nohnk

honk

Change of schedule

I think MWF is too goddamned hectic considering I'm also a full-time student. Fridays only is better.

I coded some crude combat random gen beatdown thing. I was going to release the code for public but unfortunately it's too much of a goddamn spaghetti code mess to run properly. I can't manage my time because current hectic events and holy shit people will not just leave me alone. I NEED TO CODE

Edit: By people I don't mean fanbase or anything I mean just my family members that order me to move a goosebumps book every 5 minutes.

INCOMING POST COMING SATURDAY

Stay tuned.

Ja, ach

Not much to say unfortunately so far. It's hard to shift gears in programming thought when you're used to using procedural methods and have to go into OOP. Not that it's hard it's just unusual to learn and not exactly my forte. A combo of that plus an upcoming double midterm day tomorrow has ground progress down for the past couple of days.

For combat I'm unsure how to approach striking with melee weapons. Should I make it so player just puts in >attack and then it targets a random limb, or should I let the player aim for specific body parts? I think I should incorporate both. But usually, from my experience anyway, nobody really uses aiming systems all that much as far as limbs go. Take a look at games like Fallout which have the VATS aiming system. Yeah it's nifty in theory to be able to shoot a gun out of someone's hand, but you never find people actually doing that. Everyone ends up either aiming for the head for a quick kill when up close or aiming for the body when far away, or the dick when they're feeling giddy. Very rarely the limbs. So in execution it seems like a waste to code all that limb-targeting combat when people just end up aiming for the head, body, or dick. That's just in an FPS though, so maybe it'd be different in a game like this. I will say though that if it is just a vague "attack" or "strike" command with no real targeting then it will randomly target things such as legs and arms just for kicks and to be able to see messages like "The loogieman's leg breaks and crumples apart" and whatnot.

Will give more content next post, but for now I think I should study some.

AI Extravaganzzzzza

WIP Woods graphic. Graphics aren't meant to be the highlight of the game, but they are provided in order to give a better sense of atmosphere than just plain text.

Been coding the AI and damage calculations for the game. The damage won't be just HP and whatnot, oh no. Implementing F=ma to its fullest extent here, every weapon has a mass, including flailing limbs. Different bones and armor types require different relative amounts of force in order to break or bruise or cut, depending on the materials impacted as well. Sounds somewhat complicated, but it's only marginally more effort to code than a basic HP system.

As far as AI goes, I've been prototyping the NPC behavior for a couple of days now. So far it's just rudimentary basics, making sure that they reply to commands like talk to, ask about, etc. As far as NPC-to-NPC dialogue goes, I have no clue how to tackle that. I want the game to feel natural rather than NPC's bumping into each other and automatically entering some conversation like two robots. Lots of emphasis will be based around player-to-NPC reactions though. I'm looking at examples like Postal 2, which actually had some surprisingly good AI considering the rest of the game's content.

Those are pretty much the only two concepts I'm working on now, and it's fun to see how I thought I'd spend longer just trying to learn the language I was coding this project in, but what can I say other than Python's one hell of an easy language to learn. If you can't learn it in less than a day you just weren't meant to be a programmer or something.

Getting off ma arse

Python's fun. Will definitely be using it. Also thinking of using XML to allow for people to mod the game and leave it more flexible, maybe use it for something like character creation for use in towns and traveling and blahdy blahdy blah. Just in the air, not really solid.

Right now I definitely know that I should keep some characters static and leave them in the game, but I should also generate some who fill a less important role. Like making a shopkeeper a familiar face instead of a randomly generated personality, so that'd give players something to joke about and experience together instead of each person's game being totally different, but still give each player a unique experience.

I've been thinking of ways to keep the players from being total assholes. I do want to give them almost complete freedom to do what they want, but like real life there should be consequences. Like robbing or stealing or killing people should give some sort of punishment. There's been a few methods of keeping the peace outside of conventional police that I've been thinking of, but I don't want to spoil them and let anyone reading now to know what to expect.

So far in Python I've coded tests on various elements that will be present in the game, basic things like collision detection so the player doesn't hover through walls and things I haven't dealt with before much like classes and such! Oh what a little coding infant I goddamn am.

NPC behavior will honestly, I think, be the hardest to code. I'd have to take a look at chatbots and such and figure out their capacity to learn, because with the many things the player would be able to do it'd be a waste to code it all in manually and instead it'd be better for the bots to procedurally generate their own reactions. Actions themselves would have tags or descriptions, like if they're violent or sudden or loud, and then from there the NPCs can generate how to react based on their generated personality. There's so much about the human brain, but thankfully there's not a lot that's demanded of the NPCs.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Beginnings!

Various sketches of items, creatures, and locations. Of course they're very rough, but I'm pretty proud of the bottom three doodles.

Development kicks off with the ever-existential question of what the hell programming language I should actually use to code this project. I'm torn between C and strangely enough Python. I want to pick the former for its speed and flexibility, but I do love Python's clear-cut and readable code that'd make actual development faster. Then again C's speed does sort of lose its advantage considering I'm making a game based on a polished text parsing engine, but it would allow me to go totally snookaloopy nuts and reach DF levels of complexity without worrying about slowing anything down. I'm thinking of writing the basic framework in both languages and putting both of them through some stress tests to see if there's any difference, if at all, between which one can handle the most actions going on that's most feasible in the game.

The bottom creature on that page there is meant to not really be a monster, more like just shoggoth-like wildlife. It's a vicious herbivore if that makes any sense and is meant to come in packs and devour the player's garden. Their meat is very greasy and abundant, and can be used to render tallow from for candles very easily, which can be used for lanterns or trading. Sort of one of those beginning pick-me-up commodities that allow the player to get started on self sustaining income while also giving them an excuse to kill something. Of course these are just rough sketches that don't represent the final art quality of the game. Everything's liable to change!

By Friday or next Monday I should be bitching about the language I'm coding in if I'm productive, otherwise expect more (hopefully quality) art. Have any questions drop by the comments box or send me an email at mrfat32 at gmail.