[ORPG] Shadows of Everwood

[Adiktuz]

Will start doing some cool spell later today (GMT+8), coz I have an exam this afternoon... ^.^

@tleno - yeah, there are a lot.... but I guess the dead hosted projects could be closed down in the future...

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Excelent, Hosted projects always get more attention and feedback that regular projects! Though it's a bit concerning that there are a quite a lot of Hosted RPG maps lately...

Most seem rather quiet/dead or 'released/finished' - not 'going anyway anymore'.
So it'd be nice to one with a following as large as SoE to liven up that part of the forum me thinks

 

[Dragonson]

I largely agree with Grey.
There 'aint going much on in that part of the hive atm. :S

 

[Tleno]

Yeah, most of projects there are just too ambitious to be finished the way as planned or people just loose interest in them and they get abandoned. But if you have some people that are allways ready to give feedback on your project, this shouldn't be a problem.

 

[indomitable1319]

Yeah! I'll be willing to give a review on whatever you release.

 

[Magtheridon96]

Yeah! I'll be willing to give a review on whatever you release.

Thanks for the heads up

@Tukki
Can you VM me when you wanna go to MSN? (can't give details because hivers are watching/reading/wtvr lol ;P)

 

[shadowsun]

Yeah, most of projects there are just too ambitious to be finished the way as planned...

This is one of the most ambitious projects i have seen on hive. Good to see your sill going strong.

 

[reisbro]

Everyday I check my DropBox, my email, and my inbox here on the forum, and nothing about the beta test T.T
Are we close from it?
I mean, this project is too good to wait for it, all the systems, the map, the custom models, it will all be too awesome D:
Congratz to all the SoE team!

 

[Wolfe]

Everybody, please welcome back to the team Adiktuz! Coding should be going quite swiftly now with three coders. Let's hope!

Also, to our testers, be patient. I will notify you all when the demo is ready. For now, just chill. I am considering introducing you guys to Post Demo as reviewers in the meantime, but nothing official yet.

For some game progress - Oziris is terraining some really cool stuff, such as an ogre mine, and a mansion (which will be turned into a pretty epic event). Soon, I will be doing some detailing to the City of Kravengarde.

 

[L2love]

Can we get some terrain pictures of those??

 

[Wolfe]

Eventually. They're not necessarily finished, hehe.

 

[Tleno]

Still, constantly updated new information about the project keeps it alive.

 

[GhostThruster]

Eventually. They're not necessarily finished, hehe.

If something ain't finished, you can't show it.

 

[Oziris]

As soon as Terje finishes a model I'll be showing the ogre mine so no need to worry. I also have a great plan on how to make the gold mine epic.

 

[Tukki]

While you're waiting for the those epic terrain shots, here's something to chew on!

First out we have our brand new specialization interface, where you spend
your specialization points on new abilities and/or improve learned talents!

The interface isn't completely finished; many aesthetics are missing, such as
multiboards, icon glow, D's art etc.!

We decided to go with texttag tooltips for this interface, the inventory
interface is still going to use multiboards, however.

A note on pictures: they are from the code map, thus no real terrain is present.

Enough talk, here are some pictures:

Large images

I've also been working on aesthetics of battle!
Large battles with many units getting hit can get quite bloody
This doesn't mean that there are those giant blood effects, since I've focused on making them cool, yet not rendering you blind due to effect spam.

Weapons now have clean-looking effects that resemble wind cutting. (Check the 3rd screen shot)
Here's a couple of examples using the all-time favorite melee hero:

Images

Now that you've seen some of our progress, it's time for the list:

• Systems:
  • Specialization
    • All heroes have had their abilities registered!
    • Minor aesthetic updates have been done, and many are planned!
  • Inventory
    • Removed ability interface and moved quick-access frame closer to the backpack frame.
    • Added multiboard info about the slot that you're hovering on.
    • Quick-Equip has been improved and will now equip any item type if it possible. (I.e you've one ring equipped, double-clicking a ring will properly equip it!)
    • Updated weapon and proficiency tags to work as intended!
• Classes:
  • All classes have had their abilities updated to scale better with attributes!
  • A lot of effect changes have been made!
  • All abilities have had their tooltips updated!
  • Magus
    • New ability finished by Adiktuz to replace Vanguard!
    • New talent finished & registered!
  • Ranger
    • Phoenix Darts have been recoded and updated with pitch, projectile physics and attribute scaling!
• Other:
  • Quests
    • Event Quest: Highway Assault is nearing completion!

 

[VeljkoM]

Wow great update. Interface is looking awesome already, blood looks great...great work in short.

 

[Tleno]

That's quite a lot of info you got there... I'm really immpresed.
I wonder how did you maade the blood effects look so smooth...

 

[Davesanz]

Thats a really nice interface. Sadly, i can not give you more rep.

 

[Magtheridon96]

I wonder how did you maade the blood effects look so smooth...

Variation is the key

@Tukki
Anyways, I can't submit the code this weekend because i just found out I
have a Physics test on Monday and I need to study xD

Since it's not too critical when it comes to game functionality, I think I can
probably submit that code to you in a week since I'm going to be EXTREMELY busy
for the rest of the week with school stuff :-(

Don't worry, I've made some progress

Weapons now have clean-looking effects that resemble wind cutting.

That explains aloooooooooooooooooooooooot

 

[HeroSlayer]

I've finished coding the "wearing" system and modelling the first leather set, I've also finished the faces of the other classes. I wont show u guys the set, because I want you to have a lot of things to discover when you play it, i dont want that u play knowing what u are going to get :/ thats awful xD and thats the bad part of being a developer u.u, however I love making art

 

[Magtheridon96]

That message should be directed to Tukki

 

[mckill2009]

looks nice...following...

 

[baassee]

So basic you made some kind of register that registers all blood effects and doesn't create new blood effects if there are x amount of ones present? Or I just read it wrong...

I'm not a big fan of tags due to it's easier to handle multiboards for some reason in JASS (the opposite in GUI) (personal experience reference).

And yeah, I think the green text below whirlwind should be "Learned" and not "Learmed" atleast I think as the mouse pointer is covering the first letter of the word so might be a different word ... looking good anyway

 

[Tukki]

Well, it's actually a lot easier: each unit may only have 2 active blood effects.
When a unit is < 25% of its max health, one of those blood effects will be occupied with a looping blood effect until the unit dies or gets above 25% health.

The other one is triggered by either physical attacks or spells with physical damage properties. (I.e a fireball will make the unit burn rather than bleed)

Yeah, multiboards are a lot easier to use. They occupy valuable interface space, however.
So it's either multiboard and a smaller interface or texttags and a potential bigger interface.

"Learned" and not "Learmed": I blame TGA -> JPG conversion >.> (r+n ~ m)

 

[baassee]

So you just use some kind of list (linked?) that goes thru all units on the map? Cool. But you probably should add some kind of turn off system so only units within 5000 range of any hero will be added to the system. But that's a bit op.

Oh makes sense to start burning from fire instead of bleed/freeze whatever.

lawl upload the tgas instead

 

[Tukki]

Much, much simpler
When a unit is damaged the effect system kicks in and adds the unit to a stack if its health is < 25%.
The effect stack loops through the group in 2 different sessions to avoid some unnecessary cpu-load, and removes all units who doesn't belong there (health >= 25%).

Can THW display TGA's natively? :O

 

[Grey Nightmare]

It's not the forum so much as the browser and no, most (to my knowledge) won't display .TGA's :/

Looking good regardless!

 

[Magtheridon96]

It's not the forum so much as the browser and no, most (to my knowledge) won't display .TGA's :/

Looking good regardless!

Strange how THW can display BLPs (VERY uncommon format), but it can't display TGAs (A VERY known format).

@Tukki:
I didn't know we were allowed to talk about code
I thought we had to be somewhat .. 'secretive' about game mechanics

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Well maybe it can after all?

I wasn't even aware it displayed .blps

Nice, very nice

 

[Tukki]

I've never said that we couldn't, right?
This is, after all, a hobby project! Nothing will be gained by keeping stuff secrets.
---------------

If everything goes well, I might have a cinematic system wrapped up on Monday or Tuesday.
It will allow some really nice cinematic crafting - a lot better than my current method anyway.

Coding progress is basically like this:

• Event Quest
  • Add cinematic scene with the new system
  • Boss AI needs to be coded
  • Quest needs to be bested in multiplayer
  • Do improvements and fixes
• Items
  • Axes are 100% done
  • Other weapons are only designed
• Heroes
  • 90% of all talents needs to be coded
• Other
  • Small improvements here and there.
  • Calibrate various systems.

 

[Magtheridon96]

I need to finish that AI
It's pretty advanced ;p

I have like 200 lines now with over 30 functions (And I bearly wrote the core scripts xD) - See what i did there
I'm just having a small concept problem: Should the bear assume the specific AI, or should the player use an ability?

 

[baassee]

Boss AI. Now that is something fun to code.

 

[Magtheridon96]

Now that is something fun to code.

Theoretically Speaking

I'm actually coding the AI for a bear unit (Not the Boss)

The map was kind of hard to work with at first due to the HUGE scripts, but I'm used to it now

I don't think I can say this, but whatever
The code is very close to 58000 lines!!

 

[Adiktuz]

haha... AI for an enemy bear? or ur advancing the AI of the pet?

 

[-Bloody Hound-]

I cant wait for this map to develop(Develope, sorry my english isnt that good ).

 

[baassee]

You get used to it. The amount of code.

Boss AI seems pretty interesting, may I ask what kind of boss this is?

 

[Tukki]

Well, I can't reveal to much since it's demo related. (Wolfe handles demo information)
It's a boss fight with alternating stances, so-to-speak.
Estimated progress is around 25-40%.
Bones are set, just need to dress him.

I got the cinematic system up and running with some simple features, working on the heavier parts such as different kinds of movement (i.e camera/unit/effect).

 

[xxALMIRxxx]

How much more time will need till u make the release?

 

[HeroSlayer]

How much more time will need till u make the release?

2 months

 

[Magtheridon96]

haha... AI for an enemy bear? or ur advancing the AI of the pet?

I'm advancing the AI of the pet

2 months

Hopefully

 

[Tukki]

I've updated our camera system to version 2.0, bringing you (and us) new features, better performance and overlay GUI support!

Thus far it works great, both singleplayer and multiplayer, with both me and my loyal tester Oz on 60 fps during the test run (terrain map this time).

This means that some commands/settings will be changed or even removed.
It'll also allow us to do some incredible things in the post demo, or even the current demo.

 

[Luorax]

and overlay GUI support!

I'm not sure if I understood this correctly. You mean dynamic GUI elements? Like buttons and windows that you can see/click without moving the camera to some "dummy" area? BTW I'd like to see some ingame pictures It's always good to see ingame pictures.

 

[Tukki]

Exactly, we can now display models and textures pretty accurately on your screen without moving the actual camera.

We haven't done anything with GUI yet, since it's a lot to code and it's only in concept status, so no screen shots :/.

I just finished adding arrow key support to the camera, so you can change the camera distance and height on the fly!
Rotation and Angle of Attack will be removed as elements for now. Angle of Attack is being replaced by camera height,
while Rotation is gone.

 

[Luorax]

So you've found the old DGUI library, right?
I was working on a project that used it, I had some finished library (talents, inventory, spellbook, spell bar, microbar, character creation).

The only problem with it is that it's pretty "unfinished". I've near redone the whole system, because it was not precise, and it was a bit buggy. But it's a nice system btw.

 

[Tukki]

Yeah, the idea and method of using matrices belongs to DGUI's camera system.

The preciseness is easily improved by calculating a z map using N-a-z-g-h-u-l's method
Thus it becomes a trade off between accuracy and performance, since both matrix+vector calculations and z-mapping are costly.

 

[Luorax]

Yea, I had to change the maximum player limit to 5 from 10 because it was sometimes laggy when more than 2 inventory was open.

Good luck with that system. I always wanted a good RPG that use dynamic UI.
I wanted to be the first, who creates one; I had near everything, but the filesize was a bit huge (8 playable class, 2 talent tree per class; the size of the talent icons of a talent tree was about 0,4 MByte), and I didn't have a cool terrainer. So I terminated the project. Maybe I'll continue it one day.

 

[Adiktuz]

@Luorax - you might want to look at Thyrael's Darkwind RPG, as it shows a really awesome use of DGUI...

@Magtheridon96 - ooh... that AI has really undergone lots of stages (base by me, improved A LOT by tukki, and now you)... good luck on that...

 

[Oziris]

Ladies and gentleman, I'm proud to say that the terrain is finished. Now I'm just polishing it. And I'll be showing an Art sketch of the Bestiary you will encounter in the pre demo!

 

[Dragonson]

Yee-F*cking-Haw!

'cant wait to see it Oz.

 

[GhostThruster]

*'Yipee-kai yay, motherf***er'

@Tukki: You sure you will be able to fit that in a multiplayer ORPG?

@Oziris: Do show.