Mixed news and features

I’ve got several things to say about TRS on very different topics, here they are in one single blog post.
 
First, I’m a bit ill, hopefully nothing too serious, but it might keep me from spending too much time on computers, as it affects my eyes. I’ve found some time to hack at TRS despite that anyway.
 
Next, I’ve created some tools to help me design UIs faster. I’ve been avoiding this for long, as I’m still worried by the state of Guichan: project isn’t actively maintained anymore, it’s still lacking important widgets I’ll have to design myself, etc… But, trying to integrate another UI kit in replacement got me banging my head against the keyboard, so, Guichan it will be for some time to come.
 
The first piece of new UI using these tools is a new global interface, which will vastly improve user experience by exposing features in a user-friendly way (mouse activated as opposed to finding keyboard shortcuts in a Readme file). The current widget set forces me to change the ‘speed up’ feature to become a ‘toggle’ instead of a ‘push’ mode. That bothers me a little, but not too much, let me know what you think.
 
Lastly, I’d like some feedback on a kind of dilemma I’m stuck in. I want to add loot to the game. And I see one interesting way of doing it, but it would steer the gameplay toward a much more active kind, and that wouldn’t be easily reversed afterwards.
My idea is to remove the monsters’ automatic respawn, so the player can collect loot as a separate phase from combat. If I went that way, I’d also add ‘attacks of opportunity’ to monsters. Then the player would have to manually manage a lot of things to make the adventurers act.
Another possibility is to put a much longer respawn than currently, or maybe tying it to the quest completion. That would also change the pace of the game a lot.

So, please, be my guest, comment or mail me!

New monster upgrade system

There is some major stuff coming for the future releases. Here is one part.

First thing coming, as it has generated too much negative feedback, I’m currently reworking the monster/spawn point upgrade system. It will be simpler to figure out, and with a new GUI, which will make things better looking as well. So there will still be the spawn point level but the monster itself will only have ‘minor’ upgrades instead of a complex computation for levels. Here’s an explanation of the new system.

Let’s consider a spawn point level 1, with a stock monster. Say it starts at 100 ‘points’ (to avoid thinking in terms of health, attack, etc…).

You can upgrade the monster 3 times. Each time will get you a 25 points boost, so that 125, 150 and 175. Now if you want to get it higher, you have to upgrade the spawn point to level 2.
When you upgrade the spawn point, the monster gets to level 2 stock, or 200 points. Then you can purchase upgrades to get it to 225, 250 and 275, etc…

I think it makes sense quickly, I just have to figure out the upgrade costs so it’s fair. I think the monster upgrades will be quite cheap and not very effective, so maybe 20 points or even 15 instead of 25, whereas the spawn point upgrade will cost you a lot, but will be dramatic in terms of monster improvement.

The new UI will hopefully make it very easy to understand.

Slowly readying next build

It’s been a while since I’ve given news, because there were personal changes preventing me from spending a lot of time on this. Well, now I’ve got a new job, things are settling, and I can think about TRS’ next build!

I’ve implemented a system to let ‘things’ affect behavior and battle outcomes for the Adventurers. ‘Things’ is a generic term here, although in the short term it will be only ‘personalities’ that I’m adding. I’ve still got to add more content to make it worthwhile, at the moment, I’ve done the ‘coward’ personality, I can easily make its counterpart heroic character, then I’ll find some more.

Oh, and I’ve given all creatures, including the heroes, a constant shadow, to give more depth to the visuals. This is a temporary improvements, before I overhaul the sprite/animation system to handle that correctly. I’ll make screenshots to show that as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading!

Adventurer Info Window

Following up on Next features: the Adventurer (part 2), here is the first screenshot of the actual window in action.

Adventurer Info Window

As you can see, it’s quite empty of useful information yet, but most of the structure is in place. Now the coding of the actual new features can have visible results (stats, log, house, characteristics & personality, etc…)

Soon, the next build…

New Adventurer window

Just a quick update, before getting back to coding…

Here is a screenshot of the game with its new popup in place. You can also see the second sprite set used.
Classes and characteristics aren’t done, only name and personality are really generated, and personality isn’t used yet.

Screenshot of the New Adventurer window

 

PS : this is a follow-up of this post.

Next features: the Adventurer (part 2)

This is a quick follow-up to the previous post on the subject.

I’ve finished the second mock-up about new UI elements. This time it’s a new (popup) window to show everything about an Adventurer. It will replace the side panel in the end, while providing much more information.

I know, I shouldn’t have drawn a ‘picture’ for the Adventurer using my mouse skillz 😉 Anyway, here are some explanations of the non-obvious stuff.

The window is divided into 3 parts (not counting the title bar).

The top part is obviously current state plus some general information. There are some new items here, from features not yet implemented. The portrait is clickable to jump toward the guy’s location.

The bottom left part shows the Adventurer’s house, it allows to quickly jump to the house, and shows some info. This is empty in the mock up, but you can imagine levels, upgrades and special capacities.

The bottom right part is tabbed, there is a missing tab (‘Quest’ or ‘Goals’ or whatever its name will be, it will contain the stuff currently on the side panel). The rectangles on the left are meant to look like a scroll bar 😉
This is a major new area, to give more depth to the Adventurers.
I’d like the log to feel more like story telling than computer messages, although it would be a huge task. So for the first versions, it should look like my mock-up.
The statistics content is not yet designed, you can expect kill counts, quest counts, death counts, DP gained, GC gained, GC spent, etc…

Now I must go code all this 😀

Next features: the Adventurer

I have been very busy thinking about the next steps for TRS these last days, fueled by interest and active feedback in my topic on TIGSource.

And so, the focus of my next efforts will be the Adventurer.

It is now obvious for me that one of the key elements of making the game appeal to players is making them interested in those little guys that run around, taking quests, killing monsters, getting rich and leveling. So, here are my plans for them:

1. Classes: typical RPG stuff (ranger, mage, fighter, etc…).
2. Looks: make each of them look different. At the very least, I will have one sprite set per class for starters.
3. Names: pick a random names generator and use it.
4. Personalities: have them behave differently in the same situation: fight until death, run away when injured, etc…
5. UI: all this will require lots of new interface elements.

I’ve designed several new UI elements on paper already, I’ve redrawn some with Paint.NET to clarify my thoughts and share it before they are integrated in a build.

Here is the first one: the recruit window. Instead of double-clicking the Adventurers’ Guild just to buy a new clone, you’ll be presented with this window, giving a choice between some available characters. Main inspiration for that is Theme Hospital.

Legend:

1. Portrait
2. Special ability (could be fast, strong, lucky, …)
3. Name (random generated)
4. Class (ranger, mage, fighter, …)
5. Personality (coward, blood thirsty, suicidal, intelligent, indefatigable, …)
6. Bonuses/maluses

I have other big features in store, stay tuned for more info!

Screenshots – Build 016

I’ve made some screenshots, to help promote TRS. Here they are!

User friendly

I know TRS builds are not very user friendly. For instance, each time I post one, someone will tell me it’s not working, then I’ll explain how to get it working, and then, it’ll work. Not nice at all.

I’ve taken small steps into usability in latest builds, first with a friendlier GUI :

• Build 013 introduced a main menu / loading screen / game sequence, but before that I switched from home (quickly) made GUI to an existing library (Guichan) to have more proper buttons, windows, etc… with keyboard and mouse inputs and focus working as they should.
• Build 014 introduced the Adventurer windows, drastically reducing the number of clicks required to ‘play’ and allowing to follow the little guys without spending minutes finding them in the levels.

But the user-friendliness isn’t only made of GUIs. For instance, Build 015 added long overdue save game support, which is a big step forward.

You might notice the example I’ve mentioned above isn’t solved at all by all these usability improvements. This leads me to talk about the new found user-friendliness included in (future) Build 016 :

• Added error checking for config file
• Improved error checking for startup sequence
• Added a popup message after saving (confirmation/failure notice)
• Added an options menu, with one major option ATM: changing resolution
• Default resolution will now be set to a smaller value, then configurable

And that last point is *really* important, as it’s the number one cause of “I’ve tried your build, but it doesn’t work on my machine” messages I get.

I will try to post this new build soon, there is only the new ‘tiredness’ feature to be completed.

Working on Buildings (the return)

Now that the Mac version is sorted out, I can spend some more time on actual features.

One thing that bothered me with previous versions (14/15) is that I’ve done a lot of work to support adding Buildings, it did affect quite a lot of code, but in the end, I didn’t have time to make them actually useful. So now, you can spend preciously won DP on buildings that have no purpose? C’mon!

Well, no more of that! I’m in the middle of using buildings as homes for Adventurers. That means now the Adventurer will spend some time resting in his Home between Quests. For the moment being, homes won’t be necessary (unlike in Age of Empires or Starcraft). The Adventurer might rest in the street, but it will be slower.

That should be the only major feature of next build, I will adress some outstanding issues as well, with more interface and more user-friendliness too.