Items and Study

I now have all the data for the item types put into the game. This turned out to be a little more difficult than I originally thought because of items that can have varying values. Items with varying values have been put in mainly because of crafting skills. In other games where crafting is possible but no matter your skill you just can't make something better (such as in Rune Factory), I found myself stopping caring about making stuff. Once you've made the weapon there's no point in making another except for grinding. You could also do it for money, but I was already really rich by that point anyways.

Most of my crafting was done in Star Wars Galaxies back in the day before it completely changed around. In the crafting there you were able to put points towards what you wanted to work on (do you want the gun more precise or do you want it to be more sturdy?). You'll be able to do that in Darkened Dreams 2 with crafting tool, traps, jewelry, weapons, armor, food, potions, etc.

That's part of why the item-maker program isn't functional yet. The other reason is that it's been a long time since I used the GUI programming for C#. I've been studying up on that and I've got a good idea of how I'm going to do it, I just ran out of time this week.

Speaking of GUI, we've got something that looks really nice! Peter sketched up a mockup that I'm going to be basing the GUI on when we get to that point. The map will be a big part of the game, so we're hoping to get a basic map sketch from Fox pretty soon here.



On the Japanese Textbook front, I borrowed a book from the library that I'm going to buy. It's called "Making Sense of Japanese Grammar", and it's a very good book if you already have a working knowledge of Japanese. This made me put off chapter 2 until this week, but I have got all the studying and planning done and I am ready to start on chapter 2 tonight.

-Califer

I've decided that I'll be posting every Thursday with an update.

As a programmer I find that the hardest part of a project is getting it started. In this case, I need to brush up on my C# to really get things going, and I have to make sure that all my base objects will work with each other well before I can actually test to see if they do.

Although, I do have a good amount done already. I have a general idea how the story line runs (big chunks at the beginning and end are decided, as well as a few smatterings in the middle), and I have a fairly good idea what items, abilities, skills, classes, animals, monsters, etc. are going to be in the game.

It does feel a little like I'm biting off just enough to make chewing unpleasant. I spend half of my evenings working on Darkened Dreams 2, and the other half writing a Japanese textbook. They're both fairly early in, but I don't see myself dropping either of them.

This is my third time around on the Japanese textbook, and this time it's going to work. I've gone through numerous other books, both books in Japanese and textbooks for Japanese, and picked out everything that's worth teaching. It's all sitting in a database so that I can simply look up the concept I'm teaching and it tells me where all my sources are for it. This book is going to be awesome.

Then I remembered that this is the Darkened Dreams Game blog and not the Whatever Califer is Working on Blog. Anyways, I've got a lot planned for Darkened Dreams, and it's making steady progress. I should have an item-maker done by next week this time.

-Califer

P.S. We're going to be setting up the main ideas for the GUI tonight. This is another instance where it's great to have artists on the team, since I'd probably end up making it look just like Darkened Dreams 1 :P

We've got mention!

Even though we're just barely starting with the game we've been mentioned in the Rampant Games blog as a 2008 indie RPG! I guess we're really committed now :)

I've got all the main object types decided and got some programming in. I'm hoping to have a functioning game-maker program by the end of the month.

Also, we've got art! Here's a picture of a female scout that Peter drew. You'll be able to choose your gender, face, skin color, hair style, and hair color at the beginning of the game. Your outfit changes depending on what your class is. Odds are you'll be able to go to a hair stylist to change your hair style and/or color.

Lastly, Fox has been working on maps since I finally gave him enough details for the full starting island. Hopefully those will be posted soon.

-Califer

Changing things up from the start

The original plan was to keep pretty much the same gameplay as the original Darkened Dreams. After a bit of thought we've decided to change two major elements of gameplay.

First, things will no longer be text-based. We haven't decided exactly how things are going to work, since there are a lot of abilities, but we are going to make it as fun as possible.

Second, the map will no longer be blocky. Travel, items, NPCs, creatures, etc. will be smoothly placed on the map rather than all in a certain space.

Short post, but we'll have some artwork to show you soon!

-Califer

Darkened Dreams 2

Califer-

The Darkened Dreams Team is composed of three members; Califer (Programmer/Designer), Peter (Artist: Characters and Creatures) and Fox (Artist: Maps). We all work full time for a game company, but we also wanted to make this game outside of work as a freelance project.

We have begun work on a new game, currently titled Darkened Dreams 2. It is loosely based on the original Darkened Dreams (a free game located at http://www.cs.utah.edu/~mirci/Darkeneddreams) in that you are a hero summoned to a new world to fight against the darkness that is slowly destroying the land. You are not the only hero that has been called to this cause, so you will have opportunities to team up with other heroes and discover the secrets of your past.

Because we are just starting this project we don't want to give too much away. We will be giving out more information as the project develops. We look forward to seeing you around!