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[dmoonfire]

So, I decided to go forth with my idea of doing a demake for Oblivion, done in a style of Bard's Tale. Naturally, its still exciting at this point which of course will change after GenCon next week. I don't have much right now, mostly working on the area loader since I'm going a *tad* over Bard's Tale's technology level.



Don't have much right now but I got the basic frame for the game. I'm hoping to put it at 1280x960 but keep it at the 640x480 screen size (BIG PIXELS!). Right now, I just have some startup code complete with a Windows preloader for settings. I'm only going to do the main quest, given the time and my skill. I suspect the Oblivion gates will also be single fights to start with, but got to start somewhere.

I also decided to make it a bit more parody, mainly CYA but also because it sounds better when you talk to Emperor Sunetodie.

But, I'm going to go with my same goals as Running Bomb, every vote at the end is a major polish or feature added to the game after the voting.

[dmoonfire]

Bah, while the idea of using sqlite3 for doing the save games is good and all, it takes way too long to insert said data. I figured this out at the end of the programming day (damn that homework after work thing), so I'm switching to a pure in-memory approach and inflicting much larger memory requirements on the viewer. Probably shouldn't be that bad since I'm still aiming for less than 50 MB, but we'll see.

Got the beginning of the editor going, it doesn't do much other than read in the height map file and generates an attempted "rolling 3D hills and mountains" for the game. In cubes. Because I just want to see it. That and I think it would make a nice touch. Speaking of which, I'm adding the two images I'm using for the "basic" terrain to start with. And the official map.

I also posted my working notes on the game. They'll come and go as I'm working, but right now it just keeps growing and growing. Trying to put too much in again, I think. I'll find out after I get most of the data structures into the program--that looks like the nasty stuff right now.

[dmoonfire]

I learned some very important things last night. When I decided not to make it based on sqlite3, I had to handle my own area paging. I stuck with a 32 square locations for an "area". So, an area 32 by 32. On my original map of 2048 squared pixels, with 1 pixel = 1 location, this mean that I had 4096 area files with 32 squared locations each. Um... a bit too large. Impressive, but too large. I cut the original image in half (1024) which then quartered the number of image file. I even got an import height map and paint terrain editor that takes the two images above and actually makes a 3d, cube-based map. I probably need to look into making this a packed file (zip archive probably) to cut down the number of files needed by 2000 or so.

Which looks awesome, I'll try to get a screenshot of that soon. You can walk to the top of a hill and actually see across the entire valley. Need to do a bit of culling though so it won't kill my 3D hardware, but that part is actually moving forward nicely.

I also figured out my 2x scaling problem. Apparently, 2D painting in Irrlicht isn't affected by viewport transformations so I just have to paint the frame at double size and everything works great. So, the next major goal is to get the text display working and maybe even get a character stat bar in there, or at least the Oblivion "`" console (complete with as many of the same commands as the original).

[Robson]

Woooo I'm liking the ambitiousness and looking forward to playing this. Best of luck dmoonfire!

[Gnarf]

Same. Looking forward to this one. Bard's Tale style anything is super-awesome

[Will Vale]

I'm looking forward to this as well - I've been playing Etrian Odyssey II recently so block-scrolling RPGs are high on my list of good things at the moment.

Look forward to seeing how outdoors is going to look in that kind of engine - don't think it's been done before, at least not with non-flat terrain?

Will

[Gnarf]

Outdoors have been done quite some times in that kind of engine. I believe Bard's Tale 2 and 3 have got wilderness areas, and Might and Magic games tend to have you strolling about outside. Wizardry 6/7 too, I suppose. And some other stuff. Not too sure about non-flat terrain though.

[Will Vale]

I realise there have been outdoor-themed levels - Lands of Lore is another good example - it's just that all the ones I've seen have been like dungeons with sky insted of a roof.

You can walk to the top of a hill and actually see across the entire valley.

This is what I'm looking forward to

[Gnarf]

Yeah, I didn't know if Land of Lore's engine would be "that kind" enough to mention it, although I suppose the walking around parts of it are :P I do think some of the Might and Magic stuff was more successful at feeling a bit outdoorsy than certain other games. Level design wise and that.

But yeah, I agree. That stuff there could be real cool.

[dmoonfire]

Well, sadly, I can't seem to get the *entire* valley at this point, but it is getting there. I'm sticking with 32 different heights, but they are all smooth shaded at the moment, so it looks kind of... blah. No outlines or anything until I figure out how to get the trees and grass into there; that should make things look a bit better.

I managed to set the view distance to be 48 squares right now. Assuming its 20 meters per square (using the scale of the original map), then you should have a view of the surrounding kilometer or so. I'll try to make that a bit more impressive but I need to actually get more of the game thing going first. Plus, GenCon this week so no coding after tomorrow for a week.

I also wasted a day redoing the graphics. Still not perfect, but I think they look pretty decent. If I have time, I'll fire up Blender or something and try to make a proper wood/brass image theme.

[dmoonfire]

Internet was out, so I couldn't do my homework. So, after cleaning up the apartment for my convention trip, I was drawn back to the game like a moth and an electrified grid. Managed to get the text rendering done fairly properly (still missing the screen though) so you can see the game displaying things. Even wrote a simplified HTML-like parser that can do bold, italic, and three colors (red, green, blue) so I can put in the damage messages. Oh yeah, and h1 and h2 tags too.

I'm planning on using a MUD-style damage, like "The goblin scratches you." or "The goblin -=- DEVASTATES -=- you!" depending on ratio of damage to your full hit points. Needless to say, annihilate and devastate are both "you are dead" states.

The character status area is also pretty much done (baring status). It looks like you can have up to 4 allies, all computer controlled, including summoned creatures. The status area will give you the number of seconds left on your summon, kind of like the original game.

[dmoonfire]

And, it isn't done yet, but here is a shot of looking over a valley (and a really bad river).

[dmoonfire]

Back from GenCon and got a bit of work done on this. Not much, really, but after a day's worth of driving, I was happy I got *anything* done.

I managed to get the basic console working (`) with the tgm (god mode) and tcl (walk through walls). I got worked on getting a proper editor for my settings done, something that I've been meaning to do for a while. So, I can throw most of the game logic into that file and let me tweak things as I go.

I'm planning on working on the default layout and/or character creation tonight. The 32 height didn't really work out, made everything too flat. So, I'm going to 256 heights and working on getting that cleaned up. I just have to work on the editor that does most of that since it is choking badly on the file creation. I also figured out how to do an in-place update of a zip archive which means I might be able to speed things up by throwing things in a zip archive (instead of having 2000+ files hanging around).

Creation is fun and less tedious than the editor. If I do that, I should be able to knock it off in a day. That way, I'll get the birthsigns, race, gender, class, and focus stuff all done and maybe even get a character statistics display. There won't be a redo everything at the end of the prison level though, no time or energy to do that, not to mention I thought it was stupid.

[dmoonfire]

Slowly moving forward. My Internet is down at work (again), so I can't really do anything that I need to have examples for. Instead, I worked on the editor. I'm keeping the cubic movement, but I'm switching most of the terrain to simple 32^2 meshes and imitation perline noise meshes. It will make it look more like Bard's Tale 2's wilderness area, but keeping with the 3D terrain. Once I get the trees and grass meshes in, things should look like a low-grade Oblivion. At the moment, you can see about 128 locations in front of the player, I'm hoping to get double that for a good machine (and make it user configurable using what I did two days ago).

Interestingly, I can still get the cities into the game. Those will remain the cubes as normal, only the ground terrain will be mesh-based. Sadly, IrrlichtNETCP doesn't have a tree scene node (for something like SpeedTree), so I'll just find tree models and randomly place them. I do have a grass node, which I'm hoping to get into the game tomorrow or by Saturday. Once I get the atmosphere (day/night cycle) in, I'm going to stop working on terrain and work on character creation.

My goal is to have creation and basic wilderness display/navigation done by end of day Sunday. Then crack open Blender and start making something that looks like internal pieces, caves, tombs, walls, and maybe a Vector-man-like 3D figure using my Glorious Saber web comic (or Thing Thing flash games) as inspiration. It won't be fancy, but I can at least figure out how to animate/create that.

[dmoonfire]

At the moment, I would have to say Ken Perlin is the greatest person on the planet. Last night, I managed to hack a Perlin noise function into my terrain painting (sort of baked, actually) to actually give it enough variance that it almost looks good. Desperately needs grass and trees, but now that I have Internet at home, I'll be able to hopefully add some of that. Looks like I'm going to stick with the 1.2 km visible range for now. There is some texture breaking at the mesh, but not a stopping point. Also using a mesh is slightly off center on the screen, but not critically at this point, so I'm going to just move on.

Actually got gravity working last night. Walking around actually follows the terrain (if you have collisions on, of course) and it keeps track if you fall more than 10 meters (gives a bright red error message). That will tie into athletics since your damage is based on that skill (and since you can't jump, it is only used in one place).

Tonight, my plans are to get the grass scene nodes working so I have some grass to break up the flat grounds, and probably the skydome/atmosphere scene node so I can have at least a day/night cycle. If that works out, I'll finish adding the water node stuff and call that part "done". Trees and rock placement will be put on the "later" phase since I'm running out of time.

On the paper coding side, figured out the basics for random encounters. I'm also going with the Kyntt Story type of save points. Every time you sleep, you save. And you get exactly one save slot per game. You also level when you sleep. I'm not going to keep track of skills improved (like Oblivion). Instead, I'll just give a +5, +3, and +1 attribute increase at each level. It will be more regular, but I hate random improvements.

Though, I am taking the Oblivion Overhaul for the leveling. That way, your opponent isn't exactly 1 level above you. Instead, there will be regions where the level of the encounter is higher and areas where it is lower.

Hopefully, I'll get screenshots, a short movie, and/or a demo up by Sunday.

[dmoonfire]

Well, I think I actually got something useful enough to show. That and having some Internet connection really helps with producing something more than just words. So, it is starting to look a bit more like a game. I got character creation basically done this week. It isn't pretty, but it works and most of the calculations are in there.

I got the beginning of an atmosphere node. The sun still moves constantly--I still need to sync it to the game state. Loading games works now also. And, you can "die" by moving around and falling too much (your Acrobatics skill reduces falling damage).

Here is a short flash (6 MB) video of the game so far:

http://mfgames.com/games/lethes-yarn/lethes-yarn-0.0.1-001

Oh yeah, commands:

WASD to move around (arrow keys work too)
Q and E are strafe movement.
F1 in game brings up the character sheet.
ESCAPE should escape out of everything.
` Will go into console mode
  "qqq" quit now
  "s" save
  "tgm" toggle god mode
  "tcl" toggle collision logic (turns Z and C for up and down respectively)

I actually have a demo. It's large (60 MB, uncompressed to 350 MB), but you can get it at:

http://mfgames.com/games/lethes-yarn/lethes-yarn-0.0.1.rar

[Synnah]

I think this is easily the most ambitious project of the competition (Although if Kinten and his team can demake Fallout in under a week, I'll be most impressed); 350MB demo?! I'm away from home at the moment, but I'll check it out when I get back, and give you some feedback.

[dmoonfire]

I think this is easily the most ambitious project of the competition (Although if Kinten and his team can demake Fallout in under a week, I'll be most impressed); 350MB demo?! I'm away from home at the moment, but I'll check it out when I get back, and give you some feedback.

Yeah, its a bit too ambitious, actually. For one person, that is. Unless amazing things happen this week, I won't get everything I hoped for done, but I should get a lot closer than I got to my goals of Running Bomb.

Most of the demo size are the height and texture maps for the world. I'm sure I should have done something different, but at the time, it was just easier to create expanded textures from the image I drew and modify them with perlin noise so it has a smooth texture across the entire world. Step one, make it work. Step two, make it smaller and faster.

Tonight, I think I'm going to finish up the sun movement and problem implement the in-game clock.

[dmoonfire]

Bah, I hate 3D renderers. In specific, I was really unhappy with the heightmap/terrain of the world, so I'm trying to revamp it to keep up the speed and still give more "square" appearance. Also to let me put in the meshes for the walls when you are close enough. Not to mention, it started giving me a bit of a headache when I tried to put in the first (and only for this contest) dungeon/prison.

I'm going to try something silly and severely cut down on the amount of files needed for the game. Mainly by using some procedural stuff to expand the world. Instead of having a 1024^2 map processed into 32^2 areas of 32^2 tiles (the source of most of the space), I'm going to see if I can get away with a 256^2 map and use functions to expand it out to the full 20 km range. Not to mention, remove most of the "useless" locations that were just there for terrain, which would cut down on the XML file size.

It might let me have a 'different' world for each new game but it won't be that different. I haven't decided on that one, but I'm going back to figuring out how to do rendering and LOD just because I want square walls. It might also cut down on how far you can see away, but I need to get it right before I can make it fancy. I will be keeping the mountain ranges though, it is just cool to climb up the mountains (though my rivers are like 300 feet deep... all of them). And there a few places where you can fall 380 meters still.

Oh, and I got world time and the sun movement in sync. So, as you run across the world, you actually get to see the sun move in time with you. And if you stop, so does the sun. There are also trees in there, but badly (one of the reasons I'm revamping said graphics system).

[increpare]

Cool dude.  It does look pretty good (though maybe a bit sparse still from what I've seen).  And I find that sort of screen layout  (with the big-ass pane about the main play window) to be really nostalgia-inducing and tend to lead to a feeling of immersion.