killing each other.)

New video:

Dev 2: Knights from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Week 27: Battle basics

I've been working on getting the basic battle system up and running. Right now, it's got endless hordes of cute slimes that you can fight (any resemblance to dangos is quite unintentional). One quirk is that currently they can hit each other as well as you. Oops.

I've also partly made spawn points -- spots on the field that generate new copies of enemies (hence the endless hordes). I still need to make them configurable for type(s) of enemies to spawn and conditions for spawning.

Feels like things are going slowly, but I have a good feeling that I'm setting up a good foundation that will let things go quickly once the basics are done.

Finally, I'm semi-proud to present the very first video of this very early stage of development:

Dev 1: Endless Slimes from Griffin Knodle on Vimeo.

Week 26: Vision of the Golden City

(Late post here due partly to someone putting a backhoe through an important cable, knocking out the neighborhood's phone / DSL -- although to AT&T's credit, they had it fixed in just over 24 hours.)

Without further ado, the new and probably final title for this game:

Vision of the Golden City

In a certain country, many of the children start developing unusual powers as they approach adolescence, gaining powerful fighting skills and other abilities. This always begins with the children seeing a vision of a mysterious city of gold, opulent but empty under a hot sun.

The country often comes under attack by monsters or other nations seeking the power of the city, but the chosen warriors are always able to defend it. It seems as if the Golden City gives the children however much power they need to defeat any challenge.

However, many of the chosen children have noted that they change in strange ways after receiving the power of the city. They no longer feel themselves and some feel separated from the very people they are protecting. What is the truth of the Golden City and its power?

*****

The main character and her childhood friend are two of the newest group of chosen children. As they grow in power, Friend begins acting strangely, desperately seeking still more power because he thinks that he needs ever more to be able to protect the people. The main character will have to discover the truth about the Golden City and her world in order to save her friend and maybe more.

One helpful aspect of this plot is that the middle can be expanded or shrunk a great deal depending on how much time I have to put into it. There's a whole general arc -- exploring, fighting off dangers, gaining power, and Friend losing it -- that can take up pretty much any amount of time and attention, although it will become less effective if it gets too short.

This story takes place in the setting of Last Ancient, but some time earlier than that story. I was having trouble working out the details, and I clearly wasn't going to be able to do justice to the story I wanted to tell in the time frame I had, so it made sense to drop back to a simpler story. (Which is rapidly gaining complexity from some ideas for story elements that I've thought of and quickly gotten attached to. Oops.)

Even if I keep things simple, time is still very short. I think there's a good chance that for the contest I'll do something simpler still: a battle-only game with the battle system fully developed, and basic power development tacked on, but no plot, and with areas, enemies, abilities, etc. likely to change for the real game. My goal in this case would be to make a complete, fun game showing off the battle system, and post-contest filling it out into the complete game I have in mind.

OK, enough blogging for tonight, time to go do some more stuff.