Blood and Iron

[Elwro]

Eevn a lowly Untermensch like me can appreciate the nice progress of this project

 

[hoverdog]

Bruno's portrait is great

 

[Goliath]

Bruno's portrait is great

No surprise, I didn't paint it!
Unfortunately I failed to sign up the artist thus I only have five or so of these portraits. Also I don't like the contrast between this higher quality art and my pixel mush. This means the portraits will be removed sooner or later.
I will probably replace them with the battle map representation of the character.

Again, it's only temporary anyway. Ultimately I am aiming for something like this:

(That's Mordheim rulebook art)

 

[Goliath]

Good progress today: the bullets are flying!
Non-straight shots look a little silly though given that projectile movement is grid-based. But well, it saves a lot of time to implement it this way because I can use the same grid-based drawing/movement code I use for everything else.
I think one of the most important reasons why hobby projects like this one usually never get anywhere is that people aim too high, especially as far as representation is concerned. They use the graphics/UIs of modern multi-million dollar projects as
reference and end up running out of steam before even reaching the stage where you start to implement actual gameplay.

It's sad really. Thus my personal "Gold Standard" is SSI Gold Box. More people should aim for that or Bard's Tale/Wasteland style graphics/UI then they might have a chance to succeed. Just look at the roguelike scene, it is full of complete and fun games developed as a spare time hobby. Why do hobby roguelike developers succeed where hobby CRPG developers fail? I think the primary reason is the much more realistic point of reference as far as representation/UI is concerned.

 

[Zed]

It's sad really. Thus my personal "Gold Standard" is SSI Gold Box. More people should aim for that or Bard's Tale/Wasteland style graphics/UI then they might have a chance to succeed. Just look at the roguelike scene, it is full of complete and fun games developed as a spare time hobby. Why do hobby roguelike developers succeed where hobby CRPG developers fail? I think the primary reason is the much more realistic point of reference as far as representation/UI is concerned.

Roguelike developers love to program shit -- general hobby game designers might not.
You're definitely right though. I personally think it's fun just throwing together mockups, and I easily get bored or tired when trying to actually implement gameplay stuff. For example, this morning I made this (and I'm probably not doing anything with it):

 

[Goliath]

Roguelike developers love to program shit

Well, I was a roguelike developer and now that you say it.. yes, that's true. I remember being quite annoyed by the fact that 9 out of 10 people in the roguelike development newsgroup seemed to be computer science students exercising, actually making a game was not very important.

-- general hobby game designers might not.

Right. I guess most people who want to make RPGs aren't CS students/professional programmers but that only makes the whole issue of aiming too high even worse. Programming is hard, you can get a big fucking paycheck if you are good at it because few people are, and the higher you aim the harder the programming problems become. As someone without a background in CS I really struggled with things like pathfinding. Once you understand it (by now I do), it seems trivial, but when I first encountered that problem I couldn't solve it. Bard's Tale style RPGs don't need a pathfinder, and SSI never bothered to implement one because of performance issues I think. I still remember the hilarious stupidity of the movement code in Buck Rogers. Right at the beginning during the final battle on Earth one of the RAM warriors always runs straight into a wall and becomes stuck - because there is no real pathfinding. Most of the time you don't notice that because SSI cleverly made sure that most of the battles happen on maps without obstacles between the enemy and you. Yet Buck Rogers is still one of my favorite RPGs of all time. You do NOT need proper pathfinding, a 3D map, an advanced squad level AI or anything like that to make a great RPG. I wish more people would realize that.

You're definitely right though. I personally think it's fun just throwing together mockups, and I easily get bored or tired when trying to actually implement gameplay stuff. For example, this morning I made this (and I'm probably not doing anything with it):

Nice, did you paint those graphics yourself?

 

[Zed]

You do NOT need proper pathfinding, a 3D map, an advanced squad level AI or anything like that to make a great RPG. I wish more people would realize that.

Very true.
I'd say most people would gain the most from practicing writing, focusing on characters and creating an interesting world. Especially since so many hobby devs seem to be European. I've seen too many games with great (for being created by one person) systems in place, but littered with grammatical errors or silly stereotypes.
Graphics can be shitty as shit can be and the game can still be great, but I don't think I have to argue on that point on a retro-loving site like this.
But even though you can easily dismiss graphics, sound, (advanced) A.I and other areas, they can still add great value to the game. One should exploit one's talents

Nice, did you paint those graphics yourself?

Thanks. Yeah I had the window up so I quickly pasted it to imgur for a quick example. The idea was to create a randomly generated city (random placement of buildings onto an array then redraw that array as a seen in the screenshot) and make some sort of graphic rogue. I scrapped that idea however and now I'm using it as a playground just to learn stuff (create movements, dialog [it's a bitch], and combat, etc.) and practice minimal pixelart (window is 400x300 in 800x600 resolution).

 

[Goliath]

Good progress, the new C++ foundation code is almost finished. After that I can go back to player visible stuff and make new releases. I am really happy with my decision to rewrite. The new engine is the best code I have ever written, it's a joy to work with.

I intend to redesign some parts of the non-combat UI, making it more comfortable. Next release will be wide screen (1280x720) and I intend to use that additional space to abolish separate item/character info screens e.g. an item's stats / attributes will be displayed on the same screen where you select it. I also think I don't want to stick to my original plan as far as equipment assignment is concerned. That plan was to simply clone Gold Box i.e. you put stuff into a character's inventory and then go into said inventory and "ready" the things you want to equip. I used that system in Warp Rogue too, because I like it and because it is simple to implement. However, given the sheer amount of items and characters you will have to manage in Blood and Iron, and the nature of the game in general, I think I will switch to a slot-based approach i.e.
select character -> select equipment slot -> select item from a list of suitable items in the storage.

However, I don't feel like working on the management layer right now. I will probably work on the battle mode instead which would mean that the next release would be a battle mode only demo.

 

[Goliath]

It's amazing, right from the start my goal was to keep things simple this time. To stay focused and complete the game instead of losing myself in feature creepyness.. despite that I lost focus right at the beginning. Before the rewrite I had begun to implement a world map because my ultimate vision for the game was that your warband moves around the world map looking for and completing missions.
I should worry about something like that after I actually have a working combat and character development system (which is what 90% of the game is supposed to be about).

Fortunately I spotted this mistake early this time. So to make it clear: I want to have a complete and fun game which basically implements Mordheim campaign gameplay (i.e. battle, shopping/recruitment/character development, battle, shopping/recruitment/development, battle, etc.) before thinking about designing a real world and more complex missions (i.e. missions with multiple battles, world map movement, dialogs, C&C etc.).

Engine progress has been good again. I am working on a mini-game right now to test the new engine.

 

[Zed]

Sounds good man.

If you need people to test your game once you've got more stuff in it I'm totally up for it.

 

[Goliath]

Sounds good man.

If you need people to test your game once you've got more stuff in it I'm totally up for it.

Thank you, but the general public will be my beta test team. Once I actually have a good game I might do a stable/development branch seperation (like Wesnoth), I don't think more is necessary. Closed betas are for proprietary, commercial games.

However, I need someone to test the mini-game I hope to release soon. And with "test" I mean testing whether the keyboard input routines work. That shit has the tendency to go wrong and given that my mini-game is a joke I don't want the joke to be ruined by something like that. May I contact you once I have finished it? The test shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

 

[Zed]

Only if it doesn't involves anal probing.

 

[Goliath]

Only if it doesn't involves anal probing.

I'll take that as a yes.

 

[Goliath]

I had forgotten how much this sucks: encountering a bug yet being incapable of tracking it down.
Projectile movement: works fine!
Camera movement: works fine!
Combine the two: WTF is wrong here?!
I am so looking forward to the point where I can start working on gameplay instead of UI logic.

 

[tiagocc0]

I had forgotten how much this sucks: encountering a bug yet being incapable of tracking it down.
Projectile movement: works fine!
Camera movement: works fine!
Combine the two: WTF is wrong here?!
I am so looking forward to the point where I can start working on gameplay instead of UI logic.

I feel your pain!

 

[Goliath]

Endsieg!!!

I have vanquished the digital Jew using my patented Heisenbug extermination technique: simply rewrite the entire affected subsystem using a different approach!

 

[Omicron]

 

[Goliath]

Don't expect any updates for a while. Unfortunate real life happenings demand all my attention at the moment.

And again: please don't pointlessly bump this thread, I will post here myself should something of interest happen.

 

[Goliath]

Something of interest has happened: I am in a creative crisis.

I had to realize that my preferences as far as games are concerned have changed. I used to be a total stat- and combat-fag but it seems these days I actually need a story and characters who appeal to me. I realized that while trying to play Luminous Arc 2 (Nintendo DS). I bought that game because I enjoyed the original Luminous Arc (both games are Tactical RPGs). I stopped playing after a few missions.. and the problem was the story!

Somehow I liked the writing in the original Luminous Arc game, nothing brilliant but it kept me motivated. The writing in Luminous Arc 2 did not. I hated the characters, I was bored by the story.. etc.
In the end I realized that I do not want to make a TRPG without a real story anymore. So the original concept is pretty much dead.

I am still working on a TRPG, but I cannot say at the moment what it will be like. The addition of a "story" requirement changes a lot..

 

[20 Eyes]

Glad to hear you're still working on this, it was looking cool.

 

[General Maxson]

Somehow, this reminds me of Darklands...

 

[Morkar Left]

Something of interest has happened: I am in a creative crisis.

I had to realize that my preferences as far as games are concerned have changed. I used to be a total stat- and combat-fag but it seems these days I actually need a story and characters who appeal to me. I realized that while trying to play Luminous Arc 2 (Nintendo DS). I bought that game because I enjoyed the original Luminous Arc (both games are Tactical RPGs). I stopped playing after a few missions.. and the problem was the story!

Somehow I liked the writing in the original Luminous Arc game, nothing brilliant but it kept me motivated. The writing in Luminous Arc 2 did not. I hated the characters, I was bored by the story.. etc.
In the end I realized that I do not want to make a TRPG without a real story anymore. So the original concept is pretty much dead.

I am still working on a TRPG, but I cannot say at the moment what it will be like. The addition of a "story" requirement changes a lot..

I'm just bashing through the door here without having commented your humble efforts before, though: the progress looks great! And I really like your idea of a Mortheim game.

For the story in rpgs; maybe it has something to do with that you already know the Luminous Arc game system, setting and mechanics. It's enjoyable but in the end just more of the same. I encountered something similar lately; I was replaying RoA1 after more than a decade. It felt absolutely fresh for me but it wasn't as exciting as the first time. Still I enjoyed it very much and played till the final dungeon. There I havent entered it and I don't want to play it at the moment even when I could finish the game in 2 hours now.

Just give it a break and after some storybased rpgs (with often shitty gamemechanics) you want something tactical again. For me there is always a balance between good tactical mechanics and a nice story implemented. If you think Blood and Iron needs a story go for it. M&B for example would profit greatly from a story when implemented well into the rest of the game. And I think your game is similar in pacing. Or think at Darklands.

EDIT: Starflight another good example.

 

[oscar]

A story is mainly useful in a game like for giving you something to do once you've gotten to a comfortable level of power and things are beginning to get a bit easy. But I find a fixed storyline combined with open world mechanics is pretty lame. Something like Hammer and Sickle is great, you've got vague objectives but the way you solve it and actions you take mean the plot can go a lot of different ways (and the game does punish you for being careless or taking the easy way out).

I am craving some turn-based renaissance wargame action so keep up the good work!

 

[Commissar Draco]

Always thought German RPGs are technically solid but bland partly because Teuton's lack of Humor and partly because what happened to Germans after WWII so game done by Geman brave enough to call himself Nazi those days should be interesting... Maybe you can as JarlFrank for some art copx?

 

[Goliath]

I am craving some turn-based renaissance wargame action so keep up the good work!

Unfortunately, I am busy with other things right now. Mostly real-life. Sorry, but don't wait for this.