Improved Combat System and Targeting

I've tidied up the code for the combat system to make it more efficent and easier to understand by removing all involvement of the quick slots from the main game class and integrated them as methods in the actionBar class.

I also reworked the targeting system so that there is just one global target variable as part of the player class instead of each mob having their own targeted flag. this will save much confusion in the future, it also allowed me to draw the target graphics without actually having to attack the mob and instead just show by clicking on them or the player.

I've added two spells to test out using magic ingame, one is a light healing spell and the other is a fireball spell for attacking mobs at long range.

I've also added a new graphic for the custom cursor to show that the cursor is over a sprite and that a move from the actionBar is selected.

Escape now also clears any target or actionBar selection.

next step I have planned to do is implementing the ability for mobs to chase the player or run upto the player and attack if in agro range and also join in fights if the mob links and player is attacking another mob of the same type nearby.

check out the next video for a demonstration of current progress.

New House Style and the Elevation System

Massive update post this time. I've been busy putting the Elevation system into play with the use of a new 'Sand' style house. This style of house will be the design that Skaerijj use as their homes. I was going for a sort of desert/arabian style, the graphics for the houses are far from finished but at a completed enough stage to demonstrate. I've still got to create all the little details for the houses like tent flaps hanging off the side of the house and gutters etc. And I've yet to design a new door for them if it will have doors at all, have not decided yet.

What I've designed is a house that has a flat walkable roof with stairs on the outside of the house to get up onto it. The elevation system works with this house by triggering an 'event' that increases the players elevation allowing the roof to display while over it.

I'm currently uploading a new video demonstrating the new features/graphics.

The major notes to make about this update is the alterations to the collision map. Originally there was only one collision map, now I've rewritten the entire content pipeline to load a collision map for every layer with their own elevation. The reason for this major overhaul is because there was going to be an issue of collision data on the ground layers blocking the player from moving while on the roof or vice versa.

I've also added a new 'Event Layer' map to each layer as well that records any event triggers and their effects. This is currently used only to increase/decrease player elevation but in the future will be used to trigger many different kind of events such as displaying dialogs or playing particular sounds.

By now the large scale maps I'm using are taking a very long time to save so next thing I'm going to work on is a progress bar for when saving and loading maps, just so I know its still doing something and not just crashed as the whole game feels like its stopped working when saving.

anyway, check out the new video when it shows up.

Sprites and the Content Pipeline

Been awhile since I've last posted. I've been spending the couple of days getting my head around how to work with the content pipeline in regards to saving and loading of npcs and other sprites using XML documents. Its been very complicated work and a nightmare debugging but I'm proud to announce that I've implemented the ability to save and load npcs and other sprites using the content pipeline successfully which brings me to my next announcement:

Houses! I've designed some Ultima7 perspective style wall and roof graphics and added support to create houses through the editor. I didnt make up a new video demonstration this time as creating a house is quite a time consuming process at the moment but I've added a new screenshot that shows a simple, already created house.

For now I'm going to work on speeding up the creation of houses as right now it does take a long time, they use pixel perfect positioning instead of clipping to the tile grid as the walls are a different shape to the tiles. But perhaps I'll work on making it so the walls clamp together when nearby each other to get positioning correct instead of carefully placing each wall exactly right.

And thanks for those who helped out with the sprite flickering issue, its now also been resolved.

Blog underway

Hello all, finally got around to creating this blog. I'm planning to use it to create a journal of the development progress of Destined Rings, my computer Roleplaying Game (RPG) that I am developing.

The game is still in a very early development stage, I've added a video demonstrating what has been implemented so far. Basically I've added the beginnings of an overlay (HUD) for both the game and editor and am working on implementing the editor menu options with New Map and New Layer dialogs completed already.

I've got help from an artist to create custom high-quality sprites to replace the temporary ones that I currently use as a placeholder to get things underway.

Anyway, I'll post more about the actual game concepts soon.