Taking a break to rest my fingers and my brain.

This is really not a formal blog just an exhausting out burst of communication.

I've been programming like mad to reach this December deadline. Now that I actually have a decent character gen software I can get some of these easy pesky changes done. When comparing the character gen to the actual game mechanics, the mechanics seems so much easier. There's still some more tweaks to get the character gen, character art to look better but the basic design is suppose to be centered around the code and what it can do for others looking to use it as a character generator for their NPC's.

I've actually changed some things about placing monsters/event objects. Before, making a NPC would have the option of creating that NPC into an attack-able monster. After testing it out it started to become obvious that doing monster placement this way was out of the question. While it would fork for boss placements and guard placements I needed something that would be more random and simple to populate a massie area with monsters in one go. So to enhance this I have finally implemented monster groups which gives you the ability to group monsters into a area proximity. The groups have a encounter probability that is triggered on every zone into the given map. On top of that the number of enemies min and max are randomized amongst the group. Giving the generation of monsters a randomized feel to it. Also giving the ability to have a rare monster materialize at random or a party destroying monster to appear at random.

I'm currently am working on the pause menu features that includes the using of items, equipping armor, changing AI tactics when it comes to fights, saving your game. And the last thing i am still contemplating is how to auto generate a map. I really would like to eliminate the task of making maps. I'm thinking of getting an auto snap of the area around the player within a given area radius and then auto detecting things like buildings, players, and key locations based on a SimGroup organization. I want the whole thing to be something that can generate in a matter of seconds. The only issue with the overhead screen shot is what happens when you are in a dungeon.

I'm also thinking of adding in at least one dungeon in the release to. Full of traps and a few puzzles. I want this to have as much content as I can. At least enough to use all of the features in the RPG Editor.

One more thing I want to perfect a little is how the AI thinks when it comes to following or moving around the world. I've had an idea I've been thinking of for a while but not sure how practical it would be when a NPC is trying to figure out where to walk when something is in the way.



AI Stuck/Lost Target Algorithm.



So if the AI gets stuck I was thinking of the AI dropping way points that are auto thinking. On landing they will cast a small ray cast container out to check if the player is with in reach. If found it will tell its linked list brother the original cast node that has the closest sight of the target. The casted node will not report to a node that does not have a clear view to the emitting node. Eventually broadcasting to one of the orbital node surrounding the main AI. The AI will wait for one of the nodes in its main orbital area to return a travel time and just like a router on a network the AI will travel the shortest hops through way points to its target.

It sounds like it could work only if the time on task for the scan was in the nano seconds. I wouldn't want this to slow down the system when running form a group of monsters... Just a thought anyway...

As for check points I have the following remaining:

Adding Armor Equipping.
Adding Auto map generation.
Save points.
Loading game
Inn's with time advancing features.
Creating a demo dungeon.
Adding a single summoned creature.

Testing and Refining.


When I get towards the release I hope to have at least 2 weeks that are pure documentation on everything from the database schema, to the game classes, the scripted objects. Control Mapping packages. Extreme detail of all tabs in the RPG Editor. Along with details on how to create the art assets to work with the character generator.

Note, all art I have done for this will be release for free on turbo squid. I'm a programmer not an artist. But I'm getting better at it at least.

I plan on this being a learning tool for all those who are starting out like I was back in 2005. I know there are some old code to clean up, several things that were written when I first started my degree. My coding is a continuing uphill enhancement. The more I have to create casino games the more I learn about code efficiency. Especially in the embedded world. Even though some gaming is not embedded it does not mean one should not be memory cautious.

In saying that, as I use this tool to make my own game please be assured that there will code fixes and enhancements to improve the initial code base. Actually there should be no bugs by the time of release but as I see at work you have no idea how much people can make things break just by being alive.

I'm off to sleep hopefully I can get this all done in time. I knew this would not be easy to do as one person but I will give it my best.