Cutscene Creation

Here's a quick demo of the current build:



Designing and building a Cutscene Screen - used to convey narrative, or even a loading screen between other gameplay screens:

Switching Gears - A New Focus for the Month

We're getting really close to having an alpha of the Unity RPG system.  But right now there's really no content for the actual game I'm planning on building.  I have some character designs, world design and a rough plot, but none of the dialog, character and sprites or tilesets.  Even the stats, items and battles still need to be created. 

So I want to switch gears to focus on the creative side, instead of the hardcore bug fixing grindfest that we're in right now. 

Building the actual content of the real game will lead to thinking about programming problems that will arise.  For example – if there’s an ability of an enemy, player, or a boss fight with a scripting event and the current system doesn't support it, I'll have to go and build that.

So I'm thinking of tabling the project for the rest of the month, even the year, and really focusing on content.

I'll still be occasionally posting to this blog and youtube channel, but it will be character and world designs, tactical battle puzzles, art mock-ups and musings on RPG game design rather than hardcore programming.

Tiled - Terrain and Automapping

I finally figured out how to use the Terrain and AutoMapping features of Tiled with RPG Maker style spritesheets. I'm using the High Fantasy Bundle, which has a lot of awesome sprites, but was tough to get to play nicely with Tiled.





Examples:

Battle Tile Highlighting and Projectiles

Tiles in the Battle are now highlighted, depending on pending action:



Dev Stream of Projectiles shooting across the screen (arrows, spells, etc):

Friday Night Gamedev Progress Report

Recorded yesterday - an update on the sprites, and showing off some of the new menus. Saving is also now functional!

Gamedev Timelapse!

I put together a timelapse of some gamedev from the other night. Turned out to be sort of fun to watch code and asset fine-tuning happen at 4x speed! Plus chiptunes!

May do this for some other long and boring coding streams in the future.

Closer to Alpha

I'm still here, hacking away. Here's my update on the current progress towards alpha, along with a demo of the latest build:

Character system and RPG Design - Brainstorming

Last night I also did some open ended brainstorming about character systems, progression, talent trees and rpg design in general. Here's the recording:

Building a Store - Part III

Here's the demo of the completed store -

Battles and Dialog Test wired up, and Building a Store

A big milestone was reached over the last two weeks. Wiring up the Battle Game with the DialogTest Unity projects. These are both merged together, share data structures, and live in the UnityRPG solution.

Here's a short demo walking through the current game on the dev branch:



I also started working on a store. Last night I was able to build most of the backend, and a rough UI. I'm still wiring up the UI to buy and sell, but should have that done shortly, and will stream the progress.

Quest System Demo

Quick overview of the quest system in the RPG. Flags can be set in dialog, battles, or info-popups on screen.

2D TileArray from Prefabs, Loading sprites at runtime, Pause Menu and More!

Some highlights from the stream last night:

Demo of generating 2D TileArray from the Tiled Prefab, then using A* pathfinding for player movement:



Adding sprites to the gameworld:


 Pause Menu Implementation:

Wiring Tilemaps

Here are some highlights from last night's stream, where I made some new tile maps, then wired them up in Unity to the World Maps, and some dialog scripts:

 Creating Tile Maps in Tiled:

 Wiring up in Unity, and testing:

Down, But Not Out

I'm still alive and kicking!

I've been pretty busy with RL stuff the last few months, but I've been hacking away on a few things in my limited free time.  I recorded a session over on twitch to go over what I've been working on.  Here are the highlights!

I'm hoping to do a little bit of work every day, and post to the blog or stream at least once a week!


Tiled2Unity Demo

Object Triggers in Tiled wired up in Unity

Overview of the RPG tree structure

Pre-Alpha 0.0.3, now with more explosions!

The build of pre-alpha 0.0.3 is here.

Notes:
-New project structure
-Battlemap defined in data, loaded at runtime
-Using temp gameobjects for particles, sprites and text popup notifications (floating damage, explosions, etc)
-New Font, Background images

Art Style Brainstorming

I've been brainstorming the style I want for the game I'm building over the last few weeks and months.  There will be fantasy elements, but won't be a straight elves-in-forest world.  I'm actually thinking of a story set on a distant planet, after the first wave of colonization has disastrous results for the locals.

So I'm trying to find a thematic and visual tone somewhere between fantasy and gritty sci-fi.  I like the ideas of spells and swords, and don't want everything cloaked in the stereotyped language of sci-fi.

Here are some background images I experimented with.  There are some cool filters to bring out expressionist / Van Gogh effects:

As far as sprites, I really like some of the classic JRGPs, with detailed and horrific looking beasts.  I'd like to avoid the overly cutesy chibi or anime style that’s pretty common in JRPGs though.  The Angband sprites are pretty great, but I'd like the final art to be a little more detailed and less generic-fantasy.

I really like BioWare style portraits for the dialog portions.  There are a few sets free online, and may use those, or work on photoshopping existing photographs into an appropriate style.

I really like Blizzard user interfaces.  The buttons are very clicky, and the workflow design is always simple, straightforward and intuitive.  The "flat" trend may have caught on in mobile apps, but I think in games, you still need some depth and texture to user interfaces, especially in something like an RPG, where the goal is to tell a narrative and enable tactical control, rather than pure immersion.

For sound and music, I actually really dig some of these ambient tracks.  A big boss fight can have an orchestral score, but if you are trekking through creepy caves and forests, ambient noises of dripping water or echoing wind is pretty great.

For now, building actual game assets is pretty far off.  I work from the code up, and get the game working mostly with programmer art.  Of course, plugging in a cool asset can dramatically change the feel of the game, and buffs morale when you've been banging you head against the wall for a while.

April Goals

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic with RL stuff, but I still have some realistic goals for April.  The 0.0.3 pre-alpha build is pretty much done, but there's a few finishing touches before I upload it.

Once its done, I'll be changing gears to focus on the tree structure that will drive the non-combat portions of the game.

-Complete 0.0.3 pre-alpha build
-new project structure
-battlemap defined in data, loaded at runtime
-using temp gameobjects for particles, sprites and text popup notifications (floating damage, explosions, etc)

-TreeTest demo
-loading sample world, zone, dialog and quest from data
-able to navigate using text interface
-able to navigate through Unity interface (with icons, backgrounds, etc)

-Story / Game Design
-Continue to brainstorm game title, style, story
-Narrow down visual style for user interfaces, pixel art, backgrounds
-Writing character design, dialog, etc
-Brainstorming audio (music, sound effects)

TreeTest

Just pushed a test project I've been working on to GitHub: https://github.com/tdonlan/TreeTest/

I'll be writing another post that explains in more detail what this is, but the code is out there.

Pre-Alpha 0.0.2

Pre-Alpha 0.0.2
Play: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53832568/GameDev/0.0.2.html

Release Notes:
-Upgraded project to Unity 5
-Mouse-Wheel zooming of game board
-Configuration timestep for battle (enemies vs players)
-Fix to Haste/Slow abilities
-End Battle / Restart Battle buttons
-View Battle Log on Battle End screen
-Bug fix to AI that caused enemies to not act.
-Additional entries to battle log
-Fixes to Passive and Active Effects for items and abilities

GameDev Session - Pre-Alpha bug fixes

Here's a recording of the gamedev session from last night.

Things covered:
-Mousewheel zooming
-Variable timestep of player / enemy actions
-Fixes to multi-scene transitions with DontDestroyOnLoad / OnLevelWasLoaded
-Passive / Active Effects are now working for stats (Attack Ring, Haste, Slow)
-Some other minor bug fixes.

-New build of Pre-Alpha soon!