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[squeakyReaper]

- Release 0.1.0

Awesome.  Of course, with the combat being "placeholder" as you say, I can see 0.1.0 being Pacman.  You avoid ghosts (Wolves) and picking up pellets (Money) until you can find a power pellet (Weapons, perhaps?), but otherwise it's just trying to collect money 'til death do you part with your wallet.  Fun times.

[Willfor]

Release 0.1.0

Requires the .NET 2.0 runtimes. I've included a manual for the sake of pointing out which buttons do what. Unfortunately, I forgot to include 'z', which passes time if you are on the overworld map.

At this point, I just want to know if people get crashes on trying to start it up. That is my primary concern. Any other feedback is, of course, welcome.

--

Combat is so placeholder at the moment that getting touched by any foe will give you a game over. This is not because it instantly kills the game, it is because your torso exploded. There's a framework there now for a more complicated combat system, but coding that will be a much bigger job than I can do in a day. Or even a few days.

[Willfor]

Bugfixes for 0.1.1:

* Rewrote of portions of the display code to allow better interaction with the screen. Took out some artifact pieces of code that were slowing down response times in Site movement. Changed some things so that when you come out of the one conversation in the game that has been implemented, it won't freeze movement control for about two seconds afterward.

tl;dr: Mouse support will improve soon.

Still waiting on crash/success reports from just about anyone.

[squeakyReaper]

I can't tell if the game is meant to be that slow, or if it is my laptop being a POS again.  Either one is equally viable, but it takes quite a bit of time between button presses to get anywhere.  At least it doesn't queue them up and press them all post-lag, I hate it when some games do that.

I failed to pay after gathering 40$.  I'm guessing it's impossible to pay at the moment?  At any rate, my torso apparently exploded after colliding with a bounty hunter.  Good show.  No crashes quite yet.

[Willfor]

That issue is sort-of fixed for 0.1.1. If your delay is due to the clock itself moving, then the fix I've done will only work marginally. I've removed something that was preventing another movement command from being struck for about a second after each movement command is hit, so if it was because of that it should run much more smoothly now.

The not-being-able-to pay thing... That is a bug. Whoops. Let me just check something here...

Edit: Well, I checked, and I can pay on my end. Did he just brush you off when you talked to him?

[squeakyReaper]

I just have no idea how to talk to him.  Or...  what he is.  He's that white i at the blue S, right?  What button do I use to communicate with him?  Do I move into him, or press another button?

[Willfor]

Yeah, he's the 'i'. That will change to something more official soon.

Click on him with the left mouse button. I should really make that more apparent in the next version of the Manual.

[squeakyReaper]

Yeah, no mention of it in the manual.  You probably mentioned that somewhere in this topic, and I just missed it.  At any rate, no crashes when I do everything BUT pay him, so there's that.

[Thendash]

I played it, and no crashes for me. The ability to go diagonally and to hold a direction button down would be nice, but that's all I really have to add due to the bare bones nature of the release.

[Willfor]

I implemented diagonal movement, and holding buttons down shortly after you requested them, Thendash. Unfortunately, it's been slow going since then.

I made some bigger progress today:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

^ This is what good health looks like.

The bounty hunters don't like it when you're in good health...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It would be a better screen if limbs didn't go white when they they were pretty much destroyed. Also, having them be destroyed means very little at the moment. Still, I'm slowly expanding the framework I've already laid down. The next thing I have to work with the display on is a message box where combat text will actually go. It's not too difficult to set up, actually, I should have it soon. I actually should have had it done before I even released a tech demo come to think of it.

[Willfor]

Video Blog #2

This gives a visual tour of the inventory system so far. The audio levels have been raised by a lot. It may be too loud for some people now. A transcript might be in the cards later, but I took a bit of time trying to get this done right.

Anyway! Things are really starting to come together in the very base systems. I'm going to have to tackle combat again before I can release. I have to do an AI overhaul to incorporate party controls, and I have to make materials actually do ... anything at all. Currently they are just there to look pretty.

[Willfor]

Ducking into an alley in East Fort:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Having a conversation with a potential party member:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Multi-image demonstration of mouse-click combat:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I realise release 0.1.0 is not simply bare bones, but bones that have been cooked in the kettle to make broth, and then given to wolves until they've cracked all of the marrow out of it. This, unfortunately, will remain the state of the game until I've got a lot more done with it, even though it's already leaps and bounds ahead of its first incarnation.

So basically, this is a post outlining my goals, and the general direction of the project:

(1) You're screwed, but not because of random chance.

And you're not so much screwed as much as you're in a very bad situation. The game will not set out to kill you at random because it can. No. Your actions or inactions in any given situation will determine the way the major forces in the game see you. You're in a bad situation, but working at that situation will give you every chance to get out of it. A lot of the methods to get out of the situation are dangerous, but you'll go into them knowing they are dangerous. A meteor will not come down on your head because the RNG decides it wants to join in on the fun.

If you die because the game arbitrarily decides to take you out, it is a bug and not a feature. If you pissed off a gang member by disrespecting her, and her friends come along two days later to beat your face into the wall, that is a feature and not a bug. If you pissed off a gang member by disrespecting her, and a rival gang beats your face in, she was having an affair with the leader of the rival gang.

-- Or it could be a bug in there. Sure. Good luck to future me in finding that if I get to that point.

(2) You are the dashing rogue figure who is either too clever for his own good, or just plain dumb.

Personality-wise, it's not going to matter whether your character is male or female, you are the one who said the wrong thing when the guards came for you. It was tremendously funny. They laughed so hard when they clapped you in irons that you honestly thought you were going to get away with it.

Funny that.

(3) The world doesn't care about you unless you make it care about you.

There are a bunch of things going on around you, and it won't be possible to do all of them in the run of a game. The plots are mutable, and will react to each other in different ways, and not just because of you. There are other protagonistically-inclined characters out there who will do the job just as well as you can. Characters that you can recruit can be recruited by other parties going out into the wilds. Other characters can default on their obligations and be dragged to justice. There are actors outside of East Fort who are running their own games that may start, climax, and finish before you even see them, leaving you staring at the aftermath when you walk through.

The goal is not to randomly generate these, but to modify base plots via other circumstances, and making the plots robust enough to withstand having more than one side on them. Plots that will run whether you ever find out about them or not.


There are more, but those are the big ones for the moment.