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Epic of Serinor Dev Log

Saturday, 21 November 2009
Always More Fighting
Topic: Progress Report

More progress the last couple days on the battle system, enough so to put me back on my Saturday updates schedule.  All the effects and animations are done for level 1 attacks, which means I can push forward with the tutorial story for a while.  Once the tutorial is done, I'll probably release a public version of just that piece to show what the new Serinor will feel like.  Then starts the long process of converting the old world to the new one.  After that, save files will need converted/imported to the new system.  Then Serinor will be back to where it was a year ago.  /sigh

I also finished the framework for combat effects, so nearly all abilities, techniques, and items will work as expected once their data entry's done; they all use the same scripting, just with different variables they store themselves.  Well, they'll apply their effect properly, at any rate.  Not all of those effects are scripted to do anything yet.  But one thing at a time.


Posted by Eldritch at 11:24 AM EST

Thursday, 19 November 2009
A goo approaches!
Topic: Progress Report

It is done.

Or at least stubbed out.  But there's a visceral sort of joy in being able to kill a goo again.  Especially when it's fighting back too.  There's a lot here that doesn't get conveyed in a static screenshot (attack animations, anybody?) but as a proof of concept, that's one dead goo evaporating into nothing up there.  And Adain killed it himself.  Killed it dead.

There's a lot of scripting yet to do just to make sure each class's level 1 attacks function as they're supposed to.  And then the actual code for abilities, techniques, and items, not to mention the functionless "Other" option in the base menu.

But it's a battle.  It progresses correctly through combatant turns.  All the animations work properly.  Damage and accuracy are handled correctly.  A goo inevitably dies at the end.  And all of that makes me way happier than it probably should.


Posted by Eldritch at 12:27 AM EST

Friday, 13 November 2009
A Thank You to Kildorf
Topic: Small Talk

I'd like to take a moment to thank Kildorf for working with me to get font subsets fixed in the newest build of Verge.  Although he managed to get the font issues resolved rather quickly, it turns out there was a lot of other nasties percolating under the hood.  But other than a loose end or two, he managed to correct them and get my text highlighting back.  For which I am eternally grateful.

He can thank me by being somewhat less awesome, because after I pass up SDHawk in survival time sometime in the next week or so, he's next in line on the list of Gruedorf failures participants.  Becaue we are eternal rivals.  Or something.  I was never very good at this.


Posted by Eldritch at 11:31 AM EST

Thursday, 12 November 2009
To All Things a Time
Topic: Progress Report

Combatants are loaded, monsters created, and the system can track whose turn it is ten actions out.

Enemies are generated more or less according to set functions based on the given level of the enemy.  So at the moment, all enemies of the same level are more or less identical.  The next step for enemy generation is to write the parser that will read a given enemy's "mods" from the data file, including damage bonuses, special defenses, and unique abilities.  The idea is to streamline the process of enemy creation and to allow me to load a given monster, pass it a new level, and have it scale correctly to the new difficulty level.  Level 50 goos, anybody?

I have all the formulae designed, and they produce enemies roughly similar to what used to exist at level one (with slightly higher health, since damage output definitely increased) but I won't really feel comfortable with them until I can try them live.

so my next goal is to get the actions menu done.  Once that interface is designed, the basic math for attacks is already done, so hopefully a working, if basic, battle engine will be done in a week or two.  Then I can add all the bells and whistles that come later (although I'm sure a system where all anybody could do is basic attacks would be absolutely thrilling.)


Posted by Eldritch at 2:19 PM EST

Saturday, 7 November 2009
Tiny Steps
Topic: Progress Report

It's amazing how little gets accomplished when you only do the minimum of one weekly hour for this competition.

I hacked together a few mock-ups of how I want my UI pieces lined up during combats.  This is my preferred layout, though I also put together some with the heroes aligned along the left or top sides of the screen.  I think this will work out best in the end.

With another hour, maybe I'll have enemies blitted to the screen!  Though in reality, I have to define them first.  And resize all the sprites to a larger resolution.  Without necessarily asking artists whose patience I have already tried far too often to redo every single one of them.


Posted by Eldritch at 3:12 PM EST

Saturday, 31 October 2009
Char Gen Complete!
Topic: Progress Report

Well, I'm pretty much where I expected to be this week.  Stat assignment and attack selection still need their help text written, but the hero is complete: every aspect of initial character generation is done.

Next week I start working on the combat system itself.  I have most of the layout done on paper, and my modular menu system means most of the UI pieces I'll need to draw are already done for me.  I'll also simply be yanking the guts out of Serinor's old combat engine, throwing in the guts of the simple Gelardia engine I did a while back, stirring well, and baking until complete.

The original combat engine for Serinor was such a hacked together thing it could make Frankenstein's monster look gorgeous.  Because of this, there's a deep dread in my stomach when I think about getting back to work on combat, especially from the ground up.  Rationally, I know that I have all the pieces I need to make this thing elegant and easy-to-use, but that doesn't actually soothe the gnawing despair.  It'll be better once the framework's in place, but it seems so far away.


Posted by Eldritch at 1:07 PM EDT

Saturday, 24 October 2009
Equipped for Combat
Topic: Progress Report

Heroes can actually equip the weapons and armor in their inventory, and it correctly updates their combat statistics.  The combat statistic display in the information menu is also complete, allowing the player to actually see how the equipment alters their heroes statistics.

Now that the hero can select and ready his initial equipment, it's time to move onto attack selection and attribute point assignment.  After that, the hero will receive their first spell (which I think I need to rename power or technique.)

Then I'm finally into combat.  I know combat statistics are all programmed correctly, so assuming I get attacks modular enough (at heart, an attack, even a basic one, is just a spell with no mana cost) most of the underlying math should already be done for me.  It'll just be a matter of displaying all the information to the screen and scripting special effects.

[Serinor purists will also note Plant damage has been replaced by Sonic damage, and Earth and Air are gone to make space for Sharp and Blunt, though I can't imagine there's anybody who would have spotted that had I not said something.]


Posted by Eldritch at 1:29 PM EDT

Saturday, 17 October 2009
Taking Stock
Topic: Progress Report

So after I got the displays for attack selection finished, I realized a good portion of the stats in any given attack are related to what you're actually attacking with.  So seeing stats for what something like Twin Strike or Planar Attack does when attacking using nothing but the hero's bare hands is right on up next to useless.  As such, I got the inventory system working.

I already had an item struct built in, so I only had to do two things: take the table of raw equipment data and translate it into a functional piece of equipment and then get it displayed to the screen.  Since I've doubled the amount of screen space, it's now much easier to do a side-by-side comparison of what a hero currently has equipped and what's going to replace it.  And, since an item carries its stats with it now, swapping equipment doesn't require searching through massive dat files for the particular line of stats I want to use.  Just copy to the equipment slot and update the character's stats.

I also reserved space in the item struct for custom enhancements later on.  Another nifty addition available thanks to the disposal of pre-defined dat files!


Posted by Eldritch at 10:38 PM EDT

Sunday, 11 October 2009
A Belated Return
Topic: Progress Report

I would include a screenshot with this, but Serinor has always used text highlighting pretty heavily, and until I get it working in the newest version of VERGE, the menu screenshots I want to show would look something awful.

At any rate, development on the new opening sequence continues.  Rather than generate an entire (faceless) party right off the bat, the player instead designs a single hero piece by piece.  I've scripted through gender, appearance, name, and class while slowly introducing the quest that will take the fledgling hero through the tutorial.  Next in line are stat point assignment and initial attack selection.

After that, it's Combat 101, which means I have to get the new battle system coded.  It's not a complete ground-up rewrite, but it's definitely close enough for jazz, as they say.


Posted by Eldritch at 11:17 PM EDT

Friday, 3 April 2009
Architect

I may have forgotten to update yesterday or the day before.  I haven't worked on Serinor in the past week, which would be why.

I have, however, spent quite some time tinkering with the open beta of the Mission Architect in City of Heroes.  Does writing user-generated content for an MMO count for Gruedorf time?  I don't know.  It was fun, though.


Posted by Eldritch at 4:36 PM EDT

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