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Walls and such have been replaced by Zphr's models.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!