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.