I give an update on developers forums every Saturday. Figured I'd just post that update here as well. A lot of it I've posted as I was developing it, but here's a lot of the finished bits for this week.
I really want to try to get the first Alpha release done here in the next couple of weeks. There are only a few systems that need to be implemented before the game is at a real playable state, and thankfully, ALL of them have some other complete system they are either dependent on, or can be based off. They are:
* City/Village Generation
* Ranged Combat
* Magic & Psionics
* Treasure generation & placement (this is already in using a really sloppy method)
* Talking & Trading with NPCs
* Character generation GUI
Other than that, I just want to add shitloads of content, which is actually a lot harder than coding systems. Anyway, on to the update:
Desert RLThis week has seen some core feature implementation, as well as a lot of cleaning up the back end. Memory usage is still at ~200MB at its worst, which is probably way too high.
I've also made a number of aesthetic changes to better differentiate local and travel/world maps.
Here is a picture from the travel/world map. Each tile on the travel map takes 5 minutes to walk across. The character is standing in a rocky wasteland, with mountains to the East, and sandy waste to the West. The addition of hills & plateaus to the landscape really give it the sense of scale it needed.
This is a local map in the same area, at the base of a sandstone cliff. Faint ASCII marks have been added to give elevation changes a "sloped" look. This is particularly important, because I've also introduced elevation dependent LOS.
The new "z-levels" are hard to appreciate in static images. Above, the player has climbed a sloped path to the top of the sandstone cliff.
Here is a GIF from the travel map showing the system a bit better. The player is approaching a massive plateau from the southeast, and spots it's at the beginning of some sort of scrub plain, with more cliffs off in either direction. The player can find a path up, and get a better view. This becomes really cool in the mountains; LOS is generally very small there, until you get a high-spot with an unobstructed view.
The other major thing I've implemented is a more friendly inventory management menu. I'm not committed to the exact layout and proportions right now, but at least it functions. The "place in a container" function is still a bit buggy, but I'm working it out.
What you'll also see is that, in the description for the bastard sword, there are a few specific properties it has. Namely, hardness, sharpness, and weight. You'll also notice that it gives a slashing damage die, and lists that it's capable of piercing and bludgeoning. This is also a good time to point out the ATH, MEN, and INT on the status window (Athleticism, Mentality, and Intuition). All of these are examples of the new materials, unit statistics, and combat systems.
All mobs have an Athleticism score (dexterity, strength, etc.), a Mentality score (intelligence, wisdom, etc.), and an Intuition score (a mix of luck and instincts). These are already working in various ways to affect pretty much everything that happens.
All materials have a base hardness, sharpness, and weight to them that represent their possible uses. Armors are then assigned a "coverage" score, a percentage, based on their design. Weapons are given slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing properties, based on their design.
A sword slashes, but can pierce and bludgeon. A spear pierces, and can be used to bludgeon. An axe slashes, and can be used to bludgeon. A hammer bludgeons, and that's it. These aren't the strict classes of weapons -- these are just examples. There are lots of ways to play with this system -- scimitars can't stab, but they may be better at slashing, for example.
Hardness, weight, and coverage are most important to armors. All material and design properties go into defining weapons, and all are important for various tasks.
In combat, one has to hit someone, and then they either have to hit a gap in the armor, or sunder their armor in order to do full damage. Slashes mostly rely on sharpness, bludgeoning on weight, and piercing equally on weight and sharpness to sunder armor. All 3 material properties are important for sundering though, for any weapon type -- it's just weighted differently.
Armor doesn't always completely stop blows -- it often just weakens them substantially. A percentage of blunt damage goes through armor.
What this makes for is a fairly complicated combat and equipment system, with a pretty simple execution that doesn't require too much thought from the player. Things are designed to be intuitive. Harder armors resist damage better, but are heavier -- strictly blunt weapons are better at attacking armored enemies, as they can still give lots of damage even when striking a strong part of armor -- swords are versatile, as they have points and heavy hilts -- etc., etc.
Here are just a couple exchanges between the player and a raider. A few notable things happen:
* Both successfully dodge some attacks.
* The player fails to penetrate the raider's armor, but the heavy sword damages through it.
* The raider stabs through the player's armor -- obsidian is very sharp.
* The raider stabs the player through a gap in his armor.
* The player makes use of the sharp-end of the sword after feinting.
The feint is the result of character customization. Instead of implementing skills which just make you better with certain things, or just leveling you up and giving you extra stats, instead, "skills" will open up the opportunity to do advantageous things.
In this case, when the player straight misses the enemy, there's a chance based on the player's intuition that they'll instead feint, and make an attack with an alternative part of the weapon. This is not a good skill to take for someone with low intuition -- it won't happen often. It's also not good to take if the player plans to use strictly blunt weapons -- most won't have alternative attack types.
It's been a fun week!
In any case, going forward this week I hope to:
* Fix up the inventory screen and link it to other screens (just by listing keys, suck as (E)quipment, so the player knows what to press)
* Use the equipment screen as the basis of the character generation screen, and fully implement character generation.
* Generate content! The game is completely playable now, but it just needs more content. More types of dungeons, more monsters, more items, etc., etc. I have a lot more in this regard than I've shown, just so as not to spoil anyone who might want to play.
* Figure out what to do with the empty spot on the HUD at the bottom-right. I don't want to do a mini-map. I'm considering putting context relevant controls (that might help to make the travel-map look even more different).
