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DanKirby
Monkey-Butler
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 54
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 Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 8:45 am Post subject: Considering reviving the ToL project |
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Since Shifter appears to be in suspended animation for the moment, I've been looking at some of my older stuff lately. Like my older project, Threads of Life, which has been on hold for nearly a year now. It's really my favorite story of the two, and I'd like to actually finish it, but I realize the game does have a lot of issues.
It's really frustrating to get near halfway through a game and realize that what you've been working on has turned out almost unplayable.
Anyone who tried playing the Threads of Life demo should know what I'm talking about. For one thing, being DOS-based, it doesn't even work properly on modern systems, main problem being the terrible keyhandling (it was fine on my old W95 PC).
As for the gameplay itself... town situations mainly force you to talk to every person in the town until you find the one guy that triggers the story event. Not very exciting.
Meanwhile, outside of towns you are bombarded with endless random battles, which become incredibly tedious very quickly. And the battles themselves aren't very exciting either.
Therefore, to make this thing actually playable, I'm probably going to have to scrap the whole thing and start over.
I'll definitely need a better engine, whether I rework Shifter's engine to suit ToL's style of play, or build a new one from scratch (not too crazy about doing this). New engine would allow some actual puzzles, which the very limited old one could not have.
The non-battle situations have to be reworked so you can at least figure out what you should be doing, not just talking to random people in hopes of triggering an event.
Battles need to be more balanced, AI system needs improvement.
Anyway, I'm probably boring everyone with all this. I'm going to be looking over my design materials for the next few days to see what direction I should be taking, and if I should really be reviving this.
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BadMrBox
Bringer of Apocalypse
Joined: 26 Jun 2002
Posts: 1022
Location: Dark Forest's of Sweden
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| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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What language are you using for the ToL project? QB? If that's the case, keyhandling is not a problem. I have scancodes and routines.
Random battles at a good rate shouldn't be such a problem.
Each time you move the character, just random between 0-25 or a bit higher. If 0 then fight. That is fairly balanced, I think.
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Nodtveidt
Demon Hunter
Joined: 11 Nov 2002
Posts: 786
Location: Camuy, PR
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| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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For random battles, I personally use the FF method nowadays, which is to set a number of "steps" until the next battle, and depending on the tile type, reduce the step count...when the step cound falls below zero, bring on the next battle. :)
DanKirby: consider using FB for your project if it was originally in QB. It will be a breeze to port over and you'll be able to compile the game on multiple platforms with little to no change.
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace
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DanKirby
Monkey-Butler
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 54
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| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Nekrophidius wrote: |
DanKirby: consider using FB for your project if it was originally in QB. It will be a breeze to port over and you'll be able to compile the game on multiple platforms with little to no change. |
I've considered that, as it would save me from recreating all of the data I have so far. Still, the original used Rellib extensively, so any graphics display routines would need rewrites.
The problem is, I'm not sure I want to use the original engine. That engine isn't really capable of much, especially the very simple scripting system. It makes for somewhat boring gameplay.
A lot of the stuff I have might need to be tossed as well. For example, every object in the game needs their collision-detection boxes changed; all of them are too large. And changing all of those files would be incredibly time-consuming as the current system is designed.
To improve the out-of-battle gameplay, a lot of the scripts would have to be heavily redesigned. The in-game variables may need to be rearranged, and that could be a lot of trouble. And, as I said previously, I'd rather have a more advanced script system than what I currently have.
The map file structure is designed to work with the script system (certain values determine when to call the script engine, and when). If the scripting system goes, the maps may have to go as well, but I could probably keep them, just ignoring the special values.
So, it probably won't be as simple as porting the engine and continuing from where I left off. It's on my list of options, though. Just not very high up.
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