2010/10/15

Hello

How are you?
I am busy.

I’m considering replacing the “Charge” power. It would just be a pain to implement. I need to replace it with a Shield Bash or a Missile Ward.

I’m hiring a sound effects/foley artist to finish up the remaining power sound effects I need. Please contact me if you’re interested. I will update this post once I’ve found someone.

  • Shooting a bow
  • Blocking with a shield
  • Echoing warcry
  • Earthquake rumble
  • Force field appearing

[–Update–]

Brandon Morris “Augmentality” is helping with these. Thanks!

2010/10/03

Power Sound Effects

I’m adding sound effects to powers. These are the ones that need effects; crossing them out as I add them to my local build.

  • Shoot (slingshot/bow)
  • Block (hollow metal thump)
  • Warcry (yell echo)
  • Shock (electricity) – augmentality
  • Quake (rumble)
  • Freeze (ice shatter) – bartk
  • Burn (fiery blast) – bartk
  • Heal (warm sparkles) – remaxim
  • Shield (force field)
  • Teleport – augmentality
  • Time Stop (ticking) – remaxim

2010/09/27

First Game World

The first osare-powered game (you’re seeing the beginnings of it in the “Game World” section on this site) will be a generic fantasy hack & slash. I’m using Wu Xing as a vague inspiration for the world layout. Examples follow:

Earth

The center of the map has mild environments. The earth temple is guarded by a gold dragon.

Wood

The east side of the map is springtime, windy, and heavily forested. The forest temple is guarded by a blue dragon.

Metal

The west side of the map is autumn. Perhaps mines, caves, mountains. The metal temple is guarded by a white tiger.

Water

The north side of the map is tundra, frozen, glacial. The ice temple is guarded by a black tortoise.

Fire

The south side of the map is hot, summer, desert. The fire temple is guarded by a phoenix.

The ordinal directions can be mixes of these. Northwest (Water + Metal) might be my bridge area. Southwest (Metal + Fire) might be volcanic. Southeast (Fire + Wood) might be tumbleweed badlands. Northeast (Water + Wood) might be swamp/marsh.

Next Update

Working on a side project that’s due on 2010/09/30 so there won’t be OSARE updates this week.

v0.10 is around the corner. Things left to work on:

  • Line of Sight checks on Freeze, Burn, Teleport
  • Items on Action Bar
  • Clicking on Action Bar
  • Adding sound effects for powers

Things that probably will be implemented later:

  • Charge implementation
  • Lore implementation
  • Return implementation
  • Cleave graphic

2010/09/17

Selling Items

Traditionally in these kinds of games, selling unwanted items means a trek back to the vendor every time your inventory is full. Some games like Torchlight added a convenience feature to allow your pet to handle this errand for you. I’m going one further: just CTRL-click an item in the inventory and you sell it, no matter where you are. This has been implemented in the latest svn check-in.

Perhaps this ruins immersion or simulation, but it’s not like hack & slash games are sims. Assume your hero stashes unwanted items somewhere and does the actual transaction when you do reach a vendor. This also removes the real need for a two-way Town Portal and encourages uninterrupted action. I’ll make it so this instant-sell can be disabled, in case games don’t want that feature.

Mini Map

Added a simple minimap. I hadn’t planned to do that just yet but it didn’t take long.

I might add a new collision type for invisible walls. This will help mark off exits and keep hidden passages secret on the mini-map.

[–update–]

Added invisible wall type. This is tile #15 (h0f) of the tileset (the first 16, 00-0f, being reserved for collision). This acts like a wall when it comes to collision but does not display in the minimap. Now, map exits appear as openings on the minimap but are solid walls — this will help with the Teleport spell to keep the player from getting off the map. I’m also using these “invisible” walls to keep hidden passages from being spoiled on the mini-map.

2010/09/16

Speed

Player/Enemy speed is stored as int coordinates. Diagonal speed vs. cardinal speed is calculated using the Pythagorean Theorem.

There are rounding errors of course. Here is a table of acceptable speed/dspeed for enemies. The hero uses 10,7 (it would more accurately be 10,7.07 which is close enough). Note that when moving diagonal (map coordinates; this looks cardinal on the screen) the dspeed is applied in both directions.

  • speed,dspeed
  • 3,2 (rotting zombie, goblin)
  • 4,3 (skeleton, zombie)
  • 6,4 (goblin charger, skeletal warrior)
  • 7,5 (antlion, zombie boss)
  • 9,6 (skeleton boss)
  • 10,7 (hero)
  • 11,8
  • 13,9 (hero with Boots of Speed)
  • 14,10
  • 16,11 (hero with Boots of Travel)

Item bonus speed (boots) are multiples of 3. An item with 3 speed actually adds (3,2) to speed.

Projectiles/missiles use floating point coordinates to accommodate arbitrary angles instead of the cardinal+ordinal eight.