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[oxrock]

Quests Unlimited is now available on Steam! http://store.steampowered.com/app/777420/Quests_Unlimited/

Quests Unlimited is available on itch! https://oxrock.itch.io/quests-unlimited





Inspired by a love for classic idle games like Progress Quest, Quests Unlimited is a classical interpretation of the idle rpg genre with a more traditional rpg style of gameplay being emulated.  Accept and complete quests, sell your drops in town, equip new gear and spend your hard earned currency upgrading it and becoming more formidable.

Quests Unlimited is still being worked on, but development is so far along that I felt the game warrants a release. Player feedback can only make the gaming experience more enjoyable. Give the game a try and let me know how I can make your experience more enjoyable  

-------------------------------------------------

[OUTDATED]


It's been a little while since I created this thread and some info in this post was out of date. So i decided to update things so first time readers will have a more accurate idea of where development is for the game. The original post will be left unaltered for posterity.


The idea behind Quests Unlimited

Quests Unlimited started with the thought of "What if someone ever actually had made a 3d version of progress quest?". I think a lot of us feel the draw of games with level and gear grinding mechanics  but simply don't have the time to invest to excel in those games. So, why not develop a game with those mechanics that grinds for you? With the surge of e-sports, twitch viewership and other casual afk games, maybe watching the action happen can be fun sometimes too. Of course I doubt many would actively watch the game for hours at a time or anything. The idea would be to leave it running and check on the progress every once in a while to see what epic new equipment your party has and how many levels it's gained.


So how does it work?

The premise is simple. When you start a new game you will choose what classes to fill your party with. Your party will then visit the village elder and receive a randomly generated level appropriate quest. While questing, monsters may drop equipment with randomly generated stats which can be equipped as upgrades or sold in town.

So where is development currently? 07/08/17

For now I still only have the hunter and fighter classes available for play. The game is still bare-bones compared to a finished product, but a lot of the key elements are operational. A party is randomly generated at game start and assigned a quest. The party will automatically walk to the appropriate questing area and start killing quest monsters. The quest progress is tracked and a new quest is issued when the quest is complete. The equipment system (looting,equipping,selling) is in place and working great. For now, receiving new quests and selling items is taking place remotely while in the field, but getting that functionality up and running was the hard part. Making is so that the party has to be in range of the salesman/elder to sell items/receive quests is trivial in comparison. There's now also a unique enemy in each questing area for the party to dispense of for the sake of the village. I believe that covers the major features that have changed since the initial posting.


What's to come?

Of course that game isn't done yet, so there still so much more to look forward to!

Objectives that are struck out are completed unless otherwise indicated

• quest system  is currently implemented
• mage class
• berserker class no longer in my plans
• priest class implemented as cleric
• tons of enemy classes (have 3 implemented currently, much better than the 0 I had when I first posted)
• threat system
• individual equipment windows This is currently in place and operational
• equipment scoring system based on class This has been handled and much more
• town vendor(mostly implemented)completely implemented
• equipment improvement systemworking in game
• save/load system (partially implemented)
• possible twitch.tv interaction I decided not to go this route

I've been doing my best to keep this DevLog updated every Saturday with the progress made. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to take part in the conversation and I'll be back to respond before long.
------------------------------------ Original post ------------------------------------



The idea behind Quests Unlimited

Quests Unlimited started with the thought of "What if someone ever actually had made a 3d version of progress quest?". I think a lot of us feel the draw of games with level and gear grinding mechanics  but simply don't have the time to invest to excel in those games. So, why not develop a game with those mechanics that grinds for you? With the surge of e-sports, twitch viewership and other casual afk games, maybe watching the action happen can be fun sometimes too. Of course I doubt many would actively watch the game for hours at a time or anything. The idea would be to leave it running and check on the progress every once in a while to see what epic new equipment your party has and how many levels it's gained.


So how does it work?

The premise is simple. When you start a new game you will choose what classes to fill your party with. Your party will then visit the village elder and receive a randomly generated level appropriate quest. While questing monsters may drop equipment with randomly generated stats which can be equipped as upgrades or sold in town.

So where is development currently?

As of now I have 2 party classes mostly implemented, the Fighter and the Hunter. The equipment and stats system are both functioning perfectly(you equip a sword, fighter's stats increase, dequip and his stats decrease) however the inventory UI to interact with the equipment has not been updated yet. The party system functions as expected, parties will fight other parties of rival factions. As of yet with no questing system in place and no enemies developed, the game currently plays more like a 50x5 vs 50x5 battle to the death. This is only for testing purposes and does not indicate release game play whatsoever. I think pictures do more to show progress than words honestly, have a look at some of today's progress:

This afternoon I was working on implementing the hunter's arrows and making sure they flew at their targets.Don't mind the horrid displays over the characters, they're not long for this world. It's just for testing purposes during development.

What's to come?

Well I still have to implement a lot of things, as indicated by only being at 30% developed. Here's a list off the top of my head:

• quest system
• mage class
• berserker class
• priest class
• tons of enemy classes
• threat system
• individual equipment windows
• equipment scoring system based on class
• town vendor
• equipment improvement system
• save/load system (partially implemented)
• possible twitch.tv interaction

What else is to come? Well hopefully updates at least every Saturday! I'm actively developing this game full time and think it's finally time to start showing it off a bit. Like what you see, have questions, got a suggestion? Leave a comment!

[oxrock]

Progress Report:

That's right, there has actually been progress! I am happy to report that there are currently 2 enemy classes implemented and functional within the game. Only 2 of many, but it's a start at least.

On another front, I decided to add another questing/monster grinding area to the game. So as of today there is now a cave area where there will mostly be orcs and goblin type creatures. This is in addition to the 2 other zones already in place, the graveyard and the forest circle. The graveyard as you can imagine is for undead creatures while the forest will be for more of a potpourri of encounters.

I also decided that there should be rest areas outside each questing zone to recuperate between fights as opposed to being forced to return to town to convalesce. And what better symbol of outside resting areas is there than a campfire?!?! So of course I went about making the most voxeliest (is that even a word? if not I'm declaring it a word, I call dibs on all royalties) campfire I could muster and placing them appropriately around the map. Here's a peek:


On Saturday I'll be back with more updates, more details and many more pictures of what is actually taking place. I thought a mini update to let everyone know that this was in-fact actively being developed and that this dev log will in-fact be updated would be nice.

[Zireael]

I like the fire!

[oxrock]

I like the fire!

I'm glad! I've actually upgraded the fire from a billboard renderer to 3d mesh so it's a true voxel fire now 

I haven't actually seen much out there in terms of people emulating voxel particle effects, so I was thinking I'd put together a quick tutorial of how to make a voxel particle fire like mine.

[oxrock]

Update 5/20

Now for the weekly update, I mentioned previously that I implemented 2 enemy classes this week but I haven't yet divulged who they are. Well, without further delay here they are!

Orc Berserker:
This one's a big beefy bruiser who dishes out a lot of melee dmg and has considerable hitpoints. He has very little armor however.




Skeleton Warrior:
The skeleton warrior does only moderate melee damage and focuses on damage mitigation.




Ok, so what else have I been up to? Well you may have noticed that Quests Unlimited now has an emblem! As far as functionality goes, a lot of work has gone into implementing the tools the game logic will be using to control the party and the game world. The game has actually progressed pretty far beyond the silly zerg battles we would see in the past. The party can now be told to go to a quest destination, will fight the monsters there, and if they lose will automatically respawn at the nearest campfire. Tonight or tomorrow I'll be posting a follow-up post with a video showcasing the game's progress, and hopefully filling and any progress notes that may have slipped through the cracks.

Until then, don't forget the marshmellows!

[oxrock]

Good morning everyone. I'm a man of my word and here's the video documenting the game's current state. There's a lot of information in there I've not actually gone over yet on here, so you might want to give it a proper watch. It's my first attempt at a video DevLog so go easy on me. I hope you enjoy guys.

[oxrock]

This isn't an "OMG!" update but I figured I'd put it out there that I updated the game logo. The resolution is significantly increased and the details on the axe in particular I spent a lot of time improving as I felt it was kind of plain when compared to the sword.

old:


new:




Not as happy on the shading of the axe as I could be, and still not happy with the text, it's a bit jaggy for my liking and I just feel like it's missing something. But I feel like this is a marked improvement at least.

Update:

stayed up tinkering and came up with this one:

[xix]

I love the look of your game. I also think you're making some cool iconographic choices with your logo. But (at the risk of the pot calling the kettle black) I don't think their delivery methods jive very well. I think you might want to consider the strengths of each and see where you can make them meet in the middle.

E.g. The Ram Skull Battle Axe is super dope. But the logo is hifi with outlines whereas the game is lofi with lighting. I think the logo is just reminding me of things I won't ever get to see in the game. If you come up with a battle axe that says the same things (jagged edges, ram skull, multiple pointy death spots) in voxel I think it'd jive better. I'm much more lenient on the text because it's a functional thing, but I think even then keeping it Sans Serif, unicolor, and straight might make it seem more cohesive.

Take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm developing the UI for my own voxel game, and I'm mostly working through these same things for myself.

[oxrock]

I love the look of your game. I also think you're making some cool iconographic choices with your logo. But (at the risk of the pot calling the kettle black) I don't think their delivery methods jive very well. I think you might want to consider the strengths of each and see where you can make them meet in the middle.

E.g. The Ram Skull Battle Axe is super dope. But the logo is hifi with outlines whereas the game is lofi with lighting. I think the logo is just reminding me of things I won't ever get to see in the game. If you come up with a battle axe that says the same things (jagged edges, ram skull, multiple pointy death spots) in voxel I think it'd jive better. I'm much more lenient on the text because it's a functional thing, but I think even then keeping it Sans Serif, unicolor, and straight might make it seem more cohesive.

Take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm developing the UI for my own voxel game, and I'm mostly working through these same things for myself.

Thanks for your input! You're the second person to suggest switching to voxel weapons but for some reason something inside of me is fighting it. It seems to make sense though, so I'll be chewing it over in my mind a while. As for the text being the way it is, the main reason is mostly a homage to PQ.

original:


mine:


With your post about iconographic choices I think you saw what I was aiming for with my emblem at least, I was wondering how many might see it. I will probably keep the text in the elipse but will probably lose the color transition and might change the font as well. Just not liking it.

[oxrock]

It's Saturday yet again, so here I am to fill everyone in on the progress made this week. I suppose the most exciting thing to showoff is the quest tracking. As of now 3 quests can be randomly selected (kill undead/cavedwellers/forestdwellers) and appropriately tracked. Here's a sneak peek of it in action:



As with everything, it's still a work in progress. The quest as of now is assigned at the game's start and there's no completion indicator or start of another quest as of yet. The quest variety is planned to be expanded further once more adversaries are introduced as well. There may be quests that require the party to kill skeleton warriors specifically for example, a lot of the groundwork for that has already been laid out.

Some other progress not showcased (because it's a bit like watching grass grow) is the campfire's health regeneration effect. When party members are not in combat in proximity of a campfire, they regain 1%(or 1hp minimum) health per second. Also relating to the campfire, I created another function for the party to actually walk to the campfire instead of being instantly teleported. I think being teleported is still valid for when the party completely wipes to an enemy group, but teleporting to heal after each encounter seemed silly. That of course introduced an interesting bug. Our party would attack the campfire! Well it certainly looked like it anyway, the attack animation was playing but if any of the actual attack logic was going off it probably would of crashed while looking for components that don't exist. So I went back and got that all sorted out.

I think that about covers the visible changes. There was a fair amount of code reformatting to wrangle in some classes that were getting out of control. A lot of groundwork laid for things just on the verge of being implemented. The game is actually pretty close to start being automated (barebones to the extreme) which would be a big milestone I think.

[oxrock]

I felt like this week's post needed a little bit more to be excited about, so I decided to get back to work for a bit and implement another enemy. So here he is, the infamous lizardman!



The lizardman is replacing the fighters/hunters I was using as placekeepers in the forest. He's all set up and working as intended  

[oxrock]

Hello everyone, it's been a very productive few days so I wanted to give an update to talk about what's been going on lately.
 

• I got rid of those atrocious displays over everyone's heads. Those were never intended to remain long and were there for convenience sake. They were replaced by a healthbox that will eventually be able to be toggled off for a more cinematic experience.
  
• quests can now actually be completed and have new ones be assigned!
• The game is finally fully automated!!!!!

and here's the proof:





So yes, it's fully automated at the moment but sadly there's still tons of features missing so we're far from done. My current goal is to update my existing inventory system to handle my equipment generation system and to get the loot dropping system up and running.

[oxrock]

I've done a lot of talking about what I've implemented, talked some about what I'd like to do in the future, but I haven't heard anything about what kinds of things people might be interested in seeing in a game like this. What do you think would make the game better? Should there be pets, boss fights, dancing bears? I know what I want to see, I need to know what YOU want to see! Let me know what you think.   

[oxrock]

Well, I missed the scheduled DevLog post. Whoops! I had to put the game on hold for a few days and do some contract work so I could afford to eat for a few more days, I hope everyone can understand. It was not all time wasted however! I've spent some time strategizing how to release Quests Unlimited as a free to play game while still keeping the lights on. I think I've come up with a solution that can really be something special. This Saturday I should at least have more work to show off again, sorry for the delay everyone. This game will be epic, I guarantee it! 

[oxrock]

It's that time again so I'm here to update everyone with what's happened lately. The big news is that the equipment generation system is now finally properly integrated with the inventory system. It took a ton of boring work that I'm sure nobody wants to hear the details about, but it's operational. All the items that can currently be generated can be accounted for in the inventory. With that system in place and functioning properly, that mean that monsters can now drop loot when they die! Here's a look at that in action:



That's great progress and I'm glad that's over with, but there's still a lot to tackle. For example, our party isn't utilizing all this awesome gear they're getting! Creating a gear scoring algorithm as a means for party members to decide on upgrades is on the immediate TODO list. After that, implementing a function to actually equip new inventory items should be relatively simple with the codebase I have. A little further down the list is working on the item shop, we have to be able to sell all those items we get to make room for more items!

[oxrock]

I made another gif for screenshotsaturday that looks a bit cleaner than the one shown here, so I want to make sure it's seen here as well.

[oxrock]

Holy cow, it's Saturday again already! This week has just flown right by. There have been some pretty significant improvements made this week although I fear they may not be readily apparent.

First on the list of improvements(and easiest achieved), I finally rid the game of that god awful background music that was randomly generated. The updated piece is a vast improvement, I'm not sure if it'll remain until release but it'll sure make developing less of an earache. You can hear the new background music in the video linked below.

Next and almost least, I added a sound effect that plays every time an item is added to the inventory.

Next improvement on the list are the icons for the health and mana potions. They just were awful and painful to look at. So we went from these:


to these:


Which will actually look more like this while scaled to inventory size:



Which leads us to this week's next improvement, selling inventory items! That's right, the sale of unwanted inventory items has been (very simplistically) implemented! Eventually our intrepid party will have to visit the salesman in town to pawn off their wares, but in the meanwhile, after each quest completion all unwanted inventory items are sold and your updated gold balance is displayed at the bottom of the inventory screen. We even get to hear the sound of a register bell ring whenever we sell. I feel this is a good time to remind everyone that there is a slider for sounds effects in the  options, you can absolutely turn those down if they wear you down after a while. Here's this week's video showing this in action:




Last but most definitely not the least improvement, our party can now automatically equip the items that drop from mobs! They recognize which items are upgrades and only equip items that are better than their currently equipped ones. The old gear is then returned to the inventory in case any other party members can use it. If not, it gets sold with all the other junk. This was a lot of work and I'm quite happy to say that as far as I've been able to tell through testing, it's working.... 99% as intended. Functionally it's great, visually it flubs up sometimes. Sometimes weapons don't look like they're in hands, or people need to pull their pants up, but bugs happen. Hopefully that'll be fixed shortly. Unfortunately despite this development being quite significant, it's not something I can really show off adequately with features implemented in my game currently. There's no character stat sheet to look for changes, no equipment page yet, so even though it's functional the only proof is the equipment on their bodies changing. Sadly I never know when it'll happen or on who, so it'd make filming quite tedious just to provide proof.

[oxrock]

Happy Saturday everybody! This week I've been working on something I think is pretty exciting. My last update was pretty important, party members were upgrading their equipment automatically but there was no indicator of their current stats or what they're wearing to show that off. So this week I spent building a system to inform users what's going on a bit. Each party member now has their own stats panel on the left and a detailed view of what particular gear they're wearing. The character equipment window can be pulled up and/or updated by hitting the green arrow on a member's stat panel. Here's a gif showing this in action:



Now you might be wondering, "why is there an empty slot on everyone's equipment window?" And what's a very good and observant question! I've not implemented any offhand items as of yet but I've accounted for their place in the game's future. Fighters will have different shields and hunters will have different arrows types, etc. In other news, the wonky bugs reported last update have been ironed out. There's always more to do of course but that's all for today, hope you all enjoy the update! 

[oxrock]

    Hello again everybody. This week sure went by fast! I wish I could implement something visually stunning and wow everyone every week but sadly sometimes there's some behinds the scenes work that needs attention. This is one of those weeks. Currently Quests Unlimited has roughly 6000 or so custom sprite icons for the inventory that need to be loaded whenever an item is generated. I've always just used the Resources system for handling loading at runtime because most of my projects have been pretty small. Unfortunately this system can't handle the strain I was putting on it and I was forced to learn how to properly utilize the asset bundles system. So with learning something new, things went slow unfortunately. I was doing battle with a bug that was driving me bonkers for a day and a half, but in the end I was victorious!
   
    So with asset bundles finally functioning properly I decided to tackle a few things that have been on my mind a while. The 2 most obvious will be the sprite changes made to the UI. I added a border to the equipment window and updated the menu button that hides/returns menu windows. The other changes I hadn't exactly made public because I'm not exactly proud of bugs/quirks in the projects I'm creating! That being said, the quest window wouldn't properly dynamically adjust to different resolutions before and not it does. So now the game can be set to any resolution and have the button hide the window and bring it back without issues. Before it could place the window in the middle of the screen or place it off the screen entirely based on what the screen was set to. So glad to have finally fixed that. Here's a look at the updated UI:



    That's one shameful bug out of the closet, time for the next. This is one that has been plaguing me ever since I finished the equipment distribution system. Sometimes items would drop and yet nothing would seemingly enter the inventory. Mind you that things did enter the inventory, it's just that within 1 frame of it entering they would be removed and replaced. I did debugging and found the fighters equipping/dequipping the same items over and over in a loop until eventually things vanished into the ether. Chasing down this bug was frustrating to say the least. Finally last night I was finally able to find the culprit! A typo/mental goof caused an index number to be off by 1 in my equipment comparison function. So instead of comparing for example a dropped helmet's score/desirability against our currently equipped helmet, we'd be comparing it to our chest piece. Finding that one simple typo brought everything in line and now it's all FINALLY functioning as intended.

    So what's next? I'm hoping to focus on actually using at least the health potions this week. Being as I've yet to implement a mana using class, mana potion testing will wait a bit. I've had an instance of the game up and running my on computer for about 12 hours for testing and it makes me sad to see over 100 health potions piled up. I think I'd also like to get a camera follow feature implemented. It'd be nice to have the camera automatically follow the action instead of having to do it manually as it is currently. If I have time, I'd also like to make the UI match a bit more. On the horizon... maybe another class! It would be nice to get a wizard or cleric in the game before too long. Well that's all for now, I hope you all enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes of Quests Unlimited.

[oxrock]

I figured I'd share my #screenshotsaturday pic here as well. I've been spending a lot of time on the UI lately so all my pics always feature it. I wanted a pic to showcase the fact that you can completely hide the UI if you choose to.