Considering possibilities

Hey there, long time no post here! I've been on a long discursion into the lands of music - composing a lot of tracks mainly for a fellow FOSS project scourge. That is a great roguelike 3D game. Also a few tracks for parpg the post apocalyptic RPG. As time passed I felt like I should return - anyway as currently I'm the only coder and manager of this project, not much happened to it. :)

Now I've reached a point when I can again concentrate on jClassicRPG. I'm currently considering the next things to do regarding the project. I'm checking what's going on in the jMonkeyEngine community (looks like a lot, a new 3.0 is under construction), and also wanting to create a kind of new roadmap. I'm planning to boost the quest/story/dialog/NPC (persistent characters in jCRPG terminology) part of the game in the next iteration along with adding a kind of roads to the world and better map to guide you in the zones/towns of the world. This will be the first priority.

After all this means that I want to take a kind of shortcut to have an earlier prototype of a 'playable' game and to foresee what the real shape of the game architecture might look like. And to be able to create some kind of more concrete concept for media content (3d,audio,structures) as well. The project needs this shortcut for another reason as well - to let the interested people use it as a way to create some kind of story (tho' not in the usual way as story modules are planned to be injected into the world generation [you won't define a full world with all the places, just certain elements of a story to be weaved into the randomly created world]) and add content for them in an earlier stage that I was planning before - this might catalize the community of the project. This is a slight deviation from my original plan where I was working on implementing a living world which would generate quests and story by itself - but that still might fit into the system in a later stage of development.

I'd like to see some more feedback regarding the usability of the months-ago released previous version as there's been really few replies regarding the call for test. (Well actually there was some useful feedback, thanks them, but it wasn't too much.)

Jasper Brownrigg has returned (he created our beloved main theme) with a nice new soundpack for character voices. I've committed it into the SVN already. Thanks Jasper!

Also jClassicRPG turned two years - just two months ago, eh. :) Happy Birthday! ;)

The 'Spring Greeter' release comes to life

Yes, we're ascending to the next level of our destiny through the obstacles of the great dev-eater beast of Tiredness and Desperation. We have entered the sanctuary of the miraculous Release again. Here we stand astounded and in silence, holding back breath. We are aware that something great surprising and of elemental effect may happen anytime. As we are there awaiting for some never-ending minutes, a booming sound starts to cite something strange, slowly - pressing each word. Listening carefully we try to memorize what's being told:

"
- New monsters and animals (by tidbit)
- New area type Maze (models by tidbit), maze generation
- Audio system enhanced, zone dependent music playback
- Main theme music added (by Jasper Brownrigg)
- Battle and background music for climate zones (by Pal Illes)
- Cave background music (by Marcus Rasseli)
- Storage unlocking/looting interface added, chests with traps and fix loot added to maze area
- Enhanced world map (F1)
- A heap of new portraits (by Grumbel, and public domain organized by qubodup)
- Voice profile selection for character creation with one new male sound-set (voice act by Magnulus)
- Support for normal/spec mapping for static models
- Options menu settings (by goq66)
- Optimized loading/rendering algorithm, moving to jME 2.0
- Texture atlas technique, shadow mapping, DDS textures added, memory optimizations
- Many bugfixes (e.g. game fixed for use on Intel gfx under Linux)
- Quicker loading of game, addition of 'Please Wait' panel
- Tested video drivers under Linux now include nVidia, AMD/ATi, intel
"

Right after finishing these words, a glowing globe elevates from out of the darkness of the Sanctuary. Yeah, now you know what awaits you, jcrpg's next sneak-peek enchantment is in your hands like a crystal ball. It may be that it helps you to look into a distant Future... so let the Trial begin!

Great Heroes, come and test your wits - play the game or create your own tormenting beasts! It's high time - because combat is ready to begin NOW!

Candidates for Testing and Modeling - don't hesitate!

PS.: Voice acting for the different player character voice profiles are highly welcome. Details here. As usual 3D art is just as welcome. Visit the forum for details.

Further care for the world map and new music

After fixing the recent Intel woes I've been working to make even easier to percept what's depicted on the World Map (raised by pressing F1). Now it consists of a lot more pixels in size, takes up a larger percentage of your screen and your position sign and the town signs are not fully covering the geography coloring, so you can have an idea what kind of area you and the towns are. Still there's a lot of room for improvement, but for this release this will suffice. I'm considering the last steps to shape up the next test release package, so hopefully it will happen soon! :)

Meanwhile Marcus Rasseli our new music contributor's mountain cave music has been integrated! Thanks Marcus!!

Intel video driver 3D issues under Linux

Currently I'm busy with resolving the recently detected Intel openGL + Linux related issues of jClassicRPG. I'm progressing well, I could identify a way to prevent instant and notorious crashes with xf86-video-intel driver under jME. Also I've detected that DDS support is a missing feature in the driver, so I'll have to add alternative textures for the ones in DDS format and add some tricky resource locator configuration to override them when DISABLE_DDS is specified in the configuration file. I'm happy that now I'm able to test the game with Intel driver as well, though performance of the GM965 is quite mediocre compared to those of the Nvidia GF6200Go (of course it's not a surprise, these video chips are known to be less performant 3D wise).
PS: patching the jME TextureKey and TextureManager to fall back to png/jpg if DDS is disabled, and adding fallback textures as well, I've finally brought up the project to shape with intel graphics...though it still is a lot more unstable than on any card of the two other major brand of video cards - probably due to the overload of 3D and driver problems?!

Total facelift of jcrpg's project webpage by Tranberry

YES! Tranberry our great 2d gfx designer at freegamedev.net community did it again! A total face-lift of the previously very simple webpage of the project at sourceforge.net. It's still static, but the design is just superb quality by my opinion! It's with fancy html+css combo. Go and check it here. (On a side note, I'm still tweaking the codes before the approaching release, so soon it might happen!)

Monster 'Evilrip' integrated, new creature sounds in SVN

The recently contributed monster by tidbit baptized as Evilrip, a two legged, armless, reptile-like winged fury is now haunting the halls of Chaos Mazes! The other monsters previously added (Plant'o'bite and Scorp'o'holder) and Evilrip recently have found the Fountain of Tones so now they have their unique threatening voice... the poor adventurers that get near to them will hardly forget the sonic experience! ;-)
PS: Recent reports tell that boarman tribes are hit by economic issues, so at some populations the citizens started to build huts instead of the well built, but expensive and resource eating wooden houses. Although it's clear that this new technological unit (invented by tidbit) might catalyze their expansive politics, if they ever had such.

Polishing, ironing out bugs, recent donations

I was concentrating on testing the new features and fixing the bugs that got into the code. At the moment I'm in the process of fixing the world map thingy which seems to be incorrect regarding the geography representation. I plan to iron out some remaining bugs while freezing the addition of new features into the game till the release of the next prealpha test package. Recently mvrasseli has come to the forums of jcrpg and has started to work on a new piece of music for the mountain caves. You can check the progress here.

Good news is that the latest donation campaign is starting to spin up with two recent donators (Juan and Josh, thanks!) sending some coins (till now a total of $30), catalyzing the 'Free the CC-BY-SA-NC soundtracks to CC-BY-SA' thing that is going on. After these now $20 is requested to free the first track from the NonCommercial term. I've added a little section, so that you can see the virtual budget of the project on the left side now under the 'Project Budget' panel.

PS: World map fixed. Now positioning is correct and I managed to fix the population pixels too. White shows normal villages, yellow shows dangerous maze populations - check it on the screenshot. :D
PS2: First $50 reached, tomorrow I will relicense the first track (The March On Ice) under CC-BY-SA (it's too late here now 11PM :)).