Warscale 59 - Inky Pinky Blinky Clyde
by Guimo · 02/09/2010 (2:03 am) · 4 comments
Hi everybody following this blog!!!
You may have noticed I was mentioned in the weekly recap (of two weeks ago) so my fury was apeased so I didn't posted the last week so I'm not in the weekly recap again... bummer.
OK, I will start by opening my soul and confess... the last year, I played Evony during all November and December. Mi first objective was to learn a little more about communities and interfaces and these are my conclusions:
a. You don't really need a list with all the players connected in the server visible at all time.
b. It is useful to have a buddies list so that you can track your friends.
c. Evony can make you paranoid as you expect your empire to be in ruins the next time you log in. THis is a good motivational to keep logging in.
d. You feel better with players which are on your same level.
e. It is really useful to have clans.
f. The girls in the ads don't play Evony.
So the last month I have been trying to adopt some of this small things I learned and that has helped me a little with Warscale. Given that my wife won't let me use scandilly clad women for advertisement, I will focus in the technical aspects.
New avatars
As I told you, last week I was decided to allow the players to change avatars. I decided to get all the fantasy characters in the Dexsoft site and use them. So here I present you to the four Warscale avatars.
I even got the Barbarian from dexsoft but on the end I decided it would make a better giant unit. I decided to stay on four as it can be a quite interesting number... you know... the 4 Apocalyptic Horsemen... The Fantastic 4... Inky Pinky Blinky and Clyde... The Beatles... The Wiggles... you get the idea. Also I added a girl to the mix as it seems to be a nice cliche to get a girl in the middle of an otherwise manly group. The names are a mix of celtic and aymara.
Each avatar provides with different combat and spell abilities allowing for different game styles.
Arawn is a wizard with better spellcasting and access to all the spells but lower fighting abilities. Arawn gains benefits from standing in an earth tile.
Ilawta is a fighter, fast and nimble thus using Fire, Air and Life spells. He gains more attack when standing on a fire tile.
Amarian is a king of commanding and defender type so it uses Earth, Water and Fire spells. He gains more defense while on an Earth tile.
Sulata is a dark knight, beautiful, manipulative and won't make a great fuss of disposing of potential enemies. Sulata uses Fire, Death and Water spells and gains regeneration while on a death tile. Of course as any respectful woman... she made me suffer a lot to get into the game... I had to hack a lot of code but I think the new code will be useful in many situations.
I have tried to balance them by upping some abilities and lowering others but really don't know how they will behave in real life. I guess only time will tell.
In order to handle the avatars, I was forced to modify and recompile the sever code. Interesting enough this was my first server compile since April 2009 which says a lot of how stable the server is... of how little I push it... hmmm... I prefer the first.
I also included a SPHERES attribute to the avatar which handles which spells this avatar is allowed to invoke.
Main shard screen update
Using the bits of learned knowledge mentioned before, I updated the main shard screen and hid the full player list and replaced it with the player avatar. That way you can see your avatar and his equipment the moment you log into the server providing a more familiar place. Also it feels more natural to have a button to edit the avatar and the equipment.
Equipment editor
On the equipment editor, I now can handle switching through the avatars. When you change the avatar, the equipment you are using is mounted in the new avatar of course.
Library/Spellbook editor
As the game focus has changed a little, I renamed all the references of Army to Spellbook. This is just a nominal change as it is still as army in the game code. The army editor is now referenced as the Library. I also fixed some bugs which appeared when saving and loading your spellbooks and reduced the requirement of spells in your spellbook from 24 to 0 (meaning that indeed you can get into the fight with no spells, just your equipment).
I started implementing a filter so that you could only pick the spells on the spheres available for your avatar but then this happenned:
Voices in my head: What are you doing?
Guimo: Creating a filter for the units so the player won't be able to use them.
Voices in my head: Any progress?
Guimo: Yes, I have finished the filters and updating the server, added some message boxed informing the player that his army will be cropped and now I need to implement new methods to prevent him of picking invalid things in the store.
Voices in my head: Do you realize Magic The Gathering Online has survived without all of this?
Guimo: ...
Voices in my head: And it depends on the players how they pick their spells?
Guimo: ...
Voices in my head: And you never know if he can play a spell allowing him to play a new group of spells...
Guimo: Why did you waited so long before saying anything!!!!!
Voices in my head: We love see you struggle...
And they were gone... so I undid all the filtering changes and just a dded a single control in the GUI so that the player won't be able to play a spell he is not allowed to but he may add them to their spellbooks.
Before you consider me crazy... I have been reading Bad Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
Background randomizer
Each time I load the game, a function shuffles all the available images from the sorceries and picks some of them which will be used during the game. The images stay put for that run and will get randomized in the next run. That way the player will have a fresh UI at all time.
Map randomizing
As the avatars have now benefits for standing on a tile, I programmed some kind of randomized flood filling algorithm to make the terrain fill with different elements. So basically the terrain may help or hinder you. Let me show a couple of in game shots with the avatars instead. Lots of earth element in those shots but I guarantee... the flood fill works fine.
The plan for this week
I was reading through my task list and this looks promising. If everything goes fine looks like the beta will be ready in two months. This week I plan to:
Update the game room. I haven't updated it for a long time and it requires a nice refresh.
Improve playability. Add key support for move and attack. Simplify the attack and move controls to a single mouse click.
Nothing else.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
You may have noticed I was mentioned in the weekly recap (of two weeks ago) so my fury was apeased so I didn't posted the last week so I'm not in the weekly recap again... bummer.
OK, I will start by opening my soul and confess... the last year, I played Evony during all November and December. Mi first objective was to learn a little more about communities and interfaces and these are my conclusions:
a. You don't really need a list with all the players connected in the server visible at all time.
b. It is useful to have a buddies list so that you can track your friends.
c. Evony can make you paranoid as you expect your empire to be in ruins the next time you log in. THis is a good motivational to keep logging in.
d. You feel better with players which are on your same level.
e. It is really useful to have clans.
f. The girls in the ads don't play Evony.
So the last month I have been trying to adopt some of this small things I learned and that has helped me a little with Warscale. Given that my wife won't let me use scandilly clad women for advertisement, I will focus in the technical aspects.
New avatars
As I told you, last week I was decided to allow the players to change avatars. I decided to get all the fantasy characters in the Dexsoft site and use them. So here I present you to the four Warscale avatars.
I even got the Barbarian from dexsoft but on the end I decided it would make a better giant unit. I decided to stay on four as it can be a quite interesting number... you know... the 4 Apocalyptic Horsemen... The Fantastic 4... Inky Pinky Blinky and Clyde... The Beatles... The Wiggles... you get the idea. Also I added a girl to the mix as it seems to be a nice cliche to get a girl in the middle of an otherwise manly group. The names are a mix of celtic and aymara.
Each avatar provides with different combat and spell abilities allowing for different game styles.
Arawn is a wizard with better spellcasting and access to all the spells but lower fighting abilities. Arawn gains benefits from standing in an earth tile.
Ilawta is a fighter, fast and nimble thus using Fire, Air and Life spells. He gains more attack when standing on a fire tile.
Amarian is a king of commanding and defender type so it uses Earth, Water and Fire spells. He gains more defense while on an Earth tile.
Sulata is a dark knight, beautiful, manipulative and won't make a great fuss of disposing of potential enemies. Sulata uses Fire, Death and Water spells and gains regeneration while on a death tile. Of course as any respectful woman... she made me suffer a lot to get into the game... I had to hack a lot of code but I think the new code will be useful in many situations.
I have tried to balance them by upping some abilities and lowering others but really don't know how they will behave in real life. I guess only time will tell.
In order to handle the avatars, I was forced to modify and recompile the sever code. Interesting enough this was my first server compile since April 2009 which says a lot of how stable the server is... of how little I push it... hmmm... I prefer the first.
I also included a SPHERES attribute to the avatar which handles which spells this avatar is allowed to invoke.
Main shard screen update
Using the bits of learned knowledge mentioned before, I updated the main shard screen and hid the full player list and replaced it with the player avatar. That way you can see your avatar and his equipment the moment you log into the server providing a more familiar place. Also it feels more natural to have a button to edit the avatar and the equipment.
Equipment editor
On the equipment editor, I now can handle switching through the avatars. When you change the avatar, the equipment you are using is mounted in the new avatar of course.
Library/Spellbook editor
As the game focus has changed a little, I renamed all the references of Army to Spellbook. This is just a nominal change as it is still as army in the game code. The army editor is now referenced as the Library. I also fixed some bugs which appeared when saving and loading your spellbooks and reduced the requirement of spells in your spellbook from 24 to 0 (meaning that indeed you can get into the fight with no spells, just your equipment).
I started implementing a filter so that you could only pick the spells on the spheres available for your avatar but then this happenned:
Voices in my head: What are you doing?
Guimo: Creating a filter for the units so the player won't be able to use them.
Voices in my head: Any progress?
Guimo: Yes, I have finished the filters and updating the server, added some message boxed informing the player that his army will be cropped and now I need to implement new methods to prevent him of picking invalid things in the store.
Voices in my head: Do you realize Magic The Gathering Online has survived without all of this?
Guimo: ...
Voices in my head: And it depends on the players how they pick their spells?
Guimo: ...
Voices in my head: And you never know if he can play a spell allowing him to play a new group of spells...
Guimo: Why did you waited so long before saying anything!!!!!
Voices in my head: We love see you struggle...
And they were gone... so I undid all the filtering changes and just a dded a single control in the GUI so that the player won't be able to play a spell he is not allowed to but he may add them to their spellbooks.
Before you consider me crazy... I have been reading Bad Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
Background randomizer
Each time I load the game, a function shuffles all the available images from the sorceries and picks some of them which will be used during the game. The images stay put for that run and will get randomized in the next run. That way the player will have a fresh UI at all time.
Map randomizing
As the avatars have now benefits for standing on a tile, I programmed some kind of randomized flood filling algorithm to make the terrain fill with different elements. So basically the terrain may help or hinder you. Let me show a couple of in game shots with the avatars instead. Lots of earth element in those shots but I guarantee... the flood fill works fine.
The plan for this week
I was reading through my task list and this looks promising. If everything goes fine looks like the beta will be ready in two months. This week I plan to:
Update the game room. I haven't updated it for a long time and it requires a nice refresh.
Improve playability. Add key support for move and attack. Simplify the attack and move controls to a single mouse click.
Nothing else.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
#2
Something small that I noticed. On the layer cards in your "New Avatars" section above, I think you nudge the models to left so it's centered between the left side of the frame and the left side of the attribute icons.
They seem to appear off center because of the heart, shield, etc icons. It's especially noticeable in the Amarian card.
Good luck with the voices...
02/10/2010 (11:48 am)
Hey Guimo, great blog again.Something small that I noticed. On the layer cards in your "New Avatars" section above, I think you nudge the models to left so it's centered between the left side of the frame and the left side of the attribute icons.
They seem to appear off center because of the heart, shield, etc icons. It's especially noticeable in the Amarian card.
Good luck with the voices...
#3
02/11/2010 (11:21 am)
Great update as always! When can we play? :) 
Torque 3D Owner User
...Okey Dokey Then. Those voices can get a little pesky at some parts.