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[olemars]

Google Fail :\
I've changed a few sharing settings around. Could you try this link?

[Sowelu]

Works!  And oh how glorious it is.

[sluissa]

Any news?

[Sowelu]

I've been sick and working, but planning on combat this weekend (unless I have to drive a friend around which is quite possible).  I figure my short term goal is actually going to be combat, then a cut-down town simulator that lets you walk around, hunt down bandits at night, and maybe even use the inn.

[Sowelu]

BAM



This is a NON-INTERACTIVE demo (well, you can scroll using the arrow keys, but whatever).  Good guys are the bandits with swords, bad guys are the bandits with clubs.  The actual numbers for the weapons aren't implemented.

Download the Windows binary here.  You will also need the .NET 4.0 runtime, unless you already have it, which you might.

Two hours ago I wondered how the hell it got to be 3 AM, since the last time I looked at the clock it was 10 PM.  Now it's morning.  I'm going to bed.  Hope it works for you all...  Next milestone is controllable characters.  And walls, someday, once I have the graphics (they already know how to path around impassible tiles, but the pathfinding needs a little more love too).

[olemars]

Complains about missing SdlDotNet it seems. Always takes a couple of tries to bundle everything that's needed

I've decompressed and had a few looks at the tile files, which is apparently the stuff in "BC" (IMAPS.CAT seems to be the battleground layouts/maps). It's a whole new level of wrong. There's 8 different file extensions and they all seem to be different formats. I think I've figured out the FLC type and at least partially the FFC type. The rest are still a mystery.

What's odd about these files is they all seem to contain some garbage, like they were made by some misaligned memory dump. At least a couple of them contain bits of what looks suspiciously like somebodys autoexec.bat.

I'll add support for reading and decompressing these things so whoever wants to can have a look at the raw data.

[Sowelu]

See if it'll work after you install the SdlDotNet runtime:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/cs-sdl/files/SDL.NET/6.1.0/sdldotnet-6.1.0-runtime-setup.exe/download

[Sowelu]

New version.  20101114d is user controllable:  Click your guys, tell them where to go.  Select someone by clicking on their feet, or by clicking on their portrait, or by pressing 1 through 4.  Space to pause/unpause.  When you have someone selected, click anywhere to go there, "F" -> click to flee there (same as walking but won't autoengage), "A" -> click an enemy to target that enemy.

There's a few unpleasant graphical glitches, and many grid-related issues.  Right now all movement occurs on a grid, but I am going to rip that out completely and replace it with something more true to the original and less glitchy.

But for now, I'm essentially done with combat.  I'm going to move on to adventure mode / cards, now.  Once you can ditz around in town, I'll start linking that back to combat and implementing a proper party.

Grab it here:  https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bziski2BxF5NMjc3YTVlZDUtYjk2My00NjYyLTk3YzQtN2U3NDZiY2Q2MGUw&hl=en&authkey=CIeW4q0H (yeah, I decided that Google Docs was better)

You still need SdlDotNet and .NET Runtime 4.0, both linked above.

[Muz]

Whoa, that actually looks kinda neat. I thought that this would just be 20 threads of complete vaporware, like a lot of the other discussions I see elsewhere.

[Sowelu]

Nah.  The adventure CYOA mode is going in right now, built in XML.  It even links up to the combat engine, very roughly right now, and I'll see if I can't make a full model of a city toni--

--wait a second, I have work tomorrow.  That's no good.  Well, at least my mojo held out this far!

I have the advantage of totally standing on the shoulders of giants, here.  Without olemars's and Quadko's image exporters, I'd be screwed, and I'm going to use Quadko's world map data before too long as well.  Battle + CYOA + map = the point at which it stops being a crummy toy and becomes an honest-to-god remake, however poor.

Honestly I could use some advice on how exactly to write the pathfinding for combat.  I've never worked with non-grid-based pathfinding, and if anyone has some cherished articles on the subject, I would appreciate them.  Also, I'm a little irritated that I'll have to hard-code a lot of adventure data:  No matter how much XML you throw at it, eventually the game needs some real logic in the CYOA bits.  I feel like I should use a scripting language for that, but I hate scripting languages, and I utterly loathe Lua.  Could anyone suggest other scripting languages that might be useful for things like "This CYOA card says 'Attack the bandits', then calls a script that generates the enemies and enters combat", or "This card should contain the location and date of the next Witches' Sabbat, so call this script to retrieve it"?  Or, possibly, compel me not to hate Lua so much?

Thanks!

[Sowelu]

So the XML format for the cards is mostly hammered out.  It's a busy week but I'm hoping to release a version that has a large chunk of the town + a few wilderness encounters for kicks (but no map) on Sunday if things go well.  That includes actual character stats, so you can try to talk your way out of a fight (using your best character's skill), climb a wall without rope (using your worst character's skill), or sneak into town without paying the toll (using the party's average skill).  Also, beat up bad guys using an actual party instead of just some random joes, even if combat still kind of blows.

I'm considering what I can do with political climate and stuff.  It seems like the rumors in town are so boring.  When you hit up town square, people should *know* if there's a raubritter in the area, instead of trying to waltz into town hall blind.  Also, some towns ought to be more peaceful than others, meaning few-to-no mugger attacks and maybe even no curfew; others, on the other hand, could be so violent that someone could (rarely) try to pickpocket or shiv you in a back alley in broad daylight.

Ed:  I wonder if I should move this to creative projects...

[Sowelu]

"Oh, he copied the default character names and stats," you might say.  But you'd be wrong.  No, they're loaded from an original-Darklands saved game~  Yes indeed, you can import your characters.

So much to do, and many things to tie together before a new release...

[sluissa]

Looking good so far, I'm very impressed. One question though, will we be able to change the font at least? I'm not expecting the original font, although it'd be nice. I personally would like something with a serif though.

[Sowelu]

I'm most certainly hoping to put the original font in there, but it'll work with anything.  I couldn't find a gothic/script font I actually liked that was readable at that size though.  If you find one, send it my way!

Actually, speaking of size.  The original was 320x200.  I've been building this remake for 640x400.  I'm leery of making it entirely scalable, but I guess it would be pretty nice?  And it would make more modern and exotic fonts more readable if the whole thing was scaled up (instead of having to scale the font down to smaller than it wants, which is nasty against a background).

[G-Flex]

640x400? Why stick to a weird nonsquare-pixel resolution these days? That seems kind of odd to me.

If changes to the interface are made in particular, you could probably use higher resolution than that anyway.