Land of Fire

by Pixelcomet
Land of Fire
An atmospheric, anime inspired role playing game.

Land of Fire Devlog #3

ID:1995186
 
Dec 8 2015, 5:06 pm (Edited on Dec 8 2015, 10:18 pm)
Hello, another weekly Land of Fire devlog here and this one is alittle bit more .Gif heavy so fair warning..!

This week has been a pretty productive one as we poured most of our energies into ironing out our crafting system with hunter/gather skills. After extensive research was made into game design- more specifically, crafting systems[You can check out a site that I found had quite abit of insight on the subject here: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/ 5-approaches-to-crafting-systems-in-games-and-where-to-use-t hem--cms-22628

If you've navigated to the link above the crafting system we've settled on is #3. The crafting system is something that's really going to be a big part of how people decide to play the game. Here's a visual example of just how We're looking to accomplish this.



Basically, you let the system know what you want to make by selecting an item category from the list to the left of the window. In this particular example a Katana is divided into three areas: Offense defense and Utility respectively.Now, how good[or bad] a weapon can be made is mostly determined on the quality of materials used but the player's skill in crafting also plays a small role in achieving the best results possible.

Standard 'material' crafting is inspired by minecraft for the most part.
The Materials Made here are used in all the other areas of our crafting system.

You can now work out your arm muscles by swinging around your trusty axe and start gathering some wood! The .gif is a little bit on the big side so I'll attach it as a link instead:http://puu.sh/lOvrY/9392861edd.gif
And yeah.. The trees don't keel over just yet... but we're working on that!



For those of you who weren't able to try out our earlier public builds here are a few .Gifs of a handful of Fire techniques.
http://puu.sh/lOw3m/cbabad229b.gif
http://puu.sh/lOvBs/3bbea54a51.gif
http://puu.sh/lOvKS/273586ccc9.gif
We're hoping to build combat around a player's skill rather than who has the highest stats. For the moment we've played around using primarily skill shots to achieve this. The mouse tracking feels a little bit jumpy currently Not sure if it has something to do with how this is programmed or an issue that's related to DM in general.

http://puu.sh/lOwc1/bc9e436e20.gif
Here is another mechanic we're hoping to make use of in the game- Collaborating. This particular technique involves spitting Highly combustible ash that can either be ignited manually by the user or by simply coming into contact with a source for ignition... The results are hilarious most of the time--- Especially when the ash cloud blows up the user instead. Sadly It's just me in the .Gif.

Last but certainly not least, We've hired another Code wizard to assist in the game's development. Welcome Rushnut.

Well That's it for this week's post. If you're interested in what we're trying to create be sure to fan the hub for regular updates on the game's development or even better yet, toss us some feedback/criticism if you get a chance to try out one of the public builds.
Dec 8 2015, 5:14 pm
Impressive! this game is looking to be something I'm extremely interested in trying out! I'm really worried about how this would perform on a multiplayer atmosphere however, with all of these cool effects you guys have going on and whatnot :o!
Dec 8 2015, 5:17 pm
Thank you. Uh we've been tinkering around with multiplayer and for the most part the game is pretty stable in our small tests.
Dec 8 2015, 5:21 pm
Is the game going to be geared towards the webclient? I can see a lot of this interface stuff being done on JavaScript instead, increasing server performance!
Dec 8 2015, 5:26 pm
Possibly. We're keeping a close eye on Severed world's adventures with the webclient, since they're probably the best candidates right now that are actively working on optimizing how it performs with their game.
Dec 8 2015, 10:15 pm
Dec 8 2015, 10:22 pm
In response to Ishuri
Wooow... wow. That is too awesome, I truly love the art on this game. I would say fix the shadow of the tree since it's clearly messed up, but I'm sure this is still being worked on. Keep up the awesome job fellas.

edit: Those fire skills :o...
Dec 8 2015, 10:28 pm
In response to Exentriks Gaming
Exentriks Gaming wrote:
Wooow... wow. That is too awesome, I truly love the art on this game. I would say fix the shadow of the tree since it's clearly messed up, but I'm sure this is still being worked on. Keep up the awesome job fellas.

Glad you think so! Will be bangin' out a few gifs every now and then.
Dec 9 2015, 4:03 pm
You know I don't want to be pessimistic but from my own experiences with a multiplayer game similar to this one, you're better off trying to make this into a single player. The amount of large icons and the use of animations, along with pixel movement, it'll be nearly impossible to have this run as smooth as you'd like it to be. Once you hit 15-20 players you'll need a godly server and perfect implementation of systems, depending on the fps you're running this on.
Dec 9 2015, 4:05 pm
In response to Ishuri
looking good and keep up with the good work i cant wait to play this game!
Dec 9 2015, 4:27 pm
In response to Exentriks Gaming
Exentriks Gaming wrote:
You know I don't want to be pessimistic but from my own experiences with a multiplayer game similar to this one, you're better off trying to make this into a single player. The amount of large icons and the use of animations, along with pixel movement, it'll be nearly impossible to have this run as smooth as you'd like it to be. Once you hit 15-20 players you'll need a godly server and perfect implementation of systems, depending on the fps you're running this on.

Once you know the right tricks, it's not hard to get multiplayer running like it should. This includes the work load required as well. We have a lot on our back when it comes to facing the hardships of creating a multiplayer game, especially all the taxing involved in it. We've done testing with quite the number of players and it ran how it should (many thanks to Rushnut for this).
Dec 10 2015, 5:51 am
In response to Exentriks Gaming
Exentriks Gaming wrote:
You know I don't want to be pessimistic but from my own experiences with a multiplayer game similar to this one, you're better off trying to make this into a single player. The amount of large icons and the use of animations, along with pixel movement, it'll be nearly impossible to have this run as smooth as you'd like it to be. Once you hit 15-20 players you'll need a godly server and perfect implementation of systems, depending on the fps you're running this on.

Gonna kinda go off on one here, bare with me -

BYOND as an engine is a lot more powerful than a lot of people give it credit for, this is mostly due to how BYOND transcodes into bytecode. Lots of things in the language which are functionally identical, usually have a better way of accomplishing them. The best example off the top of my head I can give is:
spawn for()

spawn while(1)


These two functions, which identical in nature, are vastly different in terms of CPU. Since 
spawn while(1)
has a logic check in it, despite the fact the logic check does effectively nothing, the bytecode it compiles down to is far larger than a simple 
spawn for()
, which results in it being a large amount slower.

Obviously this is a very very simple and relatively un-impactful example, but with proper use of update loops, object pooling, animate() and avoiding of a few very specific things within DM (Accessing overlays and /icon operations spring to mind) you can actually get incredibly large scale games running with relative ease.

Animate() in particular was a godsend, previously you had to use *shudder* /icon operations, which basically looked like this:

Client: Hi I want to rotate an icon
Server: Alright
Server rotates the icon
Server sends the whole icon back through the pipeline to the client
Client: Got it! Thanks

This is ridiculous, and I guess a sign of the age of BYOND really, animate() fixed all those issues by switching it around like this

Client: Hi I want to rotate an icon
Server: Alright
Server sends client the information required
Client: Got it!
Client then rotates the icon itself
Client: Thanks

All of the actual calculations and visual handling is managed by the client, with minimal network lag, and most importantly, practically nil CPU from the server.



Anyway I could rant about a bunch of this forever, but Inuyasha is setting up http://byond.science on which I'll be posting what I'm calling "The Green Book", relating to making your games as efficient as possible.


-On topic-

I'm really excited to start working on Land of Fire, I've seen first hand some of the fantastic looking things that Ishuri has put into it, and the artwork speaks for itself. The developers are all just really committed fans of the genre with incredible skill in their respective trades, and whilst the source for the game is somewhat daunting, I'm going to try my hardest to cut through the feature creep and start actually adding things.
Dec 10 2015, 4:34 pm
I wonder how epic taijutsu will be
Dec 10 2015, 4:35 pm
Will we be able to enchant weapons
Dec 10 2015, 4:42 pm
That particular aspect of crafting is still up in the air. We're focussing on laying the groundwork first.
Dec 10 2015, 4:53 pm
Ok
Dec 10 2015, 5:18 pm
In response to Tajcore
Ok
Dec 11 2015, 8:53 pm
TAIJUTSUS on the other hand can go either way ( look good or bad), we'll have an update for it some day e-e
hopefully some day soon ; u ;