Slow Progress

So, finished scripting for the last of the Game Over scenes, now just need to do a bit more scripting for other events, and I'll move on to finishing the other needed monster AI routines.  None of this is particularly exciting and my time to work on the project is limited, but it is progressing.

Where were we?

Oh yes, well, progress is still coming, although slowly.  Most of it doesn't lend itself to screenshots.

I added an expanded debugging mode:

...which I'm going to need to add an "arena" mode to kind of like what's in Dwarven Fortress for the combat balance.  Speaking of which, I finished the bestiary, so now we've gone from 36 enemy types to 87.  Those don't include monsters ex-players have been transformed into... a detail I still need to fully implement.

Most of the rest of my recent work was fixing bugs (Load/Save was broken, in part by adding the debugging mode, of all things) and there was a long-standing issue with save compatibility breaking between versions.

Some minor updates

Summer has been very busy for me (outside of coding) so I haven't made a whole lot of progress.

Some new stuff:

All "corpses" (defeated players) are in now, 5 different images per race.  Interface with them is also now enabled, although some are more rescueable that others...

You can now close doors with "C" which makes them more of an actual part of the game instead of just background.  You can also jam them with spikes, like in the original Dungeons of Moria.

You can switch place with friendly characters, which is required to make the NPC interactions manageable in combat.  NPCs still aren't fully enabled... they've got some bugs at the moment.  Right now I'm trying to finish the town and fill out the bestiary.

Fleshing out the town

Well, the pub is now in, so you can listen to rumors, get hammered, and perhaps stumble into an event:

...also added is the infirmary, where you can go check on defeated players you rescued with another player.  Additional steps for players to recover from there and appear as town NPCs are in, but I haven't tested them and they still need a bit of work.

That means we need a few NPC dialogues and an item shop implementation, and we're pretty much done with the town.  Unfortunately, Spring is more or less over, and I'm going to have a lot less time to working on the game.  Let's hope I can finally close out this ridiculous development cycle by the end of summer.

Always forgetting something

After loading all the graphics, I noted that I had a mysterious placeholder in the town graphics that I couldn't remember what it was for.  Eventually, while coding, I realized I never drew a graphic for the pub.  Well, I quickly drew and colored one, so it's in there now.

Additionally, I was coding some more of the town events, and there's now a suspicious merchant you an service for some cash on a occasional basis, if you've done the right prerequisite quest.  The first time I ran it, I forgot to turn on the dynamic coloring for the scene, so we got the "default gnome":

Fortunately, I'd set up the coloring table for most of these some time ago, so it wasn't a hard fix:

Art mostly done and loaded.

I've loaded and colored almost all the graphics (omitted a boss which I had to go back and add) which includes defining coloring locations for those graphics that are dynamically recolored (mostly player stuff, like giving ex-players in town their hair and eye color.)

I've made most of the icons for the new monsters/characters, although a few will have to be done from scratch.  I should get those done this week, then it's mainly scripting and coding.

If you haven't played Wayback! then you should go give it a try... it's an action game where you try to avoid enemies as you make it through a maze.  It's got clothing damage as you lose life and a variety of endings.

All loaded

So, loaded all the GOR graphics and set up the coloration so they're dynamic colored according to your character.  That ends up being 19 CGs per class, for a total of 57, and that's just the Game Over graphics. 

There's still some script writing to do for those scenes, as well as lots of other art to process and put in.  However, it's coming along well.

Line art finished

Finally done with all the art (at least the first pass.)  Here's a sample, it's the naga game over scene for the gnome player.

That gets cleaned up, resized, colorized, then mapped so that it can be dynamically repainted to match your generated color scheme in the game.

Still a fair amount of "art" work to do in the processing I mentioned, so that'll probably take another week or two.  Then it's just scripting and finishing up the game itself.

Somewhat past deadlines

So, I'm looking to finish all the game artwork by the end of January.  Progress was pretty good though this month, have a bunch of new game over artwork: Demon, Hellhound, Orc Lord, Siren (Final boss) and spiders.

I also added a doppleganger boss, plus some naga enemies.

After artwork is wrapped up, it'll mainly just be a matter of finishing NPC interaction, and then scripting to finish out the game.  So late Spring, perhaps?