Dev Diary # 6: Things are starting to come together.

About 2 nights ago I loaded up one of my stages to test a change I'd made to the recently added AIGuard resource. When I entered the level I prepared for combat by equiping my broadsword and casting "haste" on myself, then charged full tilt at the 5 unsuspecting orcs on the hill

And something magical happened. I noticed that the change I had made was succesful, but I didn't stop playing. I was having fun tearing up the orcs, dodging their crossbow bolts and hurling fireballs in response. They kept respawning, and I kept playing, for about 10 minutes, way longer than I needed for testing. My project had stopped feeling like a tech demo, and started to feel like a game. My girlfriend couldn't understand why I was grinning so excitedly.

Its a cool feeling, to see it start to come together, to see the game you dreamed of creating start to take form. Its nowhere near completion (ha!), but theres some gameplay there.

Anyway, enough gushing, on to the technical description. As mentioned, I added the AIGuard resource, which is really awesome, AI is such a huge factor in making your game come to life. It required a few changes to work with my inventory system, but that was the work of 10 minutes. The behavior of the AI is sweet, for my prototype all I need is monsters that stand around, attack you when you get close, then return where they came from if they lose you.

I also added in melee combat, but I say that in the loosest possible terms. I was looking at the Melee resource here, looks good, but I have been thinking about making some fundamental changes to things like the ShapeImage stuff, so I was kind of hesitant to add it in until I had had a thorough look at the animation stuff. But more than that, it was the proverbial wagging finger in the back of my mind, the little voice scolding me, saying "Prototype! Remember? Rough prototype first!"

So I did something simpler. When you "attack" with a melee weapon, it fires a short ray, based on the range of the weapon, and applies damage to the first thing it hits. No animation, nothing. Just a health bar that goes down.

Now, it might seem like that totally sucks, and, sure, I would love to sit and work and get something awesome in with swings and chops and different melee animations for the player and...and...

But this actually works well. Its surprising really. When you get over the missing animations, its still the same thing. Run up close, so you have this enemy in your face, threatening, click the mouse a couple of times while dodging around, and see him pitch over. The "play feel" is almost the same.

The latest thing I have put in is a rudimentary Stats system. All I did was extend the Player to RPGPlayer, add in some variables, expose them to script, and made sure they were packed in network updates. Easy. There is also a script callback to calculate derived stats, like health and mana and attack rating, based on core attributes like strength and intellect. At the moment it is incomplete, there is nothing like experience or levels or suchlike, when I press a button on the client a command is sent to the server which ups my stats, but the core is there. Level up strength a bit and the orcs which took 3 hits to kill now drop in one, etc. I also need to extend it to include skills and special abilities.


Woot, this sucker is starting to be an RPG! Just to recap, so far I have got (albeit in prototype form) :

- Mission portals (links between stages)
- RPG Statistics (50% complete)
- Persistance (Saving loading)
- Melee combat
- Dialogue
- Inventory
- Object interaction
- AI
- Spells

All thats really left on my list (of prototype features) is :

- Quests/Journal
- Map/Compass
- Interchangeable character textures (and model parts/nodes, harder, but there is a resource. Not really necessary for the prototype.)


Of course there is plenty more to implement, and tons of refinement/alteration to do. But I like this rapid prototype concept, it makes you feel like you are actually getting somewhere meaningful, quickly. And I can also get to one of the more enjoyable activities, whipping up some prototype models/artwork/stages. Hoorah

Some pics (click for larger version) :


Mmm, sword :





Obviously, there are bugs to work out, hehe :



Off with his head! :




Theres something satisfying about sending monsters flying with a Shockwave spell :



I need to build a GUI for my stats :