After BABS 2 Alpha and a bunch of hyping from my side, I thought it’s time to fullfill a few promises.
Therefore I now present BABS 2 Beta! It’s still unofficial, but at least not as unofficial as BABS 2 Alpha. The most notorious features over the alpha version are:
- Ranged attacks
- Improved interface
- Land effect and limited movement
- Real Cacophonous Midi music from my own making ;)
Of course, what would a release be without accompanying graphical terror? ;) Here you are:
Target lock baby.
Grayscale Elric going into the clouds ;).
As for the game itself, you can find it at: BABS-2.beta.zip
In order to run the game, you need to have the Java 5.0 JRE, which you can find at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp (third download link).
Finally, I would really appreciate bug reports and feedback about this program. It will be the last release before the final BABS version, so I want to be sure to have everything right by then :).
Considering that the topic considering the BABS 2 alpha release was completely ignored, I thought that perhaps posting some screenshots will help wake the community up a bit.
Time will tell :).
Progress goes faster than lightning these days. Here’s a small overview of what’s been added (forgive any omissions):
Overall:
- Configurable settings file for game options (called settings.cfg).
- Configurable settings files for map entities (called (mapname).entityfile: With this file you’re now easily able to program your own entities on the map and have a limited degree of control over their statistics.
SMEE:
- A few interface tweaks
- Transparent color in the color selection
- Added land effect editor. It is disguised as the ‘land type’ option to improve intuitivity ;). Land effect does not do anything yet, but that will change soon.
- Left the map format unedited. In the very least the new SMEE will be backwards compatible, and perhaps the old SMEE 1.0 is even forwards compatible. Haven’t tried yet really :).
Game / BABS 2:
- Added a real entity system, where you can put multiple sprites on a single map.
- Added a turn sequence, along with very simple battle menu’s and attack animation placeholders.
- Set up and implemented a statistics system. Characters deal damage, receive damage, gain exp, gain levels (yes, monsters too!) and die honorably in combat ;).
- Improved the controls to make them a bit more faithful to regular emulators.
- No AI yet. The intention is to make BABS 2 hot seat multiplayer only :).
- Added a few extra sprites and tiles. Most came from Ty & Newt’s Shining Online project (thanks guys!).
Technically I *could* release a demo, but if anyone could help out with an attack animation or two, I’d be very happy! A demo is so much cooler with graphics :P.
Well, with all the disappointing news on the SEGA front I felt it was time to get started on some serious work. Most of the entity stuff is going pretty well and today I set up most of the statistics system that I’ll be using.
The whole code is still a mess but I figure that it’ll clean itself up over time ;). Still, adding functionality is still do-able, and that’s what matters most.
I updated the progress page, so feel free to take a look at it here.
It’s been a fatally bloody while, but finally I can report _some_ amount of progress on SSC again :).
The past bunch of days I’ve largely busy with setting up an entity and sprite system, and basically the turn based movement -in its simplest form- is done. Instead of making a full game right away, my first intention is to set up a hot seat multiplayer battle engine. Of course it’s bloody easy, but I’m missing it a little in existing projects.
I might call it BABS 2, I might not. Heck, I might die tomorrow!
On a more inviting note: if there are any severely bored souls out there, feel free to contribute the project with a few tiles and sprites. You can easily use the existing SMEE 1.0 (and the PNG export option inside it) for the tiles, and a sprite template should be in that distribution as well ;).
And if you’re truly lazy: send your old crap over! I’m sure I’ll find a useful purpose for it :D.
