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Epic of Serinor Dev Log

Saturday, 2 January 2010
Moderate Progress
Topic: Progress Report

The party is full if not complete.  Still pending some art changes before the menu will even open after Marty and Aerin join.  And though the Hero Shrine will talk you through all the prompts, it won't actually do anything.  But everybody joins the party and makes the trek across Amin to the Achiela Ferry, where the battles start up again.  Measured and limited battles, mind; I have a set experience quota for this tutorial.

I also spent some time debating how to format save files.  Since I'm coming from a fairly extensive base, I know pretty much everything that needs to go into them.  They won't be directly compatible with old saves, I already know that.  But I do have some features in mind (Dungeon Lords, horribly executed as it was, did teach me some things) that require a bit of extra care in making sure data is saved deliberately.

I also need to finish the abilities menu at some point.  All these new party members have all sorts of nifty abilities that the player needs to be able to see and/or use.


Posted by Eldritch at 5:33 PM EST

Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Text Timers
Topic: Progress Report

Nothing glamorous today.

Over the Christmas holidays, I managed to steal an hour to redo the timing on Serinor's text scrolling, which was borrowed directly from the interactive novel system I'd designed for Syn's old Gruedorf project.  Text now scrolls at the same rate regardless of the speed of the computer Serinor's running on.  Unlike most throttling work I've done over the years, this should only affect slower computers (like mine), which will see a significant increase in speed.  Newer, faster computers shouldn't see a change.  I also stopped breaking lines myself and just used WrapText(), which is very nice and for which I'm finding all sorts of applications.


Posted by Eldritch at 8:04 PM EST

Wednesday, 23 December 2009
More Holiday Disruptions
Topic: Progress Report

Because I'll be unable to update this weekend as normal, and because I have no intention of lapsing in my Gruedorf responsibilities anytime in the near future, even though every other contender is pushing a month of inactivity like the losers they are, I'm moving to Wednesday updates for the next couple of weeks.

The tutorial extends into Erelikoth proper, which I've updated to run in Serinor's new system.  Most of this week's hour (or two) was spent on the conversion, but there is a short dialogue explaining why the party was strangely unmolested on the trip between Gelaham and Erelikoth.

Next week, the last members of the party will be introduced, and then it's off to Achiela, where (gasp!) I'll finally be able to save my game and not have to go through the entire stupid tutorial any time I want to test something in sequence.  I'll also have to actually design Achiela, since it's one of the maps that was never completed in the original edition.  Demonic ruins, anybody?  Good times for the whole family!


Posted by Eldritch at 9:04 PM EST

Saturday, 19 December 2009
Party Time
Topic: Progress Report

It's now possible to add other heroes to your party.  I decided against making a separate interface system for adding and removing heroes like the one that the old Serinor had.  Now it's handled from the standard menu; if the party's in a location that allows for changing party members, Add and Remove hero will appear in the marching order menu.  It feels smoother to me, and it precludes some changes Serinor's hostel system had coming, so that's nice.

I also added a guest hero system to allow for story characters that don't follow all the normal rules.  You control them in combat and can move them around your party as needed, but once in the party, they can't be removed, and you can't touch their items or change their abilities.  It was easier than I expected to implement, and gives me a lot more story options than I used to have.

The tutorial advances the party across the expanses of southern Amin, as your budding hero is led from Gelaham to Erelikoth by more experienced team members.  This serves two purposes; it shows the player where the next town is without random wandering through the wilderness, and it prevents them from randomly wandering through the wilderness when I really need them to go to a specific place.

EDIT: It's also come to my attention that I'm back below 50% failure time.  Which is cause for celebration in and of itself.


Posted by Eldritch at 12:54 PM EST

Saturday, 12 December 2009
Conversion and Faces
Topic: Progress Report

So Dratz, my one remaining active developer, thought that having face portraits for each potential hero would be a good usage of Serinor's higher resolution.  Who am I to refuse offers of art?  Besides which, he's right; I'd initially wanted face portraits but had decided against them based on the sheer amount of work it would require.  But Dratz still thought it was a good idea when I told him it would be 180 unique portraits, so I'm thrilled to have him working on them.

I've also gotten Gelaham and Amin imported into the new system.  Lots of things don't function (shops, primarily) but you can walk around and talk to people.  Graig stops you from leaving town and seeing the outer world, but it's there.

Next week it's back to work on the hostels so you can add the rest of your companions for the tutorial to your party.


Posted by Eldritch at 1:26 PM EST

Saturday, 5 December 2009
Menu Work
Topic: Progress Report

Worked on getting some of those empty menu panes filled this week.  Even if some of those panes say things like "No Map Available" or "No Spellbook Available," at least there's something in them.  It feels like it made a bigger difference than it probably did.

The logbook will be a very nice addition when it's all complete.  It will track the state of the primary story quest.  There will be an overarching story right from the start now, as opposed to after all the recruitment quests are done.  In reality, based on my current plans, it will be a primary quest the way Morrowind or Fallout 3 have a primary quest; it'll always be there, but the world is your plaything, and you can do what you're supposed to be doing or not.  I have to make sure the quest log ties in with the cartography system when I put that together, since it's a big world out there.

Also started work on converting old world pieces into the new system.  The entirety of the High Temple's scripting isn't commented out anymore.  Just pieces of it that are still under construction (the High Priest's quests and the shops, primarily.)  Next week should open Gelaham back up.  Then party management systems, then Amin.


Posted by Eldritch at 4:33 PM EST

Tuesday, 1 December 2009
New Public Build Available

I come again to the public without screenshots, but I bring something perhaps better: a public developer's build.  Grab it here or from the downloads page in the manual.  There's not a whole lot here, and some pieces are very obviously missing, but it's functional and it clears the first part of the new tutorial.  Build your hero, find your initial equipment, and stand strong against the goo.  Then let me know what you think.  Bugs and interface suggestions are especially helpful.

Next update Saturday again, perhaps without another new build.  I have to get the hostels working before I can add people to the party, so that's the next step.


Posted by Eldritch at 1:56 PM EST

Saturday, 28 November 2009
Thanksgiving Missives
Topic: Progress Report

No screenshot this week, since I am away from my computer, deep in the clutches of "family."  Not that I have much to report anyway.

The battle system now transitions smoothly from world to battle back to world.  Everything's freed correctly (so far as I am able to determine) and the graphic effects are largely in place.  Now I just have to get experience and gold actually assigned to the players.  It tells you what you're getting; it just doesn't give it to you.


Posted by Eldritch at 9:01 AM EST

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

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