Friday, August 24, 2012

Very first battle...

Hi everyone,

This week, I've been doing quite some efforts in bringing a few key features in game:

First of all, music fade in and fade out are properly working again, and are used in the most dramatic areas of the introduction story.

I also completed the forest entrance map, and finally, after some effort on putting the required infrastructure in shape, added Map particle objects, and used them to improve the look of save points.
(You can also watch a particle effect when healing at the spring, btw.)
This is a key point as it will permit me to go further in using them for better map and battle effects, for instance.

Trees, squirrels, butterflies, and particle effects!

Also, another key thing that finally went in game, is the addition of the very first game map enemy, thus permitting the very first battle to happen:
First battle, Kalya will help you with the basics.

Note that the forest background is WIP, any improvement on it is welcome, btw. ;)
To avoid high-level grinders, I also a level cap system (currently set to lvl 6) telling the players when they have reached the current maximum level. this will prevent people from going too far, before the rest of the content has reached the repository.

Fighting on level 1 should not be easy at all, and you'll have to find a way to at least reach lvl 2 before being ready to deeper in the forest. (once I've added it ;])

I also made a slight change on the collision computation in the map editor. Now, the map editor will consider a collision area passable if a passable tile is put over an unpassable one on the ground level. This will permit the addition of bridges, for instance, without the need to tweak collisions out of the editor scope.

Stay tuned ;)

Thursday, August 16, 2012

A nice video!

Hi everyone,

I took all the guts I could have and asked qudobup to make a video, ... and he accepted!

Enjoy!


 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2xNr9bCN1E

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Forest early start & other improvements

Hi there!

Lately, I've been busy integrating the latest upgrades in the village, mainly adding treasures, props, new water :), flowers, new sounds, ect...
As for me, the village is somewhat reaching the "release candidate 1" level. ;)

Example of new props (Flowers, ...)

I also fixed a crash in the save dialog and when a treasure chest was empty. This permitted me to add the very first map (Still WIP atm in the repo): the forest entrance.
Note that the interesting part of it is not the map but the fact that I added support to show the battle front character as map sprite, in this game area.
This was kinda requested by qubodup and Lilou for instance. ;)

You can now act as Kalya in the forest depending on the battle formation.

Regards,

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Polishing, polishing!

Hi everyone, :)

A lot or stuff has made its way in the repository lately :)

First of all, I changed the way the battle animation scripts are called, permitting to get a battle animation per character and per skill. That will permit to set up some great stuff when you trigger an advanced attack for instance ;)

You can already test that by triggering the Blade Rush attack from Thanis in the debug battle mode, and see him hit the enemy third times.

I also spent a lot of time in polishing the sequences in the village, preparing props (not in yet), adding houses interiors, fixing small scene glitches, ect... and added three noticeable things you might be happy to look at:
The village has now got parallax cloud shadows, light flare effect on windows and... the promised new game credits!
I'm quite glad to take the opportunity to thank everyone who somehow made this possible to happen. :)
Do you notice something new? ;) 
 Another big step done is the fact that I rewrote the way map sprite animations are loaded, permitting me to make them loaded in a much more flexible way:
Now a map sprite animation can be loaded with custom frame duration for each frames, for an arbitrary number of frame, in an arbitrary order, and one can add the same frame several times if needed.
I also made the walking and running animations factored by the sprite movement speed, which will permit me to later fine tune the frame durations and remove the roller skating impression you've got for certain sprites.

I'm now planning to finish the new houses interiors, add those missing props, add a bit more scening, add all those hidden treasures ;), and then move on to the forest dungeon scripting. :>

Best regards,