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[csg]

Since weapons are finished for now, I'm back at drawing characters for ingame dialogue!

[csg]

I'm still working on this, I promise. :D

Today I wanna talk a little bit about inventory systems and how I'm going to tackle this problem myself.

In most normal rpgs, there is only one inventory for all characters which can we accessed without restriction. But especially in strategy-rpgs its not unheard of to give each character his own set of items to use. This personal inventory can often be arranged before fights but it is also possible to swap items while fighting.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, 2005. Produced by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo

For example, fire Emblem used a fixed number of 4 weapons and 4 items for each character. Some items are stackable ( i.e you can put multiple items of the same type on one slot ).

Zirkonia is gonna use a slightly different approach, though:

Each character has its own backpack for items which can we equiped just like regular armor and weapons. Each backpack has its own count of item- and weaponslots. For example, the normal adventurer backpack got three slots for items and two for weapons, whereas one for fighters can hold up to four weapons, but only one item. While the game proceeds it is possible to get bigger backpacks more suited for specialized use.

Another example: An alchemy backpack can hold one Weapon, one item and three alchemy-items. Alchemy-items can be carried just like normal items in any item-slot, but only one of them per slot. Specialized backpacks with alchemy-slots can stack these items up to 6, making them really valuable for longer fights.

Some backpacks in use: On the left: one weapon, one item and two alchemy. On the right a 2 / 2 distribution.

So, thats it!

Oh, and here a quick healing animation:

[Pixel Noise]

WOW.

Yes, you had BETTER be working on this. This is killer stuff. I like the idea of exploration/battle taking place on the same maps, and how you plan to tell the story. And, the visuals, unf. Your concept art is incredible.

KEEP IT UP.

[MereMonkey]

Your artwork is incredible!!

[csg]

Nothing really new, but I updated the first post quite a lot! Some older images got replaced.

[csg]

Hey Guys! Was working on some graphical stuff.



Status changes and buffs are shown directly below characterscreens. These are changing constantly over time, so I put some work into their effects upon destruction.


It all started with the idea of letting the icon glow and disolve into fragments.


This was not enough, though. Some form defining fragments were added.


Colored the fragments and added some flickering parts!


Fragments got some vertical force and they slow down!

[csg]

Finishing my book-system right now.

[csg]

Hey folks!

I finally made peace with my attributes! :D Some hard decisions were made, despite it might look kind of standard. Here a quick shot from the in-game menue:

The status screen is split into character attributes on the left and Weapon Mastery ranks on the right ( There is a lot of space for active modifications which you can get via skills and/or items down below ).

Strength and dexterity are kind of self-explaining. They influence then damage that is dealt with weapons. Each weapon has its own base damage and might scale with strength and/or dexterity to some degree. This allows some variety in Weapons like high base damage but no scaling for general weak characters or some hard to master weapons with almost no base damage but very good scaling. My greatest influence for this system is Dark Souls.

Will affects your magic damage and resistance.  Only a small number of characters can use magic, so I decided to merge damage and defense in this case.

Physique represent the characters capability of taking hits. It decreases physical damage taken. This value can also be modified with some equipment later on, but I'm not entirely sure about equipment yet.

Movement is simple: It shows how much fields a character can move in one turn.

Resistance reduces efficacy of all negative status-effects. This might  vary: It can either reduce damage taken ( from poison, for example ) or reduce the time the character is affected.

Luck is really my worst enemy. I really hate luck and most of its effects, to be honest (or rather, bad luck). I skipped it in all my previous drafts, but at the end I decided to include it. Luck will mostly not influence fights, as most weapons have 100% hit chance. But it will influence positive random effects like withstanding a sudden mortal blow. By the way, enemy will not have Luck at all, so no random critical hits from foes. In my opinion, the more a game is tactical, the lesser it should deploy luck in greater extend, but not everyone might agree here.

Weapon Mastery shows the characters ability to handle different kinds of weapons. These weapons can be used if it is at least D. Some types get upgrades with higher ranks. For example, daggers cam be used twice per turn if its rank is C or higher.

[csg]

If this game will ever be published and sold in stores ( Let me dream, ok? ): the dvd-cover!

[csg]

I used the background image from the last post for one of my animated sequences:

[csg]

The playable prologue is on its way! Right now, I need to refine all of my old assets. The first one is the tavern map!

[csg]

Finally done with my map rework for the prologue!

[csg]

I'm kind of lazy right now, but some news anyway:



The fireflies inside the glaslamp are just some additive blended Billboards, moving with a sinus along their axes. Really simple, but effective.



Sometimes they just stop and stick to the glas. They need to rest, too!


Also, ingame books will get some nice illustrations done by Sabaku ( http://thegamingsketchbook.tumblr.com/ ):

[Bluebutton]

Spectacular work and an insane level of polish. Inspiring stuff.

[csg]

Hi folks!

For the prologue, beta testing is starting soon! So I thought about how my testers could commit their found bugs to me.
Sending an email or calling my via Skype might work, but it certainly would provide overhead for me - It would be
better if these bugs could be collected somewhere central, ready for me to look at it. 

So I created a rather simple approach: Just hack in some information about the bug ( type, occurrence, screenshot, ... )
and send them from inside the game directly to my server!

Ingame gui for reporting bugs

This interface is accessible from withing the game, with just only two clicks.

Afterwards, all these information can be viewed from a website:

I know, I'm no web designer! But it works

So everyone can see if a bug is already reported and there is a simple overview. You can even filter
for specific game revisions, bugtypes or closed or open bugs.

Of course, this is not always viable: What about game crashing bugs? These cannot be reported directly.
This system is only for simple and obvious bugs. For everything else, the testers still should contact me.
But it filters out most of the small fry for sure.

[Jasmine]

Man, I JUST stumbled across this gem, and I am loving everything about it.
Put me down as a beta tester!

.. if that's okay..

[csg]

Weow, some more characters for the prologue! Almost done, for God's sake.

[csg]

Hey, long time no see. Sorry about that!

The playable prologue is on its tracks, right now we're in beta tests. While bugs are killed ( °,´,° ) I'm using my time to finishing up the last remaining 3D Models!



This model is roughly 600 Polys and looks better than the last ones. Nice improvement of quality AND performance! Modeling is still not my strongest point, but it kind of works for now.

More updates on this from now on!

[Seiseki]

The hand drawn textures makes this look amazing!

I'd love to see you attempt some trees, Diablo III style.

[csg]

Seiseki, I'm gonna try it on my next outsidemap! :D This is really cool.

More characters!