Reddit user SimonLB posted some information (and lots of screenshots) about their Shining Force III inspired MUD.
This is Shining MUD, a project I’ve been working on for several years as a hobby project. It is currently in the Alpha stages, but mostly feature-complete. It is based on the Shining Force series for Genesis/Saturn, although it’s more like an RTS than a turn-based strategy game.
There’s lots more information in the reddit topic, and plenty of screenshots in the imgur.com gallery. It’s always a nice surprise to see new projects, so check out the topic and give some feedback :)
Source: Shining MUD – a huge project in the works for at least 5 years.
It’s been a while since the last dev diary, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Lots of things have changed, but there’s not really much to show. At the moment I’m writing a pretty hefty set of articles on the technical side of the game. There’s a lot of notes to go through so I’m not really sure when it will be ready, but it seemed like a waste to do so much work behind the scenes without sharing it.
The biggest change was the switch to a kernel based engine. It’s added a bit of overhead, and it’s probably over-engineering things, but it makes adding new functionality to the main loop a lot easier. Services can be added and removed dynamically, and can either be called every loop (like the screen renderer) or just sit in the background (like the resource database).
Once example of how useful this can be is with the debug listener. A DebugListener service object can be created and added, and it watches for changes to certain directories. Once a change is detected, it send an event so the resource manager can reload things. Because it’s added dynamically, it can be left out of non-debug releases, or even added via the debug console during runtime.
It’s been a while, but Ken Hilf recently updated Shining Force PC, a promising looking Shining style PC game. Although there are no new maps to play with, there are some big changes behind the scenes. The map editor is much improved and now supports maps up to 255×255 tiles, as well as brush sizes and other tweaks. It also sports a new Quake style console that makes it easier to perform some common tasks. such as filling an area with tiles or creating a new map.
From the site:
So, it’s been a while since I’ve done any updates on SFPC. I’ll admit, things definitely slowed down for a while, what can I say, I needed a break (or two)! Despite the lack of posts, I have gotten a lot of work done over the past few months, though the bulk of it was not really video or blog post worthy. This release represents the sum of the year’s changes so far, which includes lots of bug fixes, a major revamp of the movement code for performance reasons, and some new editor features and engine enhancements.
There’s no new gameplay map to try, hence the lack of a video. The main draw of this release is the enhanced editor, which includes several features which should be a big deal to anyone interested in making maps. Press the Home key to toggle between Play and Edit modes.
It’s great to see updates from a really promising project, and it’s well worth downloading the updated demo and trying things out.
Read More: SFPC – August 2011 Update
Shining Force Centra’s Mandrew posted some information about his new Shining-Style MMO project:
The goal is to create a browser based tactical RPG in the style of the shining force games for the Sega Genesis. As the leader of a powerful army, called a force, you’ll travel the world fighting enemy hoards, discovering lost treasures, and fighting epic boss battles. You’ll be able play the game with your friends by chatting, trading in the auction house, and fighting both with or against their forces.
You can read more about the project at the SF MMO homepage. There’s information about the game world, as well as how the class Shining Force mechanics (such as gold and resurrection) will work in an MMO setting. There are also some shots of the WIP map editor. Definitely worth a look!
Source: Shining Force Central – SF MMO site/blog launched
Hi all, even though the worklog is empty BABS 3 development is progressing at full speed. Just head over to the Shiny Sword/BABS forum to find out about the latest advancements. These include vast improvements to the tile editor and the introduction of arbitrary tile sizes, among many many other things ;)
