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[kavs]

Love the new art style! Glad to see you're in XNA as well. Does it randomly generate water as well? I'd love to see what it looks like.

[Angelo]

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you like it!

Love the new art style! Glad to see you're in XNA as well. Does it randomly generate water as well? I'd love to see what it looks like.

Nope, I haven't added random rivers and stuff yet. For the moment the only water appears at sea level, and I've yet to even make that act as water! I've been mostly working on the interaction system lately.

Each interaction is a sequence of hard-coded effects, and is defined externally in an XML file. You'll be able to mod these to add custom interactions, similar to the way modding in the Sims works.

I've also been working on the interface. I'm making a custom window manager based on WinForms. I've been inspired by OpenTTD, I just love how flexible the interface is there.

Other than that, a big portion of my remaining time goes to making existing code more stable.

[DavidCaruso]

Wow, that new art style looks gorgeous.

Though I think it's a bit too "grainy" - for example, I didn't even notice the player character at first.

[Angelo]

I see what you mean. I'll try playing with the contrast of the grass a bit. For me it's the best iteration so far, but maybe it could be better. Thanks

[Widget]

If you could forgive me for playing Devil's advocate, the "graininess" is one of the things I like most about the art. It gives the impression of a world that's detailed on a finer scale than is actually apparent.

Also, a PC is always more apparent when the player is in control of a game than in a still image.

[Angelo]

Gonna show some screenshots from my latest work.



Here's some (ok, all) of the currently implemented interface windows. You have your basic character window listing your needs and equipped items. A skills window showing a bunch of mostly unnecessary skills that will be probably be merged down, but for now I need them cause almost all interactions are based on them. Classic inventory window, settings and a construction browser thingy.



I really need you to pay close attention to this one, because it introduces a completely new concept in video games. Digging/Mining. Mind numbing, I know. What's even more mind numbing is the dynamic lighting. See how it gets darker further in the cave? Oh yeah. To help with digging those hard to reach tiles, the engine offers adjusting the max drawing elevation level, and rotation.



It looks very noisy and fps is getting raped at that zoom level, but here's a sample of the random terrain generation. I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna implement infinite maps. On one hand it would be pretty cool (and very original, like digging), but on the other hand the concept of the game includes an "outside world" which you can do deals with (like exports and imports), attract NPC citizens from, and more. So it would be logical to have something like a road connection to the edge of a finite map.

That's everything I could show that is screenshottable. Most of the other things are optimizations. Thanks for viewing!

[Angelo]

edit: Updated links with new version that actually works.
Start-a-town! v0.2.0b alpha.exe
Start-a-town! v0.2.0b alpha.rar
Start-a-town! v0.2.0b alpha.zip

Here's a new demo! If you've tried the old GM demo you'll certainly feel the difference. There's hardly any significant features implemented yet, but you can see the general direction. At the moment you can walk around the map, dig, and harvest berries. And eat the berries.

I'm more interested in feedback on game performance, interface, and graphics. More specifically on performance, I'd like some fps stats on different machines and on different resolutions.

Thank you!

[Joana]

I really like the new art style. It's simple and colorful but does not distract from the overall feel of the area. Its lush and green, so I find it appropriate.

That said, I can't run the newest build. It immediately shows a window saying that "Start-a-Town! has encountered a problem and needs to close." or something along those lines (my windows isn't in English). At first I thought it was my XNA install rebelling on me, but I reinstalled and the issue remains.

I'll wait until more people try it. If it's only on my end, I'll try sorting it out later and giving it a spin. Those screenshots look great and I'd love to try it out!

[Angelo]

What version XNA do you have? Try installing 4.0 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a88c6dec-aeae-42cd-a108-d35c013c3b97

I'm glad you like the visual style

edit: Also try installing .net 4 from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263.aspx

[Angelo]

Ok it turns out I was using the beta version of XNA Game Studio. I've rebuilt the demo with the latest version and it works, I tested it on another pc. So as long as you have the dependencies mentioned on the previous post, it should work. I updated the links.

edit: If you tried again immediately after I posted this, chances are you got the same old file again cause there was a power outage between me saying I updated the links and actually updating them. But now they're really updated.

[Joana]

I didn't even know there was a XNA 4.0! I really need to update myself about these things more often!

So I installed everything (thanks for the links!) and I'm able to run the new version (the old one still gives the same error). I played a little and it looks great! I'll try it after Wednesday when I have more time to give you a more in depth opinion!

[Angelo]

That's good to hear!

Also, I would like to give some tips on digging, cause I just realized that it's not so obvious as it grew to be for me after all the testing...

To dig a tile, you press control + right click on it. If there's an available path, the character will go and dig it up. The character is considered to be 4 tiles high. Keep that in mind in case you're trying to dig and nothing happens, there may simply be no opening high enough for the character to reach the target tile.

You can dig tiles one level below you up to one level above, with a horizontal radius of 1 tile (diagonally inclusive). Press alt + mousewheel to change the draw level (the maximum elevation up to which tiles are drawn). This is a necessary tool to master to be able to dig vertically (especially if you want to dig yourself out of holes). You can also rotate the map using [ and ] (I forgot to mention those keys in the ingame help window).

It's a little complicated I know, but it's the best system I could come up with, given the isometric engine. It's not as easy as digging in 3d! If you have and suggestions for improvement, I'd like to hear them!

[ohgr]

this has tons of potential and I really like what you have so far!

I think digging could be quite an issue however, unless it's meant to be a simple tool for evening the gradients for even building. if you're thinking of something such as digging to mine for resources, you'll either need to use:
- A hide feature on the foreground terrain so that players can properly see/click on what they want
- Or (better, in my opinion) a "below ground" view that only shows terrain below sea level, and does not show foreground terrain.

with that aside I can't think of much else to critique until more is added, so great work so far.

[Angelo]

Hold down Alt while scrolling the mousewheel up and down. You can change the highest visible tile layer. This way, you can essentially "hide" surface of the map so you can easily underground. Try it out and tell me what you think!

Keep in mind however that you have to alt + scroll down for quite a bit before the change hits the layer your character is currently in, since when the game starts the highest visible layer is all the way to the max height of the map.

In a future version I'll add some HUD elements, like a scrollbar, to make this process more clear.

A below ground option would be sort of useless since when the player starts changing the landscape, it'd be hard to keep track of what is below/above ground. I think changing the is the max visible layer is the most efficient way, it just needs getting used to.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Joana]

Hey there! I'm back with my update!

So, I've tried the game and must say that I'm loving it, even as it is now. It's quite addicting to dig a make cozy caves with archways and such. It's great fun! 

That said, I found some issues while playing and try to give you some alternatives. Keep in mind this is all my experience. You may follow or discard these advices as you like.

- When digging, it gets kinda confusing to switch from Ctrl + Right click to dig, and Alt + Mouse Wheel to change the Layers. When digging, I found that I needed to use the layer alteration very often to get to dig where I wanted. While I see that changing layers and digging might be different (meaning, a person may want to change layers to move and not necessarily dig), I think you can keep the interaction as it is, but add a Ctrl + Mouse Wheel for layer changing too. That way, you can use Alt + Mouse Wheel when moving, and Ctrl + Mouse Wheel for digging.

- My keyboard does not have a [ or a ] direct keys, so I couldn't test the map rotation  (which would have come quite handy in many situations, instead of changing layers all the time, and also digging to my left). I need to press Alt + 8 and Alt + 9 to access them in my keyboard, and he probably doesn't register them as such. I have this problem with many games and programs too. If you could remap them to some other keys (maybe the alphabetic ones are probably your best bet), I'd be really grateful!


The rest is nitpicking and stuff that is (very) probably incomplete, but I decided to include it anyway. The same rules as those above apply!

- When you get to loot berries, the text says that when you left-click you eat them, but actually that only happens when you do that in your inventory. I wasn't confused because I know the system and how it works, but if you can change the text while they're not in your inventory it will probably clear up any confusion from someone who doesn't know it unlike me.

- When I dug up some caves and wanted to get out, I clicked outside and didn't find any problems, but when I wanted to go back in again from the exact same spot it said that no path was available. I had to climb down the first steps of the cave for it to find one.

- Also, when you dig deep, the darkness cuts off when it reaches 100%. That's probably because you still have no way of illuminating caves and want the testers to see what they're doing.


Oh, and since you asked, here's some info on FPSs and such from the Debug Window:

Window: 800*600
Zoom: Default
FPS: ~165

Fullscreen: 1680*1050
Zoom: Default
FPS: ~50


Anyway, that's all I have for now! Keep up the good work! I'll be watching the thread for any new developments!

[Widget]

AMD Athlon 4000+ Processor ~2.4GHz
3GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9400GT ~1GB VRAM
Windows XP SP3
Firefox and Steam running in background

Running 1280*1024 fullscreen, normal map-size and fps read while moving;

Zoomed-out - 5fps
           - 15fps
Default    - ~37-41fps
           - ~66-105fps
           - ~88-110fps
Zoomed-in  - ~67-90fps


Running 800*600 windowed, normal map-size and fps read while moving;

Zoomed-out - 5fps
           - 6fps
           - 11fps
           - ~27-31fps
Default    - ~57-72fps
           - ~84-129fps
Zoomed-in  - ~124-169fps

If I zoom out further or in closer the fps remains the same as the extremes above.

EDIT: Sorry the formatting's a mess.

[Angelo]

I have actually already changed the layer switching to ctrl + wheel, after realizing myself how confusing it is with alt. I must say however, that I only mapped digging to control temporarily, for testing purposes. Right now there's only digging, but with many different available interactions a different system is needed. Maybe an action bar, or keep the control+click combo and just choose the interaction that it performs.

I'm gonna implement remappable keys, but until I do, I'll change the rotation hotkeys nonetheless. Good catch on the misleading tooltip! A bug I would never care to notice! On the pathfinding, I too have noticed the problem you mentioned, and did some changes to the algorithm. It now seems to find a path normally in situations where it previously wouldn't, but of course only with continuous testing will it prove completely problem free. It's working satisfactory though so I'm not spending more time on it for the moment.

For the cave brightness, I was actually gonna include torches in that demo but it turned out that I needed to make modifications on the map/tile structure. So I postponed them for the next demo (or the one after the next). There's not anything to be found underground yet so you're not missing out on anything. If you desperately need light though, you can dig a light shaft all the way to the surface and light pours in! Ooooh!

Thanks for the fps statistics. It looks like on high resolutions it struggles to maintain a 60 framerate. On normal zoom that is. I take comfort in the fact that another game with similar graphics, OpenTTD, also loses on performance on high resolutions. Of course I'm gonna check the two games against each other when (or if) mine reaches the same level of complexity as OpenTTD.

The outermost zoom is for testing mostly, to make sure everything appears in the right place during map generation. It's normal that it's slow cause it's drawing every tile of the map. So if you zoom out even further, when you're already drawing all the tiles, there's no more fps hit. But I'm gonna have to resort to trickery if I'm gonna keep that kind of zoom level in the future. Probably paint everything to a texture and draw the texture.

That's all for now. Thank you very much for the feedback and stay tuned for a new demo in the next few days.

[Widget]

Yeah, most of those zoom-levels aren't something I would even begin to try playing at but I wasn't sure what may or may not be relevant 

I'm not sure what it might indicate as more 'stuff' is implemented but there's no noticeable difference with the reduced framerate in fullscreen and default zoom. It rarely dropped below the mid-40's and looked fine in play.

[Angelo]

It's psychological then. When it drops below 100 fps I feel I'm doing something wrong. Which is both good and bad I suppose.

Quick update: Next version is gonna let you play more with walls. They're now treated as tiles. Which means, you can build on their sides (like a staircase or something) and also walk on them. You can also stack walls on top of each other, as long as you can reach them to actually build them.

By the way, interactions like digging and building right now happen automatically, but only because I set them to zero duration for testing purposes. They will have a progress bar which will shorten the higher the skill tied to each interaction.

[Alex May]

Feels good, lovely engine, great UI, what did you use for the UI? Homegrown code?

Got a crash for you:
i.imgur.com/AsxFu.png I was pressing random keys at the time I think
And this after trying to go fullscreen
i.imgur.com/s2Y3U.png

in 800x600 I get about 150 fps at 2x zoom on this dual core athlon 64 5200+ (2600mhz) with GeForce 8800 gts