Importing the assets into the engine, setting up pathing as well as the info the editor stores does take time - and it's rather mind-numbing, but once they're in, they're in.
I do give myself the odd treat-break from the monotony and add a bit more world into the Meltwater Foothills, which are starting to look pretty nice. I've shared the same location here as yesterday, to show how much better it's looking already with the new tiles I've imported into the engine.
In terms of bugs, there's not been any show-stoppers - which is fantastic. There's been a few that I've patched, but no "this game constantly crashes" type thing.
I've also kept the code pretty clean in terms of big code changes, so that's given me time and opportunity to build the world out more. And to that effect... I've been really hammering away at Quirkwood and the surrounding areas that will border it.
Part of that process has been pouring new assets into the engine to build out new types of areas, and I've done a lot of work bringing in a Mountain tileset as well as the start of some serious Snow tiles too, which have made for a very refreshing change to the colour palette that I am seeing - which is always a welcome change.
So, the northern end of Quirkwood will be giving way to the Meltwater foothills, while a long way south, and inland I've started making a mountain range.
The plan is to keep at this for a little while longer, just getting all the edges of Quirkwood tidied up nicely, so that I can start dropping in NPCs, creatures and of course, quests to complete!
It's probably not so much the "new" bugs - but I've tracked down a bunch of things that I've picked up from the recent release.
I've made things tweak and jump about when they need attention. So if you finish off part of a quest, your quest log will bounce about till you have a look at it. Same for characters that go up levels and can learn new skills. A little jiggle of their character portrait will alert you that something needs you.
I did also go in and fix a genuine bunch of bugs. Using skills from the character screen in landscape mode now correctly shows the Use Skill icon. I nudged the Stat Points about in the character overview screen so they line up better. You can properly now see commentary and game information in portrait mode when in combat. There's a bunch more stuff along those lines too. But you get the idea. Broken or dodgy stuff being fixed.
Oh, yeah, I'm also fixing a few of the conversations that aren't quite good enough - though that's ongoing.
The next few days will be spent trying to find ways to promote this, to hopefully get some players running about and experiencing the game for the first time. The discord is ready to go, so if you download it, jump on there and say hi.
Google Play Store link: Is Right Here
And it is with a giddy elation that I can say I submitted and got the app approved to go live.
I did get a few bits of feedback from testers that I agree with, so I'm adding a few tutorial images which I think will make it easier to start and a few teeny tiny tweaks in the code (for example, you really don't need to see the framerate constantly while playing) and it's good to go.
The fantastic news, is that I can now go live whenever I make these changes. And that's going to be soon. Really soon.
I've now done the last of the second skill-trees, which was the Archery Tree for the Rogue class.
It has a mix of passive buffs to make your ranged attacks much more potent, but also a number of damage-over-time and debuff options. They will all work with ranged attacks obviously, though some of the passive skills will make your character better at more than just archery itself.
So, with the final class now having two usable skill-trees I might look to implement some more specific and special functionality to use with effects and abilities. I'd like to do something along the lines of Fear and the like. I wanted to also do an effect that changed sides for a creature or character momentarily. Those sorts of things will need some extra code to be written up, but nothing too dramatic. Oh, and one more thing that came up... I have the ability for an ability to put effects on the character, or an enemy, or a location etc... But I wanted to make an ability that puts on effect on a target, and another different one on the character using the ability... so I think I'll need to work out what structure changes I'll need to make to enable that functionality. Again, I don't think it's too hard... but it'll be fiddly and need changes in a lot of little places.
Meanwhile, even though it's Christmas here and there's loads of friends and family stuff going on, progress is still happening on the game.
I've been working on more skill-trees, and also filling them up with abilities and the effects behind them, so this time round, I've not finished up the second Mage tree - Air and Earth.
They're all there, the skill titles basically give away the gist of what's happening in each one. Having said that, I think I will need to make some more "special" effect abilities, as I am feeling that a good bunch of these skills are starting to feel a bit same-samey. So I think there's going to be some code added in the not too distant future giving things new functionality, and I'll go back and apply them to the spells and abilities that I wanted them to be used in.
On that note, I also added a bunch of functionality around Ranged effects and ways to buff the character for those, as while I do have the Rogues skill-tree for archery set up, I've still to create the actual abilities in the game, so I think that'll be next up.
All I'm doing is more snow and snow and snow. Importing the assets into the engine, setting up pathing as well as the info the editor st...
