Author Topic: Multiplayer, More Regions and Buildings, Minimap, and the Energy Lance  (Read 5754 times)

Offline x4000

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Original: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2011/03/multiplayer-more-regions-and-buildings.html

Here's the latest video:



New this week: more buildings, more general objects, and some additional regions, as well as a lot more population scripts for the existing regions.  There's also a new Energy Lance spell, which makes cutting through big lines of objects or enemies easier (but it does lower damage to actual individual enemies).  We also added a ton to the HUD, including our actual in-game font, better organization, and a minimap to show exploration progress in each area!

The biggest new work this week, however, was multiplayer.  We've now got the basics of multiplayer working, and Keith and I were able to play together in the same server across the Internet with great success.  It's still jerky in multiplayer because we haven't put in any smoothing or prediction yet, but it functions and it's actually not any worse than some Mario Kart DS matches I've had in the past, even if the smoothing isn't there yet.

This week I'd hoped to get into interiors of buildings, but I did a lot of work on exteriors instead, as well as getting sucked into a lot of business stuff (taxes, distributors, etc) this week.  Next week looks to be markedly more clear, though, and this week was quite productive even so.  Stay tuned!
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Offline Ozymandiaz

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Looking good! :)
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Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Visually looking better, other than that, no comment :)

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Offline Echo35

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Stop teasing us and release it already!

Offline RooksBailey

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I am really looking forward to seeing some interiors.   8)

Offline Ozymandiaz

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Its kinda evil to release all these trailers... :P

Will most of the magic be combat based? Seem like magic and traps is the way to get the monsters here (maybe some guns, even rare sci-fi guns?)


(Even got a Logitech Rumble Gamepad F510 in the mail today in anticipation of this game ^^)
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Offline Teal_Blue

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Just caught the news!!!  Looks Better and better, i like the shadowing on the buildings, and the nice texture on the windmill arms, and the moving shadows as the windmill turns, very cool! 

:)

-Teal


Offline x4000

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Glad there's excitement! :)

In terms of the magic, there will be plenty that is for healing or "logistical" purposes, as well.  Examples include magically marking stuff so you know where you've been, planting trees (which has some combat value, potentially), and shrinking/growing objects for decoration or practical purposes (more on this in the next video/diary). :)

Also of course logistical things like teleport, which you could argue are either combat-focused or not.  Certainly most things can be pulled out in combat in a pinch, anyway, but my main definition of non-combat spells is stuff that is also useful when there are no enemies around.
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Offline Teal_Blue

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Glad there's excitement! :)

In terms of the magic, there will be plenty that is for healing or "logistical" purposes, as well.  Examples include magically marking stuff so you know where you've been, planting trees (which has some combat value, potentially), and shrinking/growing objects for decoration or practical purposes (more on this in the next video/diary). :)

Also of course logistical things like teleport, which you could argue are either combat-focused or not.  Certainly most things can be pulled out in combat in a pinch, anyway, but my main definition of non-combat spells is stuff that is also useful when there are no enemies around.


Will spells be 'craftable'?  Or perhaps some are and some aren't. Am hoping there will be a lot of crafting, but suppose i should just wait and see, I know you said there will be crafting, just wondered if you knew how much yet? I don't want to take away from the adventuring and exploring, i just thought it would be interesting to craft alot. 

Thanks for the nice update, looking forward to the one next week.

:)

-Teal


Offline BobTheJanitor

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This may be off topic or in an area that's not ready for the public yet, but seeing the screenshots mentioning 'civilization level' made me curious. (Although I know that's really more like a character level) Will the settlements and such include any gameplay of the 4X or city-building variety? Probably not anything too deep in that style, I'm not expecting to be laying out roads and upgrading building and managing populations and commanding armies and such. I know the game is centered around playing as one person at a time. But is there going to be any of that flavor added, or are settlements just going to be a static group of buildings, or something that manages itself automatically whilst you are away? The game already seems ambitious enough without tacking on even more, but I was curious.

Offline x4000

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On crafting spells -- it depends on what you mean.  Not in the magicka sense, spells won't be craftable.  You can't make up a whole new spell out of nothing.  In terms of if you can affect existing spells via modifiers of some sort... possibly that might be something we add, but it's not in our immediate plans.  You'll have to craft, well, pretty much every piece of equipment you find, though.  That means you'd find an unpolished fire gem or something along those lines, and then depending on how you craft it, you can turn that into one of a small number of finished fire-related spells that you can actually equip.  That's what the enchanter class is for.

On the civilization level -- no, this isn't a hint at any 4X or city-building components.  The goal here is spending less than 1% of your time in a menu, same as with a Zelda game.  I would estimate that close to 50%, if not far more, of a 4X game is spent in menus, and a good portion of a city builder depending on what you consider to be a menu (does the underground view in SimCity count, etc).  Given that the game is post-apocalyptic, there won't be any new construction of buildings or similar, but a settlement will consist of people setting up homes inside existing buildings.  So that office is my smithy, that cubicle is your "house," etc, that sort of thing.  There may be smaller wooden structures that players or NPCs might construct, but we're not entirely sure on that yet.

Bear in mind most of the "city building" parts happen in an automated fashion, without any interaction from players.  At core, that's what we're going for, as we want it to be more about the higher-level decisions rather than about the intensive management.  So you invite X NPC to go to Y settlement, because they are an armorsmith and you need one there, etc.  You set up the wind shelters as sort of a "road" of sorts, to allow for strategic movement on the world map.  And so on, that sort of thing.  The core experience, here, really shouldn't be any more complex than Zelda, Crystalis, or similar.

That said, there's a lot of room for optional things to be layered on, and given that we have civilization levels a lot of that can be gated for the protection of new players, too.  If someone is interested enough to play past a few civ levels, the game is free to become gradually more complex, certainly, and that's the general approach Keith and I have been coming at it from.  Right now we're mostly focused on making that core experience really tight and fun, so that if the game never grows beyond that, it's no loss for the bulk of our potential audience (and hey, that helps with scope, and with the review-ability of the game, and the ability to describe the game in a nutshell, and the ease of introducing new players to the game, and many other handy things).

Keith and I have talked about everything from having some much deeper advanced city-building components, to much more freeform advanced crafting, to having settlement-defense segments at advanced levels, to all sorts of things.  Depending on how the public alpha, beta, and beyond goes: we might develop on that sort of thing as themed, paid expansions focusing on some new style of optional gameplay that provides benefits to the main gameplay and layers onto it; or we might just build that same sort of thing into the base game for free if the game is selling that well already; or we might just not get to it at all if the game's fanbase doesn't look like it would support it.

All of those sorts of hypothetical features would layer into existing worlds, unlike, say, Defender Mode in AI War, so that's one thing that is nice about it.  This is "an adventure game about exploration," at core, and that's where Keith and I are mostly focused at the moment, but we've been keeping things open and certainly talking about increasing the scope of that, if the game is popular, and once all the rest of our requirements for the core part is met.  And as new ideas occur or are suggested to us, of course.
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