Constructing the New Game screens

Started to tread the path to a new game with a created party. This is useful for several purposes: this will enhance EntityMember code wrapped around attributes and skills and such, will create the base class/race concept of jcrpg, and also makes necessary to create java code for complex input UI elements like buttons, lists, image selector, labels etc. All of these things are interesting I think, I enjoy creating the new concept of screens and internal mechanics. :) PS: I forgot to mention that the intent is to create a UI that is easily usable through and only through keyboard. ;) (I know, I know, but there is and will be a big lot of thinking how to make this comfortable, easy to use.)

UI for the party - 2D portraits needed

I was doing some kind of prototyping for character portrait display on the HUD. It's checked into SVN, but really it does not relate to anything coded as characters and classes, just a plain UI coding with hardcoded image paths and such. But I will publicize it, so to let people know that jCRPG is now in need of 2D fantasy portraits for the characters! As you can see I've used public domain portrait paints not really related to fantasy or classic RPGs to demonstrate how the screen will look alike (more or less, :-) as there will be some more gfx for HP and such bars and some more frames for it).

So hereby I call classic RPG fans with some major or minor talent in 2D painting to the cause! If you can, please, create some portraits, share it with us and release it under CC-by-sa / GPL or other free license! You can upload things at the contribution forum after registering to it. If you can point out already created fantasy portrait ( or pictures containing quality human(oid) faces :-) ) media under free license, don't hesitate to share it here as a comment or at the forum.

Xstreamely fast development for Save/Load

Java is powerful and robust. Now again it's demonstrated with the help of XStream the extremely easy to use XML serializer under BSD (opensource) license. Thus with a little care GameStateContainer is converted to an XML hierarchy containing all data and reading it back is just another use of XStream. I had to add some Java "transient" keys here and there to avoid serialization. Now a "single slot" save/load is available, with zipped XML save file. I will soon improve it to multi slot save-load which is more comfortable for the generic use. But the proof of concept is ready again. There's a pitfall although - if Java class fields and hierarchy changed the old save/game becomes incompatible with the new game loader. Anyway I think it will work great when jcrpg becomes stable but this is a very important thing to care about later - plan carefully the gamestate classes and only change them when its truly necessary.

All this is checked into SVN repository. Brave ones can test it. You can continue your wandering around the world if you had to quit previously but saved the game. :-D

PS.: multislot save/load ready in SVN, check the screenshot.

About the look and all

theotherhiveking one of jcrpg's oldest donor of models and fan has raised a question about the look of jcrpg. Thinking about it while answering I happened to find it important to clear this thing up in a more highlighted way, in form of a blog post quoting the thing.

theotherhiveking:
"...make the graphics prettier.. actually al those smalls bumps look really bad. I would make them a LOT bigger, not taller.
Also smoothing would help, mountains look like pyramids..."

me:
"Mountain look might be improved later but the classic cubic tiling used in jcrpg definitely adds a cubish or pyramid like look for many things.

The bumps cannot be really bigger, because tiles that make the soil are again smaller cubes, it cannot be improved programatically, and neither would fit the classic style jcrpg aims at. So it will never look like modern RPGs, because it's not a goal of jcrpg."


So it might turn down some people that jcprg is aiming at a style that is non-realistic or modern enough and in general can be found weird, but all the architecture and programming of the game is so much wrapped around 3d cubic tiling of the classic genre style (Bard's Tale, Wizardry series) that it cannot really deviate into a direction of the modern 3D buildup of games like Oblivion and such. Hope it won't scare away people. Maybe it is something different than the current style and main stream, but I'm really optimistic that this gives a strong character to the game that actually can be loved if you get used to the style.

Main Menu, GameState and such

I've added main menu to the game, pressing F10 brings it up. You can restart your wandering around now, jcrpg reinitializes 3d core and game state when doing so. On sf.net someone asked for screensaving button, I've found that jME can bind it easily to a key, so I've set F12 for that purpose. You can use it to make shots of the game. It will save a png in the root dir of the game. GameStateContainer class was created to contain all the things that should be saved and loaded in the game. Refactored much of the code to add it. Now I'll add save/load to/from XML file format, and right after I'll start to create the first primitive version of character creation pages - nothing serious but we are approaching a state where we cannot go further without attributes and skills.

The "Animal Outside" Release

It's been a while. Well, I've stabilized positioning of encountered beings, put some turning to face the player in it and fixed some things here and there like adding an encounter acknowledging dialog (first primitive interactive menu in the game :-) ). So I thought it's time to unleash it. There's plenty of things to code that opened up while connecting things together in Ecology/Entity*/J3DMovingEngine/PlayerTurnLogic classes, so hard work ahead...closing up on encounter choices, skills, handling danger and combat situations...

Headlights: "Ecology System and ecology generation with 3 type of animal packs (gorilla, wolf, warthog) was added, Encounters' system draft version was implemented, World geography generation was boosted with Cave and River addition, Animated /rigged model loading (Gorilla), Text box log and choice box window added to UI elements, World map colorization was extended, 'UI ruining shadows' bug fixed."

Download, run and report back! ;-) See ya!

Draft version of Encounter in SVN

You can check it out. Very simple rules of grouping and such but it gives a hint how it will look alike. 3D encounter visualization very primitive version is also in SVN. Each turn the units that you may face will be added to the 3D scenario while previous turns' units are removed. They will walk in circles and no calculation for surface and such. But I count it as the first dynamic game play experience because when it will get complete it will work mostly like that draft version: walking, reaching next turn, engine counts encounter possibilities, player faces encounters deciding what to do, doing friendly or hostile acts, reaching end of encounter, walking ... ad infinitum or death. :-) and the same applies for AI encounters between the non-player units.

...and so happened that jcrpg developer was as brave as to say jcrpg reached an important theoretic milestone. Soon(er or later) a release will follow too.