Announcing Project GoldScript

[Rohan]

Yeah I do understand the need for more info. But remember, not a single D&D game ever had or will ever have this feature. I guess RTwP kind of negates this though, and since a majority of the games with the license, at least in modern times, are sadly RTwP, the only turn based implementation I have to compare it to is ToEE.

I don't know, I never felt like the lack of information bothered me in either the Goldbox games or in ToEE. It's sort of strange, because playing FFT without it would seem ... weird.

 

[Ninjerk]

Yeah I do understand the need for more info. But remember, not a single D&D game ever had or will ever have this feature. I guess RTwP kind of negates this though, and since a majority of the games with the license, at least in modern times, are sadly RTwP, the only turn based implementation I have to compare it to is ToEE.

I don't know, I never felt like the lack of information bothered me in either the Goldbox games or in ToEE. It's sort of strange, because playing FFT without it would seem ... weird.

FFT doesn't have a combat log, and I'd guess the math is quite a bit more complex having read a guide about the unlimited turns Calculator trick years ago. AD&D was pretty much just table-weighted probabilities with regards to basic combat mechanics.

 

[Rohan]

Yeah I do understand the need for more info. But remember, not a single D&D game ever had or will ever have this feature. I guess RTwP kind of negates this though, and since a majority of the games with the license, at least in modern times, are sadly RTwP, the only turn based implementation I have to compare it to is ToEE.

I don't know, I never felt like the lack of information bothered me in either the Goldbox games or in ToEE. It's sort of strange, because playing FFT without it would seem ... weird.

FFT doesn't have a combat log, and I'd guess the math is quite a bit more complex having read a guide about the unlimited turns Calculator trick years ago. AD&D was pretty much just table-weighted probabilities with regards to basic combat mechanics.

Yeah I've read some stuff about the math behind FFT, it's nuts.

A combat log is something I have scoped to implement. From a UI point of view, it's far easier to do and takes up a lot less screen real estate.

Hmm I'll have a think about this thanks very much for the feedback.

 

[Ninjerk]

Yeah I do understand the need for more info. But remember, not a single D&D game ever had or will ever have this feature. I guess RTwP kind of negates this though, and since a majority of the games with the license, at least in modern times, are sadly RTwP, the only turn based implementation I have to compare it to is ToEE.

I don't know, I never felt like the lack of information bothered me in either the Goldbox games or in ToEE. It's sort of strange, because playing FFT without it would seem ... weird.

FFT doesn't have a combat log, and I'd guess the math is quite a bit more complex having read a guide about the unlimited turns Calculator trick years ago. AD&D was pretty much just table-weighted probabilities with regards to basic combat mechanics.

Yeah I've read some stuff about the math behind FFT, it's nuts.

A combat log is something I have scoped to implement. From a UI point of view, it's far easier to do and takes up a lot less screen real estate.

Hmm I'll have a think about this thanks very much for the feedback.

Are you planning on allowing UI customization at all?

 

[Rohan]

UI customisation is not in scope. Too much of a time sink for an indie project.

 

[Ninjerk]

I figured. No big loss.

 

[Rohan]

Okay so check this out, this is just a mockup done in Photoshop, so it's not working in engine yet (it'll take me a fair chunk of time to get it working, so I'd rather be fairly sure of it before I do).

Basically there's two columns

1. Round
2. Targets

The unit who has the current turn gets a slightly thicker border, as well as a pulsing white overlay on their portrait. The black circles with numbers in them indicate the unit's level.

The target column is filled if the current unit is targeting another unit or units. If it's more than one, they just stack underneath. You will know they are targets because their portraits will get a pulsing red overlay. If you're healing them, a pulsing green overlay.

The round column will have some animations. For example after the current turn is complete, the portrait will slide off to the left, the next unit's portrait will slide in from the bottom, the bars and name will populate with the right data, and the unit who just had a turn will now slide in at the bottom of the round.

Likewise the targets will slide in from the left when targeted.

There is no design here yet really, maybe just the bars and font for now. It's minimal, but I sort of like it. It gets the job done and is cheap to produce in terms of time and with the right kind of animations, it can look pretty flashy as well.

It's really interesting to compare UI from wRPGs and jRPGs. I really liked all of Matsuno's games in terms of UI, Vagrant story in particular had a very minimal and cool user interface albeit with far too many menus. A limitation of the console platform I guess. I will admit, I sometimes get tired of the gritty stone look that seems to be required for all wRPGs. ToEE was a breath of fresh air, very minimal and almost futuristic with its radial menu. The inventory screens still felt very dark and had a D&D feel to them, but they weren't designed over the top.

For things like this, time and cost always needs to be considered. I can actually design a lot of it myself, but it takes away from time I need to spend programming so I don't want to kill too much time with it. What I hope to do is get a framework in place in terms of functionality and layout and then maybe pretty it up later with a coat of design paint.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think you'd be better off leaving PC party frames up in the left there and putting the turn order elsewhere. I'd have to think I'd be annoyed have to mentally resort my party list every time I needed to make a decision about healing someone, assuming that I look at the list. It wouldn't bother someone who looks at the map and thinks about where the damage is spatially (I should think).

Another thing, are you going to have that much unused screen real estate? Seems wasteful unless you have a lot more information to go on that right side of the screen.

 

[Rohan]

By PC party frames you mean like party portraits right? Hmm yeah, I'm wondering about it. Thing is in this context, who you can heal is always shown by the range of the spell. It doesn't really make sense to cast a healing spell and then use the party portraits for targeting, also for multiple targets within a range, that wouldn't really work either. I was thinking about putting the combat log in the top right, but I'm not too sure.

 

[Ninjerk]

By PC party frames you mean like party portraits right? Hmm yeah, I'm wondering about it. Thing is in this context, who you can heal is always shown by the range of the spell. It doesn't really make sense to cast a healing spell and then use the party portraits for targeting, also for multiple targets within a range, that wouldn't really work either. I was thinking about putting the combat log in the top right, but I'm not too sure.

I mean just having a consistent reference for how your party is doing overall. I suspect FFT, TO, and the like wouldn't have minded having that information at hand all the time if they weren't trying to fit the game onto 16" CRTs.

 

[Rohan]

Right yeah that's fair enough. Ok I will work this in.

 

[Rohan]

Greetings Codex.

It's been a while since I have come around here with updates, in truth I took a big break from the engine in 2015 because I pivoted it into another unrelated web app. But I never stopped minor updates to the code base and in the past couple of months I've really made a huge amount of progress. I'll be doing a blog update soon to discuss what I've been up to in more detail (with videos!), but for now here are some pics to showcase things.

First here's the gallery if you don't feel like reading:

http://imgur.com/a/S5B7S

I'll walk through each pic and some more stuff below.

Updated Toolset UI

On top of completely restructuring the engine code base, I rewrote and redesigned the toolset interface. The toolset is what I am using to build my combat levels and test combat. The new design gives me more viewing space and options while the code restructure allows me to drop in functionality extremely easily.

Units in a textured level

Previously all the videos I had shown which had units in them were of untextured levels. I did have a video showing a textured level (Dark Orbonne Monastery) but at that time, it was not possible to actually load units into that level. I've now made it possible and confirmed the validity of my combat level building process. Feels pretty cool to have these sprites walking around in a "proper" level.

Radial Combat Menu

I've implemented a contextual/radial menu for combat actions. The design is not final at all but the code is there.

Water Depth

Units can now sink in water!

And here's a bunch of stuff that is either too hard to show in pics or I'm too lazy to show right now, they'll be featured in the next proper blog post;

• Aerial Movement - The jumping animations for units have been completed, what I had before was a pretty hacked together solution, but they are totally legit now.
• Better Pathfinding - The elevation of tiles in the level matrix relative to the current elevation of a unit is now factored in to the path finding engine.
• Sound - I've implemented the sound API for the engine. As I'm also a musician/audio guy, this was really important to me to get going. Sound effects can now be attached to any event easily and engine BGM can now be set according to the engine state.
• AI Behaviour Framework - I now have a system to code and customise unit AI. It's a bit manual right now in that I have to write each behaviour sort of, but it works. I'll most likely be looking to make this more robust and organic soon.
• Camera AI - Well it's not really AI, but it sort of is. The camera will now automatically rotate at crucial points so that the turn taker is never occluded from the player. This became really crucial to implement as soon as I got the radial menu going, and this was hard. Probably one of the toughest bits of code I've had to write so far, but it's done.

And finally, I've separated engine code from game code and made the initial steps towards implementing the very first GoldScript Engine game. This is a really big one. Although the previous version of the engine "worked" it had opinionated stuff in it. For example, the order method for the combat round referenced the unit's speed stat. This isn't good engine code, because what if a different game had a different stat it wanted to sort by? Realising this was a light bulb moment that made be decouple all this kind of stuff from the engine and start to create my first "game". This was a bit of a rabbit hole that I knew had to happen but wanted to delay until later, but in order to actually have combat happening, I couldn't put it off any longer. Now I've done it and it's working very nicely.

Hopefully there's still some people interested in a game like this. I'll try not to take year long breaks too much in the future

Soon I would really like to get into a discussion about the upcoming game's ruleset. Right now, I'll leave you with a very rough preview of what stats are currently being applied to each unit in the game, probably fairly standard stuff but yeah thought it would be nice to share. Just keep in mind that this is all super hyper pre alpha and subject to massive changes;

Primary

MIT (might)
VIT (vitality)
AGL (agility)
KNO (knowledge)
FTH (faith)
LCK (luck)​

Secondary

HP (hit points)
AP (action points)​

Tertiary

Leap - determines vertical movement
Speed - influences round ordering
Stride - determines how far a unit can move without incurring AP impacts
Accuracy - Used to determine if an attack hits
Armour - HP buff and cannot be restored by healing spells or regular consumables*
Attack - determines physical damage
Dodge - used to determine if a unit can evade an attack or effect*
Defense - used to determine if a unit can defend or parry an attack*
Power - used to determine magical potency
Range - units chosen action area of effect
Resistance - used to modify damage calculations vs the damage type​

(*) These stats are really preliminary right now, their names or effects may change greatly

That's all for now, hope to back soon with some new updates.

Edit: formatting, also, not sure why embedding images from imgur doesn't work...

 

[Zed]

This is cool. Good job, man.

 

[CritiestBunny]

Nice work! Is this a solo project? If so, kudos for sticking with it man!

 

[Rohan]

Greetings Codexians,

I have a new update http://www.projectgoldscript.com/development/real-combat-es6-react-and-three-r86/



Some of this is detailed in the last post I made on here, but everything is a lot more solid now. I'll trying to get posts happening more regularly from now.

 

[Rohan]

Hey all,

Would like to start a conversation here about Action Points.

How do you feel about them?

Currently I am using an AP based system and I quite like it. However there is definitely a need to communicate current AP to the player at all times.

Right now you can perform a move action, then an attack action then a move if you have enough AP for it.

This is different to say, FFT or ToEE, where there was kind of a "move" phase and an "act" phase.

Which do you like better and why?

 

[Ninjerk]

The only time I have ever thought action points were handled exceptionally well was in the fan-patch of JA2 (1.13? IDR). The extreme granularity was satisfying.

 

[Rohan]

The only time I have ever thought action points were handled exceptionally well was in the fan-patch of JA2 (1.13? IDR). The extreme granularity was satisfying.

Hey thanks!

I've never played jagged alliance, can you tell me a little bit about why the patch was so good?

 

[Ninjerk]

The only time I have ever thought action points were handled exceptionally well was in the fan-patch of JA2 (1.13? IDR). The extreme granularity was satisfying.

Hey thanks!

I've never played jagged alliance, can you tell me a little bit about why the patch was so good?

It took arguably the greatest implementation of TB gaming and then took it further.

 

[Mustawd]

Is this like x-com's time units? Basically you have a pool of time units that you can use at your discretion. Whether that's move or attack, etc. The idea being as long as you have enough time units, you can basically choose what your PC does and when. This takes place in each Player turn. Once all your units are out of time units or you're satisfied with movement/attacks you end your turn and the enemy has the same opportunty.

 

[Rohan]

It took arguably the greatest implementation of TB gaming and then took it further.

Ah right, I've read a bit about the AP system in the game now, seems like the mod just modified the number of AP your units have?

What I want is to give the player more tactical options. The AP mechanic I have in my mind works something like this:

Every unit has AP which depletes when they perform actions and replenishes each turn. Their AP can be different depending on class, buffs and equipment.

The move action currently costs 1AP, so your movement range is determined by this stat. Attacks currently cost 1AP but this would change based on what was equipped, for example large weapons would probably cost more.

I'm wondering about the possibility of AP being spent to perform some actions faster (casting time) or in a slightly enhanced way.

Of course AP can't be the only thing used to determine what you can and can't do. If that were the case, if your unit had 5AP and attacks cost 1AP, you could attack an adjacent foe 5 times. Currently I only want the move action to repeatable. To offset the ability to abuse this, attacks of opportunity against fleeing units will need to be brought in.

This is definitely a complex system to implement. Going for a move phase / action phase type design is a lot easier, it's also easier to build in terms of AI. For me it's about what's more fun though. The idea of having to more carefully plan my moves seems more fun to me.

What do you guys think?

 

[Ninjerk]

It is complete gear/gunporn. They revamped the inventory system with different kinds of packs (e.g. giant rucks with more large inventory slots, smaller two-piece sets with a vest+pack combo wherein the pack must be detached to climb onto roofs and utilize height advantages) to the point that inventory management is actually fun and not a chore. You kind of just have to play it.

 

[Rohan]

It is complete gear/gunporn. They revamped the inventory system with different kinds of packs (e.g. giant rucks with more large inventory slots, smaller two-piece sets with a vest+pack combo wherein the pack must be detached to climb onto roofs and utilize height advantages) to the point that inventory management is actually fun and not a chore. You kind of just have to play it.

Ok right I see.

I guess I'm wondering more about the mechanics of AP. From an AI point of view, AP definitely adds an extra layer of complexity.

But the tactical benefits are there... I'm kind of torn between what to do.

 

[Rohan]

Hey guys, the September blog post is up!

http://www.projectgoldscript.com/development/scalable-field-view-zoom-and-2d-ui-in-a-3d-world/

 

[d1nolore]

Looks good very impressive so far. Looks like you are building a pretty useful engine too.