I got a mass emailing from GenCon about events for gamer’s widows (read: Fluffy). They had a lot of fun things: karate, belly dancing, yoga, jewelery making. So, Fluffy and I tried to register. Except for one of them, every single event was filled upbefore they sent out the email. Every single one. Why did they even bother?
Fluffy isn’t sure if she wants to go, mainly because she isn’t really into gaming at all. She might be in a LARP, but she doesn’t know. I was planning on doing the writing circuit again, though that makes me a wanna-be. On the other hand, one of the ladies from work read my story (WBM) and she really liked it. Said it had interesting characters and a good plot. So, that was promising.
Biking in the summer is hot. Biking when its wet and hot really isn’t fun. On the other hand, I’m consistently getting up that nasty last hill. I also managed to repair Evil’s bike last night with just a “turn of the wrench” and liberal application of WD-40. I’m glad I could help her, I like helping.
But, my bike is making this nasty clicking noise so I’ll probably have to bring it into the shop. :( I hate it when I can’t figure out something that should be simple.
Just minimally finished Dragon Quest VIII yesterday. It ended up taking me about 75 hours (but at least ten of those were just leaving the machine on because I couldn’t get to a save point and it was really late). Very fun game and I love the visual style. I also love the mixture of humor and seriousness. It really made the story very enjoyable.
One of the frustrating parts was the boss marathon near the end, not to mention I was getting to the part where I just wanted the game to be over. It wasn’t as bad as Star Ocean, but I kind of rushed the last bit just to get it over. And, in ending, I went through the walkthrus to see what I missed. Apparently, they have another entire plot after you “finish” the game! And a dungeon, and a bunch of monsters, and equipment you can’t get during the game.
So, it isn’t really over, just the main plot is over. If I write an RPG, I’m going to have it actually end when you finish the main plot, but give bonuses to the next round, like Final Fantasy X2. Radiata Story did the same, but they just gave you some cash and had you restart; I already purchased everything.
I don’t know if I will continue the game. The main plot is over and the rest just seems like 100% completion mop-up which is something that doesn’t appeal to me. I never really got a thrill at getting everything, inventing everything, or finding every single thing. I like the story and plot much more; not to mention I still have Fable and Oblivion to play.
Now, back to Turf Wars.
I got the Gregorian calendar actually working properly. It calculates years, months, days, hours (24), minutes, and seconds. The XML file is fairly condense but littered with the occasional C# code. The CodeDom generator works perfectly and I’m very, very happy with it. Still a few things left:
- Parsing
- Pre-generate Tool
- Renderer
- Choosers (Gtk# and SWF)
For Turf Wars, all I have left is to get the tool done and find a good calendar that fits the world view (10 months, fits our 365.something days in the year). Then, I can get back to orders. Such a large task, making a calendar, for what basically is a cosmetic problem, but I’m planning on using it a LOT with some of the later games.
Last night, I was working on the compiled version of a calendar. I got the basics working, including muddling through the swamp that is System.CodeDom. This version was more complicated than the MfGames.Template library, mainly because it does more than the template library.
I feel that the approach is a good one. When you define a cycle in a calendar, such as DayOfMonth, the generated code actually creates a property of that name which gives the calculated results. Thay way, if you create a cycle “LongCycle” or “Calibration”, it will create that. This means you have a calendar object specific to your calendar and also with the properties that make sense for that calendar.
Speaking of Calibration, I still need to work on a roaming cycle events (holidays).
But, the project is sound and I think I have a couple good points before I consider it “done” enough to use in Turf Wars:
- Date Formatting
- Date Parsing
- Hours of Day
- Non-Looped Calculations
- Rendering
- Chooser (Gtk# and SWF)
- Offset (since the rest of the world isn’t zero-based)
I also found a potential calendar for Itrifore that I’ll propose to fightertype. That way, I can have pretty formatted dates and times on my game while I’m debugging instead of looking at a decimal number.
On my progress for Turf Wars, I decided that I had to finish the culture library so I can get a properly formatted calendar. Because of that, I spent a day working on a new approach for the culture, using some of the ideas I got from MfGames.Template. Instead of writing an entire grammar to handle formulas, I decided just to use CodeDom to write out a C# class that can be compiled that has all the rules. It simplified my work, requires less invention, and I think it can be done in a reasonable time. So, this week, I’m going to try finishing it up (at least the Gregorian, the Sepia Thrones, and the Itrifore calendars).
Last night there was this very loud and flashing lightning storm. I was feeling a bit down for various reasons and I got to thinking about Balance. As for my original goals, Balance succeeded, I created a system that was fairly accurate for my goals, could do almost anything. However, I never finished actually writing it. And, with Turf Wars, I put it on even more hold.
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Fluffy and Bouncy are both against me trying something new. I should just “finish it” since I’ve been working on it for eight years now. On one side, finishing it would be a very important thing. On the other, I don’t know if I can actually make it fun to play. The need to simplify it further and further is hitting the point of where the system can’t take any more simplification. By its design, it was written to do “anything” and that makes it a complicated system.
I’m just not sure what to do.
Started the progress on getting vassal orders working properly. Didn’t get too far, but it was significant. Now, you can see a list of orders you’ve given your vassals. The next step will be to add/delete/reorder them.
Still excited about working on this, despite the fact the order part of this is going to be the most complicated part of the game. After this, the nasty hurdles should be fairly reduced until I get to the 3D modelling stuff. I also went out and purchased Carrera, Bryce, and a bunch of other applications, mainly because I don’t want to figure out Blender today.
For the first time, this Friday, I managed to go the entire trip from work to home without getting off the bike (except to fix a slipped chain twice). That even includes that really, really big hill that I’ve been struggling with for a year now. I’m so happy. :)
Decided that new some screenshots would help encourage me. These aren’t much different, at least in the stylistic appearance from the prior ones. I managed to clean up the route appearances to something that looked a bit neater. I don’t know if I had the layers in the last one, but I do now, which lets me turn off the ones I don’t want to see. In the “real” game, you won’t see routes.
The next three images are the three vassals moving around. Vassal automatically go home at the end of their day. That gives Nightmare their “advantage.” You can set the beginning of their day, which lets you have two shifts (12 hours each) without too much of a problem.
You might also notice the favors number changing. At the moment, the toll for routes is 1,000 favors per meter, just for debugging purposes. In the future, it will be less and variable, but for testing purposes it works out just fine. What you can’t see is that buildings also produce an income, which helps pay for all that expensive tolls.
While I was explaining what the game can do, I had a great idea. I’m giong to have the top-down view show all the buildings. As you put your mouse over them, it “erases” the buildings and shows the lots, with the information about the building underneath it. You’ll be able (I hope) to use the middle mouse roller to control the size of the erasure. I think it would have a nice touch and adds to the usability of the game (information).
I know I shouldn’t jump the gun, but I really want to get to the 3D stuff. Of course, the game engine itself isn’t done, so that isn’t going to help if I split my efforts. I’m going to struggle really hard this month to get most of the game “done” with this interface before switching over the 3D efforts.
