AlexandraErin's site

Early gameplay video of RetroQuest.

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 21:37:32 +0000

I recorded a video of a few simple fights in RetroQuest, using a very simple test map that just has a small stretch of road and two encounter zones: one with single goblin and skeleton encounters on and just around the road, and a field with slimes in it to the south.

Apart from getting a basic idea what combat is like, you can see a brief application of stealth and two special pre-battle tactical maneuvers... though one of them, Tactical Repositioning, was very underwhelming because none of the encounters in the demo really had conditions that called for it. While both of the maneuvers used in the video have to do with changing your starting position, they'll include a whole range of options for buffing your party or altering the battlefield conditions to your advantage.

Making the video was helpful because I spotted some glitches watching it that were harder to catch at the time I was playing, mostly having to do with arm position or the fact that a skeleton didn't detect that it was holding a weapon in one hand (it kept attacking with the empty one.)

How even terrible art can benefit from careful design considerations.

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 07:32:59 +0000

So, this time last year I was working on an extremely retro RPG called RetroQuest, which featured an authentically eye-stabbing phosphorescent green as the only color. Some changes in design direction prompted me to overhaul the code from scratch, which gave me a chance to rethink the choice (or lack) of color palettes and the general graphical style. I've ended up with something that looks less like what a game from the target era could have looked like and more like those early graphic styles carried forward.

This was the old version:

I based it on how games (particularly the original Ultima III) had looked on my school's old monochrome Apple IIs.

This is the new version:

Despite the facelift, the game is still largely the same. The graphics are just a better fit for what the project ended up being. They're more of a blend of elements, since RetroQuest is a blend of ancient gaming influences and not just an Ultima Trilogy clone.

The character icon is based on the smiley faces available in the old ASCII extended character sets that were so common for DOS shareware games. By making the character a giant head instead of a tiny stick figure, I can fit an actual range of expression in and make a character with less detail feel more alive.

The main palette uses a very limited range of grays with a slightly darker palette for the background (because contrast is important when working with limited colors). Green (and amber, the other standard for monochrome monitors) is used as a highlight color, to symbolize magic and objects of power.

The wells here are part of the character creation/customization system... the character is throwing green pixels into them to allocate points into specific skills/areas. They also show the ASCII influence, being basically a zero turned on their side... I might rotate the base icon to make that more apparent, haven't made up my mind.

It's quite a change from what I originally envisioned when I started the first version of RetroQuest a couple of screennames and many versions of BYOND ago basically as a gag game, but it's certainly easier to look at and does a better job of conveying the nature of the game, the blend of old and new.

Mouse cursor size.

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:22:38 +0000

Code:
Not a code problem, per se.

Problem description:

I'm working with a game that uses a very small default tile, which has the side effect of making any icon used as a mouse cursor shrink down to an equally tiny size.

Is there any way to override this and explicitly set a mouse cursor size other than by changing the default icon size?

Multiple map controls vs. recycling?

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:33:36 +0000

I'm a bit unschooled when it comes to things like optimization.

I have a game with a sort of side car to the inventory/status area that is used to display different things at different times (spells in the spellbook when you're casting a spell, information about an item being analyzed/examined, status of your followers during combat, etc.) I use a map control to accomplish this.

It seems to me that the easiest way to handle swapping between them seems to be to have a separate map control for each menu and then simply hide them and only show the one being used. But that would result in there being four or five map controls in the window, even if they're not all being shown. Is this something that would cause a problem? If I'm not doing anything with the hidden ones, are the going to be generating network traffic?

The alternative would be to have lists of what belongs to each version of the screen and have a proc that handles the switching, but I just don't know the pros and cons of the two methods.

RetroQuest - in glorious several color.

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:25:17 +0000

So, when I moved away from the green screen CRT concept for RetroQuest's graphics, I didn't ditch it completely... like I said last year, there are important thematic reasons for it. Instead I'm using it as a sort of highlight color. Green in the RetroQuest world is the color of the Phosphor Essence, the substance that powers magic. So it will show up in magical effects and powerful magic items.

It's also involved in the character creation/advancement system. Last year's version had a very straightforward "character sheet"/menu system which was efficient but really worked best once you'd already played through a bit and understood what everything did/meant. In order to allow players a chance to try things out before committing to a build, I've set up an in-game area for adjusting stats called the Temple of the Flame:

In the Temple, there are wells for each primary skill... pictured here are the ones for Healing and Companionship. Ghostly phosphor-burn images representing the skill hang in the air. When you pour some of our own soul energy into the well, it manifests as a green phosphor sprite that circles above the well. Within the temple, shrines will allow you to customize other aspects of your character.

Selections made don't become finalized until you go up a level, so at any point during your first level of experience you can completely change your build, and even after that if you find out a choice you made isn't quite what you expected or you want to test something out before committing you can still take things back as long as you don't level up after getting them. Since you have to talk to an NPC to cash in a level-up there's no danger of getting stuck with something accidentally.

Over on the right there's another tiny bit of color. Besides white and green, "amber" was the other popular color of monochrome CRT monitor... it was marketed as being more ergonomic than the others. I started off just using "Gold" as the generic fantasy currency of choice, it seemed like the logical place to put it when decided it would be wrong to pay homage to two of the monochrome standards and not the third. These color highlights also serve an in-game function: when you see something that's not a shade of white/gray, you know it's going to be something powerful or valuable.

Close Encounters of the Retro Kind

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 23:24:23 +0000

Changing from "inline" combat to random encounters with instanced battlefields/arenas was one of the big changes I made midstream in the last version of RetroQuest. The new version started from the ground up with that idea, and it took it in a different direction.

The problem with the old version was that I had to actually create the arenas, either by drawing them as individual maps or creating a satisfactory generator for them. Custom crafting the field for a boss battle or something is one thing, but having to lay out every possible random encounter in the game? No thank you... not when there's a better idea around.

The new version of RetroQuest grabs a snapshot of the area immediately around a player who triggers an encounter, then scales it up to three times the size in order to make sure there's enough open space to maneuver around in.

You can get an idea of the effect here.

Here is a picture of the character walking around in exploration mode:

Here's the same character, moments later, after triggering an encounter:

This is the tactical phase, before the fight actually begins. During the tactical phase the action is frozen but you can move your viewpoint around or adjust your starting position. I've repositioned the character slightly to get a better view. The light gray field that she's in the corner of is the tactical movement range... it's centered on the player's starting point.

There's a random stat roll to determine if enemies who would be hidden are spotted or not. This character's Tactics is relatively high, so the goblins in the woods and the area around them are highlighted until the fight begins.

Also note that the resolution is higher in this shot... during the tactical phase you can zoom out to see more of the field at a time.

Finally, here's the same battle, during the action phase. I tried to get a shot of hitting the goblin warrior, but I was a second too late.

The goblins' arms are inherited from the default character, they do need to be repositioned a bit and will probably be redrawn to be somewhat more consistent with the goblin head.

You can also see that the character's facial expression is changeable. In combat, characters mostly respond to their own and their enemies' attacks. The expression during the tactical phase represents the results of a morale roll. Good results bring random buffs, bad results bring penalties. The morale check does not depend on the difficulty of the fight... you can face certain doom with a smile on your face, after all. Instead it's based on things like how long it's been since you've eaten or drank, the quality of your allies, etc.

RetroQuest: Everything old is new again.

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 07:55:52 +0000

So, it's been over a year since I started working on the current version of RetroQuest, and more than half a year since I last posted about it... as of the last post I was trying to wrap up a few things before doing some multiplayer testing.

But trying to nail down the remaining issues convinced me that the code had serious problems... I'm a hobbyist here, I don't do a lot of planning in advance, and there were two or three fairly major changes of direction between July and December of last year. The code was kind of like one of those archeological sites where you can dig up one city and find the remains of a whole other city underneath.

But even though it happened in a very haphazard fashion, I was very happy with where the game design ended up so I decided to start again from scratch.

And since I was throwing out the code... well, as much as the green screen graphics fill me with the warm glow of nostalgia, they weren't a popular choice. And while the original version of RetroQuest I cobbled together like ten years ago was purely an Ultima clone, the new version's more of an all-purpose nostalgia buffet. If it was a fantasy roleplaying game on a floppy I could get a hold of in the mid 80s, it's probably somewhere in the DNA of RetroQuest.

So along with the total code overhaul, I gave it a graphical facelift. I didn't just dump the lack of a palette, I changed the style. The lack of detail in extreme low resolution graphics with no color was a feature because I'm not an artist... but I'd need to be a better artist to make everything I wanted to out of featureless green blocks.

So the new graphical style is black and white (or very dark gray and very light gray... this time I've got the softer contrast in from the beginning), with a shade of gray in between to add detail.

And rather than making blobby stick figures and then trying to add individuality to them based on clothing and accessories with little room for detail, I've gone in a different direction... one that anybody who played a game using the extended ASCII character set will probably get a thrill of recognition from, before they turn to prod the embers of the fire and curse the chill in their old bones.

I'm included a bit of a teaser screen shot of the inventory system... there's a hint of the new character design at the top, in the equipment/status area:

I'm -very- pleased with the inventory system, which works much better than the one I kludged together in the "green" version... if nothing else, I learned a lot about BYOND's modern capabilities trying to make that game.

You can arrange the items pretty much as you see fit in a little "bin" beneath the map display. Those letters underneath it are filters: Weapons, Hats, Food, Potions, and Magic. There will be a separate one that hides or shows quest-related items.

This example has weapons and hats on. The character is wearing a cheap wizard hat, and has a bear companion... the bear's icon there is also a directional indicator if you get separated.

The character's hands aren't that big in the game, and they'll probably end up much smaller in the equipment area, too. Though I kind of like how enthusiastic it makes the character look.

State of my stuff.

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:55:41 +0000

I have a slight weakness when it comes to planning, in that I tend to lose track of where in the month things are relative to each other. Like, when I decided to spend this weekend getting Bacchanal into shape for outside players, I neglected to consider that it's the weekend before Christmas and I had plans. Likewise the next two weekends. I'm not prepared to give up my limited development time on RetroQuest, so I'm not sure when Bacchanal will go up. There will probably come a time sometime in the next few weeks when I find myself stuck on something else and needing to spend a few hours distracting myself. Failing that it will be sometime in mid to late January.

My efforts in RetroQuest lately have been in two major areas. One is making sure that combat styles other than the straight-on warrior type are viable. The other is tweaking the combat AI so that enemies are more responsive and less likely to just fall into a line following a target around the battlefield. They now hesitate, flinch away, circle around, and change behavior based on how the fight's going.

Next week I'm going to be putting in an actual interface for party stuff and work on filling out the types of monsters and encounters so it's not just slimes and bandits. Some of the party stuff is going to be easier for the fact that I'm now aware of the possibility of making additional map controls as display elements... last time I was really active on BYOND, I don't believe that was an option and I didn't realize it had changed. Some of the interface stuff I already have will probably change as a result of this discovery, but my priority leading up to the first tests is going to be to add stuff that's missing, not revise stuff that's present and working.

I have plans for an in-game tutorial system involving a Training Guild, but I don't believe it will be present in a more than rudimentary fashion for the initial tests, so I'll be writing a preliminary guide to things like stealth and magic for playtesters. Magic in particular is based around expendable resources that cost money, so figuring it out by trial and error would involve re-making your character until you get it right. Stealth has a gentler learning curve, but could still probably bear some explanation.

Having a ball, wish you were here.

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:42:28 +0000

Working on filling in the low-level spells and wizard gear.

Magical implements work like weapons as far as equipping them and then attacking with them, but they are unaffected by distance and use you and your target's respective magical abilities rather than the normal attack and defense scores. This makes them very reliable in the hands of a wizard, except when fighting another wizard... not a bad idea to have a physical weapon as a back-up for those cases, if you're traveling solo.

Implements also give a bonus to actual spellcasting (they don't boost your magic for attacks). The basic implements in order of power are the sigil, orb, wand, and staff. The versions available for sell in the starting town have no effects beyond the casting bonus and the ability to attack with magic, but ones found thereafter are more than commonly likely to carry additional magical effects.

The purpose of implements is to create single-target at-will attack spells that are independent of the normal spell system, which is dependent on expendable scrolls that cost money, are mostly intended to be cast at the outset of a battle, and never require active targeting. Since this game has multiclassing baked in, if there wasn't a way for wizards to fight as wizards from "round to round" in combat, there would never be reason to be a full-on wizard. As things stand, a warrior/wizard is one of the best solo combat builds. The use of spells to soften up enemies (or buff up oneself) makes melee combat markedly easier, though the additional expense means you'll gain money for better gear more slowly.

Some pictures of the orb can be seen below.

Bowling for bandits.

You're a kitty!

The telltale hearts in the first pic signify that something has just taken damage. In this case, I happened to snap the screenshot right after the bandit defeated my cat.

The cat is a natural choice for a wizard's companion because they do give a boost to your magic whenever they're around. This doesn't mean they're the only option... a badger or bear will be better at keeping enemies off of you.

Remaking the world.

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:46:48 +0000

So, my proof-of-concept world generator did nothing more than generate a ragged coastline around the continent, then seed it with rocky outcroppings, lakes, and forests of random sizes and shapes and then cross-cut that with rivers and paths. It got the job done but was processor intensive and the results were very mixed. Sometimes it would give beautiful results, sometimes it... wouldn't. I've kept the same methods for generating irregularly-roundish patches of trees and waters, but I'm moving towards a less haphazard distribution scheme.

The final concept for the world generator, which divides the continent up into 25 roughly equal-sized areas (roughly because of the coast lines) and then assigns them characteristics. One might have scattered bits of forest, one might have heavy forests. One might be strewn with boulders. One might be overgrown. They aren't really "biomes" in the Terraria sense... they're all mostly made up of the same types of landscape turfs, so the transitions between them are pretty natural. A forest or lake can even be seeded in one zone and grow across the border. I don't plan on having any drastically different landscapes until I have sea travel and expansion continents.

So far for distributing the basic land types there are no balances being enforced... that is, it doesn't always have the same number of heavily forested zones in the continent. The only place where it's not completely random is the central zone, which always has scattered trees and a few lakes and one small central patch that's completely pre-set. When I start adding less common land types (swamps, for instance) there will be minimum and maximums so that there isn't a world that's completely impassable or one that doesn't have enough swamp for swamp-related locations to be spawned.

I'm not going to fill in all the detail of the world right now, but getting it to divide the continent up and define the areas is a necessary step in getting the random encounter generator populated with more than the very easiest encounters.

The individual zones are in the neighborhood of ~50 square screens, which is big enough that it'd be possible to pass through them and miss interesting sites but not so huge as to take forever to explore. I'm still mulling options when it comes to things like opacity and day/night illumination that might make it easier to miss things. Since I actually have a stat-based discovery system that might be unnecessary... if I want to have a hidden village in the forest, I can just make it *hidden* without turning every square of trees into a black hole. That's honestly the more appealing option to me.