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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsPIONEERS (Build 7)
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Author Topic: PIONEERS (Build 7)  (Read 149369 times)
Joshua
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« Reply #500 on: February 28, 2013, 01:27:47 PM »

You didn't save it? Losing is fun!  Cheesy
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makerimages
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« Reply #501 on: March 01, 2013, 02:31:08 AM »

Suggested Pioneers to http://www.twitch.tv/discogypzyfish he spent 10-20 minutes scrolling the first post of the devlog, finally deciding-he wont play it.
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Eigen
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« Reply #502 on: March 01, 2013, 03:53:33 AM »

Suggested Pioneers to http://www.twitch.tv/discogypzyfish he spent 10-20 minutes scrolling the first post of the devlog, finally deciding-he wont play it.

Good to know. I must say that is a long time to scroll through a post. Maybe the scrollwheel has some gunk in it? Also, I imagine this Mr. Discogypzyfish had his reasons for not playing and I mustn't weep too long and carry on living even though this dark cloud makes me want to write some poems and cry the pain out.

Seriously ...
« Last Edit: March 01, 2013, 04:27:53 AM by Eigen » Logged

makerimages
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« Reply #503 on: March 01, 2013, 06:20:48 AM »

Yes, sadly-as he finally said he likes MOBA style games more.
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« Reply #504 on: March 01, 2013, 06:31:50 AM »

Suggested Pioneers to http://www.twitch.tv/discogypzyfish he spent 10-20 minutes scrolling the first post of the devlog, finally deciding-he wont play it.

I think he would have been better off using these 10-20 minutes to just play the game.  Giggle
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« Reply #505 on: March 01, 2013, 12:12:11 PM »

As earlier, I +1 what's been written above.
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« Reply #506 on: March 03, 2013, 11:28:01 AM »

More feedback for Eigen:

- I like sailing, it's original and a nice break from the turn-based movement, definitely a learning curve to it though
- One thing that got me was when I pointed my ship towards on of the dots and pressed the key (W?) to open my sails, got some speed, and then changed direction while still holding the 'Open Sails' key, I would lose speed gradually. Seemed like I needed to stop holding down that key once I changed direction. I don't think it was mentioned in the sailing tutorial (and I know nothing about sailing) so I had to figure it out myself, took a few minutes
- Loading up my party for disembarking from the ship was frankly, a bit of a buzz kill. The player will be doing this a lot, so it should be as quick and frictionless in terms of the UI s as possible. Drag+drop, and having multiple party member inventory windows open at the same time would help I think
- I'm sure you know this but... the game isn't that fun right now. Crafting, interaction with natives, basically more meaningful things to do with your exploration will help a ton. Cool landmarks to discover would help too. The slowness of the game hurts the fun factor right now too, I think this is because it's turn based without any NPCs, so the game feels unnecessarily slow - I think you had mentioned this somewhere in the thread before

Sorry if I come across as harsh, just want to give honest feedback because the potential is there.  Grin
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Eigen
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« Reply #507 on: March 04, 2013, 12:33:09 PM »

No, no, don't worry. It's not harsh, it's honest. I like that. It's far more helpful than just praise.

Yep, the sailing might take a little while to get used to but it's very simple, really. Perhaps even too simple but adding variable wind speed and stuff like that in there just doesn't fit. I think I need to graphically indicate when the sail is up or when it's down to avoid confusion.

On picking up items - I agree. Drag and drop solution would be preferred for most of the items. Actions like "fill up flask" would still have to be performed through the menu. I think I'll make it so when your inventory is open in the brig/camp screen, it's moved slightly to the left and down so they wouldn't overlap and then you can drag stuff around. Should be pretty straightforward to implement.

And you're right, it isn't much fun since there's very little to do. That's something I'm going to be addressing real soon. But even if you just go around exploring it's somehow rewarding. I don't know.

someone played it for nearly 2 hours. Smiley

I'll copy this from my reply I just wrote on the Pioneers forum:

Quote
Basically at the start of the game you get to choose between two paths - Explorer or Adventurer. The goal of the explorer path is to find some sort of ancient city/ruins/whatever. Stuff like Atlantis and along the lines of that. I'm still working on the details. For that you go around the world discovering and collecting clues. Once you put all the clues together you can go the final quest of actually discovering that place. Adventurer path is similar but instead of one end goal you have X amount of Treasure of Something Mythical to find. So these are the main quests. Things like Spice Run are side-quests and help you with your funds and who knows what else. I'm not yet sure about this, but I've also planned smaller goals alongside the game. These would be divided into a category like "Botanist - Discover all Y types of plants" and "Anthropologist - Find all Y native tribes" and so on. These aren't mandatory to complete but should offer enough on the side.

The ideas are very rough but that's the general plan. I'm really trying to go for this grand adventure feel. It's something I love in games and books and hope to achieve in this game.

You mentioned slowness. I agree, but it's not something I've been trying to avoid at all costs. It's quite relaxing and that could actually be a feature. Not everybody will like it but there's really not much I can do to speed stuff up. This was said about the latest gamplay video:

Quote
That was great to watch for some reason.
Quote
I totally agree! A really cozy and calm watch and the game itself looks like something one could sit and play for hours and hours.

Smiley




I posted the latest build on /r/indiegaming a couple of days ago and got some interesting feedback (that's where the stream link came from).
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Eigen
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« Reply #508 on: March 11, 2013, 01:57:45 PM »

This weekend I was working on filling the rest of the world. My idea was to simply create and scatter maps with random sizes all over the world. Once I did that and saw how pathetic it looked (huge image), I immediately scrapped the idea. It looks like a bunch of small islands and that just doesn't look right. I want more solid pieces of mainland. So I started thinking maybe I should create the whole world as one huge map. Obviously it'd be broken into pieces and loaded in when needed but then I could move away from individual pieces of map. You can enter exploration mode whenever there's enough land nearby. Clearly my crappy method of generating a map wouldn't work for the whole world, so I turned to Perlin noise. It's sweet!

So, what I managed to work out tonight is the map generation (a basic colormap). Next I need to add villages and the rest of the details and cut everything into managable pieces. Then when moving around the world I need to check what pieces need to be loaded and launch a new thread to create all the actual game objects. I guess I can store most of the data in the colormap. I still want the world to be persistent, as it is now, so if I cut down some trees I want the trees to remain cut when I return there in the future. It's quite a bit of work but I think it'll pay off in the end. It actually simplifies the system I have now. And it should be faster since I don't need to serialize the map pieces all the time, writing an image files is certainly faster. The world will feel larger, continious and more realistic. Plus then you could have different explorers in different parts of the world (if you want to multi-task).

The world is currently 4096 x 4096 in size. Should be plenty for now.



Click to see full size. Warning: large image!


Something that needs resolving is how to place story specific points on a randomly generated map. For example, where should the first town be, east of which is the spice island the first quest requires.

Also the map needs to tile horizontally so you could sail around the world.
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« Reply #509 on: March 12, 2013, 02:58:19 AM »

Ah yeah, procedural map generation - this stuff is right up my alley.

I've been using Perlin noise generation to make my maps, but since it's seeded randomness, I only create the portion of the map that is within the immediate vicinity of my player as I move towards it, and I eradicate map data as the player leaves it behind. It allows for endless roaming.

I'll have to work out a system of storing the modified map data from doing things like setting forests on fire.
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Eigen
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« Reply #510 on: March 13, 2013, 01:52:29 AM »

Yeah, I need to have persistent world so it's all generated up front. Takes a wee bit time to do so, though. I have 4 iterations for the terrain each with varying noise parameters to create more varied heightmap and with a 4096x4096 image it takes around 40 seconds. Add to that the rest of the post-processing, cutting into pieces and saving to disk I imagine it'll take a minute easily. Not too bad though.

Here's what I have right now (half a meg png)

There are too many flat areas right now, I need to fix that but it's starting to look alright I think. I can't wait to get it implemented so I can go explore it Smiley
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« Reply #511 on: March 13, 2013, 02:05:04 AM »

I can't wait to get it implemented so I can go explore it Smiley

I love that moment.
Looks awesome!
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« Reply #512 on: March 13, 2013, 09:49:05 AM »

The land looks really, really good!  Kiss
However, the rivers looks a bit "straight" in comparison. Moreover, it seems the sometimes rivers tend to flow to higher grounds, which lead me to think that they are generated independently of the height map.
I know it is complex, but I honestly think it is possible to make even better landscapes by taking height into account. On the other hand, it is just a map, it may look better ingame.
Anyway, huge progress have been made since the last map. Keep it up!  Coffee
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Impmaster
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« Reply #513 on: March 14, 2013, 03:38:42 AM »

Hey, RPS wrote about Pioneers.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/14/avoid-dysentery-and-acquire-wealth-in-pioneers/
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« Reply #514 on: March 14, 2013, 08:20:35 AM »

Yeah, I need to have persistent world so it's all generated up front.
Does that also mean you will simulate things happening the entire map, even when unexplored?
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« Reply #515 on: March 14, 2013, 08:58:49 AM »

I noticed that the map is not seamless which tells me that your map does not loop. I read this great dev blog post on seamless noise that you may find useful if you do want seamless (looping) maps. Keep up the good work!
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Eigen
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« Reply #516 on: March 14, 2013, 09:05:31 AM »

My Word!


However, the rivers looks a bit "straight" in comparison. Moreover, it seems the sometimes rivers tend to flow to higher grounds, which lead me to think that they are generated independently of the height map.

Indeed, they aren't completely correct. Also, they're not rivers per se, but simply areas without land tiles, so the rivers are all on the same plane (height = 0) whereas terrain around it can be anything from 1 to 5. For the rivers to be on the higher ground I'd need to rework it so that they are drawn onto the tiles. I might do that at some point, but not right now.


Yeah, I need to have persistent world so it's all generated up front.
Does that also mean you will simulate things happening the entire map, even when unexplored?

That might be pushing it too much I think, so probabably not. More likely only animals and characters within a certain radius will be updated.


I noticed that the map is not seamless which tells me that your map does not loop. I read this great dev blog post on seamless noise that you may find useful if you do want seamless (looping) maps. Keep up the good work!

Thanks, I'm going to check it out right away. I'm only interested in horizontal looping though so that circumnavigation would be possible.
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« Reply #517 on: March 14, 2013, 11:46:23 AM »

There's also Wang Tiles, I suppose. Although I must admit I don't quite understand how they work.
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Eigen
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« Reply #518 on: March 24, 2013, 01:20:23 AM »

Still re-coding my world structure, so not much to update. It has required more changes than I expected but the end result will be worth it. Right now I've broken and removed so much stuff that all I see is a black screen. But that's normal Roll Eyes

In other news: A few days ago my interview with David from Plus 10 Damage was posted. My first! It was a lot of fun thinking about and answering those questions.

Link to the interview
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Joshua
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« Reply #519 on: March 24, 2013, 08:24:35 AM »

I'm putting the wraps on the rope item, which can really change how your band moves across the map.

Eigen has tasked me to do some research on subterranean procedural generation. Which is a challenging task, but I'm totally pumped for what it implies! Any suggested reading please send my way.   Grin
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