Friday 27 June 2008

First Particle Effect, EntityMemberState (HP,SP,MP and such) + many updates

Well, we're progressing at steam power level, my RPG-fan friends! We already have a thing we can proudly call a progressing and functional combat. You can die, you can have a Game Over, you can run out of Stamina so you have to wait, or run out of Mana so you can't cast spells. Yes, we have now an extensible effect program thing for the Skill Act Forms (spells, shots etc.) that uses J3DMovingEngine to handle jME based particle effects! Check the screenshot.

Also there's now a Camping button. If you press button 'C' in normal mode you switch to a camping mode with quicker passing time, Interception switched off, replenishing points like health and stamina (until you press C again or an AI initiated encounter surprises you at the start of the turn). The list of new things is not finished yet: we've just introduced Resistance values against skill act form impacts: Pierce, Bludgeon, Chemicals, Cold, Fire and Mental resistance for now! A new font is also replacing simple Verdana for a better more RPGish typography.

Well, yeah, we have now Experience Points as well, and it is accumulated upon each use of a skill! If you can get enough now you can even do a leveling of you experienced character! It's done with the help of the new shiny Character Leveling Window where you can pump some attribute points (which can raise Health, Mana, Stamina, Sanity, Moral points as well) and some skill points - which may lead to addition of new Skill Act Forms to you character if you've hit the right skill level needed for them.

Zphr is still working heavily on new 3D contents for jcrpg. The Boarman Thug is mostly complete with pain and death animation! He's working on a Boarman Mage currently. You've a more complete shot here about the tough thugs!

Much progress, working ahead to version 0.1 steadily. So loyal jcrpg people, get on and do some trumpeting around about jcrpg on forums you are at. We're about to get some serious innovated classic-RPG fun here! :D

Friday 20 June 2008

Working on EncounterLogic Turn Act Phase playback

We're continuing the accentuated work on turn act phase! Several new things designed to make it a working system. Just to mention a few: added multiple animation type definition for MovingModels, boosted the EncounterLogic with a real turn plan listing choices that units and player made ordered by the EvaluatorBase speed evaluator code. Success of a given skill use is now calculated by EvaluatorBase too. Another new thing is Impact and ImpactUnit that is calculated by EvaluatorBase - modifies actor's points and target's points (like health, stamina) on success.

Based on results different sounds and animations (etc. attack, pain) are played now when available for the model/skill. It's starting to round up well, although this part just needs tones of work as you can imagine. Ugh, not even mentioning the particle system and such that will be needed for spell effects. Lots of work ahead. But it's FUN! Watching the enemy attacking and struggling when hit by player's party members - a visual turn based game logic is (will be) just right before the nose of player. :D

Check the screenshot for a preview - also a faint glimpse at Zphr's brand new fantastically looking animated boarman thugs (modeled in Blender again) and the text box in the bottom shows combat messages of the previous round... Thanks Zphr for doing a great-great job with the boarmen! I will post more about the boarmen when it will be more complete.

All in SVN!

Monday 16 June 2008

Boosted, boosted encounter code

Dozens and dozens of little and bigger changes are being made to the encounter code, especially the part which abstracts the description of encounter unit topology - lineups in encounter information (containing all information of units and topology of the encounter), encounter unit (common superclass for EntityFragment [roaming groups] and PersistentMemberInstance [NPC]), encounter unit data (for representing a unit with more detailed data in a given encounter, temporary data like generated member instances, current lineup line) -- lotsa lotsa changes I'm not patient enough currently to describe (most of them are a lot of helpful classes to make encounter logic code's calls more uniform, adding generalizer helper classes etc.) ...

Well, the most important change that has been made is that now EntityInstance groups are refactored to contain only one type of units each, thus in an encounter a group can be represented with only one 3d unit (like in Heroes of might and magic for example). In 3d view now you'll see a 3d unit with billboard labels describing unit lineup line/type and current size to help easy measurement of encounter/combat situation. Check the screenshot. So lotsa changes, yeah! :-) And still working a lot now on the turn act phase logic + its visualization. Tough designing and coding times.

Also to make it a little more nicer, I've added partial transparency for the encounter and turn act phase windows - you can see the units behind the window giving a more aesthetic look, probably.

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