Ye Olde Blah

Project Specific Discussion => SMEE / BABS / Shiny Sword Discussion => Topic started by: Devlyn on July 23, 2012, 07:54:07 am



Title: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on July 23, 2012, 07:54:07 am
Hi all,

The title says it all really. The game is already in a releasable state, but I'm planning to bolster it further anyhow.

Either way, do people fancy a preliminary alpha release here, so that they can provide feedback etc? It'll have at least 3 battlegrounds, 4 party members, a small town, a simple shop and a vastly improved SMEE map and tile editor.

Also, it contains the roleplaying dialogue mechanics that will set the game apart from many others, although I have not nearly milked that to its full potential yet.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: christian1982 on August 12, 2012, 05:48:07 am
Hi Devlyn,

can you please provide a link of the actual source code. It would be nice to look over it, add some comments or corrections.

Cheers
christian

PS: It would be nice to generally add a link to the common source code, if this is possible. Otherwise just send me a pm how to get it.
If the llink in [searching java code] is actual just mention it.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 14, 2012, 09:33:38 pm
Unfortunately the source code is on my laptop at work, but I'll upload it to a public spot tomorrow.
The shopping system is currently broken, but a lot of other things are working, and often better than before ;).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Aura4 on August 15, 2012, 12:42:32 pm
I'd be interested in an alpha of your game.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 15, 2012, 03:12:12 pm
Okay, I just uploaded an archive with my whole development directory in it. It should have two executable scripts in the top level named ShinySword and SMEE, which you can run directly.

The archive is at http://ccs.chem.ucl.ac.uk/~derek/BABS3-alpha.rar


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 19, 2012, 07:46:48 am
Hmmm... a lot of silence at the other end... did  I send around such a pile of crap? ;)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Aura4 on August 19, 2012, 01:55:24 pm
No, I just didn't visit shiningsource.net. Downloading now. Thanks!


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on August 19, 2012, 02:19:19 pm
The config files still cause trouble on Linux, but I'll test it out on Windows later today :)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 21, 2012, 10:44:40 pm
I'm curious if it will work.
And perhaps the config file might work if you dos2unix it? (replacing the carriage returns with newlines?)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on August 22, 2012, 02:41:32 am
No joy, even after converting files with dos2linux :( If I get chance I'll dig a little deeper and see if I can come up with a fix.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 22, 2012, 09:14:49 am
No problem, and thanks for the help :)

One thing we could try is writing a sample config file in Linux using JAVA, and then determining how it is different compared to the Windows one?

Unfortunately I'm abroad, so I can't do a lot to help right now :/.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on August 22, 2012, 12:58:33 pm
Good plan. I think my knowledge of Java can stretch that far, so I'll see what I can come up with.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on August 23, 2012, 12:36:35 am
I tried it on Windows. Works perfectly :)

There's a couple of graphical problems (the menu icons are tiny), but otherwise it definitely has a Shining feel to it. I think with a bit of polish it has plenty of potential. The rats tore me to pieces though :(


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 23, 2012, 07:17:35 am
Well, it's not an easy game, but I can give you a mini-walkthrough:

1. Collect your three party members in the town. They should not be very difficult to find, but you should join the Redeemers first.

2. Go to the basement battle of the starting mansion. Do it at least once, or twice if you want to be well-prepared for the next one.

3. Go to the house on the other side of the street, and find the sewer battle with heaps of oozes. Do it at least once, or twice if you want to be well-prepared for the next one.

4. Go to the northeast of town, and prepare to get beaten :P.

I'd love to do more development it, and actually do so occasionally, but I think I'd enjoy the whole project a lot more if we could turn it into a team development effort somehow. Perhaps we could even go wild and prepare for a kickstarter project?


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on August 23, 2012, 11:57:57 am
So now I feel like a complete dumbass for trying to beat the rats before recruiting anyone...


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 23, 2012, 07:45:29 pm
Yeah, the Shiny Sword is a bit more harsh than most Shining Games. All those 12 year olds in the 90s are now about 30, so I think we should scale up the challenge accordingly ;).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Aura4 on August 30, 2012, 06:13:06 pm
I found it pretty hard, too, but that's because I gathered only 2 members for the party and then entered the sewer battle. Thanks to your hints it will be easier. :)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on August 30, 2012, 11:39:30 pm
If you like I can add more easy battles to the game.... I just need to think of more interesting weenie monster types then :P.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 02, 2012, 09:39:06 pm
Well, still updating the code. Fixed the healing animation and made it fancier, and I updated the item graphics now :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 02, 2012, 10:37:24 pm
Nice. I've been doing some work on the site (nothing major, just cleaning up lots of code and making some much needed fixes). I might add something to show when a project's code has been updated, so we can show we're not totally dead ;)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 03, 2012, 08:34:59 am
Awesome :). I'll just hammer away at whatever in the game in the meantime. You'll be able to follow my progress on the SVN revision log I guess ;).

One thing I still do suck at are game sprites though. Those things take ages to make, and they look weird when I make them...


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 03, 2012, 12:46:56 pm
I'll have a go at some sprites today then :) Do they have to be in GIF format or will transparent PNG be fine?


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 03, 2012, 01:46:35 pm
Cheers! Thanks a lot Ty :D.

BABS supports both, but I personally prefer PNGs these days :). The overall setting is a bit of a high fantasy very savage Egyptian desert-style environment, and I need all sorts of sprites really.

Regarding monsters, I think I mentioned some suggestions in the other thread :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 03, 2012, 01:47:14 pm
One more thing: the alpha channel is fully supported with PNGs :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 03, 2012, 02:41:26 pm
I'm not much of an artist, but I'll see what I can do :)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 07, 2012, 12:05:15 am
So...uh... I thought the Seolean sprite was a good place to start. But now he looks like he's had a poker shot up his arse. I think I'll stick to map tiles ;)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 07, 2012, 07:53:36 am
lol!!! Agreed, we should work on things that are easy to do :)
 
In that case perhaps we should fetch a sprite artist from somewhere else though. Perhaps one roams around on the SFC forums or we can do a few commissions at fiverr.com?

Otherwise I can make the sprites, but they do take me ages and look like crap :P.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 07, 2012, 11:54:48 am
I think that might be our best bet - I can cope in small resolutions, but 50x50 is a little too much for my lack of skills ;) I've been reading up on my spriting tutorials, so I'll have another go at the weekend, but this time I'll start on something simpler.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 07, 2012, 02:39:34 pm
Sounds good. By the way, do you want access to the background wiki, to get an idea what the setting is all about?

The game won't adhere rigidly to the setting, but it'll be heavily inspired by it for sure :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 08, 2012, 02:14:02 am
Sure thing, that would help me get a feel for what I'm drawing. Or at least trying to ;)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 08, 2012, 05:11:57 pm
Meanwhile I'm giving the whole shopping and item system an overhaul :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 08, 2012, 06:01:55 pm
Made some major fixes to the shop and item system now, it should work a lot better! There are still a few smaller things to fix there though :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 09, 2012, 12:00:01 pm
Btw. Ty, one other monster that would be really cool to have would be a Medusa. As BABS supports facing changes in combat, I think it would be totally brilliant to have a battle where the characters turn to stone if they accidentally end up facing a Medusa :D.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on September 11, 2012, 12:35:59 am
I'll give her a go :) What I might end up doing is drawing it 24x24, then scaling it up for cleaning. It seems like the smaller resolution is quicker for me to work in (and looks less sucky ;))


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 11, 2012, 07:06:50 am
I realized that another thing we could try is drawing them full size (say 1000x1000 or so) from the right angle with thick lines and then downsizing them to 48x48? Perhaps that makes it much easier to get the proportions right? We support PNG alpha channels so as long as the big versions lack in detail the resize may well lead to a decent result?


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 11, 2012, 08:12:25 am
Hey Ty,

I think I found a good and quick way to do these things. Here's how:

1. grab the 100x200 template PNG from the sprite directory and load it in GIMP.
2. Resize it to 1000x2000, using pixel resize (to keep the template line easy to select and delete).
3. Draw your sprites. Use a brush of size ~13 with hard edges, and don't bother about shading (at least I didn't) or excessive detail. Use Shift button to draw short straight lines if you have a shaky hand like me ;).
3.a. Also, use the Layer transform to mirror your sprite for a cheap walking animation in the case of otherwise symmetric sprites :).
4. Save it in a good format at this size so you can reopen and edit it later.
5. Remove the gray template lines. Selecting them and pressing delete may be a quick way to do it.
6. Scale the image down to 100x200 using anything but Pixel Resize.
7. Use a Sharpen filter of strength ~50.
8. Export your image to a png file and there you go!

I just tried it out myself, and could make the following in about 20 minutes (first try).

Let me know if it works for you!


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 11, 2012, 07:17:16 pm
Small correction there... a brush size of 10 works even better actually :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on September 26, 2012, 02:00:20 pm
Just wanted to say that this project still isn't dead :P. I've revised some of the map transition engines, so that it is possible to skip to a different map if a certain battle has already been completed previously :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on April 01, 2013, 06:40:26 pm
Very small message here. Made a tiny update allowing people to save their plot progress, using the F4(save) and F8 (load) keys. The character stats have yet to be added to this primitive save state engine, but I just felt like putting at least *something* in this time ;).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Ty on April 04, 2013, 01:18:53 am
Awesome dude, glad to see things are still moving along :)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on February 16, 2014, 11:18:06 pm
It is, albeit at a sluggish pace ;).

I added a few more small things today, after having done so about a month ago. Main change now is the ability to enter maps at custom locations, instead of the default startx, starty locations.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Elvenfyre on February 17, 2014, 09:44:29 am
nice :)
yeah the old workaround for that was ok (making multiple text files for the same map to give it different start positions) when you had 2 entrances, but once it got beyond that it was quite tiresome, so a great addition :)


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on February 22, 2014, 11:07:44 pm
More updates as of late. I added a tiny and oddly tactical battle in the Downstairs bar, and I've implemented a mechanism for treasure chests, and item rewards.

I also added a few more shallow NPCs. I'm still short of artwork as usual, but I'll just make do with what I have for now :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on February 23, 2014, 10:37:05 pm
There's now a way to bucketfill tiles on the map..by holding down the shift button while placing tiles :).


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on March 16, 2014, 01:01:07 pm
For the first time ever BABS now has full QuickSave/QuickLoad support. It saves/loads everything that is remotely relevant in the game.

I'm still thinking what kind of saving/loading interface is the most elegant, but currently I save with F4 and load with F8...still very simplistic.


Title: Re: Development on BABS has resumed
Post by: Devlyn on March 23, 2014, 09:04:52 pm
More changes now. Added several new maps and one new battle involving a Medusa. The Medusa is *very* tough to deal with, and requires more tactical smarts than raw grinding power :).