The Shining Source

It’s just a quick update today, but seeing as there’s a small amount of momentum I want to keep it going.

Old Graphics, New Graphics

I’m sure you remember the wonderful graphics from the original demo’s. If not, let’s have a little refresh…

In order: Wooden Sword, Wooden Spear, Wooden Rod, Short Sword and Medical Herb. I doubled the size for visibility’s sake.

Here’s what they currently look like.

It’s the first bit of pixel art I’ve done for long time, but I think it’s an improvement on the originals.

I’ve always liked the style of Shining Force 3, so that’s what I was aiming for here, whilst trying to keep the old Shining Online style.

Any comments or criticisms are welcome :)

Shining Online has been going for a very long time.

Actually, that’s not really true. It was started a long time ago, and is sporadically worked on. Maybe one day it will be finished. Maybe.

After reading an old review of the Atari ST demo of Shining Online, I looked through my old emails to revive some fond memories. Here’s some old feedback from when things were just starting to get interesting.

The hardest part is getting started

how can i play this game (shining online),i mean what should i do after i download it

…wrong game

Dude! Any chance of getting some tips on designing character sets for rpg 2k? They dont seem to work for some strange reason!

At least they apologised

I DONT MEAN TO BOTHER YOU OR ANY THINg (IN FACT I DONT KNOW IF YOU EVEN UP DATE THIS SITE AND MORE) BUT IDED LIKE TO KNOW WHAT U USE TO MAKE THIS GAME I DONT KNOW HOW TO PROGRAM SO I AM LOOKING FOR AN EDITOR IF YOU WANNA KEEP IT SECRET THATS OK TO

Short and sweet

I hate you

And finally…

When we were starting out, it seemed like a good idea to ask people what they wanted. Here’s my favourite survey result:

Name : Obright and Bowie

Age :87

Website : www.thiswebsiteisajoke.com

System:
1] PC

Specs:
ITs big an hairy much like the shining online game. But unlike the shining online game my computer is Good

Do you think a fan made SF game is a good Idea?
Yes

Do you think online options are important?
Very Important

Which Shining Sites do you visit regularly?
This one because its SOOOOO dam good

Comments
I would like to see the makers of the game as the easy bosses so we can kill them and they will never make any more games

You can’t buy fans like that ;)

Click for Screenshot

ChrisW posted in Ye Olde Blah to show off screens from his new project, "Gathering Light". It’s Flash based, and although it’s still early in development it’s looking very promising.

From the forum topic:

All information is stored server side, but the game still remains single player. You can search for players in the arena, which are pulled up randomly, from there you can check out their status page and all of their members and then battle them. Your rank will either increase or decrease depending on your wins and losses, party level sum, total gold, etc, etc.

Even though battles are all single player, you can still trade, join guilds, and enter tournaments. There is also a story mode which you can play when you don’t feel like PvPing. Story mode allows players to gain special characters, items and unlock new PvP maps.

You can find more information on the Gathering Light Website, including a forum for feedback and a blog with plenty of screenshots and development news. Stop by and take a look :)

There’s not been much of interest to write about lately, but work has still been going on under the hood. There’s been a task list sat in front of me for the last month that hasn’t got any shorter, which is frustrating to say the least.

The biggest problem on it is getting the server and client to communicate in a way that isn’t a complete nightmare to update. For a while the server was miles ahead, but now the client side is starting to take shape and the server code is looking like a mess.

The good news is that things are getting done. The bad news is it’s taking a lot longer than expected. It’s a combination of a few tasks being much bigger than estimated, and also a lack of motivation to tackle them. I’ll be making sure the next milestone is more fun.

Terrible Programmer Art

As noted in previous entries, there are two different gameplay modes in Shining Online: online and offline.

Here’s what the offline title screen looks like at the moment. It was a 60-second job in Paint, so it will be changed eventually…

Selecting “New Game” takes the player to the “New Story” screen, where they can select from a list of installed stories to play. After that, it’s up to the story author what happens. Intro sequences will be supported, as will the trademark Shining Force character naming screens.

A break

I’ll be taking a few weeks break to go home to England, so there won’t be any progress for a little while.

Same as usual, really ;)

Let’s see what fun things have happened in the world of Shining Online this week.

Progress is slow but steady. The first online test was conducted this week, with mixed success. Writing software is great when it’s only for a single machine, but once it starts seeing other configurations everything goes belly up.

Thankfully a few tweaks fixed things, and servers and clients were happily communicating across the vast space of the internet.

Task wise things are chugging along, with a few hiccups on the way. The biggest problem so far has been character creation. The Shining Force stats system is quite simple, but there are still plenty of things to keep track of. These stats have got to be stored on a world server, but also transferred to the client machine.

It’s a pain, but it’s getting there.

I think the next milestone will concentrate on more visible things, because I’m sick of looking at memory dumps and database schemas.

Evolution of the Launcher

There are two ways to play Shining Online, online and offline. When playing online, you’ll need to enter your account details somewhere so that they can be verified. If you’re going online, you’ll see the “Launcher” window before the game starts.

The Launcher handles a few key tasks: downloading news, logging players in and checking for updates. If a software update is available, the player can download and install it directly from the launcher. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

Once you’re logged in, it’s time to choose a server to join. Once that’s done, it’s in to the game world (eventually ;))

The image on the left is the original version, and the one on the right is the current iteration.

Yes, my programmer art sucks.

That’s it for this update. Next week we’ll see what happens when you press that lovely “Play Offline” button…