How the game plays - and starts... (and release!)

I've been getting ready for really opening the game up, as I feel it's in a good place from a technical app point of view. The things I've been chasing up of late are really make the gaps feel better and better. Things aren't crashing. Things are working. The UI is getting better and better.

That leaves.... the gameplay itself.

One common bit of feedback I'm getting is that there's a pretty high learning curve at the start in terms of combat and interface. And that all the different classes and characters are a bit overwhelming. Setting up your party at the start can also feel like a chore rather than a fun start.

So I've been really having a good think and trying to work out how to change it up. And I am thinking that starting off with a single character might be better, and getting companions along the way, like opening up a new character slot when you level up and so on. There's also a thought on perhaps having a quest or two that might let you open up a slot earlier if you complete it.

The more I am thinking about it, the better this approach is feeling from a number of angles. You'll get to learn your first class much better by only having that character to run. The way combat works will be more intuitive which will make more sense when you have multiple characters - and amusingly, you'll be leveling up quicker as the XP won't be shared between a party of six characters.

So, while I progress the Play Store stuff to get the app ready for production and release, I can work out how I'm going to do these changes and probably get them in within a reasonable amount of time (and hopefully before the app progresses all the way to a full Production release on the Play Store anyhow).

I'll also be opening up to some testing here, so if you're keen to get an early go (as well as helping me to be ready for a full release) keep up to date, as I should get that going in the next week or two - which is part of the process to list the app on the Play Store. 

More Quest Bugs Solved

So, one of the last (I swear, this has to end at some point) things that I wanted to check on was a bug that had been brought up in my last round of testing. I was told that a quest that should have been easily completed wasn't ticking off properly. I will admit, I was a bit skeptical - after all I'd tested these quests numerous times over, and things were working. Until I tested it.

Turns out there was a damned symphony of bugs that I hadn't picked up. I could go on and on about why they weren't picked up, and to my credit, they were quite topical and only sometimes happened - but that's neither here nor there.

So, conversations were buggy in that they would create events for your party even if they weren't supposed to show a conversation you were up to. They didn't show it, but they processed stuff as if they had. So that got fixed. Oopsie.

The other issue I had, I vaguely recall thinking about, but clearly I'd forgotten about it. Quest information was created when the quest was being presented to your party, and then processed again when you accepted it - which resulted in the quest sections doubling up until the app was closed - when it would reload them properly next time. So I went through and managed to solve for that happening. Oopsie again.

Anyhow. Now it all works nicely. Seems to reload and save everywhere as it should have, so I think I've squashed those bugs for good.

I'll have a poke about see if anything else is dumb-dumb-dumb and needs fixing. Hopefully not though.

Game Controlled Characters

Yesterday I hadn't quite finalised the interface for setting up how the game will run your characters (if you want it to) and today I got the last bits of the interface set up. You can give your characters up to five general commands such as "Attack Using Melee Weapons and Abilities" or "Debuff Enemies". This will result in the character trying in order to perform the commands you've given them in the fight. It should be enough I think to get the ball rolling, and although I suspect that I'll do more with this later, for now... it's good enough!

Game Controlled Characters and Logic

A while back, I posted that I'd done a bit of tweaking on game controlled settings and being able to set up characters to fight automatically using the same logic that monsters have - and I circled back to that, firstly by adding a toggle on the character screen to set each character to be game controlled (it was previously available in the game settings).

I also then updated the game server and database to be able to save that data, so if you set characters to be automatically controlled, they'll stay that way until you change them back.

With that done, I finally decided to sift through the code to work out why my healer was casting healing spells on the monsters I was fighting - while my other characters were doing their thing successfully. And that led me down a rabbit-hole of bugs and almost correct logic - as well as a bunch of abilities and effects that had slightly incomplete data. As I'd created a bunch of this data (and all the editor logic associated with them) a long time ago, I would generally add some functionality and then test it with the newest function available, or the monster that used it - that sort of thing.

So it turns out that some of the game abilities and effects didn't have quite all the information that they needed for my code to function. One of these was a flag "intended for enemies" which tells the character or monster if this particular ability should be used on its friends, or its foes. My editor defines that as a new field from the target selection values. But it was added after I'd already added a bunch of effects - like the healing spell my caster was throwing about.

So..... I've not gone back and updated all the effects and abilities in the game, and I think that added all the information that they needed, which then let me get into the code properly to see what was happening during the selection processes.

And wouldn't you know it, turns out there were some logic gaps there too. Not massive fall-through-the-cracks ones, but things were just wrong enough to look like they were working, when in fact they were doing the wrong things. Amusingly, in monsters, who generally only have one or two abilities, this was much less noticeable. Anyhow. I think they're all fixed nicely now - you know, until I find something else that's going wrong.

I think I'll add in a more detailed selection on how you'd like the game to play your characters - after all, I already have that logic built in for monsters, and it's just a few dropdown selectors away.
 

Android Cameras and Bevelled Corners

Another bit of feedback I got was that some buttons were hard to hit due to the physical device having a screen with rounded corners, so that if a button was right in the corner, some of it was cut off and difficult to hit.

Great feedback. Even on my on-screen emulator, that's the case, but I guess it's not as much of an issue as I can be super accurate with the mouse and press what I want to press.

Anyhow, I've gone through and fixed a whole bunch of those things, giving little padded areas around the edges of the screens, so that buttons aren't quite as pressed against the edges.

At the same time, I've gone through and totally removed some old item interface code where buttons were popping up ready to use. The new item interface caters for all those, so it was (very poorly) doubling up where it wasn't needed.

There's still a few things to fix up, but they're much less glaring than these were.

And it's still only morning! 

Interface Tweaks and Bug Fixes

I've been working through the list raised by my dev colleague in his first impressions test.

I'm splitting it into two main sections. First off, plain of crash bugs. There's things I wrote, tested, and then forgot about. And when someone else tests it, much much later, it turns out that there's some Ooopsie moments as all the changes over time cause crashes. Like trading in landscape mode. Which was looking for something that hasn't existed for ages - but as my emulator runs in portrait mode on the machine, I've never really picked it up. Anyhow. That's now fixed.

And the other section is again things I've noticed myself, but put on the back-burner in terms of development. Like assuming that the icons in the item menu system were intuitive enough (guess what, they weren't quite). So I sat there for a good while hacking away at the code and finally worked out how I can add a text description to the menu over and above the icon-only interface that it's meant to have - so no more guessing what icons translate to. While I was doing that, I also found there was another bug in that menu (the screen would vanish when it wasn't supposed to when trying to split a stacked item) which I have also now fixed.

So, there's a few more things to work through from the list I got, but it's looking very promising!
 

Parallel Things

So yesterday was basically two trains running on parallel tracks.

I reached out to a colleague and fellow game maker to do a final "first impression" game test. I've specifically left him off the testing train, so that when he gets a look at it (like now) it's the first time he's seeing it - and he's doing basically my final user-test before it's ready for an open beta. So that's both exciting and rather scary! We'll see what he says and if there's any last minute things that need tweaking.

The other track was me ticking off, in a rare case of much quicker than anticipated, proc items. And I don't know what to call them other than that. But basically items that sometimes generate a particular effect.

So an example might be a chestplate that every now and again, when you're attacked, drops a healing spell on you. Or a sword that every now and again sets your opponent on fire when you attack them... or...  or.. or...

I've set them up in what I think covers off all the types I want to have, and able to fire off in all the ways I want them to trigger. I have enough flexibility to set them up as I want, and I was even thinking to myself that it allows for some amazing cursed weapons too - where a sword might have fantastic stats for your character but also bestow the occasional heal, or buff on your enemy as it spites you. More on this later.

It ended up going much quicker and much less painfully than I thought it would, as all the code just slotted nicely into hooks that already exist in the code, and I managed to use fields that already existed, so there was no change to the database - which is always great.

I will need to tweak the item information screens in some way, so that these effects are somehow shown, so you can tell when an item can do something along these lines. Currently, all it shows is a "Equip: Benefit bestowed" line, which I need to think about so that it gives more away without just being a slab of technical stuff.

Menus, Information and User Experience

I've gone back through some of the overlay and menu options tweaking the app to show data nicely for the new effect and travel options - actually not crashing when displaying those.

And it was a pretty quick little tweak, but ties up loose ends neatly and keeps the app pretty crash-free as far as I know.
 

Edit: I've also tweaked quest completion so that if there are quest items as a reward, it sends you to that screen, and if there are no quest items as a reward, it sends you to the quest detail, showing that it is indeed complete. I got some feedback before with someone not being sure of a quest being completed, when it did complete, but the only reward was experience. Makes it cleaner now.

Teleport Vendors (Ahem... fast travel) working!

It took a bit more convincing everything to work, but I have fast travel working in vendors.

Currently, I've set up a little useless loop from Captain Rayne, to Floren Docks, but the game is doing everything exactly as it should. It automatically calculates the amount of gold to charge your party, pops up a confirmation of where you will travel to, so you don't accidentally send yourself on a one way voyage and then sends your party there (and closes off the transaction window).

I will be doing a bunch more testing, I am curious what happens for example if you are moved to a location that your app doesn't currently have loaded. I think the app will handle that properly, but you know... worth testing. I'll need to set up a few more things in the transactions for Captain Rayne to let that happen, but I've already written all the code in the editor to let me do that, so hopefully should be much quicker and easier now.

Edit: Of course, being sent a long way across the map (to a location that the app had not loaded in that current game session) didn't work out of the box. However, it now does. That'll save issues later on when there are teleporters in the world to enable other fast travel.

Buff Shops (Ahem... Healers and Taverns) Working!

So yesterday, I finally cracked the last bugs and bits of code around vendors being able to sell buffs to your party.

So while the functionality is working nicely now, I will need to add in a short description (that's a small database change) for each effect, so that if you click on the info for it, I've got something useful to show you before you spend your hard-earned gold (or other) coins on what's on offer.

I do figure, that while I am poking about in this section of code, I'm going to also add in functionality for vendors to sell trips to other places, so while I don't have any ships captains offering journeys to far-off lands right now, I suppose eventually there will be a need to do it. And right now, all the required code sections are in my head - so it'll be much quicker doing it now than doing it later.

Vendor Buff-Shops

One of the last things I've decided I need to have in the game before I can open up to some open testing is having vendors that sell buffs or effects. While it's reasonably quick to get a healer up to be able to cast a resurrection spell, if you don't have one... you kinda don't have one.

I was going to get around this by making items that could be applied - and I did in fact set up some test items that do that, but I figure it's better to go through and make the changes to the database that are needed to support these things before there's players running about in case I break things.

So I've been working on how to add that to the schema, and this morning, since the first thing, I've been trying to work through a dumb bug that was stopping something working - and making me exceptionally frustrated. Turns out it was a scope issue with one variable, in one function where the functionality had been expanded and I could not for the life of me work out why things weren't working... when clearly they should have been. And they were. Just inside that one single function.

Anyhow...... now that I finally got through there, I need to make a bunch more changes to other sections of the database, add the new fields to the extracts that the app picks up, and finally I can make the interface in the app to let you turn up to a healer, or a tavern kitchen or whatever else, and pick up some sweet healing or buffs from the locals! 

The other thing I managed to incorporate nicely into this change, was the ability to set up other types of vendors with more ease as well - and I have a few more ideas for those. Not that I really need to implement them yet, but knowing I can do so later without too much hassle is great.

Suspiciously Close to Open Testing

Super quick update, but I managed to tie off a few more loose ends, on some interactions with items and quests in the game, and also around opening up a change log from the login screen, but the big update was tracking combat moves for characters, showing a popup when the limit is almost reached and adding combat moves to the delay for each character.

After a mis-step...

Given the code I already had written up for controlling creatures, I had always thought it would be easy to allow the game to control player characters as well. So I've been working on making a nice interface for that in the settings, so you can set some (or all) characters to be game controlled.

And.... it mainly works.

There is a pretty basic setting that says "If the character is a fighter, make them use melee attacks..." and so on, which I will aim to improve later, with some options for you to select - as monsters are actually smarter, though they are set up properly in the editor. Now, I say... mainly works... There's some dumb-dumb stuff that I'll need to tweak. Currently, I am quite amused, as my mage hurls fireballs at the enemies.... then my healer follows that up with giving them delightful heals... so clearly somewhere in the code, I need to add a few "Don't be silly" conditions...

You can see the HUD showing the Wolf both on fire from my mage, and with a heal... from my healer.... 

Anyhow, for the most part, things seem to be working nicely, so I can tweak those things easily.

Combat Assists And Other Tweaks

It's been a very busy real-life period with a good few things taking place here that have kept me from spending much time on the game, but one of those wrapped up over the weekend, and I now have some time again to spend.

So, one of the last things (there are a few more) things that was on the to-do list before I can do the open testing launch was finally fixing up the Combat-Assist function that's been sitting there for goodness knows how long, and not actually doing anything properly.

It's not perfect, but it's there and working. 

Characters can choose to (instead of an attack or ability) help protect one of their colleagues by offering them protection. To do this, they must be beside the other character and it will use up a standard activation. But, the character they are protecting will gain a good bit of defense and some armor due to the aid provided. Additionally, multiple characters can do this and the effects stack. So, if you're in a situation with a very difficult encounter, protecting your tank may be really important at the right times.

And... so far.... it seems (I almost don't want to say it aloud) that the concurrency crashes are at bay. Fingers crossed that doesn't change.