Fight!

It's come to the time to put fighting into the game! There are a number of things that will be different about fighting this time around from the original game. For those just joining us, the original game can be found here. The fighting is now going to be time-based instead of input-based. If you haven't selected a special ability or item by the time you need to have an attack in you will simply attack with your weapon, so it shouldn't be too hard to use.

Another thing that will change from the original is the accuracy. Missing happened far too much at lower levels. You could get a whole page of "you missed the bunny." "The bunny missed you" before getting a hit when you were just starting. There will still be a chance of missing attacks, but it will be relatively rare (5-10%).

I hope to have all the timing set up correctly before going to bed tonight, but actually doing damage, showing the numbers, and showing the damage animations will have to wait until at least tomorrow.

-Califer

P.S. Peter's been getting stuff done too. He should probably post soon.

They walk, They LIVE!!

It used to be that there were a few ugly little monsters that would sit on the ground and not do anything. You could get close to them, you could look at them, but that was all. The items were much better because you could pick them up and you could drink the potion to heal yourself.

Now the monsters are on the move! They'll randomly travel around their location using a path-finding algorithm. I've also put the path-finding algorithm on the player so that when you click on an item that isn't close to you the Hero will walk up to it and pick it up.

There were a few bugs because I had to rewrite some hefty sections of code, but it's crash-free now and almost ready to go on to the next step!


But what is the next step?

-Califer

P.S. Yes, I do know what the next step is. I just want to have something to talk about next time.

Cough Cough, Hack Hack

Funny thing about programming. You really need to be able to focus on what you're doing in order to get anything done. Funny thing about sick, it's really hard to focus on things correctly.

So, I haven't gotten a whole lot done this week. I just got over being sick yesterday, and my wife is still a little sick. Miracle of miracles, even though we were both sick for a week the baby never got sick!

But this isn't a blog about my home life, it's about Darkened Dreams 2! It WAS worked on! I cleaned up a problem on movement and got to the next level of overhauling the collision system. There are still a few bugs in it but I hope to finish those tonight and get auto-move working correctly.

-Califer

Achievement Unlocked!

We've got some good news! Darkened Dreams now takes up the first two slots in a Google search! Take THAT, emo poetry!

Also, a week or so ago I visited the local Independent Game Developers Association (IGDA) meeting and showed off what I've got for Darkened Dreams 2 so far. Two bloggers made mention of us! Check out Tales of the Rampant Coyote and MonkeyTime. Be sure to check them out, they were both pretty positive in their previews.

As for what's been going on here, I've been sick the last few days, as has my wife. Fortunately we've been able to keep little Celeste from getting sick. I haven't got a lot done, but I did notice that moving around wasn't quite to my liking so I've cleaned it up a bit. I'm hoping to have enough time to get the monsters to move around on their own before Saturday, but unfortunately I can't promise anything.

-Califer

Monsters!!!

Now we've got monsters showing up on the top screen! I even got a screenshot to show you how it looks now. The further a monster/item is away the more faded out it will be. I've also got some icons in to show how close you are to if (difference is color), plus a number to match on the map.

And how about those monsters? I think Peter needs to practice his art skills a bit . . . (kidding, of course. This is programmer art through and through.)

Fairly soon I'll be putting in creature movement. I already have it set up in the maker where you can choose what kind of AI it will use for moving around. Some examples are 'Timid', 'Aggressive', and 'Pack'. Once we've got them moving around all nice and everything it'll be time to beat the ever-loving crap out of them!

-Califer

Going the Distance

There's a big problem with trying to display the map as top down, but the top screen as side-view. That problem is that we need to show how the map matches up with the top screen. I've set up a system so that if you are far away from the item it appears in the distance at 1/4 the size, and when you get close enough it moves to a closer position. When I got it all working I tested it out and . . . it's busy. Really busy. Once the animals and such get added in it'll be a real mess. So now I need to undo all that stuff and get a new way to do it.

Peter had a good idea of how to handle it, and one of my friends from IGDA had another one. I'm going to try using the both of them to help get the idea across. Once that's all set up it's time to make the animals/monsters do the same!

-Califer

New Year!

I've got to admit, I haven't gotten a lot of work done on Darkened Dreams lately. Working a full-time job and having a baby around took a lot out of me :)

But I've got some more stuff done now! Just this week I got the mouse enabled, set up a button system, and made it so you can pick up items from the ground using the mouse.

I've also got an inventory screen basically built. I just need to add some button information into it so it can display your inventory and let you drag and drop items.

Should be fun!

-Califer