THURSDAY, 24 JUNE 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Over the last few days I have been working on various bits of the game. Most of the work has been polishing some of the little things and also the addition of more Annor GUI elements.
Today, in-game and working is the first permanent button on the GUI screen. This button opens the Skills window which in its basic form tells you how good you are at different things. I have started work on coding this GUI window and added a few of the database functions in to test it live. The screenshot is at the end of the post. Please note that NWN2 takes terrible screenshots that look blurry as hell when compared with the actual game (due to image compression).
I have almost completely polished the drinking button. Drinking from rivers and lakes will now take 10 real time seconds. During that time you will be unable to move. Your character will keep going down to the water. Yes there is an animation and yes there are also sound effects. It is really quite good and makes it feel more involved with the game. Busy tomorrow night and away all weekend but I will try and finish more of this skills window before next week. It won’t be done before that though (I think).
TAGS: drinking, GUI, polish, rivers, screenshots, skills
POSTED IN Character Skills, GUI | NO COMMENTS »
SUNDAY, 20 JUNE 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
This is the first version of the Felling GUI. I have had a few issues closing the window after the tree falls. Something in the engine stops the call for the GUI to close from actually triggering. I think this is a small quirk in the engine and for now its just going to have to remain a small annoyance.
The GUI closes if you walk away from the tree. I can only assume that if the tree is destroyed before the GUI closes (by another player perhaps?) then it will remain open in a similar way to before. Again, not a problem as it can be closed manually with the esc key. I will investigate it later.
Another thing on the “Investigate later” pile is making it movable. The flags are there but I obviously havn’t set it up right. (Click to make the picture bigger)
Please be aware that this is NOT the final version of the GUI. I have things to add and things to move, but the functionality is there. The green triangle is like a progress bar. It starts out green and finished red. As you can see from the screenshot I have been hitting it for a while.
The “Hit” figure is the amount of felling that has been done. This will probably end up being a percentage. The “Wood Loss” figure represents the amount of wood you have smashed/ruined on the tree in the process of chopping it.
And the skill level… well it explains itself. My character is “Adept” at Felling.
TAGS: felling, GUI, screenshots, skills
POSTED IN Character Skills, GUI | NO COMMENTS »
TUESDAY, 15 JUNE 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
I have a number of upgrades to the Felling Skill which I hope will set a standard for the way the rest of the games systems feed information back to the player.
The GUI for Annor is quite reduced. We don’t want to add a load of clutter to the NWN2 display. Currently when you chop a tree nothing happens visually. Your character just hits the tree with whatever weapon until the tree falls over. You have no idea how well you are doing or indeed, how badly you are doing. You also have no idea how close to falling the tree is.
To inform you of your progress there will now be a new GUI window that pops up the moment your first swing makes contact with the tree (provided you arn’t punching it).
The GUI window will be dedicated to showing the FELLING progress. It will have a tree picture on the left (done in the Annor Classic GUI style of White & Colour like the Status GUI element). Next to the tree will be a V shape on its side making a wedge. This wedge will be like a progress bar and decrease as the tree gets closer to falling.
After each hit the GUI will update and tell you how good your hit was and how much damage you did to the tree in the process (for the last swing). It also tells you your level in Felling. This standard GUI will also be applied to the Bucking and Hewing systems when they are written. The images etc will be changed accordingly. Screenshots to come later this week.
TAGS: felling, GUI, lumberjack, skills
POSTED IN Character Skills, GUI | NO COMMENTS »
TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
After looking at the finer details of Player – Creature (NPC) combat and damage bonuses I have decided to make alterations to the cut down script.
Yes I know it isn’t even finished yet!
So what’s gonna change?
To put it simply, the script for calculating the damage a weapon does to the tree will be altered to include one new element: WEIGHT
The reason this wasn’t considered last week was because other systems that use the same variables used by the Felling system were not 100% agreed on. An example would be the creature damage system. Sharpness of a weapon is fine until you are attacking creatures. In Annor, the base damage a weapon does is literally take as just that – base damage. On top of that are the weapons stats and the players skill etc which are not part of the NWN2 engine. Sharpness would then be applied as additional damage.
Great – until you start using a hammer, or a staff etc. This is where weight will come in. Sharper, lighter weapons will balance off against blunter heavier ones. This evening I will be adjusting the maths to take the weight into account. Lucky for me, weapons don’t really get much lighter with use. Usually.
TAGS: felling, skill maths, skills
POSTED IN Character Skills | NO COMMENTS »
THURSDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2010 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Well tonight/this morning I finished the first draft of the Felling skill’s chop script. In many ways the script is basic as it doesn’t award the player any EXP. It doesn’t check for an axe. It doesn’t do any real maths. But it demonstrates how the script SHOULD work.
This concept is a concept I use when designing a system and developing it. I take the bits we need at the beginning and decide what the end result should be. Then I make a simple system for getting there quickly. Once that has been done, tested and ironed out we know that the system will work from start to finish and provide us with the ultimate result required.
From then it is a case of adding the details in the middle. The “luxuries” as I like to call them. Of course…. in this case they are not luxuries. Instead they are problems and penalties that relate to your characters abilities. Headaches… yes you can call them headaches.
Well I took some screenshots showing the prototype cut down models of a birch tree. I am waiting on Kaleotter for the finished version of this model. There are currently several issues with it. But issues aside, I have done some foresting and here are the pictures to show how anti-nature you can be.
TAGS: felling, kaleotter, lumberjack, screenshots, skills, tradeskills
POSTED IN Character Skills | NO COMMENTS »
TUESDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2009 BY EARL (SIGNET)
Well Relentless is ill but I am not so I am continuing on with getting one of the most core systems up and running.
This system is of course the Skills system. The skills system is something that the players will love and hate at the same time. Especially if you think that just because everything is available to your character forever, you won’t find it easy to do everything.
The first skill of them all comes under the Lumberjack skill tree. Skills are organised in to groups but the groups are purely there for the players benefit. Lumberjack consists of 4 skills. Felling, Limbing, Bucking and Hewing.
Each skill level gained in any skill makes it harder to gain the next level in any other skill. So you could be the best at Bucking but crap at Hewing. Or awesome at both but pretty crap at Felling. You can basically focus on the bits you want to do yourself rather than aiming to be the best Lumberjack.
These ‘limits’ are applied across the board. The deduction is simple. EXP gained from doing any task that comes under any skill is reduced by a certain percentage. A percentage which is the same for every skill and increases with every level gained.
We are mean.
But this is to add depth…tactics…and above all…….social skills and teamwork. The clever guy is the guy who focuses on what everyone else hasn’t and established himself (or herself) and a specialist of some kind. The best in the trade at …. cutting off branches.
So chopping down trees is on its way. Keep an eye on the site.
TAGS: annor, chopping, database, lumberjack, skills
POSTED IN Character Skills | NO COMMENTS »
