Elysian Shadows

Since this project DEFINITELY MUST BE COMPLETED (as it is for my Software Engineering class), I thought I might as well post updates on it.

Win Binaries for releases, plus awful code:
v0.3 - http://infinitehat.moosader.com/ShatWrath03.zip
early - http://www.moosader.com/cs451-jan28.zip

About
Shattered Wrath is a game my group in Software Engineering is making.
The Infinite Hat team, consisting of me (C++/Engine coder, artist), a scripter, a designer, a tester, and a paperweight (er, i mean assistant tester and resource getter).
http://infinitehat.moosader.com/

The class is basically to teach us to work in a team, and write a shitton of documentation. x_x

The story is being written by someone who is doing something that pisses me off-- cliches.
It's a troubled, steampunkish world, and you're Marcus Thieves. A thief. Yup.

His story summary:

The city-state of Cinnaka, a bastion of progress and genius but also a cesspool of scum and villainy. Tycoons and Business moguls run the city within the bureaucracy of the Commerce district leveraging the poor down into the industrial district. These businessmen are vicious in their pursuit of fortune often using the underworld to gain an advantage over competitors. But all is not lost the Church of the Shattered provides hope for those in need freely giving food, water, shelter and care. The Church's origin revolve around the Wrath Amulet that was destroyed long ago. It was said to hold great psionic power even be capable to bend people to a persons will. Rumors have begun to surface that the amulet, or at least pieces of it, are still within Cinnaka and such a unique item would fetch a hefty price even if it turned out to be nothing but an amulet.

In more recent times a Famous Tycoon(name TBD) has found himself in a position of being cut out by his younger rivals. A sort of coup d’état seizing control leaving him out in the cold. However, this Tycoon is not about to let such things go unanswered and he intends to bring the full force of the underworld against his former associates. Now Marcus Thieves will be his sword from the shadow stealing back what was taken as well as his own share of course.

The story is not going to be big, though. We keep reminding him that it needs to be pruned down. We're thinking maybe a dozen levels to explore, and like one little quest to complete. -_-;

Here's some development so far:

v0.1 - just tiles, collision, and the character:



v 0.2 - npcs move on basic paths and have basic talking with Lua. Stolen RPG Maker graphics, and custom sprites by me.



v 0.3 - At the moment, just refactored some code and added dialog boxes. Need to add a basic RPG menu (will just have stats, save, and load for the time being), level warping, and music/sound.





Tentative Release Plan - Summary

February
Iteration 1 Development February 1st through February 23rd
Iteration 1 includes the development of the basic engine structure, graphics, and game development tools, such as the map editor. Rudimentary scripting will be set up, as well as the basic physics that are required for this game.

March
Iteration 2 Development February 23rd through March 23rd
Iteration 2 will include more advanced scripting features, including the beginning of the
turn-based battle system, as well as NPCs (both friendly and aggressive) scripted to move
and respond to player's actions (such as being talked to).
A Graphical User Interface will also be in development during this period. An inventory system will also be added on at this point.

April
Iteration 3 Development March 23rd through April 27th
Iteration 3 will include any engine fixes and polish, but will mainly focus on developing content
for the game. Content will be added primarily through scripted events, and the end-result
will resemble a short, basic (but polished) 2D JRPG.

May
Project Release
At this point, all the development has been finished for the game, and Windows, Linux and
Mac releases will be available.

Sounds pretty cool! I can't wait to try it out So you said you were using lua for the events and stuff? I guess it's time I hop on the lua train too

just a few constructive criticisms.

1. when you walk diagonally your walking animation is twice the speed. just looks weird.
2. your NPC get drawn over the player when they shouldent be. you need to impliment some depth identification for drawing NPC's
3. i dont know if this is intentionally, but you character is not centered on the screen. its off to the left and i think and a little down,
at first i thought you were trying to do something with the golden ratio, but the mesuarments didnt pan out.

anyways. looks very good and cant wait to see the final product.

avansc wrote:just a few constructive criticisms.

1. when you walk diagonally your walking animation is twice the speed. just looks weird.
2. your NPC get drawn over the player when they shouldent be. you need to impliment some depth identification for drawing NPC's
3. i dont know if this is intentionally, but you character is not centered on the screen. its off to the left and i think and a little down,
at first i thought you were trying to do something with the golden ratio, but the mesuarments didnt pan out.

anyways. looks very good and cant wait to see the final product.

Wow, I didn't even notice #3 until you said something.
But yeah, all those will get fixed provided adequate time.
(I'm getting shitty grades trying to balance Probability, Assembly, OpenGL and this thing + all it's documentation)

Here's a mapping criticism. You have one corridor that is only one tile wide, the one leading to a prisoner "dungeon" with the locked door. You have to be aligned almost perfectly to go into this corridor, otherwise if you're like two pixels left or two pixels right from the approach you stop against part of the wall. It's not a game-breaking feature, but a suggestion for more intuitive map design.

I wouldn't make passageways this narrow, at least with the collision system you are using. The easy solution is just to avoid making paths narrower than two tiles. If you *must* make them one tile wide, however, some games work around this by creating a shaft that converges diagonally into the passageway. Here's what I mean
With diagonal wall tiles that have special collision rules. if the character is just a few pixels off, the character will just "slide" on the wall down a few pixels and easily into the passageway.

Yeah, this is by no means an actual level for the game; I just couldn't get any other teammates to make any for the prototype demo.
Still need to rip some diagonal tiles as well.
By end of the semester I will hopefully have an original tileset made, but it all depends on how badly my other classes rape me.

Whoa! Nice! I like how the source code is included so idiots like me can see how this is all done!

=/ it was nice but when i quit out the process didnt end and starting eating my cpu up =O

Funny, I didn't have that problem...

mllarson wrote:Funny, I didn't have that problem...

by the time i found out what the hell it was my cpu was fluctuating around 70% with chrome open as well.

The "Customer approved UI" is due in Wednesday's class, though I got stuck on some bugs and refactoring for longer than I thought and only got this much done:


The menu


Talkin' to NPCs

I get the impression that you're doing this project almost entirely by yourself Lusikka? You need a break hah. It's looking nice so far, just keep working on it you're getting there.

deryni21 wrote:=/ it was nice but when i quit out the process didnt end and starting eating my cpu up =O

So it was still showing up in the task manager? That's odd. Did you quit with F4 or the X button?

mllarson wrote:Whoa! Nice! I like how the source code is included so idiots like me can see how this is all done!

I don't know if my code is that great to learn from. 'tis a bit of a mess. o_x

dandymcgee wrote:I get the impression that you're doing this project almost entirely by yourself Lusikka? You need a break hah. It's looking nice so far, just keep working on it you're getting there.

The engine is 100% me, with scripting and the C++ functions to handle scripting done by the scripter Tim. We also both share documentation, and the everyone else is free to douche their asses all month.
Oh, and graphics drawn and stolen by me too. :O

LusikkaMage wrote: The engine is 100% me, with scripting and the C++ functions to handle scripting done by the scripter Tim.

At least your "scripter" actually does something. :P It's always nice to have someone that understands programming working on a team with you, I know for a fact that teams with members who don't even understand the basics of programming are very difficult to please. Best of luck, as always I'll be watching this one.

yeah i quit using q??