7/28/2010

Fun Shot! #2

Hi all, here's a snapshot of notes on the battle system UI flow.

Enjoi!

7/22/2010

As The Grind Continues

After releasing a super alpha version of the game so far, I've just been grinding along.
Nothing entirely interesting has happened in the last month, here are some of the things improved and/or added:

  • Stabilized name display and tile animation
  • Added team functionality
  • Added personal messaging functionality
  • Battle against monsters [Draft]
The most tedious part was starting the battle system, i turned to rpg maker 2000 again for inspiration.
Fusing together its old school battle system with my own vision of the game (and with the limitations of man power and working with Android.)
Battling is turn based, like an animated card game.
Each player or monster takes a turn. (Attack, Defend, Special Attack, etc)
Everyone takes turns, according to different stats, damage is dealt and players are chosen for attack.  (Level, Speed, Defense, etc)
An animation is played for each attack and players can attack or do things like defend or use items.

At this point many things are finished, but the battle system is still in a rough stage.
I've gone to pains to keep a clean code base though, so I can tweak the settings as I see fit.
So far, for the battle system I've written:

  • Erlang: 
  •   A single module/process handles all the battle systems such as creating the message queues.
  •   Periodically stores to global database and keeps track of handling turns
  •   Stores and executes monster battling action patterns 
  •   Waits and notifies players when a turn is taken
  •    (566 lines of code.)
  • Java/Android:
  •     A dialog activity is launched when it's notified a battle has started
  •     Bootstraps battle UI, downloads resources accordingly
  •     Listens for events and displays battle animations
  •     Have the player select a monster and take attack, etc. (TODO)
  •     The main class is 481 lines of code so far, but a lot of code is in its own class, and I'm lazy.
  • Perl/HTML/SQL:
  •     Add data schemas for new battle system components (attacks, teams, monsters, battles, etc)
  •     Add to the existing admin functionality the necessary components
  •     This includes a web UI for managing: monsters, parties, attacks, backdrops, etc.
  •     The Client->Server Battle module is only 63 lines so far.
  •     The Admin->Monster Management module is 263 lines, (fairly complete.)
 There is still plenty of work to be done, no one said it would be easy.  I think the battle system is one of the most challenging aspects of making any game.  I hate math :p