House fully reborn

Here we go again! :) WoodenHouse class is born to add some variety...you'll be able to spot a boarmen town based on the rooftype. :P Now only a bunch of things to fix on the to do list and we'll bombard you with the heavy weight release...

Town Update #2

Walls and such have been replaced by Zphr's models. The roof is still the old, because that's the hardest part to replace - it has some 3 different models in the old version which should be carefully replaced later. :)

Zphr's new town models, texture splatting in SVN

Check the screenshot, it tells the story! :) Soon, I'll add more parts of the already complete town model set done by Zphr. Texture blended with alphamasks is working now. So the town, steep mountain sides and climate edges look way cooler now. :)

It can't get any smoother :)

With a mindslicing TerrainBlock tricky extension the tiles are now using the normals as if it were a big normal TerrainBlock, not several ones - one per ground tile exactly.

In our cube based architecture the tiles have to be generated one by one, so normals were missing from the ground tiles because the separated TerrainBlock meshes cannot calculate with the vertex positions of the neighbouring tiles. Now the trick is - use the full RenderedArea's cube elements to get neighbor opposite/adjacent Cube's already present height data, create a one size bigger (9 points 3x3) heightmap and build vertices/normals from that heightmap for the original 4 cornered (2x2) heightmap's normal buffer. Uh, crazy to write down, but it's working. The shot shows how gooood. :) And it's not slow either luckily! :)

Tiling on a next level - smoother slopes

No, not releasing yet. It will take some more time because after discussing the tile based ground thing with Zphr who were in big favor of some better non-45 degree ground gen, I've found a quite goodly fitting way to add smoother slopes to the game - using jme's TerrainBlocks on a per tile basis and adding some additional 'cornerHeights' to the geo generated Cube class I could reach something like a thing seen in Transport Tycoons' tiled ground - quads with an angle. Check the screenshots. Some more tailoring will be needed before it's completely usable (trees, grass and such, plus override for economics), but I think it worths the time! :) We have been discussing this every now and then since the addition of 45 degree slopes, but now finally I could find the way that fits the classic cube based architecture of jcrpg! I'm quite happy about this fact...

Polishing before release + new 2D elements

Many small fixes and minor enhancements are being added to the codebase. New 2D elements were created by Zphr meanwhile. HUD main log is now 2 rows longer thanks to the 2D changes. These are all in SVN. Light effect was added to spells, turn act window inventory lists are supporting item icons as well now. Some new sounds were added. Encounter Grounds generation was perfected, adding Cave Encounter ground for example. Logging to console was moved completely to text file logging to help later bug investigation.

Nearing the next release

Well, although we're in summertime so I should expect low interest and low feedback still we're heading for the next release with ultra speed! Countless changes and improvements - again especially around combat. New sounds for spells, new UI graphics effects to easily spot who is doing things, flying 3D impact point counter for the enemies. Now you can quite easily follow the happenings of the combat with the cool turning encounter camera mode. :) Character sheet was improved too, added resistance point output to it. You can also try to leave a combat - in that turn you won't act, and if you survive enemy attacks you can escape. Neutralization social skills too have received real effect - you can neutralize enemies with social skills like Reasoning. :D Also some popups before starting a combat is added for better understanding of the situation. Zphr's actively helping out in the graphics part. Also Tranberry has created point bar graphics for the HUD bar elements! Thanks for them a lot!

Zphr's BoarMage ready to kill + Encounter Grounds :)

Zphr's übercool new Boarman Mage model is ready to rock the battlegrounds of jcrpg! It's completely suitable for a great battle - shooting fire sparks at you if you don't put them to sleep with your Fumes Of Twilight alchemy spell. :D

Another big change has been invented! Discussing encounter visualization with Zphr, we ended up with the idea to introduce Encounter Grounds. The tiled labyrinths and cities where you'll be walking around won't be enough empty and clear space for a goodly visible scenario, so it's a reasonable solution to have a separate 'walked zone' dependent Encounter scenario. Your view will be switched to a 'battle' ground like in many other classic games you were - but still you won't walk on that scene either, we still have the first person view and 'battle line' philosophy of Wizardry 7 and predecessor, instead of the 2d walk-around of other games like the Gold Box series AD&D game. The encounter scenario generated will depend on your actually walked ground's climate/economic zone. I've added a test screenshot with the jungle Encounter Grounds AND the BoarMage. Enjoy! :)

Meanwhile there's now a camera changing method too, in encounter mode, the camera will switch to the actually acting unit and after act the target unit. Cool, isn't it?

90% ready Skill Act Form architecture - skill/spell tree to design!

Well, the good thing is a really big part of the Skill Act Form system (at least for Turn act phase) is quite ready! This means that we have:

• basic impact form to decrease or increase all kind of points with the given act form - so you can create normal spells or combat attack forms that decrease stamina or health etc.
  
• weapons / ammunitions with BonusSkillActForms for spell and such effects - for creating artifacts (of course with attribute/resistance bonus modifiers too if you want that)
  
• armors body part dependent, that can also contain bonus Resistances/Attributes for enchantment
• State effects - so you can create long time effects for spells like sleep, poison, an elemental shield, long term burning spells etc.
• act forms can specify contra attributes/resistances that help the attacked resist them
• usable objects with bonus act forms - to create potions, kits etc. even with long term effects (with the help of the new State effects)

So basically it's time to create the different State Effects (like I've already added Sleep, ElementalResistance, PhysicalResistance), the system of spells and combat forms, a long list of artifacts, armors, potions and the like. Nice, isn't it? And the prettiest thing is - this all works well with the combat system - although AI is lacking a refined choice algorithm yet, it will bash you with the most powerful skill it has at hand. :D (Not that it won't prove efficient - you can easily die! ;-) ) But that AI decision mechanism too will change soon!

Qubodup's recent Boarman/Particle/Combat demo Video

Steady progress in the turn act phase/combat mode calculations. Armors, enchanted artifacts, potions, some new spells, more complex calculations were added in the meanwhile. You can check it in SVN. Qubodup @ freegamer has given a shot for a recent SVN revision and created a video on vimeo.com. It shows well off what's going on in jcrpg nowadays. He said it's a bit boring (boaring? :)), but I say it's cool that blog readers can have a look at this, so here it is!


JClassicalRPG revision 1279 from qubodup on Vimeo.

Inventory and BodyParts in the works

Equipping/unequipping armor to a certain bodypart is now working. Also there's now Body part and Body definitions for different creatures, so they may have different Body build-up. Body parts like legs, torso etc. define their size and criticality upon injury. In a combat chance of body part hit will be based on size of a body part. The criticality of injury is also defined by body part. A lot of inventory thing has been developed, working Give, Drop, Attach (ammo type to a weapon). There's even a draft Inventory Object Detail page to see details about an item.

Also party order can be changed now so the lineup in a combat can be different. It can be done by pressing F5 on the Party Character Order window. A lot of small fixes, and a memory optimization for UI text generation were done (it was eating away a huge amount of memory, I've added caching for font quads now). Steady progress for now, I think! :D