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I decided to make my own turn based game much like Pokemon/Yu Gi Oh as a learning experience. Tentative features include multiplayer, AI, and a stable graphic system. I actually don't even have a name for it yet. Meh. I'll think of one soon.
I plan to release this when it's 'done-ish' and keeping it completely open-sourced so someone can see how I did things.
Log 1:
Seeing as my technical artistic skills are a load of poopy-kaka, I decided to create a perl script that ransacked a Japanese trading card game's picture files and cut out the art. So, I'm sorry Square Enix for stealing your Guardian Cross images! They're all pretty nice and what not. I promise not to make this game a commercial product!
Using Java, so I stuck to the old library I was taught in high school. Something called the swing.awt library. It uses JFrames to create image spaces and supports .png and alpha layers, which helps a lot. Still, had to open up Photoshop and modify a ton of pictures to make it look just right.
Four hours later, I have a prototype battle set up. Text took forever to fix, and I have no idea how to make it scroll so the Battle Log just clears itself out whenever it gets full.
There are absolutely no animations yet so far. Just a single sprite image that flashes on and off when I used an attack [which was also dummied. The moves list doesn't really exist quite yet.]
Log 2:
I hated my UI. It was spacious but looked cramped. I made another bot that went through all the images and resized them to 295x375. The party icons are now more spaced out and equally spaced. I also started implementing a move list and the move tab is not functional. Sorta. At this point only mouse clicks works, but I aim to implement some arrow key controls later.
Implemented tooltips, but realized they were extremely obstructive. Will fix later.
Log 3:
I implemented basic keyboard controls, and removed the tooltip. The current active monster now has a glowy yellow thing around it's portrait. You have to now select an attack, which displays information on the selected move, select a target and then hit confirm. The result is a cleaner and more intuitive UI... I think.
This update took the longest. Because you can attack anyone in play there had to be a way to display health information without actually clicking on the portrait. So the party portraits are also HP bars. Chunks of the pictures turn red as the monster takes damage until it is completely killed.
I realize at this point that JFrames aren't gonna cut it. They're slow as hell. Someone suggested to me that I should try out Qt for Java. So far it looks promising, if anyone knows a good library for GUI please let me know.
Log 4:
Busy week at university. Updates will be slower now
Implemented a Victory screen [yeah, you couldn't really 'win' before. now you can!]... which means I need to implement a defeat screen. Hmm.
Pseudo loots now work. I say pseudo because items don't really exist yet. And I'm still unsure how I will implement EXP in this game. Perhaps you can choose how to allot them and everytime you win a battle you gain more points to allot? I think I will go with that for now.
More updates coming!
Please let me know how I can improve the UI and what not.
And yeah, the search of a good GUI library in Java continues! Please let me know if you know of a good one.
Log 5:
Implemented map overview system, finalized game concepts.
Map Overview:
This is a LOT more work than you think it is, especially with what I wanted in my game.
First off, each and every new save you make on this game will have completely randomized areas, with completely randomized loots, spawns, paths, locations, what-have-you.
That means, in one game you may stumble on an abandoned ruin within the first few minutes of the game or you may find one much much later. Instead, you may find volcanic areas, jungles, cities long abandoned, graveyards... what have you.
So, in my graph algorithms I had to generate maps 'as you explore'. I also had to weight each 'tile' of the map. Dead-ends and places deeper within hostile territory will have much higher chances of having loot chests or 'special events'. Likewise, weaker monsters and more lesser loot are found on the outskirts. Bonuses are given out on the complete exploration of each sub-area. It's risky to completely explore out deep sections of an area, but the bonuses and rewards are more than worth it. This brings me to my second topic, the game concepts.
Game Concepts:
Battles and Saves:
Battles are brutal, each will [ideally] have you just barely winning with only one monster left with barely any health. You can 'heal' your monsters after battle with Spirit, but you only have a fixed amount. The higher level the monster you are healing, the more Spirit it takes to heal. Spirit is gained by winning battles, exploring areas, random loot chests, or completing quests [not yet implemented, but this is next haha]. You will have to plan out when you recharge your monsters, when to sacrifice them for more Spirit, or when to summon a bunch of new ones to replace your damaged old ones. If you lose a battle, you will have to be able to recharge one of your monsters completely. If you cannot afford this, it's game over.
Following in the footsteps of Faster than Light, you can only save your progress and quit. Loading a save game will 'delete' it. Death is permanent. On death, your party is saved and scored, this party can be used on multiplayer against other players [not yet implemented, will do this last I think.] Some players [including me, and I even made this game] will Game Over within the first five battles. How far can you go?
Battles are highly strategic. Attacks will target a 'position' on the enemy's party side. Monsters can swap positions as well, and the AI will try to keep their glass cannons protected with tanks by swapping the positions of their monsters repeatedly to avoid taking heavy damage. Attacks take time to charge, some attacks are almost instant while some take more than 2 or 3 turns to follow through. The ones that take longer to charge may be able to attack multiple positions, inflict status effects on the enemy party, or buff your own monsters.
Upon defeated an enemy party, you will gain Spirit, EXP, and items. EXP is stored in a pool and you can choose how to allocate it. If you are low in Spirit, a strategy to conserve it while you're looking for more is to hold off leveling your monsters because it is cheaper to heal lower level monsters. You can level up any monster you have in your party, so that level 1 monster you have just summoned doesn't have to be used in battle to get more powerful.
Items:
There are several types of items:
Skill Crests: Gives a monster a new skill [or levels them up if they have it already], as long as it is compatible with the monster and it meets the stat requirements.
Summoning Stones: Summons a new random monster based on the quality of the stone. You will most likely end up using the lower quality summons as either tanks for your higher level monsters or sacrificial fodder for more spirit.
Essences: Increases stats of monsters.
With these items, you can make your dream team of monsters haha.
Fusion:
Monsters can be fused. There are two types of fusion. I don't have names for them yet.
The first type takes a base monster and a sacrificial monster. The base monster gains some of the skills from the sacrifical monster, some stats, and also increases its' Max Level.
The second type takes two monsters and forges a new one entirely. Some monsters can only be summoned, while some monsters can only be forged. Hopefully you can figure out the way to make some really powerful monsters!
Conclusion:
Hopefully this will make you guys want to try out the beta that's coming out SOON(tm) haha. Battles are scary and challenging, but rewarding and fun. Exploration is rewarded and encouraged, but you have to be smart about it.
I wanted to capture the feeling that Realm of the Mad God and Faster than Light had created. Where life is cheap, mistakes are punished, and there are no second chances. yet you will come back for more and more because it's fun, challenging, and rewarding.
Other Notes:
At this point, music works fine, no sound effects yet but I am on the search for them. I'm at 76 different monsters, 69 different attacks/skills/stuff [THANK YOU MAPLESTORY.], 26 different items, 6 different zones with their own theme and backgrounds.
I am currently working on the graphical portion of items, monster stat pages, improving the map overview visuals, securing/encrypting the save files [you can actually 'cheat' by finding the save file and copying it and renaming it. when you die you just rename it back and continue on. You can also open it up and change values around. I want to fix this first before releasing the 'beta'.] and will soon move on to finding some audio files.
I should also look into trying to find bugs...
I need help with:
Finding an appropriate icon for the player on the Map Overview, along with icons for treasure and what not. I am in no way a good artist and cannot draw to save myself. The map overview graphically is... meh to me. I want to improve it and will take any and all suggestions/critique. PLEASE HALP MEH.
Thanks for reading!
Log 6:
Began creating new UI pieces and installed new fonts. Small log, but it's noteworthy.
Added finishing touches to Monster Info, Map Overview, and Fusion screens. More screenshots incoming, too tired =_________=
Acknowledgements:
I plan to release this when it's 'done-ish' and keeping it completely open-sourced so someone can see how I did things.
Log 1:
Seeing as my technical artistic skills are a load of poopy-kaka, I decided to create a perl script that ransacked a Japanese trading card game's picture files and cut out the art. So, I'm sorry Square Enix for stealing your Guardian Cross images! They're all pretty nice and what not. I promise not to make this game a commercial product!
Using Java, so I stuck to the old library I was taught in high school. Something called the swing.awt library. It uses JFrames to create image spaces and supports .png and alpha layers, which helps a lot. Still, had to open up Photoshop and modify a ton of pictures to make it look just right.
Four hours later, I have a prototype battle set up. Text took forever to fix, and I have no idea how to make it scroll so the Battle Log just clears itself out whenever it gets full.
There are absolutely no animations yet so far. Just a single sprite image that flashes on and off when I used an attack [which was also dummied. The moves list doesn't really exist quite yet.]
Log 2:
I hated my UI. It was spacious but looked cramped. I made another bot that went through all the images and resized them to 295x375. The party icons are now more spaced out and equally spaced. I also started implementing a move list and the move tab is not functional. Sorta. At this point only mouse clicks works, but I aim to implement some arrow key controls later.
Implemented tooltips, but realized they were extremely obstructive. Will fix later.
Log 3:
I implemented basic keyboard controls, and removed the tooltip. The current active monster now has a glowy yellow thing around it's portrait. You have to now select an attack, which displays information on the selected move, select a target and then hit confirm. The result is a cleaner and more intuitive UI... I think.
This update took the longest. Because you can attack anyone in play there had to be a way to display health information without actually clicking on the portrait. So the party portraits are also HP bars. Chunks of the pictures turn red as the monster takes damage until it is completely killed.
I realize at this point that JFrames aren't gonna cut it. They're slow as hell. Someone suggested to me that I should try out Qt for Java. So far it looks promising, if anyone knows a good library for GUI please let me know.
Log 4:
Busy week at university. Updates will be slower now
Implemented a Victory screen [yeah, you couldn't really 'win' before. now you can!]... which means I need to implement a defeat screen. Hmm.
Pseudo loots now work. I say pseudo because items don't really exist yet. And I'm still unsure how I will implement EXP in this game. Perhaps you can choose how to allot them and everytime you win a battle you gain more points to allot? I think I will go with that for now.
More updates coming!
Please let me know how I can improve the UI and what not.
And yeah, the search of a good GUI library in Java continues! Please let me know if you know of a good one.
Log 5:
Implemented map overview system, finalized game concepts.
Map Overview:
This is a LOT more work than you think it is, especially with what I wanted in my game.
First off, each and every new save you make on this game will have completely randomized areas, with completely randomized loots, spawns, paths, locations, what-have-you.
That means, in one game you may stumble on an abandoned ruin within the first few minutes of the game or you may find one much much later. Instead, you may find volcanic areas, jungles, cities long abandoned, graveyards... what have you.
So, in my graph algorithms I had to generate maps 'as you explore'. I also had to weight each 'tile' of the map. Dead-ends and places deeper within hostile territory will have much higher chances of having loot chests or 'special events'. Likewise, weaker monsters and more lesser loot are found on the outskirts. Bonuses are given out on the complete exploration of each sub-area. It's risky to completely explore out deep sections of an area, but the bonuses and rewards are more than worth it. This brings me to my second topic, the game concepts.
Game Concepts:
Battles and Saves:
Battles are brutal, each will [ideally] have you just barely winning with only one monster left with barely any health. You can 'heal' your monsters after battle with Spirit, but you only have a fixed amount. The higher level the monster you are healing, the more Spirit it takes to heal. Spirit is gained by winning battles, exploring areas, random loot chests, or completing quests [not yet implemented, but this is next haha]. You will have to plan out when you recharge your monsters, when to sacrifice them for more Spirit, or when to summon a bunch of new ones to replace your damaged old ones. If you lose a battle, you will have to be able to recharge one of your monsters completely. If you cannot afford this, it's game over.
Following in the footsteps of Faster than Light, you can only save your progress and quit. Loading a save game will 'delete' it. Death is permanent. On death, your party is saved and scored, this party can be used on multiplayer against other players [not yet implemented, will do this last I think.] Some players [including me, and I even made this game] will Game Over within the first five battles. How far can you go?
Battles are highly strategic. Attacks will target a 'position' on the enemy's party side. Monsters can swap positions as well, and the AI will try to keep their glass cannons protected with tanks by swapping the positions of their monsters repeatedly to avoid taking heavy damage. Attacks take time to charge, some attacks are almost instant while some take more than 2 or 3 turns to follow through. The ones that take longer to charge may be able to attack multiple positions, inflict status effects on the enemy party, or buff your own monsters.
Upon defeated an enemy party, you will gain Spirit, EXP, and items. EXP is stored in a pool and you can choose how to allocate it. If you are low in Spirit, a strategy to conserve it while you're looking for more is to hold off leveling your monsters because it is cheaper to heal lower level monsters. You can level up any monster you have in your party, so that level 1 monster you have just summoned doesn't have to be used in battle to get more powerful.
Items:
There are several types of items:
Skill Crests: Gives a monster a new skill [or levels them up if they have it already], as long as it is compatible with the monster and it meets the stat requirements.
Summoning Stones: Summons a new random monster based on the quality of the stone. You will most likely end up using the lower quality summons as either tanks for your higher level monsters or sacrificial fodder for more spirit.
Essences: Increases stats of monsters.
With these items, you can make your dream team of monsters haha.
Fusion:
Monsters can be fused. There are two types of fusion. I don't have names for them yet.
The first type takes a base monster and a sacrificial monster. The base monster gains some of the skills from the sacrifical monster, some stats, and also increases its' Max Level.
The second type takes two monsters and forges a new one entirely. Some monsters can only be summoned, while some monsters can only be forged. Hopefully you can figure out the way to make some really powerful monsters!
Conclusion:
Hopefully this will make you guys want to try out the beta that's coming out SOON(tm) haha. Battles are scary and challenging, but rewarding and fun. Exploration is rewarded and encouraged, but you have to be smart about it.
I wanted to capture the feeling that Realm of the Mad God and Faster than Light had created. Where life is cheap, mistakes are punished, and there are no second chances. yet you will come back for more and more because it's fun, challenging, and rewarding.
Other Notes:
At this point, music works fine, no sound effects yet but I am on the search for them. I'm at 76 different monsters, 69 different attacks/skills/stuff [THANK YOU MAPLESTORY.], 26 different items, 6 different zones with their own theme and backgrounds.
I am currently working on the graphical portion of items, monster stat pages, improving the map overview visuals, securing/encrypting the save files [you can actually 'cheat' by finding the save file and copying it and renaming it. when you die you just rename it back and continue on. You can also open it up and change values around. I want to fix this first before releasing the 'beta'.] and will soon move on to finding some audio files.
I should also look into trying to find bugs...
I need help with:
Finding an appropriate icon for the player on the Map Overview, along with icons for treasure and what not. I am in no way a good artist and cannot draw to save myself. The map overview graphically is... meh to me. I want to improve it and will take any and all suggestions/critique. PLEASE HALP MEH.
Thanks for reading!
Log 6:
Began creating new UI pieces and installed new fonts. Small log, but it's noteworthy.
Added finishing touches to Monster Info, Map Overview, and Fusion screens. More screenshots incoming, too tired =_________=
Acknowledgements:
Monster images were ransacked from a game called Guardian Cross.
Background images are from deviantArtists put under an underpainting filter to standardize their looks.
Sprites courtesy of Maplestory [LOL...]
Background images are from deviantArtists put under an underpainting filter to standardize their looks.
Sprites courtesy of Maplestory [LOL...]