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[timmeh]

I am back!  Picked up my computer a little while ago, I should be resuming work either tonight or tomorrow, depending how much schoolwork I have due tomorrow (which I should find out in a minute here, when I check the school website...).

I should be active again.

[Outcast Orange]

Woo! Timmeh's back!

I was really starting to worry.
Let's cook up some games this creativity thread will never forget!

[timmeh]

I'm on it

I've got the main menu back in, as well as the basics of my c_game and c_player classes (with obvious chunks commented out where they require other classes, like the inventory).  All the splash-screens (the loading screen, main menu, etc.) are all loaded from external files now, to make editing them easier.  I should be able to get character creation back in (and far nicer looking and smoother) either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how much I decide to sleep

After that I'll get the maps back in (although they'll be the same, mediocre ones I have in the current release, I'll make them better later, but I want everything working for now), followed by items, then enemies, then spells.

I'm considering making all the files look like the spell file, with a format more like DF's raw files.  Any opinions?

I should be back full-time after Saturday, but I've got SATs that morning, so while I will be working, it may be a little slower until the end of the week.  On the other hand, you don't have to worry too much about Assassin's Creed 2 sucking up all my time, cause I've almost finished it already, just need to find the other 49 feathers for 100%.....  epic game though, loved it the first time, and I'm planning on playing it through several more times, albeit maybe a little slower this time...

[Outcast Orange]

Aha! Another Assasin's Creed fan. I would have played that game obsessively too, if it didn't require you to sit through the same cut scene on startup each time.

Epic game though, very fun.

[timmeh]

You're talking about the first one right?  The cut-scenes with Al Mualim talking.  You can avoid those if you stop by the bureau in the city you're supposed to be in, and it'll load you straight into the bureau when you pick "Continue Memory" or something like that... haven't played it in a while...

I was referring to the second one though, and didn't notice any cut-scenes on the startup or load, besides the expected company logos.  Incredible game, fixed all the problems the first one had (I still liked the first one, but I'm not going to claim it was flawless, not by a long shot) and then just piled more on top.

[Outcast Orange]

If I ever get my Xbox back, I'll have to look into that. Sounds like a great solution.
I can't wait to find the new one on a clearance rack some day, when things are next-next gen.

Strapped for cash = no new games.
By the time I get Cod4 2, the online multi-player will be half deserted,
and only the super elite will remain.

[timmeh]

Heh.  I know how the no-money thing feels... I had been saving up most of the year to get AC2, and I won't likely get another game until sometime mid-next year, unless I get one for Christmas/Birthday, and given my families current financial situation, I'm not going to get my hopes up too high

Anyways, I've run into a little trouble with my game... I've not made much visible progress since last night, but if I can get past this then there'll be a leap, and I'll be able to get character creation done shortly afterwards.  Anyways, I've reformatted the class file to work like the spell one (tags with '[' and ']' instead of an ini), and it's almost working, but for some reason, when I'm putting the individual lines into a vector for parsing it dies on me.  It's not the reading the lines, it's adding a string to a vector, and it's really bugging me...

Here's the code, if anyone has the time to look through it I'd really appreciate it, kinda stuck here for the moment...

[EDIT]: Scratch that, it was complaining when it loaded a blank line and tried to add it to the vector for some reason.  I just told it to only add a line if it's not empty and it's working now.  I might have some screenshots of the new character creation up soon.  I'm going to be changing a little bit about the mechanics of character creation and stats too.  For example, health is going to be it's own stat, so endurance will only have the one use.  I'm going to be re-balancing all the stats later too, cause some were more useful than others before.  I'm also replacing the point system in character creation by giving the player some experience to spend on their stats.

With any luck I'll have class selection done before dinner, so I can get stat adjustment and confirmation in this evening...

[Outcast Orange]

I haven't had a chance to really dig into the latest version yet.
On my to do list though.
Maybe later tonight.

We ARE creation. I am orange.

[timmeh]

Screenshot time, however lame it may be to share screenshots of a text-based character creation process

Spoiler: SCREENSHOTS!!! (click to show/hide)

ToA 0.31 title screen, you may or may not be able to tell that the screen is a little taller now, albeit not by much.


It's bare-bones, but it looks less command-prompt-like than it did before. You can use special symbols now too if you want. I should be able to make the maximum length longer pretty easily too, should that become an issue.


Class selection is probably the biggest, nicest looking update I've made (followed perhaps by stat adjustment and the overview screen, although the both of them still need work...).  The list of classes is displayed on the left, and the details for the currently displayed class are on the right.


This is the stat adjusting screen, where you can spend exp on your stats prior to starting the game. I'm likely to move the instructional text, and I need to find some way to conveniently display the cost of increasing/profit from decreasing the currently selected stat...


This screen is shown at the end of character creation, to let you review the character before you start. I think I'll add [Escape] to return the main menu too at some point...

A little more work on this tomorrow, and I'll start on the basic map and movement stuff.

[Outcast Orange]

Looks good.
More polish is what I lack.

My lack of polish will be the downfall of fruit.

[timmeh]

Thanks!  And don't worry about it, polish can come later.  The new shapes in Cloud Scream and the layers getting generated are impressive work themselves!

Another screenshot...  Using the system I set up to display the splash-screen's used for the title screen, menu, credits, etc. I scratched up a UI in notepad and tried displaying it on the console, to see how it would look. 



Overall I'm pretty happy with it.  The borders will be replaced with the smoother lines used in the other screens, I just can't type them as easily in Notepad.  Other changes apparent here, I'm thinking of changing energy to a sort of "magic points" system, where they're used to cast spells, thus the numbers instead of the bar.  The hunger bar is just text, but that's more because I can't put color in Notepad, I don't know if that's a change that'll actually be made or not...

Obviously, the map dimensions will change a little, although since I'm taking a section out of the bottom, I don't think it's really getting any bigger, just wider.  The short versions of the messages were a bit of a pain to write and keep up with, so I'll probably stick with a single message for each action, and use the larger space at the bottom to display them.  If I still have a lot of extra space I may use the right side of the message box for something else... maybe a quick-inventory or something, I dunno.

Once I've got basic map and movement stuff in I may post some about the rest of my planned UI.  I've got some ideas for changes for other parts of it as well...

On the note of the magic points thing.  As it stands, energy is completely useless.  Just another stat to keep track of and refill whenever possible.  This way it'll have a use.  I'm also considering, like in several other rogue-likes I've played, making spells use health if you don't have the energy.  Any ideas, opinions, critique?

[Bricks]

I haven't had an opportunity to play yet, so these suggestions may be extraneous or already implemented.  Anyway, energy for using spells sounds like a good alternative.  As long as it's clear to the player when it happens and how much of a hit they will take, being able to use health as magic would be pretty cool.  Do you intend energy to be used when reading a scroll?  Logically, I don't think it should, but I can see why you might want it to for balance reasons.  Looking at your screenshots, hunger seems out of place being a bar while everything else is a fraction.

[Outcast Orange]

Is there any reason that you don't use the extended ascii?
It is really helpful for giving a graphical appearance.
You should use the solid blocks for walls like in DF and my old curses versions.
Unless you're really particular to the older look.

Also, when you want to use a special character in notepad, the best thing do do is Ctrl+V it.
You can even hold it down to make more than one at a time.
Then, if you need copy/paste for something more useful,
just make sure you leave one lying around to pick back up when you're done.
Makes ascii art easier too.

[timmeh]

@Bricks - I don't think using scrolls/wands will require energy.  Hopefully I can retain some sort of balance by making them rarer and expensive enough to be a sort of trade-off.  I'm going to need a better interface for spell casting if I do this, cause I'll need a way to display the casting cost, as well as health and energy... 

On that note, if I do use energy for spell casting, should I remove memory casting limit?  I mean, I'll definitely still make the player cast it enough to learn it, but at the moment each spell has a sort of 'knowledge' stat that increases by one when cast from a scroll/wand and decreases by one when it's cast from memory.  I'm thinking I may remove the part where it decreases when cast from memory if I use energy though.  That, or just make magic really powerful, cause it would be hard to use it regularly if both restrictions stay...

@Outcast Orange - No reason really, when I started it in the first place I didn't know about the special symbols, but now that I do I'll probably do just that.    The only real reason I didn't have symbols in the example screen is cause I was in a hurry.  It was thrown together in a couple minutes, but once I finish my practice SAT (little over half-way done, taking a lunch break) I'll probably make a better one.

[EDIT]: Missed your comment on the hunger bar Bricks, my bad.  My only issue with using numbers for hunger is that the scale is from zero to one-thousand, so the numbers would take up just as much room as the bar and look a little out of place... so I guess my options are:
1.  Use a verbal display (I.E. Starving, Hungry, Sated, Full, etc.).
2.  Change the scale to something smaller.
Both have good and bad things too them I guess.  The verbal display would take a little longer to write, and might still look out of place.  But changing the scale (to say, 0-100) would mean that I'd have to take out a bigger chunk of hunger each round.  I suppose I could use a decimal value to store it but only display the rounded version... hmmm...

[EDIT2]: Okay, apparently ifstream doesn't agree with unicode formatting, so special symbols loaded from the file are out until I can figure out a way to load them properly...

[Bricks]

Yeah, I'd say mess with the current system as little as possible, and just round the hunger value off so it fits on a 0-100 scale.  I'd recommend NOT truncating the value, since you'd always go from 100 to 99 in one step.  Verbal scales are always too ambiguous for my brain.

Forgetting a spell seems a little strange; I'm not sure what sort of magic-related mythology you have in your game, but I think the spell should only get stronger as you use it (or at least stay just as powerful).  I guess it comes down to two ideologies - the constantly shifting madness of weighing your risks, or, the player who becomes more specialized and more reliable as time passes.  I prefer the latter, but I know many roguelike developers prefer the constant threat of death.  You seem to be working on magic a lot recently, do you intend to make a magic-heavy character viable?  I imagine that is hard to do without making magic too commonplace or too powerful.