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[NetprogsGames]

This month marks my 2nd year of development of my 2D RPG. Wow, I can’t believe it’s been another year already!

Many things have changed this past year as development has been mostly focused on game-play components rather than the core engine itself.

The core engine work was mostly wrapped up last year, you can read more about it in the full blog post linked below. Since then only minor changes have been made to it; mostly minor bug fixes and changes needed to support new features introduce in the second year. I’m still very happy with how all that work ended up and it’s still very much the driving force behind everything done in the second year.

Oh and yes, I finally came up with a name! It wasn’t until last last couple months though, so I’m still very much a slacker. The name I decided to go with was “Mischieviots”. This is a fun play on words between mischievous and idiots; it pretty much wraps up the personality and behaviour of our little friends while they go on their wild adventures within their world.

So, what’s new this year? My, where do I start….

Let’s start off with a quick re-cap:

Biggest changes this year:

• New character/monster artwork
• New Music!
• Cut Scene’s
• Scroll crafting
• Orb crafting
• Loot chests
• Vendors
• Tons of new UI for character/game management.
• Added profiles to allow multiple players on same devices and have their own “save space”.
• Added “Save on server” option to allow for save files to be shared between devices.
• Created a bunch of spells for fun and their animations.
• Created one special attack for each player character to start off with.

Major time sinks:

• New artwork animating
• Spriter Engine Development
• Decision Tree / Configuration Visual Designer
• Character/Monster balancing

Future work:

• Tons and tons of items, equipment, spells, special attack etc are all being planned.
• Still focusing on finishing up the initial mini/tutorial adventure to provide full proof of concepts to obtain some initial feedback.
• Create a user guide on the website for explanation of all the interfaces and how everything works.
• I believe most of the features are self explained, or at least easy to figure out, but I want to make this guide just in case.

Full Article

If you're interested in reading the full article, including some screen shots and video's, you can visit here:
http://www.netprogs.com/year-2-wrapped-up/

[NetprogsGames]

UI Updates

For the last couple weeks I've been focused on adding in the code to support full keyboard and controllers. I've also done some cleanup on configurations, balancing and some minor map updates. Today's post is going to cover some of these changes made recently haven't been shown off yet.


Updated Conversation Window's

I decided to remove scroll bars from the conversation windows and instead make it larger and centered in the screen. This gives you a less “cramped” feeling when reading longer conversations. I then went back through all the conversations in the mini-adventure and adjusted them to fit within the non-scrolling design of the window. Overall, I think this is a much easier window to read information from.

Here's a quick peek at what it looks like now:




Updated Equipment Window

Continuing with the "cramped space" updates, I also decided to remove the previous lower description panel from the equipment window and moved it into a "popup" overlay that can be opened by clicking on a "details" button instead. Here's what the final result looks like:




Keyboard / Controller Support

I finally wrapped up all the connections for keyboard (no mouse required for those that prefer that style) and controller support. Although the code is in place for controllers I still need to do additional testing with various controllers before considering it complete. This will come at a later date.

Along with the completion of these changes, I also added the ability to allow the player to customize the buttons to their personal preferences. You can do this through the options settings using this new window:




Minor Console Update

After working with some balancing numbers I realized that I'm going to need to have 5/5 digits in the console in order to display everything needed. The previous version had to be updated to add in a small amount of additional space in order to fit the new numbers in. Below is a quick picture showing the update (although rather minor)





Forest got more tree's!

I decided the forest area was looking rather sparse and needed to have additional tree's added. I've added in almost 2x the amount of tree's there was previously and might add in more later after further testing on small devices to ensure the FPS and performance does not get overly degraded by having too many objects on the screen. Right now the new amount of tree's seems to be working fine so I'll continue to monitor and will likely add in more later.

Here's a peek of a section that was updated:

[NetprogsGames]

Weekly Wrap-up Highlights #5:
05/09/2016 - 05/22/2016

Hi everyone!

It's been a couple weeks since my last update so I figured it was time to show off some of the most recent changes made. There has been a lot of polishing changes made along with some new minor features added as I move closer and closer to wrapping up this introductory adventure I've been working on these past few months.

Adventure Log
I decided that it would be helpful for players to see a list of on-going objectives in a list so when they return later they know exactly where they left off and what they've done recently also. The log is limited to 5 entries, but will typically always contain some historical items along with what's still on-going.

The objectives window is shown here. As you can see, two of the three objectives have already been completed and are thus “checked off”. You can still review their details though should you want to.



When clicking on any of the “Details” buttons, you end up with a new window providing you with a more in-depth description of the objective:




Game Information
This little window gives you a really quick review of several pieces of game information: gold, residuum and the current amount of time played. This window will eventually contain many more parts, but for now is still pretty basic. Here's a quick peek at what it looks like:



Updated Navigator
I also decided that I needed to update the navigator to provide additional buttons to access the new windows. This resulted in the top part of the navigator turning into more of a “tool bar” now.

Here’s a screen shot showing before/after of the navigator:




Eat/Drink Animations
I've been meaning to create these for a while now, but never got around to doing it. This week I decided I'd better just get them done. This is just an initial cut of the two animations, I will likely return to it for additional polishing in the near future also.

Knight Eating


Knight Drinking



New Weapon/Spell Orbs
I wanted to create some lower level weapon/spell boosting orbs for player to start working with early on. Due to balancing requirements, they cannot be too overly powerful, but I believe I've created a set that should be fun to play with. I've created some for up to level 12 (the game maxes out at level 50) and will certainly add more in the future. Here's a quick description of each one:

Weapon/Physical Attack Boosting Orbs

• Damage Boost
  
  • [Level 1] +5 direct damage to all attacks.
  • [Level 10] 5% increase to damage for all attacks.
• Elemental Damage (one orb for each of fire, cold, electric)
  
  • [Level 6] +5 direct elemental damage
• Vicious
  
  • [Level 2] Does an additional 1-10 damage to enemy, but you take 1-5 damage in return!
  • [Level 8] Does an additional 1-15 damage to enemy, but you take 1-7 damage in return!
• Double Strike
  
  • [Level 4] You get a 10% chance to do an additional 25% base damage on all attacks.
  • [Level 12] You get a 5% chance to do an additional 50% base damage on all attacks.

Spell Boosting Orbs

• Damage Boost
  
  • [Level 1] +5 direct damage to all spells.
  • [Level 10] 5% increase to damage for all spells.
• Elemental Spark (one orb for each of fire, cold, electric)
  
  • [Level 2] Does an additional 1-10 elemental damage of the orb type.
  • [Level 8] Does an additional 1-15 elemental damage of the orb type.
• Elemental Boost (one orb for each of fire, cold, electric)
  
  • [Level 6] +10 direct damage of the element orb type.
• Double Strike
  
  • [Level 4] You get a 10% chance to do an additional 25% base damage on all spells.
  • [Level 12] You get a 5% chance to do an additional 50% base damage on all spells.

Inn / Shop Keepers
I've shown off the vendor windows before, but I hadn't yet placed them into the town. I've since added them to the main building just above the market square and added two NPC's inside. The Inn Keeper is a nice older man who own the joint and his son is holding up the fort on the shop side.



There is a fun little interaction between the two should you decide to follow their conversations. In the end though, you can end up having a small savings deal with the son, or if you peeve him off, you will end up here:

[NetprogsGames]

Weekly Wrap-up Highlights #6:
05/22/2016 - 06/09/2016

Hi everyone!

Sorry for slacking on updates the past couple weeks, but I've been neck deep into creating an entirely new area for players to explore: The Dark Caves!

This area contains many new monsters, a couple of small mini-scene's and ultimately leads the player onto the final boss of the tutorial.

The boss isn't completed yet, so I'll report back later on that one once I have more of it ready. In the meantime though, I want to share the progress so far.


New Maps

There are actually two new maps that have been created for the Dark Caves.

The first being larger and requires some exploration to find some missing friends and the other is smaller and introduces a small trap/puzzle for players to interact with.

Here's a new sneak peeks at these new maps:

Dark Caves  - Looking around




Dark Caves - Dwarf camp




Dark Caves - It's a trap!




Dark Caves - We found gold!




New Monsters

The Dark Caves also introduces a whole new set of monsters to go up against. These monsters are much tougher than the one's the player has previously run into and will take more effort to defeat them. Once you work into the final cave, they become even tougher!

Spiders
There are to types of spiders, large and small, each of them have a chance to poison our hero's when attacking.




Slimes
There are 7 variations (colors) each with their own special attack related to the color. If you watch them carefully, you can determine how best to approach each type!




Bats
These are just common bats, but they also have a very special attack that should it go off, will be detrimental to the player!




Skeleton Minion’s
What's a cave without some undead kicking around! These are pretty much common skeleton's and nothing too special. They're pretty much minion status, but can still give you a hard time.




Zombie’s
These guys are thick, tough and hit like a truck. Might not want them hanging around too long!

http://www.netprogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/javaw-2016-06-04-10-30-16-582-1024x614.png


Necromancer's
These guys are the first caster monster you'll run across in the tutorial adventure. They have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves, so best to be careful with them and don't ignore them too long!





Bug Fixes and Updates
There have been ton's of code changes made in the last couple of week also, but instead of listing them all off here in a giant wall of text, I'll give you the URL's to my weekly developer logs to read over should you be interested:

http://www.netprogs.com/weekly-wrap-up-72
http://www.netprogs.com/weekly-wrap-up-73
http://www.netprogs.com/weekly-wrap-up-74

[NetprogsGames]

Weekly Wrap-up Highlights #7:
06/12/2016 - 07/10/2016

Hello everyone!

It's been almost a month since the last update, but there has been a lot of progress still being made. With the mini-adventure "The Gathering" mostly completed, the majority of the focus lately has been on polishing and various improvements of existing features.

"The Gathering" is fully playable now with about 2 hours of game play available (more if you take your time and far less if you really rush it). The boss is now complete and you can now "finish" the adventure upon defeating the boss. There is enough equipment and spells available to take you up to level 10, but current testing seems to land you around level 8 by the time you reach the boss.

Private alpha testing has begun!
Currently Mischieviots is in private alpha testing and we're gathering all kinds of feedback on the mini-adventure being used to test out all the mechanics of the game. If you are interested in helping out with bug finding, feedback etc, give me a shout and I can help you get started!


New spell history window
To help players use spells quicker & easier, a history of their most recently used spells are provided to them upon opening up the spell window. This allows them to use those spells right away instead of having to find them in the sub-menu's each time. This history remembers up to 5 of their most recently used spells and will reorder that list based upon the last used by placing it on top.

Players also have the option to hide this initial menu should they wish to not have it shown.

History Window


Option to turn off




Item usage from character screen
As mentioned above in the notes, players can now use items on characters directly from their character details screen instead of having to go all the way back out to the main menu. The main menu option is still available too. Here is what the new screen looks like when using an item on a character:





Updated loot window
The loot window felt too bulky and didn't really fit well with the "common" UI used for most other windows. I decided to slim it down a bit and make it a bit more simple looking. Here is what it looks like now:





Updated conversation window
After some testing, it was felt that the static sized conversation window quite often felt too big for smaller conversation pieces. In response, it was decided to make the window start off small, then expand outward as the conversation got longer (if needed). The maximum size of the window stayed where the static used to be so we don't over-extend the screens on mobile devices.

Here is a quick peek at what the smaller window now looks like:





Updated equipment icons
I finally found an icon pack that I felt matched the style wanted and have made all the current items/equipment in the game use these new icons. Unfortunately I still haven't found anything yet for spells, so those are still using ugly placeholders for now.

Here is a screenshot of the inventory window with a bunch of the new equipment icons in place:

[NetprogsGames]

Weekly Wrap-up Highlights #8:
07/11/2016 - 07/30/2016

Hello everyone!

It's been another couple of weeks since our last update. This wrap up is smaller than the last few due to there being less changes needed since reaching Alpha testing.

Private alpha continues!
Our first adventure, "The Gathering", is fully playable now with about 2 hours of game play available (more if you take your time and far less if you really rush it). The boss is now complete and you can now "finish" the adventure upon defeating the boss. There is enough equipment and spells available to take you up to level 10, but current testing seems to land you around level 8 by the time you reach the boss.

Mischieviots remains in private alpha testing as we continue gathering all kinds of feedback on the mini-adventure being used to test out all the mechanics of the game. If you are interested in helping out with bug finding, feedback etc, give me a shout and I can help you get started!

Latest updates
To avoid "feature creep", we've pretty much held back on adding anything new at this point and are more focused on polishing what is there now. We've recently purchased a large number of icons and have been placing those into the game replacing the previous temporary one's. We also have two musician's working on sound effects and additional music for the game; we can't wait to see how these turn out!

In the meantime, here are a bunch of screen shots showing you what many of the new icons look like:

[Babar]

I have to say I hate the font, and it looks like you are using the same everywhere :D !
Other than that, animations look great, but I find the map feels a little too generic, design-wise, I think you need something to give more of unique look to tiles, maybe some shader/lighting?

Good luck with the dev !

[NetprogsGames]

Thanks for the feedback Babar.

You are right, most of the fonts are the same right now, but I am planning on investigating better options soon and then replacing everything. For now that's just something I liked and seemed to fit for the purpose of the alpha state of the game.

I'm also open to improving the maps also and will look into using shader/lighting options to improve the tiles. If you happen to know of any samples I could refer to, that'd be great!

[NetprogsGames]

I've been playing a bit this weekend with screen shaking during special attacks.

Here's a quick GIF showing what I've come up with so far:




Here's another with shaking added to a mini-cut-scene outside the cave:

[NetprogsGames]

Our first trailer!

I decided recently that it was probably time to start working on at least one trailer for Mischieviots. Since RPG's are typically more heavily story based, it is sometimes hard to show "action" in their trailers, so I wanted to have a little fun with it and this is what I came up with:






Day/Night Cycles

To add in a bit of variance to the game, I decided to try out a day/night cycle that would roll over often enough to actually notice it. All four stages are used: Dawn to Day to Dusk to Night. and each one will slowly shift into the next. This day/night cycle is applied to both the exploration maps and combat; so if you happen to get into battle during night, you have to fight in the dark! I've been considering bonuses/penalties for various things during day/night, but haven't put a lot of thought into it yet. Here's a quick picture of what combat looks like at night:




Updated Combat and sounds effects

This past week I've received my first batch of sound effects to be used for combat. I also decided to try and spice up the combat itself a bit more by adding in a variance of attacks instead of the previous "always the same one". For example, previously when the knight attacked, he'd always use his "slash" attack. Now, he'll choose from one of four: Slash, Chop, Thrust and Throw. Depending on how many targets he's attacking, he may also choose more than one of these in a single attack, really mixing things up.

Here's a really quick video showing the new combat adjustments along with some of their new sound effects:

[NetprogsGames]

New Optional Added

This week I’ve added in a new optional fight in the forest just outside of town. The first time you come across our little "friends", they may be quite a bit tougher than you, but that shouldn’t stop you from at least trying as you can return later and try again.

If you do beat them (first time, or even later) you do get some nice toys in the chests that are hiding behind them; so it’s worth it!

Here’s my first attempt as a fresh-from-town level 2; it doesn’t go so well…

[NetprogsGames]

I'm pretty excited this week with my new monster encounters system.

My original implementation of monster encounters went with the old JRPG style where you have “random” (algorithm, not actually random) encounters which would immediately force you into battle with them.

This past week I decided to try out something a little different. I wanted to keep the same algorithm for encounters themselves, but instead of forcing the player directly into battle, I would spawn monsters on the map near by the player.

When spawned, these monsters will show up as little pink markers on the map showing their locations. This allows you to choose to walk up to and engage, or simply ignore them and continue onto whatever else you were doing. There could be up to 6 at any time, but might be less if they happen to spawn in places you can’t reach (lakes, mountains etc).

After a certain amount of time, which varies on per monster spawned, the monster markers will change to darker color indicating they’re about to wander off. A short period after that they’ll disappear off the map entirely and you’ll need to wait for a new batch to wander in again.

I’ve done some initial play testing with this new setup and the leveling still works out to be about the same; assuming you go attack things frequently and not ignore every time.

For those who like the immediate encounters, they can choose to turn them back on and not use the spawning. You can change this in the options area of the game.

Here’s a quick little GIF showing the monsters spawning in the forest and walking up to one:

[NetprogsGames]

Updated special attack for Bandit

Our Bandit friend started running into the same problem the Archer did a while back. Due to their weapons only ever having a single target option, they quite often ended up feeling a bit lacking in damage compared to the others.

To help compensate, I previously gave the Ice Archer a special attack that did party damage and made it available every 3 turns (kind of like a many-shot). Since the Bandit also ended up having this same problem, I decided to give him a similar attack called: Flurry of Knives.

The first version was pretty much a copy of Ice Archer’s, allowing him to hit multiple targets with a single attack, which I posted about last time we chatted. After some further consideration though, I then decided that this version took him too far away from his "single target" style of combat. The second version of his Flurry of Knives now hits a single target, but 5 times in a row!

[NetprogsGames]

It's been a while since my last update mostly due to the only changes being done now are minor bug fixes and polishing while waiting for the remainder of my sound effects to be made.

This past week though I've wrapped up an initial version of the introductory cut that the player will see when first starting a new adventure. I don't want to give away all the details, but here's a couple GIF's showing some of the events.

Getting caught cheating sucks:



When trying to save someone doesn’t go as expected:

[NetprogsGames]

I've been working on making some changes to the inventory and vendor windows to add some additional improvements to them.

Below are some screen shots showing what's been added and a little bit of detail on how each one can be used now.


Character Equipment

In the window where you assign equipment to a character, previously I had all equipment for that character along with what was also assigned to others (although grey'd out) all in one place.

I've now separated those two lists so you can still see what everyone else has assigned if you want, but in a second list reducing clutter while working with the current character.



As before, clicking on any of the item slots will filter the list to display only the items related to that slot. The screen shot below is showing the result after clicking on the amulet slot , thus showing only amulets. Any item in green is already assigned to the current character while uncolored means it is available for slotting (unused)




Main Inventory

Previously this window was used only for managing items in your inventory but I've since expanded it to display equipment and the new junk section. When working with either Items or Equipment you can click on the "Junk" button at the bottom of the description area and have that item/equipment moved into the junk bag. This allows you to reduce clutter in the main tabs for things you intend to sell later (see vendor later).

Items

The "Use Item" available on the Items tab works as it has before allowing you to use that item either on other characters (such as potions) or immediately (like map or beacon).




Equipment

When on the equipment tab, you can also "quick equip" any piece listed there to a given character. This will automatically assign the selected equipment piece to the character and place the previous piece into the bag again making it available to others. There is no stat comparison in this area, to do more detailed work you should use the character equipment window shown above.






Junk

Once an item/equipment is placed into the junk bag, clicking on the Junk tab lets you review them and also restore them back to their original location should you decide to keep them. The Junk bag is stored with your game save and can be maintained across multiple play sessions.




Vendor's

The vendor's have been given and small overhaul also adding in a more obvious buy/sell switch along with separate of items and equipment into their own lists to reduce clutter.

Buy

In the buy tab you also gain access to the "Buy Back" section. Any time you sell something (see sell below) that item/equipment will end up in this list allowing you to buy it back should it of been sold by accident.

Note: The buy back list lasts only as long as the current play session and is not stored with the game save at this time. It can be later, but for now I don't feel it's needed.






Sell

In the sell tab you'll see the same separation between items and equipment along with the Junk tab. When visiting the Junk tab you are now able to sell anything there as wanted. When sold, these too will end up in the buy back section for retrieval should you change your mind or sell by accident.

[NetprogsGames]

Updated Experience Window

After some feedback from players, it was observed that most didn’t even realize that the window displayed post-combat showing their experience also allowed them to review what benefits a character gets should they level up on that last battle.

Previously you had to click on their “panel” that showed the character and it would open up a separate window with details, but it was never made obvious that this could be done; so many people missed it.

I’ve now updated that window to better show all characters in one look (no more scrolling needed) and also made it more obvious that you can now step into a separate window to review details on a level up.

Here’s what the new experience window looks like:

[NetprogsGames]

Introducing Tutorials

I’ve decided that now things have pretty much stabilized in the UI that it was a good time to look into making some kind of tutorial system. I was originally thinking of making a simple set of web pages that would describe everything (and I might still) but figured having something in game would be more beneficial.

I’ve now added in a new NPC in the town that will help player “train” through various features of the game. For now I’ve just focused on combat, but will be adding in crafting later this week and add more if other area’s need it.

When you first meet the NPC, if you don’t have any friends with you yet, he’s not overly keen:



Later though, once you’ve picked up your Amazon friend, he’s a bit more chatty:



If you choose to step into his combat tutorial, he’ll start up a fight with some of his pets and step you through some of the basic combat steps: Attacking, Casting (heals), Defense, Skipping turn and finally running away from a fight. Each of these are step-by-step and give you time to try each one out before moving onto the next. At any point during the tutorial, you can go back and try a previous step.





Once you’ve completed the tutorial for the first time, upon return visits he’ll start offering you additional options for further chats. This will lead you into being able to repeat the original tutorial, go into an advanced combat tutorial as well as being able to practice a bit more using his pets.



When choosing to practice with his pets, you’re taken into another battle where you can play with all the tips you’ve learned recently without the fear of them fighting back!



When choosing the advanced combat tutorial, you will then go through party changes, item usage (food/potions) and changing equipment during combat.

[NetprogsGames]

They finally have names!

I’ve finally gotten around to giving our little friends the names and also came up with a short little biography for each one. These may change in the future, but for now I’m just happy I finally picked something!

Here’s our cast of friends in order that you’ll meet them:

	Knight: Finley Scottish for "Fair-haired hero". Our main character in the game has no significant background and has pretty much spent his entire life aimlessly wandering around from tavern to tavern pretty much accomplishing nothing.
	Amazon: Gerarda Old English for "Brave Spear Woman". Nobody is entirely sure where she came from. One day she just showed up in town for a competition and amazed everyone with her combat skills; she was immediately offered a job in guard duty and hasn’t left since. She dreams of big things in her life other than just being a simple guard grunt though and is always looking for something else to do instead. She doesn’t talk a lot, but when she does, you’d better listen!
	Archer: Frezza Italian for "arrow". Fezza has spent many years learning the fine art of archery and has become quite good at her trade. She prefers to live among animals in the forest and isn’t a huge fan of large cities. There are only a few people she would call a true friend, but will do anything in her power to help them when in need.
	Mage: Lilura Basque for "Enchantment". While very early in her development as a mage, Lilura is a quick study and really likes it when she can fine new shiny magical things to play with. She is good friends with Frezza going back many years and too prefers the more solitude life away from larger cities.
	Bandit: Calvin Latin for "Hairless" or "Bald". Born with a full head of hair, which his parents were never able to keep control, he was named ironically after his bald great-great-uncle. He was raised to be a free spirit and always speaks his mind, even if it means peeving someone off. Unfortunately, due to unknown events, he was left with nothing but hit wits and attitude to carry him through life; resulting in his life as a bandit.
	Dwarf: Gus Gaelic for "Strength". He’s Dwarf, enough said!?! Grumpy and very strong willed, Gus has spent most of his life focused on combat training, exploring caves and obtaining as much loot as he can. He’s not an overly great conversationalist, but tries his best when required. Gus isn’t a big fan of free-spirited people though, then tend to annoy him!

[NetprogsGames]

Available to play!

The first adventure, "The Gathering" is now available for free download. Hope everyone enjoys!

http://www.netprogs.com/getting-started/

This is not the end though! There are plans for at least 6 more adventures with the gang, so I'll continue posting here with any major updates as the work continues.