It was slow, it was bumpy but it's now out!
Valyria Tear Episode I - v1.1.0 is now released. :)
I talked about the following features in the previous post:
- A skill graph permitting custom made evolution of characters.
- A way more streamlined story evolution and less grindy experience.
- Faster battle experience with a lot of better visuals and more balanced enemies.
- More readable status effects throughout the game.
- A lot of bugfixes, including critical ones on the lua heap management, sound crash and other bloopers.
- Valyria Tear is also featuring a skill graph editor.
Let's have a round on the past effort:
- 1026 commits on the game repository (not even speaking of all the work done on the other ones.)
- The previous release was on April, the 25th 2016 ( Oh my, more than 3 years :O )
Good news is:
Since it's way too much time, I've now reduced a lot the scope of my next release so hopefully things happen faster.
And next release will at last include some story content update. :D
Stay tuned!
Valyria Tear is an attempt at creating a free (as meant in the GNU General Public License) J-RPG game. This blog is meant to bring news of what is done day after day, and for memory. :)
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Monday, September 9, 2019
1.1.0 Release Beta1 out!
Hey all,
It's been ... so much time.
But I am happy to announce that 1.1.0 beta 1 is out, finally.
Here are the links:
Source:
https://gitlab.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/-/archive/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1.tar.gz
Windows installer:
https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/releases/download/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1-installer.exe
Installer MD5: e9f8329dfc872471f818273f04c9a036
And a screenie, hinting the most intruiging feature:
So what is in this beta 1 you're talking about?
- A complete revamp of the game balancing and game economy
I bet some of you might remember making quite a lot of money without ever needing to actually use it. And never be able to buy interesting items throughout the whole game. It was quite the game breaker for me, too.
Both should now be gone. As now, you'll get material and other items from enemies that you will be able to either sell or trade right from the first merchant to get a bit of equipment, potions and so on.
Life won't be easy for low levels anyway, though ;P
I also reviewed each and every enemy stats and attacks to provide variety and more visuals. This was a ground-breaking task in itself, and took me basically 6 month to do, when taking real life concerns at the same time.
Last but not least, to help with the rebalancing, I wanted the heroes to have more meaningful skills, with a twist ;), and provide the player with a bit of choice. I've thus decided to have the craziest idea I had so far ...
- Skill graph implementation
See that as a the kind of skill pathway you had in Final Fantasy X minus the boring payment system that could completely break your choices.
The skill graph system permits you to invest hard won XP points to unlock skill nodes, providing you with statistics improvements, skills, and so on.
I also made a skill graph editor from scratch, as a proof of my own insanity.
For this release, there is only the first skill graph layer implemented, up to level 20. But more is to be expected in the next chapter.
- Faster battles
Battles are now faster and special attacks are now announced. This is a small improvement compared to the rest. Yet, due to the fact that you fight a lot in those games. It really changes the way the game feels in a pleasant way.
- Better (starting) story
The story was tuned to become more logical and provide action faster. It's been a long complains to many players.
- UI related improvements
It should hopefully be subtle, but it's there. We now have:
- Better understandable status effects and statistics (at least for me ;])
- Tooltip signs
- Interaction icons for some exits and healing points
- Auto save support
- Escape point support (more UI based than anything else, really.)
...
- And a LOT of bugfixes
The 1.1.0 engine doesn't look like the previous for many aspects and I would have to thank a lot of people here. (Feel free to have a shout out ;])
The most noticeable ones being:
- The map scripts code was not unloaded after being loaded. Making the game memory go up and up. More here: https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/commit/3dc767df548c2ab7f1d02009f7d263408ba84ada
- Crash with audio code with very specific conditions but happened
- Much better GL backend (Thank you so much Authenticate)
And what's next?
I've been caught in very very big feature for a sole person to code, mount and test all data and I beg you to have a go at this beta to report any bug you could find so I can fine tune the Episode I.
As I said, I've been caught in big things, so from now on, I'll tie myself to small releases with small improvements.
The good thing is, I realized now is the good time to start scripting the episode II and add small gameplay features up to an interesting point in the story and then release again. So next release with include some new story pieces. :D
On the other hand, expect more beta things and small improvements until I polished them, but at least I hope to release more often.
Have fun and stay tuned!
It's been ... so much time.
But I am happy to announce that 1.1.0 beta 1 is out, finally.
Here are the links:
Source:
https://gitlab.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/-/archive/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1.tar.gz
Windows installer:
https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/releases/download/1.1.0-beta.1/ValyriaTear-1.1.0-beta.1-installer.exe
Installer MD5: e9f8329dfc872471f818273f04c9a036
And a screenie, hinting the most intruiging feature:
 |
| Skill graph implemented! |
So what is in this beta 1 you're talking about?
- A complete revamp of the game balancing and game economy
I bet some of you might remember making quite a lot of money without ever needing to actually use it. And never be able to buy interesting items throughout the whole game. It was quite the game breaker for me, too.
Both should now be gone. As now, you'll get material and other items from enemies that you will be able to either sell or trade right from the first merchant to get a bit of equipment, potions and so on.
Life won't be easy for low levels anyway, though ;P
I also reviewed each and every enemy stats and attacks to provide variety and more visuals. This was a ground-breaking task in itself, and took me basically 6 month to do, when taking real life concerns at the same time.
Last but not least, to help with the rebalancing, I wanted the heroes to have more meaningful skills, with a twist ;), and provide the player with a bit of choice. I've thus decided to have the craziest idea I had so far ...
- Skill graph implementation
See that as a the kind of skill pathway you had in Final Fantasy X minus the boring payment system that could completely break your choices.
The skill graph system permits you to invest hard won XP points to unlock skill nodes, providing you with statistics improvements, skills, and so on.
I also made a skill graph editor from scratch, as a proof of my own insanity.
For this release, there is only the first skill graph layer implemented, up to level 20. But more is to be expected in the next chapter.
- Faster battles
Battles are now faster and special attacks are now announced. This is a small improvement compared to the rest. Yet, due to the fact that you fight a lot in those games. It really changes the way the game feels in a pleasant way.
- Better (starting) story
The story was tuned to become more logical and provide action faster. It's been a long complains to many players.
- UI related improvements
It should hopefully be subtle, but it's there. We now have:
- Better understandable status effects and statistics (at least for me ;])
- Tooltip signs
- Interaction icons for some exits and healing points
- Auto save support
- Escape point support (more UI based than anything else, really.)
...
- And a LOT of bugfixes
The 1.1.0 engine doesn't look like the previous for many aspects and I would have to thank a lot of people here. (Feel free to have a shout out ;])
The most noticeable ones being:
- The map scripts code was not unloaded after being loaded. Making the game memory go up and up. More here: https://github.com/ValyriaTear/ValyriaTear/commit/3dc767df548c2ab7f1d02009f7d263408ba84ada
- Crash with audio code with very specific conditions but happened
- Much better GL backend (Thank you so much Authenticate)
And what's next?
I've been caught in very very big feature for a sole person to code, mount and test all data and I beg you to have a go at this beta to report any bug you could find so I can fine tune the Episode I.
As I said, I've been caught in big things, so from now on, I'll tie myself to small releases with small improvements.
The good thing is, I realized now is the good time to start scripting the episode II and add small gameplay features up to an interesting point in the story and then release again. So next release with include some new story pieces. :D
On the other hand, expect more beta things and small improvements until I polished them, but at least I hope to release more often.
Have fun and stay tuned!
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
News from the project! (Yes, you read well!)
It's been quite some time and quite some changes in real life.
But I do apologize for the lack of news mostly due from me being very, very busy. ;)
What happened since last time?
A lot of technical fixes happened, when I was active or helped by authenticate, endoalir, bmorel or SuiteCake. (Thanks guys!)
- Project reorganization:
I turned Valyria Tear github into an organization. I also turned luabind into a submodule based on the quite good luabind fork by Oberon, and adapted it for c++11. (Still need to work on that part to make it accepted on upstream.)
I also moved the editor in its own repository which permitted some more simplification.
- A big leak killed!
The most noticeable change is that I killed a few days ago a very nasty bug that was there from the beginning, making the lua threads never freed from memory. This means the game won't end up anymore swallowing gigs of memory for nothing and crash due to some memory overflow.
- And other niceties!
Moved to C++11 officially!
Battle animation fixes to scripts, ...
Simplified battle computation functions.
Auto-battle implementation with the help of SuiteCake
Added a menu to call any kind debug scripts
Fixed background image resizing by authenticate.
Removed the need to write texture to disk when resizing the context by authenticate. And a lot more of bugfixes by everyone! What's next? The ultimate plan is to work on the few features still lacking to make the game more interesting in term of strategy and nicer to players.
Then, a full game rebalancing will be done based on everyone advices.
There is still quite some work to do but we're getting there! Stay tuned!
Battle animation fixes to scripts, ...
Simplified battle computation functions.
Auto-battle implementation with the help of SuiteCake
Added a menu to call any kind debug scripts
Fixed background image resizing by authenticate.
Removed the need to write texture to disk when resizing the context by authenticate. And a lot more of bugfixes by everyone! What's next? The ultimate plan is to work on the few features still lacking to make the game more interesting in term of strategy and nicer to players.
Then, a full game rebalancing will be done based on everyone advices.
There is still quite some work to do but we're getting there! Stay tuned!
Monday, April 13, 2015
Let's Play Valyria Tear - By Eugene Loza
Hey there, :D
Just a few words to thanks loudly Eugene Loza for creating a let's play for Valyria Tear!
The let's play now spans till the beginning of the Mt Elbrus Dungeon and is still being worked on. :)
- Added support to disconnect and reconnect your game pad without being forced to restart the game. Thanks to SuiteCake for that one. :D
- Completely reorganized the game data. When I say completely, believe me it's completely. This was hard work, but now the data is organized with next episodes and features in mind.
- Made the app name and logo optionally translatable. Gallaecio requested that one a long time ago, and I'm glad this is now done. :)
- Added support to show the status effects potentially applied when aiming on a body part. Useful against certain enemies.
- Also, as I was on it, now both battle heroes and enemies have much more common logic, permitting for both of them to support an optional AI with script support, and custom death, skill and item scripted animations.
So, what happened on Valyria Tear since the last time?
Valyria Tear technical upgrade is still being worked on, but several interesting issues were fixed and a few features done in any case. :) The most interesting ones are:General:
- Added a setting to either be gentle with the CPU or get the maximum FPS possible. You'll find that in the Video settings.- Added support to disconnect and reconnect your game pad without being forced to restart the game. Thanks to SuiteCake for that one. :D
- Completely reorganized the game data. When I say completely, believe me it's completely. This was hard work, but now the data is organized with next episodes and features in mind.
- Made the app name and logo optionally translatable. Gallaecio requested that one a long time ago, and I'm glad this is now done. :)
Battle:
- Added support to see active status effects on the current target, so that you can see what enemy is affected by them, or which ally you should help, for instance.
- Added support to show the status effects potentially applied when aiming on a body part. Useful against certain enemies.
- Also, as I was on it, now both battle heroes and enemies have much more common logic, permitting for both of them to support an optional AI with script support, and custom death, skill and item scripted animations.
Shout out:
Next OpenDungeons release nearing completion! If you are a Dungeon Keeper fan, just have a look at the new website, and try the latest development snapshot. :D Stay tuned!!Tuesday, March 10, 2015
OSX 1.0 version available!
Hey there, :)
Socapex just made me a great surprise by creating the OSX package for the full Episode I version.
Just go grab it on the Downloads section! ;)
Stay tuned!
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Code Monkey!
Hey there, :D
Just some news from the Episode 1.1 technical refinement release.
First of all, I've finished migrating and fixing the current game scripts following the new scripting API.
Thanks a lot to authenticate and SuiteCake for providing code cleanups and feed-back along the way. \O/
authenticate also fixed the minimap rendering with intel drivers and I owe him a beer for that.
I've also streamlined a bit the map code to follow the standard coordinate system used by the rest of the engine, in preparation for future different zoom ratio support. ;)
I'll be at reorganizing the game data now that I have enough of it to be sure of how I do it. ;)
And then, I'll have a go at porting the HoA features from the map editor so that starting to work on the new 1.1 content will be much easier.
Stay tuned!
Just some news from the Episode 1.1 technical refinement release.
First of all, I've finished migrating and fixing the current game scripts following the new scripting API.
Thanks a lot to authenticate and SuiteCake for providing code cleanups and feed-back along the way. \O/
authenticate also fixed the minimap rendering with intel drivers and I owe him a beer for that.
I've also streamlined a bit the map code to follow the standard coordinate system used by the rest of the engine, in preparation for future different zoom ratio support. ;)
I'll be at reorganizing the game data now that I have enough of it to be sure of how I do it. ;)
And then, I'll have a go at porting the HoA features from the map editor so that starting to work on the new 1.1 content will be much easier.
Stay tuned!
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Hey there, :D
It's been quite some time, right?
Reidy (from Evolonline) even told me this blog needed some news so here we go :D
Then, you'll ask me, what happened since September?
Well, first of all, a lot of things on Valyria Tear of course: OpenGL 2.0 and SDL 2.0! Mainly, and also thanks to some hard work from authenticate, Valyria Tear has finished its transition to SDL2, as he fixed text rendering when using the newest SDL_ttf version, and I added the screen resolution auto-detection with a fallback to hard coded ones when it failed, and VSync/Swap tearing support thanks to SDL2 functionalities. authenticate also fully made the work to make Valyria Tear use the OpenGL 2.0 norm and added support to use shaders to first emulate fixed pipeline support, but this will later permit to add cool effects! :D 1.1 version on going: As for other changes, development on the 1.1 version has fully started. This version will focus on refactoring as you have seen and add support to a new skill system permitting you to select where you want to put your strength when your characters level up. Work will also be done on rebalancing the game and add different difficulty levels, and a brand-new autosave system, permitting to make the game experience much more enjoyable. :) What's new? I first added support to trigger a dialogue in any game mode and added a tutorial dialogue in Flora's shop. I also started working on a offline manual that will serve as a template for the ingame one. (Still need some work but I'm not that far.).
The text scrolling is also now configurable and I made it muck quicker per default to avoid Confirm key bashing when playing. I also upgraded the audio code so that the map music doesn't restart from the beginning when leaving a battle and keeps playing in battles when it is the same than the map. Last but not least, work is now being done to simplify the scripting API, streamline it a bit and make it less error-prone for the scripter. In term of internalization, thanks to alexanderkjall and eugeneloza, the game has also been translated into Swedish and Ukrainian. :) Moonrise also made Ubuntu packages for Valyria Tear. And this is not everything... OpenDungeons has reached the 0.4.9 milestone after a year of work! It now has multiplayer support a new GUI and a rock-solid core gameplay. Go grab it and get in touch with the team if you need info! :D Hero of Allacrost development has taken off again, and work on art and on the map editor is now being done as witnessed on their forums. :) I wish you all a nice year's ending. See you in 2015!
Well, first of all, a lot of things on Valyria Tear of course: OpenGL 2.0 and SDL 2.0! Mainly, and also thanks to some hard work from authenticate, Valyria Tear has finished its transition to SDL2, as he fixed text rendering when using the newest SDL_ttf version, and I added the screen resolution auto-detection with a fallback to hard coded ones when it failed, and VSync/Swap tearing support thanks to SDL2 functionalities. authenticate also fully made the work to make Valyria Tear use the OpenGL 2.0 norm and added support to use shaders to first emulate fixed pipeline support, but this will later permit to add cool effects! :D 1.1 version on going: As for other changes, development on the 1.1 version has fully started. This version will focus on refactoring as you have seen and add support to a new skill system permitting you to select where you want to put your strength when your characters level up. Work will also be done on rebalancing the game and add different difficulty levels, and a brand-new autosave system, permitting to make the game experience much more enjoyable. :) What's new? I first added support to trigger a dialogue in any game mode and added a tutorial dialogue in Flora's shop. I also started working on a offline manual that will serve as a template for the ingame one. (Still need some work but I'm not that far.).
The text scrolling is also now configurable and I made it muck quicker per default to avoid Confirm key bashing when playing. I also upgraded the audio code so that the map music doesn't restart from the beginning when leaving a battle and keeps playing in battles when it is the same than the map. Last but not least, work is now being done to simplify the scripting API, streamline it a bit and make it less error-prone for the scripter. In term of internalization, thanks to alexanderkjall and eugeneloza, the game has also been translated into Swedish and Ukrainian. :) Moonrise also made Ubuntu packages for Valyria Tear. And this is not everything... OpenDungeons has reached the 0.4.9 milestone after a year of work! It now has multiplayer support a new GUI and a rock-solid core gameplay. Go grab it and get in touch with the team if you need info! :D Hero of Allacrost development has taken off again, and work on art and on the map editor is now being done as witnessed on their forums. :) I wish you all a nice year's ending. See you in 2015!
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