Blood and Iron

[OminousBlueDot]

Like what you're proposing, Copx.

Seem most productive, so far. *My* game doesn't even exist in though.

 

[Goliath]

I have starting implementing the battle mode. Some basic data structures are there, the battle map can be displayed and you can scroll around it, but that's it. No new release yet, but probably soon. The only visible change is the scrollable battle map anyway. I am still in the basic engine code phase.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Aww^^

 

[Fowyr]

I have a massive boner looking at this screenshot. Very Nahlakh-esque style.


Awaiting next updates.

 

[Goliath]

The pre-historic look of the graphics is the result of my personal limitations. I am not a graphic artist. In fact, I managed to get worst grade in art class every year back in school. Fortunately, you don't need skill to create graphics like these. Should I manage to sign up a good graphic artist everything will change.

 

[Goliath]

Version 0.0.5 released, screenshots updated: http://biron.sourceforge.net/

As I said, no major news from a player's perspective.

 

[torpid]

Do trees and rocks block movement in the battle map, or offer cover?

 

[barker_s]

Good to see you're still working on this one. It's also a good thing you're not focusing on the graphics at the moment.

I can't remember if it's been asked already, but are you planning to include close-quarters city battles, or are we going to fight in the wilderness only?

 

[Goliath]

Do trees and rocks block movement in the battle map, or offer cover?

Yes, that's kind the point. Big rocks in the forest don't make that much sense from a realism point of view, they are there for combat code development. Trees are blocks movement/blocks line of sight/full cover objects, rocks are blocks movement/does NOT block line of sight/half cover objects.

 

[Goliath]

I can't remember if it's been asked already, but are you planning to include close-quarters city battles, or are we going to fight in the wilderness only?

I intend to include pretty much every kind of terrain. Wilderness battles are not planned to be that common actually (because wilderness maps are boring).

 

[Goliath]

There have been no updates because I am rewritting the whole thing from scratch right now. I wasn't happy with the source anymore. The rewrite turned out to be a good thing because it uncovered a random data corruption bug which was also in Warp Rogue. A real ninja bug, because you cannot see it in the source unless you are intimately familiar with x86 floating point hardware, and it cannot be reproduced in a controlled way running the game itself. I do unit testing now, that's how I uncovered it. Hopefully this will fix the quality issues I had in the past. I hate buggy games as much as everyone.

Implementation language has changed from ISO C90 to ISO C++0x, because I really like some things in the new standard.

 

[Kosmonaut]

There have been no updates because I am rewritting the whole thing from scratch right now. I wasn't happy with the source anymore. The rewrite turned out to be a good thing because it uncovered a random data corruption bug which was also in Warp Rogue. A real ninja bug, because you cannot see it in the source unless you are intimately familiar with x86 floating point hardware, and it cannot be reproduced in a controlled way running the game itself. I do unit testing now, that's how I uncovered it. Hopefully this will fix the quality issues I had in the past. I hate buggy games as much as everyone.

Implementation language has changed from ISO C90 to ISO C++0x, because I really like some things in the new standard.

What scripting language are you going to use in this game?

 

[Goliath]

What scripting language are you going to use in this game?

None.

 

[Murk]

bumping for great justice

 

[villain of the story]

Blood for Blood God, Iron for Iron God!

 

[Goliath]

bumping for great justice

Don't worry, the project is alive an well. I haven't had much time for this lately and I am still working on the C++ rewrite which means progress does not lead to user visible changes. There won't be another release until:
- I have finished the C++ rewrite
- Actually implemented some new, user visible stuff

Next release will also use a new version scheme XXXX.Y where X is the year and Y is the release i.e. 2011.2 = second release of 2011. The standard scheme does not really work well because it leads to incorrect assumptions.

For example, the current 0.0.5 version number suggests we are ages away from a complete game. While in fact, I want to have a feature complete beta in about a year. That's surprisingly realistic given that design is 90% done and many of the "hard" (for hobby coder values of "hard") coding problems are already solved.

Once the fundamentals are done the rest is brain dead easy i.e. implementing a game mechanic like a weapon rule is usually between 1 - 5 lines of trivial code . More importantly, it's fun. In contrast, writing GUI code is definitely NOT fun. Thus visible progress should vastly accelerate once I reach the high-level, visible features stage.

 

[Konjad]

Have it changed a lot since the first version released in here? I haven't played it since then, but might as well play again, though I want to wait until there's a lot more to the game.

 

[Mhain]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/biron/ :

Last Update
2011-02-23

So, yeah.

 

[Goliath]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/biron/ :

Last Update
2011-02-23

So, yeah.

Project is alive, though. I just never find the time to work on it. I will post in this thread myself if there is news.

 

[Goliath]

Have it changed a lot since the first version released in here? I haven't played it since then, but might as well play again, though I want to wait until there's a lot more to the game.

Continue waiting. No point in downloading it again yet.

 

[Satan]

so... any news?

 

[asper]

If you need any financial support consider doing a donation drive. I'm sure people would be willing to shell out a few bucks

 

[Goliath]

If you need any financial support consider doing a donation drive. I'm sure people would be willing to shell out a few bucks

Nah, I need someone who steals my copy of "Drakensang: River of Time". It is the first CRPG since Bloodlines I like. I have just finished a complete playthrough (including the expansion), and have played countless characters through the first ~30% or so of the game. The hours I spent doing that would have been more than enough to get "Blood and Iron" to 1.0.

I am playing through Drakensang (the first game) right now. Based on Codex reviews I was convinced that it sucked.. and well it does. Most of it is an unbearable dull and badly designed dungeon crawler but I want to finish it anyway, because I liked River of Time so much. In other bad news, they have re-released the original Nordland trilogy (an inferior English version is known as "Realms of Arkania") here in Germany, and this time it is a good re-release (with expert mode, CD music, all smoothly working under Win7).. and I discovered a German website dedicated to the games with all the secrets and tips I need to actually finish them. Because unlike the Drakensang games the Nordland ones are hard. I did not get close to finishing a single game in that series as a teenager playing without spoilers (There was no internet back then - at least not for me). So I am very much looking forward to that.

Good RPG times for me, bad times for people waiting for Blood and Iron. However, there is a good chance that I will get back to Blood and Iron after I "finish" Drakensang, either by completing it or because the sheer boredom overpowers me. After consuming for so long I feel the urge to get back to producing.

I would like to repeat that the design of Blood and Iron is largely complete and that I know how to implement it, which means that I am highly optimistic about actually finishing this once I get back to it.

And now stop annoying me by bumping this thread. I will post here myself should one of these things happen
a.) a new release
b.) I decide to abandon the project

 

[Goliath]

c.) I feel like it.

Sometimes small tweaks can drastically improve things.Well, it's a matter of taste one could say but I think I prefer the new look and thus you will have to accept it. Muahuhuhahah, being non-commercial is so awesome!

The rewrite is making good progress at the movement.

 

[Zed]

I have personally always preferred low-res pixels to vector-looking AA, but either way works. Thanks for the update.

 

[Goliath]

I have personally always preferred low-res pixels to vector-looking AA, but either way works.

Well, I actually continue to draw the graphics as low-res pixel art because that's the only thing I can do. Up until now I drew 16x16 tiles and scaled those up to 32x32. I simply added another step: apply "oil paint" filter.

I.e. one can switch back to the old look any time by simply replacing the tileset bitmaps with the unfiltered ones. This being free software the art "source"(i.e. the original 16x16 set) will be included so it would be easy to restore the old look.

However, once this is actually a game and becomes even just a little bit popular my own programmer art will most certainly be replaced by shiny graphic artist art. Once a free software project reaches a certain level of maturity it's easy to recruit graphic artists. See Battle of Wesnoth for example. So I won't spend too much time on graphics myself.