Working on adding static background images to the game.
Because I used OpenGL, scaling came free!
Here's some snapshots.
Showing posts with label rpg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rpg. Show all posts
9/09/2011
Fun Shot - #?
Hi All,
Working on adding static background images to the game.
Because I used OpenGL, scaling came free!
Here's some snapshots.
Working on adding static background images to the game.
Because I used OpenGL, scaling came free!
Here's some snapshots.
6/02/2011
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.)
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.)
10/08/2010
Technical Diagram 1A
I was bored so I thought I'd map out the game's network architecture.
Each component in itself is complex.
This is the most basic diagram with the server running in a single machine.
However, it should be fairly easy to decouple each component into separate servers and scale as necessary.
Anyway, now I'm working on creating tilesets to continue mapping the game.
The SolomonRPG game engine is at version 0.3.
It's solid and stable enough where I can finally concentrate on adding and creating the content!
Each component in itself is complex.
This is the most basic diagram with the server running in a single machine.
However, it should be fairly easy to decouple each component into separate servers and scale as necessary.
Anyway, now I'm working on creating tilesets to continue mapping the game.
The SolomonRPG game engine is at version 0.3.
It's solid and stable enough where I can finally concentrate on adding and creating the content!
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:
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:
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]
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
6/21/2010
Super Alpha Test (Tech Demo)
UPDATE: Due to major updates in the server, this client no longer works. Stay tuned for further releases!
Hi all,
Today I am releasing a super alpha version of the game so far.
However, it's still not much of a game. This is more like a tech demo.
This is mainly to get some very early feedback on what I've got so far,
to gauge the interest in it.
I also hope to pull in a bunch of testers to help me further develop the multiplayer aspect of the game.
Please note that it's still really buggy and unpolished, I also don't have a production server and am using my development server.
So expect plenty of downtimes and broken server communication.
Also, the game was developed with an Android 1.5 (stock G1) and doesn't fully work with 2.0+ just yet.
Make sure you have TasKiller ready, you'll need it.
So with that said:
You can download the latest alpha apk here.
Use the signup word: 'douchebag'
Features so far:
Signing up for an account
Camera movement via trackball
Touch based movement, click on the tile where you want to move to.
Area to area teleportation, just step over some of the NPCs and you'll get teleported. (not polished)
NPC/Event/Player activation. Long touch a player or npc for the player menu to come up.
Tile animation, check out the water move.
Remote player display and movement (not fully polished)
Character name display (though it hurts FPS, it'll be optional)
Zone chat
All multiplayer enabled
Feedback, Comments, Questions, Testers, etc:
therevoltingx@gmail.com
4/22/2010
Let's Chat!
After taking a brief vacation, I'm back working on my game.
I was heavily inspired by the Android game 'Pocket Empires' which I think is brilliantly designed.
Integrating the chat involved working with Perl, Erlang, and Java all at once, but I got it mostly done in less than a week.
Most of the time was wasted fiddling with the Android UI toolkit.
So here's a screenshot of the rough results, of course multiplayer enabled!
3/17/2010
New Client Screenshot
After a lot of work on the game's multi-player code, I've seemed to have wrapped up most things regarding real-time movement.
Though it's not perfect, it's working quite well, so I'm posting a screenshot with 3 players on the screen at the same time.
Videos should be coming as soon as I get some time.
12/23/2009
First Client Screenshot
The first screenshot I'm uploading of my game running on an android device. More to come soon!
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