Role of the Hero - February Contest Blog

Note: I originally attempted to post this back on the 23rd of February, and THOUGHT it had gone through. I only just now realized that it had not, so I've cut and pasted it back in for a second try here!



Well, we're down to the last week before demos are due now. I've spent the last bit working on the website some, giving it a little facelift. Added clickable popup shots to the sidebar gallery, rollovers to the nav buttons, and some initial content so it doesn't look so bare. Still contemplating a CMS instead of the HTML based site, but frankly that's a lower priority right now than getting the game ready.

I've set the standards/systems in place for armor and weapons - basically, the equations that say how much armor something gives, how much it weighs, how much it is worth, damage it does, how often it can be repaired before it breaks, etc. Pretty much all gear will be craftable. Players will be able to buy some too, but some stuff will simply require a crafter. Resource as drops or harvested items will be important.

Initial quests are in. I'm plugging dialogs into NPCs, setting up spawns, stuff like that. There is still a TON left to do, and I have more than once considered just dropping out. This really is going to just be a demo by next weekend. ;) But I figure I'll stick it out.

In retrospect, two months is not really enough time to learn a new engine AND make a decent game. I managed in a month with RC partly because the tools there are superior, and partly because I knew the engine really well. Having to basically learn the engine from scratch, because the gameplay material is all written in Python which I have NEVER touched before, has been a bear. If I didn't have solid example material to draw from I'd be really lost. As it is, I had a 24 hr battle with getting a rat to spawn, and the little buggers are still not walking their paths quite the way they should be. They do drop tails for a quest, though...

I'm going to give myself a few more days to get more material in, then I'm going to kick this up on the server and make sure it works. Working is important. I don't want to be pulling my hair out Friday night trying to figure out why my server won't run! But all looks good on the local test, so it shouldn't be that bad.

Let the countdown continue!