Pyrian on 27/2/2015 at 05:58

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Scrolling is more complicated than it seems. My scroll update function is almost 100 lines of code. :p And I'm not even slowing it down as you approach the target position, like most implementations do (so it doesn't look as smooth).

demagogue on 27/2/2015 at 11:16

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I'm still picking at my French Revolution simulator.

I'm getting pulled in two different directions what I want to do with it. Generally I want it to be quite sandbox, like a Paradox game or Dwarf Fortress, where you can go down different tracks, the main one being trying to become the next ruler of France (or see the restoration through if you swing that way), but also alternative tracks like become the ArchBishop of Paris, or build a commercial/criminal empire with whatever your profession is. I'm also planning a set of NPCs the player is in competition with, vying for the same main positions (as opposed to spawned or quest AI who are just there as disposable fodder).

But a part of me would like to still have some storytelling elements and something to actually do as you're walking around the streets of 1780s Paris. The player is going to be able to walk or ride horseback around town, deal with spawned AI on the streets, enter buildings (with procedurally generated interiors & stats, possibly missions), and have dialogs with NPCs.

There are a few paradigms here. For a game like Hardwar, there's missions you do for a guy that take you through a story, but on the side you're doing Elite-like sandbox trading. There are games where you do short mission threads, most of which for their own sake, but some of which add up to a story, like GTA (old and new), X3, Skyrim even. And there are roguelikes where the missions themselves are randomized and sandbox, but there are some story points (or bosses) and you're making general progress towards something, like oldschool Rogues, Pixel Dungeon I'm playing these days, Transcendence, FTL. Or even more in the sandbox direction, but with events that tend to add up to tell their own story, is something like Dwarf Fortress. I haven't played Sunless Sea yet, but I'm curious what it does. I could see some mission or narrative structure to get the player started on some otherwise sandboxy tracks too like the way Skyrim missions are structured to get people into different factions and making progress in them. Like are you a farmer planting wheat, a baker buying it and setting up shops all over town, a priest wooing rich parishoners, a bandit, a police or soldier keeping the peace in the erupting chaos, a noble trying to keep his head, a sans-culottes trying to take it ... Whatever you are, getting a reputation among your peers for doing what you do well. I know I want something, and I'm tempted by different approaches, but I need to find the right one for this game. I have to say, though, since no marketer is looking over my shoulder, I'm tempted to go the Dwarf Fortress route and let people go to into as much depth as they want to go down (beyond the simple Elite model where you just pick Solider, Trader, or Pirate). Then it's "scored" like a Paradox game. I mean, there's not an absolute score, but there's a relative score of reputation from your peers, along with maybe money, and the basic game is to improve your position better than when you started. But otherwise the game isn't going to tell you exactly what to do.

Of course, aside from the design debate is the question of game mechanics. Sometimes I feel like, when I'm writing down my ideas, I'm starting to derail from thinking about what the game is going to actually be doing each frame.

Edit: Image
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2098[/ATTACH]

Renzatic on 27/2/2015 at 22:58

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Considering the huge, huge, HUGE advances Blender has made over the last couple of years, I figured it was high time I get around to learning it's ins and outs in a big, bad way.

Also, I'm snowed in, and don't have anything else to do.

So I hit up BlenderCookie, downloaded about 17GB of tutorials, and started making my way through them.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Plane.jpg) Here's an airplane.

Honestly, I'm amazed they're giving it away for free.

Pyrian on 5/3/2015 at 02:33

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Incremental development just bit me again.

Basically I'm chunking as small as I can, and testing as frequently as I can. But very little is being built with later steps in mind. I mean, a lot of little basics are there. But most of the code is the bare minimum to get things working in the current build. Sometimes this is really good, like when I decided to change how levels would load just before that feature even went in. I'm certainly glad I hadn't gone very far down the original path. But other times I link code without remembering that it was created with simpler assumptions and needs to be reworked - especially in cases like level loading, which touches almost everything.

Pyrian on 7/3/2015 at 17:01

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Almost a year, recently. Did a lot as a kid, too, with Applesoft Basic and Turbo Pascal.

I actually have an Agile web database background, but even there, wide decisions and the database skeleton itself were usually made upfront in the first sprint, and rarely changed. At the end of the day, a lot was made about being able to change development plans on a dime, but this was talking mostly about the UI layer or at deepest the database wrapper. You couldn't last-minute change how half a dozen tables interrelated without creating a mountain of work (unless you faked it in the wrapper).

But it is really nice when you go to hook up a new feature and realize that your other components are already prepared for it, isn't it? :D This is more my natural inclination, too, but I'm trying to hurry along; I need this project stranger-playable in a week, or I'll have to push it several months, as a traditional web database project is coming down my pipeline and won't wait any longer.

Hrm. One of the challenges here is that even the games that inspired this game aren't very much like it. There aren't many simultaneous turn games out there (aside from Frozen Synapse/Cortex, of course).

I only ever did the roll-a-ball and 2D tutorials. Once I could work... I did. I'm more of a fan of reference works, at the end of the day.

Interesting. What happened with your inputs?