Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Tavernking]

Here's an early version of the party member screen. This is all connected to an actual NPC code class, this isn't a concept mockup. It ain't pretty but good enough for a demo where I'll be claiming that everything is in early alpha. But it should give a good idea of the type of game I'm trying to make. The space on the right will be used for an inventory system I'm yet to implement.

Yes I know that having a skill called Combat and another called Ranged sounds stupid. Sue me.

 

[deadmeme]

Here's an early version of the party member screen. This is all connected to an actual NPC code class, this isn't a concept mockup. It ain't pretty but good enough for a demo where I'll be claiming that everything is in early alpha. But it should give a good idea of the type of game I'm trying to make. The space on the right will be used for an inventory system I'm yet to implement.

Yes I know that having a skill called Combat and another called Ranged sounds stupid. Sue me.

Strategy skill?

 

[Tavernking]

Strategy skill?

For preparing defences of your base, commanding battles if you ever become a general, coming up with plans for ambush opportunities etc. Could also be named tactics, but again, sue me.

 

[deadmeme]

Strategy skill?

For preparing defences of your base, commanding battles if you ever become a general, coming up with plans for ambush opportunities etc. Could also be named tactics, but again, sue me.

So this is going to be with more party members it seems. Or maybe armies.

 

[V_K]

Going by Beowulf's statistics, he doesn't sound very great.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Well, that's entirely up to you because nowhere is such a claim made.

 

[Bad Sector]

More porting! Added (well, finished, i already wrote the initial code some time ago) a version for Android devices with gamepad/controller, like the infamous OUYA or Nvidia's now abandoned Shield Tablet (and handheld but i do not have that). Here they are running:

OUYA:

Shield:

I also have a JXD S7800b that i bought ~6 years ago which should work but i cannot find its charger. Though i guess nowadays a more relevant Android gaming handheld would be GPD XD+ (though that is going to be replaced next year with a new Android handheld according to GPD). Too bad Nvidia never made another Shield handheld - and only had it available in US IIRC. Then again none of their later "Shield" products caught on - i have a Shield tablet, which is actually still quite nice and powerful as a tablet but Nvidia abandoned it (no updates since 2018) and their "Shield TV" range is pretty much pointless nowadays that almost every big TV already comes with Android built-in. AFAIK they even discontinued the gaming-styled controller and instead use a remote control-like one.

Well, anyway, Android gaming devices rant over (for now :-P), here is the new stuff. I'll upload the source code at some point later since this might be too buggy.

 

[Ninjerk]

Now to get it running on one of those refrigerator-mounted TVs.

 

[Bad Sector]

They already use Android so it should run. Though it will still need a controller to play :-P

Might add touch controls at some point.

EDIT: that point is now, i just added touch controls. Also improved rendering performance for the hardware accelerated versions, the game should now be playable on a P133MHz with a Voodoo 1.

EDIT2: uploaded a video with the Android touch controls. They are slightly more flimsy than normal (though only slightly - the controls aren't that great since they're basically converted to fake joystrick motion events which themselves are converted to fake keyboard events :-P) because my phone doesn't seem to have any way to enable debugging through wifi so i have to use a USB cable... but the USB slot is bad and it disconnects all the time, so i had to both make the gestures to move and try to avoid touching the cable so it doesn't disconnect while keeping the phone in place.

 

[CryptRat]

Except for possible extra XP for special encounters, is experience for killing enemies in every RPG which gives experience for killing enemies just the sum of the experience given by each enemy for a given encounter (in which case maybe you gain XP at soon as you kill an enemy since in that case it's just the same), or do some games, for example, would use the square of the sum, to take into account that fighting 3 ogres is significantly harder than fighting 1 ogre then 1 ogre then 1 ogre?

I've just been considering this (you will still typically get more XP from treasures than from encounters, but that's not the point), but first I'm not the biggest fan of big numbers and considering I would not give less than 1 XP for a enemy and that increment among monsters must be at least slightly exponential (it cannot be linear for sure, XP for killing a goblin must be very low when you're able to kill an ogre) the experience will very quickly reach the 100 000 range and much more eventually, and secondly, and more important, if games actually don't do that then there may be a legit reason, which is why I'm asking.

 

[V_K]

An early demo of Skald did that - XP rewards were significantly larger for fighting larger groups of enemies. The problem was that, even though that version had separate combat maps, the encounter composition wasn't set in stone and depended on the number of enemies in the vicinity when the battle started. So in principle, you could play cautiously and pick enemies one by one - end quickly end up heavily underlevelled, unable to proceed further. And that was a 30-minutes demo, I imagine in a full-scale game of at least 10 hours that could lead to grotesque difference in levels between cautious and risk-taking parties and a pain in the ass to balance.
So basically, I'd say only go for it if you have blobber-style encounters, where it's impossible to engage enemies individually. If individual enemies are visible on the map and can be interacted with, better stick with standard additive system.
In principle, you could also try to offset that by making XP rewards decrease with character level, up to the point where enemies significantly below the party level don't give any XP. Then a cautious party eventually would be able to catch up with a risk-taking one, albeit with significantly more grinding.

 

[Ninjerk]

Except for possible extra XP for special encounters, is experience for killing enemies in every RPG which gives experience for killing enemies just the sum of the experience given by each enemy for a given encounter (in which case maybe you gain XP at soon as you kill an enemy since in that case it's just the same), or do some games, for example, would use the square of the sum, to take into account that fighting 3 ogres is significantly harder than fighting 1 ogre then 1 ogre then 1 ogre?

I've just been considering this (you will still typically get more XP from treasures than from encounters, but that's not the point), but first I'm not the biggest fan of big numbers and considering I would not give less than 1 XP for a enemy and that increment among monsters must be at least slightly exponential (it cannot be linear for sure, XP for killing a goblin must be very low when you're able to kill an ogre) the experience will very quickly reach the 100 000 range and much more eventually, and secondly, and more important, if games actually don't do that then there may be a legit reason, which is why I'm asking.

*Josh Sawyer has put you on ignore*

 

[Ninjerk]

Seriously, though, to put what I think V_K said/suggested in a more condensed form: you're probably making more work for yourself since you are expanding the sample space for character progression. Somehow you're going to have to account for people who are capable of making the experience trivial by overlevelling and those who eat crayons and have them play more-or-less the same game.

 

[Ninjerk]

Actually, since AoD was so intensively designed, Vault Dweller probably has plenty to say about awarding experience. I wonder if there's a blog post already out there?

 

[Tavernking]

Let's say I've got a grid where I want the party members to be loaded.

Enemy forces will spawn right of this grid. My question is what's the preferable way to spawn in the the party members? Right now I've got them spawning up to down, left to right. That's obviously not the best way. An alternative is spawning everyone in random locations on the grid, but how annoyed would you be if your glass cannon mage spawned on the frontlines next to a massive ogre, and your tank knight spawned all the way back where he can't protect the mage? Especially since my game uses permadeath. The third idea I had was the player getting to choose where to spawn on the grid, but this would quickly become tedious after the first few times since I'm allowing the player to have up to 12 party members in a party.

Any other ideas?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Let's say I've got a grid where I want the party members to be loaded.

Enemy forces will spawn right of this grid. My question is what's the preferable way to spawn in the the party members? Right now I've got them spawning up to down, left to right. That's obviously not the best way. An alternative is spawning everyone in random locations on the grid, but how annoyed would you be if your glass cannon mage spawned on the frontlines next to a massive ogre, and your tank knight spawned all the way back where he can't protect the mage? The third idea I had was the player getting to choose where to spawn on the grid, but this would quickly become tedious after the first few times since I'm allowing the player to have up to 12 party members in a party.

Any other ideas?

I'd suggest setting it within the context of each particular encounter. If the enemy came from a particular direction, set the player party in the opposite part of the map and adjust the starting distance based on the minute details (e.g. how sneaky the enemies are). If it's an ambush, get them closer or spawn the player party in the middle of the map and surround it with enemies from all sides, or hey -- scatter everyone and enjoy the chaotic battle that will make survival horror games feel like Saturday-morning cartoons in comparison. If you find a way to make the stats and systems affect this, it might result in an appealing package that manages to keep things fun by being reasonably unpredictable at times. While it might not suit your game design, this should give you a few ideas on how to handle this.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Do you not have some way for the player to define some sort of formation for their party? That would seem to be the most ideal. And you can simply rotate it based on surprise, terrain, or other conditions.

 

[vdweller]

Bros,

These days I'm gonna have a lot of time with a smartphone in my hands.

Does anyone know of an Android app for creating 2d games which allows for programming stuff also (i.e. no drag&drop/block code crap)?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Bros,

These days I'm gonna have a lot of time with a smartphone in my hands.

Does anyone know of an Android app for creating 2d games which allows for programming stuff also (i.e. no drag&drop/block code crap)?

Can't say about game making tools, but if you want to do music, you can make genuine chiptunes using DosBox to run the PMD98 MML compiler, program the tunes using whatever editor is available and use DroidSound to listen to the results.
That is, if you're fine with YM2203/YM2608.

 

[Tavernking]

When is a good time to request that my thread is moved from the Codex Workshop to General RPG Discussion? I was thinking once a demo is available and once I'm ready for less forgiving playtesters to playtest said demos.

 

[Citizen]

Idk where to post shitty game assets I make, so I'll dump em here

Edited the post with a better render

edit 2: fuuuuuu now I see some baking artifacts on this, gotta fix soon

edit 3: fixed

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

That's a nice model, but looks to be a shitty fantasy sword.

EDIT:
I'm not dissing the maker or the model, just really hate this kind of unrealistic weaponary.

 

[Ninjerk]

Looks like something from Secret of Mana.

 

[Bad Sector]

I was busy with playing games recently so i didn't work much in my engine the last month or so, but eventually found some will and energy and implemented Quake-style brushes. These are actually entity "elements" (other engines call them "components" or "game objects" but i'm special the name "component" is taken by Free Pascal's framework and "game object" sounds weird to me) meaning that any entity can use them, be part of entity prefabs (when i implement such thing) and have their own transformation (meaning no need to care about texture locking or whatever that some quake editors have to allow for non-world aligned geometry). This actually generates regular scene meshes for the renderer which are treated the same way as any other static mesh so they should... "mesh" fine with non-brush geometry :-P.

 

[The Avatar]

Almost done with character creation. The biggest part was making the male/female versions of all the different armors for each race/class combo.