More Fun Shots

I'm pretty excited as my graphic artist is now finished with most of the tileset work and now it's time to do backgrounds and monsters!

Slowly but surely, the story seems to progressing.  I know have tons of ideas for little quests, it's just a matter of implementing them and herding the player through the global story.

Anyway, here's some more screenshots.

Fun Shot - #?

Hi All,

Working on adding static background images to the game.
Because I used OpenGL, scaling came free!
Here's some snapshots.

The Art of Storytelling

It's been a while since my last post and that's mostly because I've been working a full time job.
I thank God that I got this sweet gig as a mobile app developer.
This gives me the chance to learn and develop for iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry.  Which means more potential clients for the game.
That, however, is in the distant future.  I've still got to get the Android release out there.
What's even better is that the job doesn't require insane hours.  I've still got plenty of time to work on SolomonRPG.

So, toward the goal of releasing the first version, I've slowed down development of the game engine and am now focusing on the art and storyline.  This doesn't mean the engine has stalled, I just feel that it's at a point where it's good enough and has enough features that I can start concentrating on other critical aspects of the game.

Believe it or not the programming is not the most important aspect of a game.
At least for what I've had in mind since the beginning.
I really hate many of the MMORPGs out there for a few reasons.
 For example, Pocket Legends, has great gameplay and graphics but I have no idea what the story is.
Granted I've only seriously played it for a few days.  There is no insentive to play beside just leveling up and collecting items.
What's even worse is how you can actually buy items and powers using real money.
I hate this.  It cheapens the game and feels like a sell-out move.
Another thing is the story, or lack of story.

What I love about RPGs are the stories.  I remember the good old days when I played the greats.  Breathe of Fire, Chronno Trigger, YS 1&2, Secret of Mana, Zelda, Final Fantasy, etc.

These games ruled in the story telling aspect.  They introduced characters and story lines that progressed and changed, climaxed and concluded.  Some of the characters would even die.
Now in most modern MMORPGs this notion is gone.  They are not true to their ancestors and have become nothing more than a cheap quest fill system to make some quick cash without actually making a game.

I'm not saying that I think the story line that SolomonRPG has is any better.  In fact, it might be worse because I'm not a professional writer.  I haven't written a story for a long time

I'm saying it is a unique challenge to have a few races/classes and develop stories around them.
These stories have to be cohesive to build/narrate the story of the virtual world.  They have to drive to a point and a conclusion.  There is drama and conflict in the middle.

At the same time, you must keep in mind the constraints of the virtual world.
For example, the engine was designed to use a magic battle system.  So you have to give a good background/narrative has to how or why the characters are able to use magic.
You have to motivate them to continue to level up and interact with the virtual world.
You also have to keep it simple enough where casual users don't have to read through tons of text to be able to pick up the game and play.

These and other factors make story telling challenging.  These are the types of questions that forced me to really examine the story:

What am I doing here?
What is my goal?  What is my history?
Why is this town here, why are the other towns there?
Why are those monsters there?  Where did they come from?
Why do I have to fight them?  Why do they fight?
Why should I do a quest?

Furthermore, the idea of having to write a bunch of brain-dead short quests that don't really tie into anything was not acceptable.

Back to the things I hate about most MMORPGs.  You may have noticed that in the Android market you'll see that most MMORPGs are crappy website type 'games' that don't even have any moving graphics.  You click on a button and you see some text change.  Boring!
To top it off these games don't offer anything in terms of story telling either.
They usually consist of the same old: Go here, get me X of these, and I'll reward you with this.

This is why I never play World of Warcraft, what's the point?
I don't care about the characters, and I don't care about leveling up for the sake of leveling up.
I guess the only real motivation there is the end-game.  Where you can battle against other players and do party raids.  That's the real fun in leveling up.

SolomonRPG doesn't have a raid system, or even PvP yet.  So, I had to come up with a concept that'll motivate players to co-operate and level up.  To continue playing toward something.
However, in there lies yet another issue.  What to do once the story 'ends'?
I guess at some point I'll have to implement PvP and raiding of a king.

This is the reason I have been so quiet for the past few months.
This adds yet another challenge to making SolomonRPG possible.

In the coming months I'll keep you updated on any progress I make.
So far I have the world story premise but I'll hold off on telling it for now until I polish it a bit more.
I'm also in the progress of making character lists and dialog for each one.
Creating an end-story that will be where all the sub-plots lead to.

These are all new aspects for me, but thankfully God's been giving me the chance to meet some really smart people who have helped give me tips and advice on how I should tackle this.

Anyway, for now I'll just post some random art for the game.  These are all still concepts.
Wish me luck, and don't forget: Jesus is King!

P.S.
Here are some snapshots of some of the custom art and maps that I've gathered so far.
None of this is final, in the end I'll probably use tons of pixel art for the old school feel.
Also, thanks a bunch to Kinou Games for being awesome.  They've done a bunch of custom tilesets and character sets.  They've also been helping me with the art style and map concepts.   All in all, I HIGHLY recommend them for anyone who needs good game art at decent prices.
(The first hand drawing is by a personal friend of mine.)

Android: Canvas Frame by Frame Animation Tutorial

In this tutorial I will outline how to play an animation on a canvas on Android.

As you may already know, the canvas is the standard way of drawing on Android.

Drawing to a canvas is fairly straightforward.  You typically extend a View class and override the onDraw method.

In this case we will override ImageView for the sake of simplicity.

I will be using Eclipse for this tutorial.

First, create a new Android project with Eclipse.  You can use 1.5 as the target.  I've named the application animationtest.

Also, make sure you create a default activity, I call mine 'DefaultActivity.'

The package name I'll be using is com.solrpg.animationtest.

After you have created your Android project, create a new class named MyAnimationView.  

This class will extend ImageView and we'll do our drawing here.

MyAnimationView.java: http://github.com/therevoltingx/android_animation_test/blob/master/src/com/solrpg/animationtest/MyAnimationView.java

Now, your view is ready to use.  Because DefaultActivity simply sets the activity layout to R.layout.main we'll need to modify it.

So, open up res/layout/main.xml and remove the TextView entry and replace it with your custom view using this xml: http://github.com/therevoltingx/android_animation_test/blob/master/res/layout/main.xml

Now we're ready to display our animation.  I have prepared a set of png images from a gif.

You can see the original gif here: http://solrpg.com/resources/attacks/2/2.gif

Then I imported them into res/drawables/ naming them shark_0.png shark_1.png shark_2.png and so on.

Where each number is the frame, all together this animation is 16 frames.

Now it's time to go back to MyAnimationView and add our animation code.  Basically, android calls onDraw every time the view needs to be drawn.

Typically this only happens once when the activity view is being set up.

After that, we have to call invalidate() on the view to have Android call onDraw().

First, we have to load the resource drawables into an array of bitmaps which can be drawn on the canvas.

So, we add a loadAnimation() method to MyAnimationView.  This method simply loads the frames from the res/drawables/ folder into a list of bitmaps.

In the example, we load the bitmaps when the default activity is created.

Once all the bitmaps are loaded, the animation is ready to be drawn.

Now, back to our onDraw method.  

First we have two private state variables called mIsPlaying and mStartPlaying.

Every time onDraw is called we check wether either one of these is set and draw the bitmap frame accordingly.

In order to start an animation we simply set mStartPlaying to true and call invalide() to have Android call onDraw().

When an animation is playing the variable mIsPlaying is set to true it checks which frame it has to draw.

In order to know which frame to play we need two variables play_frame and last_tick.

play_frame is set to the frame index of the animation that we're about to draw.

last_tick is set to a system time stamp.  This time stamp is set every time a frame changes.

This lets us calculate how long the current frame has been drawing.  

Once a specified amount of time has passed it increases the play_frame counter and calls invalidate()

Now you're ready to draw the animation.  We add a method called playAnimation() which simply sets mStartPlaying to true, then it calls invalidate().

In the tutorial application I added a button that when pressed calls playAnimation().

That's it!  Drawing an animation this way is fairly easy, I hope someone finds this helpful.

Project link: http://github.com/therevoltingx/android_animation_test

A Holiday Release - SolomonRPG:Alpha 0.3

SIGN UP NOW - ALPHA

Download the client: SolomonRPG.apk

Signup here: http://solrpg.com

OVERVIEW

It's been a few months since I last made a release.
With the restlessness of the holidays, and finally achieving some sort of stability I've decided to make another alpha test release.
Here's a breakdown of the issues and notices for this release:

HOSTING
Because I am unemployed at the moment, I can't afford to keep my linode running without any sort of income.  I've gone ahead and shutdown the previous Linode I had setup so I don't waste money.
As with the previous release, I'm hosting the server on my home server so things will be noticeably slow.
I've made the http://solrpg.com point to my home server as well.  Because I'm sort of at a feature freeze I hope that I won't be messing with the server that much.


ANDROID CLIENT
I've gone ahead and spent some time polishing the client code.  Making sure it'll work in various resolutions and just polishing up the lifecycle of the application.  I've tested it on a few G1s running Android 1.5 and Android 2.2 and it works just fine.  I also tested it in the emulator with larger screens and it seemed to work just fine although it's unusably slow in the emulator.

ERLANG SERVER

This whole project has been centered around learning Erlang.  These past few days I took the time to learn about the Erlang OTP application setup.  Creating an .app file, bootstrapping the application when the VM starts, creating a proper application supervisor, and updating the various sub servers to die and restart more gracefully.  I also added things like database connection pooling.  This was very fun and I learned a lot about the Erlang ecosystem.  

SCRIPTING SERVER

I finally added the concept of switches and created my first real 'quest'.  A switch, can hold any given value.  Anything from a string, to a boolean, to an integer, or float.  Each switch is defined by a name, and needs to be defined with an NPC.  Once it's defined, you can use it globally in other events.  Here's how my first quest looks like.  This is real game scripting code:

Generic person NPC:

importPackage(com.solrpg.solomon_scripting)

var PENDANT_SWITCH = 'village_pendant_quest';

Solomon.defineSwitch(PENDANT_SWITCH);

if (Solomon.getSwitch(PENDANT_SWITCH))

{

    Solomon.message("Thanks!");

}

else

{

    describeQuest();

}

function describeQuest()

{

    var MessageStr = "Hey, if you find a pendant in the forest, please bring it to me. \

My mother gave it to me, and it's not of much value, but I'd be happy to pay a \

small reward for it.";

    

    Solomon.message(MessageStr);

}

Dropped pendant NPC:

importPackage(com.solrpg.solomon_scripting)

var PENDANT_SWITCH = 'village_pendant_quest';

Solomon.defineSwitch(PENDANT_SWITCH);

if (Solomon.getSwitch(PENDANT_SWITCH))

{

    Solomon.message("It's empty.");

}

else

{

    Solomon.setSwitch(PENDANT_SWITCH, true);

    Solomon.message("You've found a pendant");

}

I've also added support for catching errors and when the script fails to load.  A message is simply sent to the player, so the creator has to make sure there are no mistakes in the scripting code by constantly testing them in the client.  

The Future

Certainly the most time consuming aspect of the game seems to be the story development and map making.  My girlfriend is helping me create maps for the games and she's really good at it, so that's a load off for me.  Now I'm just concentrating on coming up stories, making maps, fixing bugs, and stabilizing all the features.

However, there are a couple of features I'd like to implement sometime next year:

• HTML Tileset Editor
• NPC Auto Walking
• Compress data sent over network

None of these features are critical to the game.  The NPC autowalking is something I'd like to see soon.  Right now all you see are moving water, moving players, but I'd like to have the option for the NPCs to move as well.

Compressions of data is sort of important, this is actually just needed at a couple of critical points.  When teleporting from area to area and when first logging in.  Not a priority. 

There are also plenty of lesser features I have to implement before releasing the game, but those are the big ones

WORKING ON NOW

Mainly just brainstorming with my girlfriend on the world map.  She's making the maps on RMXP and then I select whichever tiles she used and compact the tilesets and import them into the game.  

I'm also polishing the battle system. 

I also had to implement leveling curves which was pretty fun.

Basically, it's a way to keep track of how many experience points are needed to get a certain level.

Each class has the following attributes:

level, exp, hp, mp, attack, defense, speed, and critical_hit_chance.

Each class has a certain algorithm to calculate how many exp points are needed to reach a certain level and what to set the attributes to when the player reaches those levels.  

Then I used a jQuery chart library to generate some tables to visualize it better.  

I still have a bunch of story related work to do, here's my TODO list for the release:

•     Full concurrent world map
•     4 races with full story lines
•     All races and content up to level 20
•     Monster and monster parties for all world areas
•     Integrated multiplayer communication and party management
•     Fully working multiplayer battle system with stats
•     SOLRPG.COM - 
•         Full documentation of game overview and gameplay
•         Fully working site with minimal feature set, doesn't have to be perfect

SCREENSHOTS

The Erlang Game Loop

After my last blog post I took the time to signup for Linode and setup my application there.
After running a few tests it was apparent my initial game loop was flawed.
Even with the beefy hardware the erlang beam process was hitting 300% after around 50 areas.

My initial approach to the game loop was a bit naive. 
When loading each area I would spawn an erlang process with a game loop that would grab all the players in that area and process any new move flags, pathfinding, checking collisions, updating character positions, etc.

I figured that even though this was CPU intensive it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  I was wrong.

However, if you pay attention you'll notice I can easily improve this by having a global game loop, and processing all the players regardless of their area.

So, the old was was something like this in pseudo-code:

foreach (areas)

     load_layout_into_memory()

     bootstrap_ets_tables() 

     start_game_loop(area_id)

end

It took me no longer than 30 minutes to update the code.  Now it looks like this:

foreach (areas)

    load_layout_into_memory()

    bootstrap_ets_tables()

end

start_global_game_loop()

I then ran some tests on my Linode, first I had to set my ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES to 7000.
I was able to load over 3000 areas with the beam process hovering around 10%.  Great!


It now seems like SolomonRPG should handle well for a good while.  There are a few things that need to be smoothed out, but for the most part everything seems to work.
With all these areas the only issue is now running out of memory but Linode has some good plans for adding more memory.  And although I haven't done much testing, thanks to Erlang, I think I can just add more nodes and have them process sets of players.
For example, have node1 process players 1 - 1000, node2 1001 - 2000, node 3....
Or perhaps separate them by area.  Either way should be easy to implement, damn Erlang rocks.

On The Road to Release - Part: 1

After having ported the map editor to HTML and Javascript, I also took the time to setup a domain and implement the player's website.

The final url for the game is: solrpg.com

There is still a lot of work to do, though, before I release the client in the Android Market and enable signups.
Here's a breakdown of what's needed or being worked on.

For reference, here is the hardware I'm developing the SolomonRPG server on:

1 Core CPU - AMD Duron(tm) 1.2GHz

1GB -  DDR RAM

80GB - PATA Hard Drive

Cent OS 5 - x86

Hosting - Linode
At the moment, the domain is hosted on my only spare computer at home.
Obviously, I can't release the game because my upload speed is pathetic.

Linode has a hosting plan that starts at $20 a month.  I've been hearing good things about them, and I'm excited to try them out.
Here's what the basic hosting plan includes:

4 Core CPU - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz

512MB - RAM

16GB - Hard Drive

Cent OS 5 x86_64

The Solomon server holds a lot of small bits in memory ram, such as player credential, player location, status, tileset layouts, etc.
Simply storing a player and area definitions in memory can be a scaling issue
However, from preliminary tests reveal the real wall seems to be the game loop for each area.

Each area has a process that handles all the game logic for that area.  Each game loop runs at a variable 60FPS.
This is fairly CPU intensive, and my development machine starts giving out at barely 20 areas.

At the moment, I'm not sure if I can optimize this.  Perhaps by having a game loop for each Erlang node and try to squeeze the game logic there, but I haven't given it much thought.
I want to do some tests on the Linode host itself to see if its worth my time to optimize.

Content Creation
The fun part is creating content for the game.  Creating tilesets using Gimp and constantly testing them out and choosing which tiles to use.
I have choose carefully because tilesets have to be as small as possible.  The bigger the tileset, the longer it takes to load in a mobile phone.

Mapping out areas is also quite fun, I have to first map out the world on grid paper with a pencil.
Then, mapping out each area using the new editor. 

Story making is another challenging aspect.  For that, I'm turning to my favorite book in the world, The Bible.  In the coming months, I hope to continue carefully reading the Bible and implementing some of the cool stories into the game.  I want people to know that I'm Christian and that God was the only one who helped me make this game, I never would have been able to get this far by myself.

Polish, Polish, Polish
Continue to refine the SolomonRPG codebase and try to fix as many bugs as possible.
Make the client not drain the phone battery.
Lower the SolomonRPG CPU requirements.
Implement scripting in Erlang using erlang_js (MAYBE)
Make teleporting from area to area as smooth as possible.

Funds and Revenue
If I am unable to lower the CPU requirements, it'll be very expensive to release the website for the game.  Ideally, I'd like players to create as many areas as they'd like for free.
I will have advertisement in both the client and the website, but I'm not sure if it'll be enough.
I don't have a budget for the game at all, and I'm trying to save up enough to sign up for the Android Market and the first month of hosting.  Anyway, I'm thinking of adding a donation button to the blog.  We'll see though.

New Puppy!!

For the longest I've been wanting a dog.  Finally, this weekend I went down to the animal shelter and picked up a Staffordshire mix.  Here are some pictures, it's sooo awesome!

Player Map Making in the Browser

After spending some time creating maps and thinking about story telling, quest designing, and map making I've decided to move the map making process to the browser.

For one, it'll help speed up the flow of the development of content for the game.
I've decided to use jQuery for this.

Since the beginning I've thought about the ability of players to be able to create the story and world around them.  The infrastructure was set up with the thought in the back of my head.

So, now that I've decided to port the map maker to a web interface I've also decided to add the ability for players to make the world.

Here's a break down of this new feature-set:

== Player Web Interface + Web Map Maker ==

    Each player has a login to the web interface.

    One can create maps using existing tilesets.

    In each map one can create events/npcs.

    Npcs are javascript driven.

    

    World is empty except for current areas

    Player creates account either in web or in client (pre-allocates X scripting switches)

    Player can then create areas.  

        Set Name, Select a tileset.  Width and height are 20x20.

        Area Settings:

            Name

            Troops (if empty, non-battle area)

            Encounter Rate

        The area is automatically added to the system.  

        Player can add event and script them as necessary

        Regular players cannot modify stats.

    Only an admin can link the outside world to you.

    You can ask to be teleport into your created areas.  When done you can ask to be returned to your previous position.

    Needed Features:

        Upload character sets. (OPTIONAL)

        Create item

    For fast scripting:

        A list of switches (filter by 'created_by_you', 'system_switches')

        A list of items (filter by 'created_by you', 'system_generic_items', 'created_by_others'

    Areas must be able to be deleted!!!

    

    Scripting (Pseudo-code):

            /*********************************************************************************************************************/  

//Merch Area Trader - 10x Small Wolf Claw Quest

//Go to the forest, collect 10 wolf claws and come back and i'll give you a red pin

                       

 if (checkSwitch(25)) //quest_finished_yn

 {

     //player already finished this quest

     message("Hey, how u liking that pin?");

     return;

 }

 if (checkSwitch(24)) //10x wolf claw quest

 {    

     //player has accepted this quest, check the status...

     var nWolfClaws = getItemCount(1005); //number of walf claws collected

     if (nWolfClaws >= 10) //small wolf claw

     {

         //the player has collected the necessary amount of claws...

         setSwitch(25, true); //quest_finished_yn

         addItem(1006, 1); //add 1 red pin item, created by me

         message("Well done!  You've earned this pin!");

         return;

     }

 }

 else

 {

     //player has NOT accepted this quest...

     message("Man I need me some wolf claws, go fetch me 10 claws and I'll give you this shiny ribbon!");

     var response = choice("Do you accept this quest");

     if (response == true)

     {

          //player has accepted the quest....

          setSwitch(24, 10); //10x_wolf_quest

          message("Great!  Good luck!");

          return;

      }

      else

      {

          //player didn't accept the quest...

          message("Fine then...");

          return;

      }

  }

            /*********************************************************************************************************************/  

I want to make map making as easy as possible.  Event/NPC making will be way more difficult.  It'll be scripting based.  The cool thing is you should be able to create areas, modify, and test them using the master server with the android client.  Once approved these areas can become part of the larger world and story.

The scripting will be very RM2K/RMXP inspired and powered by Javascript, so hopefully it'll be easy to use.  I'm guessing the most challenging aspects will be the new territory such as scripting in a multiplayer context.

With this detour there is going to be a significant delay in the release of the game, however there should be no reason this can't be achieved in a reasonable amount of time.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this!

Update:
Here's some snapshots of the work in progress:

FunShot, Making Maps

For the next few months or so I'll mainly be working on adding some content to the game.
Mainly making tilesets, prototyping the maps in RPG Maker XP, creating the maps in my own custom editor.
After that I have to work on adding quests and adding more features to the scripting system for this.
Getting close to a release.  Stay Tuned.