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 ;)

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

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,

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,

Almost in the forest!

Hi,

Yesterday, I added the last village sequence before the hero can leave the village, so for those who were starving to fight monsters, there is not that long left to wait. :)

Good news, you'll even be able to get a sword, and a team mate!!

As for the other news, I've done a invisible but necessary engine change: Now, animations scripts (used to load every animated objects (or not, btw) you can see) have gained a much more flexible format permitting me, for instance, to directly load certain objects from the tilesets (thus, reducing the memory used), and to use any frame, an arbitrary amount of time, in an arbitrary order. (Compared to the fact that I previously needed to create an image with the frames in the right order.)

There is nothing much (new) to see as for now, since I adapted the existing animations to just look like before, but it will soon permit me to make the map sprite loading code much more flexible and add a true custom animation support for our heroes, making them laugh, being surprised in a more visible way. ;)

I'll also take the time here to talk about a issue the map code has been having for a long time:
Which is described here if any OpenGL specialist wants to have a look: https://github.com/Bertram25/ValyriaTear/issues/2
The map code is having a pixel shift on tiles that are on the bottom-half of the screen, making certain tiles not look completely "right".
According to the clues I have gathered so far, it seems that the texture and/or vertices coordinates computation is wrong somehow, so I take the opportunity to ask for help if anybody is interested in fixing that low point.

Best regards!

Slowly shaping up!

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I didn't write something here. A lot has happen though, even if quite some of it is still behind the scene.
Most of the people compiling the game will already have noticed it for days, but the end of the hide and seek quest has been scripted.
A special Don't-Desperate point to Iwan and Shirish who have been chasing that funny kid all around the starting village. It seems I'll need to add some hints there and there from the other inhabitants.

You should anyway be able to obtain the item needed to finish that small first quest.

You might also notice that, now, the map music doesn't interrupt when switching from a map to another with the same background music. To achieve this, I added an ownership system to the audio files, letting the game modes own a music file and free it from memory when not needed anymore, but keeping it untouched as long as a game mode needs it.

This permitted me to remove the sound loading and freeing micromanagement done in the map files, and will let the scripts do more stuff sound wise without cluttering the memory more than necessary.

Another thing that you might have noticed in the last post is that Safir-Kreuz did a first version of the new Bronann's portrait (a big thanks to him!), and I also removed the weapon from the Bronann's back, which will fit more the story beginning. The actual plan is to make the sword appear on his back based on his equipment. :)

I also spent some time on upgrading the treasure system and the key item handling, which needed a bit more love than I expected. You'll then be able to open treasure chest again :)

The 'open a treasure' dialog.

A small warning in the menu's item description should also tell you when an item is a key item or a shard.

Key items.

I'll add much more treasure chests around in the village, but only once I've finished the game up to the point where you can enter the forest. More to come about it, then. ;)

So what about now:
I'm currently fighting a nasty bug in the event handling making random crashes appear for a certain set of events. The bad news is that it is preventing me to push the next part of the story, the good news is that I've found the bug and most interestingly why it is happening. I shall then fix it quite soon, hopefully.

Best regards,

Game start

Hi,

I've been quite busy on refining the starting plot lately with Lilou (The second story maker), and we finally agreed on the episode I full story. (Which is quite something, already).
I then started to script the first minutes of the game (and scripting can take time also!).

Catch me if you can!

Like everything, a lot of work is still waiting but the engine state has proven once more that path finding problems are gone, making it possible to make use of it extensively.

Along with this, I finished and added a first version of the shop map and Kalya's house exterior, and wired them with the rest of the game. The village exterior is now considered complete, even if it is still full of small map tiling bugs I'll try to correct little by little.

I also upgraded the Allacrost branch to make its demo playable with the latest engine version.

Note that things might sound silent code-wise, but I've got my bag of unreleased (and unreleasable) stuff I wish to finish by the next weeks. ;)

Last but not least, here is a little surprise preview:

Can you notice anything new? ;)

 'Till next time!