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[SimpleSyrup]

Update! - http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/

Build 722

• Certain items are now usable. Hit the 'U' key to use an item.
• Added a new location, "Abbey of the Rock". There's a teleportation rune to it in the guildhall in the main town.
• A bunch of internal refactoring not interesting to anyone.
• Got rid of the cursor in the play state.
• Fixed a bug where every object on the client was getting an update at 13hz whether it needed it or not.

Go check out the teleportation runes

[rszrama]

Alright, I registered for the forums solely so I could provide feedback on your game.  I dig what you have going and want to pitch in where possible.  I usually gallivant as Scarvye for anyone who sees a pirate walking around.

First bit of feedback is quite random, but the resolution of the play area doesn't fit my normal resolution in Firefox with a bookmark toolbar and multiple tabs open.  Is there some way to make this simply go fullscreen that I don't know about?

About the recent features, I do find it odd that my character disappears behind whatever is on the floor.  Is there any plan to change the z sorting here?

As for targeting things directly underneath the character, I like the idea of just tapping the key twice.  Stand over a turkey leg and hit t t to take it without having to bother with a direction.  This will be quicker than pressing t and then having to move a finger to another key.  Same for using runes and whatever else you come up with.

Other ways to make the controls simpler might involve remapping keys so I can use one hand easily for common tasks.  In Roguelikes, you're always moving with the arrows and often needing to pick something up.  Adom therefore maps the pick up key to the comma which is handily accessible by my right hand.  Not sure if anyone else feels this way, but t really feels awkward.

I think someone else mentioned it, but in the event that there's only one option for any given command, defaulting to that one option would be nice.  It might also be nice for default actions to be performed when bumping into NPCs and signs, presumably converse and examine.

Other than that, movement is great (I love the way you've implemented diagonal movement), the world is fun to wander around, and I can't wait to see what comes next!  I do wonder, though... If I idle for a while, I tend to lose my connection... is this a forced thing or should I be able to sit around indefinitely?  When do I disappear to other players?

[SirNiko]

Playing earlier, I also noticed that the teleport rune graphic overlaps my character, so I disappear behind it. It's a minor cosmetic bug, but it needs to be fixed in time for PvP, otherwise griefers will hide under the rune and kill anyone that tries to teleport.

A command to display your current xy coords would be neat. Or, you could make a compass/map item that does this when its used. That would help orient players who manage to get lost, at least until a proper mapping feature is added.

I've yet to spot any crippling bugs, although there aren't really enough things to play with that might be bugged. You might consider spawning a huge pile of items on a single tile then trying to take one, or creating a mess of items across the server to see if it degrades performance much. That's about all I can think of at the moment. The variety of items at the grocer suggests you've already dealt with issues regarding stacked lists of items, so you should be good already.

Looking forward to the next update!

-SirNiko

Edit: Pushing "Drop" or "Inventory" when you have no items generates a blank list. You can escape out of it like any other list, but maybe a different "You have no items" message should be displayed when you have no inventory.

[SimpleSyrup]

Two minor updates that I wanted to throw out there. First, as always, the links:

GAME: http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/
HELP: http://simplesyrup.pbworks.com/Hubris-Quest-Online-FUQ

1. Sorted tile rendering so players always render on top of items, runes, etc.
2. Added pets. I was starting to work on mobs, and needed to test pathfinding so I created simple pets that will chase you around. To create a pet, enter chat mode (via '/') and then type '/spawnPet petname'. (petname must be all letters, no spaces numbers etc) They will basically follow you around (if you get about 50 spaces away from them they'll stop until you come back. They die when you disconnect.

I'll try to respond to everyone's feedback when I get a chance tonight. Thanks guys!!!

P.S. SirNiko, you can check your coords by typing /coords into chat (e.g. hit / and then type /coords)!

[SirNiko]

Not a bug, but weird behavior:

I logged in at the town, and spawned my pet (a monkey, though it should not matter). I checked my coordinates (about 400,800 for the town) then hit the teleport rune to go to the monastery. My monkey did not teleport with me. I checked my coordinates again, and then walked back to town with my new frame of reference. As I approached the town from the south, I must've re-entered my pet's pathfinding range, because he came running to greet me... then shot way past me, and disappeared to the south. A few seconds later, he came rushing north and started following me again.

Also, the examine command for pets always says "your faithful companion", even when it's not actually your pet, but I'm sure you knew that.

-SirNiko

[rszrama]

Pets rock! Blimey the turkey will be following me around from now on, and a small part inside of him will die every time I eat a drumstick.

As a side note, think it'll work for pets to use runes?

[SimpleSyrup]

@rszrama - hah, maybe I should get some TIGsource affiliate signup revshare? Anyway, thanks for the feedback! re: resolution, no fullscreen yet, if it's possible with Flash i definitely want to try. i'm a bit of a flash newbie (this is only the second thing i've ever done in flash, and the first thing i've done in as3 and flixel). re: z-sorting - fixed now. re: double-tap to target underfoot -- it's a good idea. re: key layout, just gonna go for what's intuitive right now versus optimized (because i'm not sure what to optimize for yet). re: defaulting for only one option - yes definitely needs to happen. re: idling -- yes, you are booted after 5 minutes.

@niko - i think most of your points were addressed (overlap and coords). you're right that i do need a load test. (I don't think a lot of items will hurt, but a lot of pathfinding AI might). re: the blank lists, i agree, very annoying, i will fix that.

@niko (later post) - you're a pretty crafty tester! that IS the behavior i expect from the pet though. explanation: pets don't teleport by design right now. next, the pathfinder aborts any paths longer than 50 units or so, so when you get away from the pet, it just stops and waits for you to come back. when you re-entered the pet's space, he pathfinded (pathfound?) to where you were at that moment. right now, nothing interrupts a pet when he's on his path. they don't reevaluate their path over time. so he got to where you WERE and then repathed again to where you were now. not desirable behavior at all, but fledgling behavior. i solved this problem in the past in some shooters I worked on, but it's a lot easier when there are only a few AI. i'm trying to think about how to make this work in a much larger scale right now. and yep, i need to target the examine message depending on the owner.

@rszrama (later post) - heh. you're giving me some interesting ideas. i was thinking that you could kill your pet for meat (you know, if you're starving or something). then i thought about what would happen if you fed pet meat to the same species of pet -- basically creating a cannibalizing pet, which could be kind of fun. re: runes, no, i purposely made the pet not follow you through the rune right now. mainly to test what happens when you get really far away from your pet.

[oryx]

less pet canabalizing, more goblins, skeletons, gold, dark crypts and infested castles.

[SimpleSyrup]

Mad dash to finish some form of combat before the deadline! Aiyee!!!!!

(PS: I wish there were 576 hours in every day )

[SirNiko]

Mad dash to finish some form of combat before the deadline! Aiyee!!!!!

(PS: I wish there were 576 hours in every day )

There are 576 hours each day. It's just that there are also 24 sunsets during the course of a normal day, so nobody notices.

-SirNiko

[SimpleSyrup]

Latest build is up. 3 hours is not enough time to implement combat and interesting results.

Wish I could have made it farther in the compo. Sigh, double sigh, triple sigh. Family, holidays, sickness, kids, real job - wow, it sure is a lot harder to get free time to code than when I was in my 20's!

GAME: http://hubris.simple-syrup.info/
F.U.Q.: http://simplesyrup.pbworks.com/Hubris-Quest-Online-FUQ

Final compo build (795) --

* Added weapons (you spawn with one)
* Hit 'E' to equip your weapon
* Hit space bar to attack with your weapon
* Added attack + damage effects (blood splat and melee swing)
* Added monsters
* Spawned 100 monster camps around the world
* Monsters give a pretty good chase, without using any real pathfinding.
* Monsters are self-separating (will not pile into a single tile)
* Attack monsters till they die and they will turn into tombstones. This is your sole reward. Sorry!
* You can't die.

Well, hopefully this game will get more interesting in the post-compo state. I created a new thread here to follow it in its afterlife: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=10404.0. Strike that. I'll continue Hubris Quest discussion on this thread.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback!!!

[SirNiko]

Pathfinding seems to be completely broken now. If you summon a pet, they will not follow you. Monsters make no effort to approach or chase the player, even if you attack them then walk away.

Combat messages for the enemy attacking the player incorrectly suggest the player is damaging the enemy. It's clear it's supposed to be the enemy's attack message, since it mentions a weapon different from the one used by the player.

Monsters don't spawn on top of each other, but they do have a habit of spawning on camp furnishings, like fires and boulders. Because of the way these are displayed, the monster is hidden beneath the object and difficult to see.

I'll definitely be following this after the compo, so I hope you keep updating the project!

-SirNiko

[SimpleSyrup]

Niko... UGHHHH.. thanks. I knew I was too tired/rushed to throw all that code out at the last second. These are really dumb bugs:
 * The pet not moving thing -- I commented out the pet moving code, no idea why. * The damage message thing, I forgot the word "by" so it's extremely misleading.  * Monsters not chasing, well, that's just a hairy bug that I have no clue about unfortunately.

So, eh, are we allowed bugfixes in this competition?

[SimpleSyrup]

Okay, maybe this disqualifies me, but I fixed all the bugs:

* Pets follow you again. Durrr.
* Damage messaging is fixed.
* Tombstone labels/descriptions are  fixed and now show who killed the monster.
* Monsters not chasing - this was hairy but I fixed it. What happened was there was a crash bug in the monster heartbeat code, and when that crashed, it crashed out the main heartbeat queue so everything in the game stopped getting heartbeats (e.g. monsters would just sit there.) I fixed the crash bug and made sure that heartbeats will always happen even if a crash occurs during one particular heartbeat.

Thanks Niko.

[rszrama]

Very cool.  I love the little campfires surrounded by severed heads, and the tombstones are a very nice effect.  I already posted in your other thread so I can be sure to follow along as this develops.  Would love to stay involved.

[SimpleSyrup]

Tentative name for the post-Assemblee version of this game:

Sword of Pixel



Thoughts?

[rszrama]

No feelings one way or the other on the name, but that graphic rocks.

[Techpriest]

You sold me on the picture and i kinda like the name

[SirNiko]

With some luck, you may be able to rope in Oryx to make more sprites in the future, although I feel like the current stock should last you for a goodly while if you're clever.

"Sword of Pixel" Is a good name. It evokes a sense that the game can be expected to be a little silly, and willing to break the fourth wall. It also suggests a preference for 8-bit generation players, who will find the graphics charming.

As it stands, the game's really only attractive to Socializers and a little bit of Exploration (like Pencerkoff frolicking in the flowers, chatting with his homies). Hopefully you'll get some form of permanent character growth implemented soon for the Achievers (Not necessarily via player accounts) and create some competitive gameplay that Killers can enjoy.

I'm looking forward to following this after the competition, and getting this ready to support a (initially small) population of happy players, as opposed to beta testers.

-SirNiko

[Oddball]

Liked: The persistent gravestones is a very nice touch, and the persistent world in general is nice. Also the world is very big with lots of areas to explore.

Disliked: It was very sparse of monsters to fight. Not sure if I missed something but there seemed to be very little to do. The controls were a bit fiddly. Being able to click on stuff to examine it, pick it up, etc. would have been nice.

Conclusion: This could turn into something really cool with a few tweaks here and there.