Welcome to a new update! I know I'm not doing these too frequently, but at least they are big and give you all the details about the game! Unlike a game like
Seven Dragon Saga, where updates are much shorter than I'd like! If there are no updates, it does not mean that development is slowing down. Quite the contrary! Because releasing an update takes much time, too. If I maintained a blog like
Rampant Coyote, I don't know how I would be doing any development at all.
So what is this new update focusing on? Firstly and primarily, on the new interface graphics. It's still a work in progress since I'm expecting a bit of additional interface artwork from the art designer, but otherwise most of the changes that I wanted to do have been made, and I have enough screenshots for a full update. (Click on a picture to enlarge)
New Interface Pictures
First, let's have a look at the party creation and character creation screens. These few pictures are in high-quality png format but most of the next ones are in the lower-quality jpg format to save website space. In the character-creation page, there is a dice icon to re-roll the ability scores. When you click on the icon the game plays a dice rolling sound. On the topic of sounds, I've also added new interface sounds, including a soft mousing-over sound and a couple of page-flip sounds that are appropriate to the new scroll-based interface graphics. On the subject of character creation, I have already implemented the new sub-races, but I have yet to implement the new character classes like Samurai. On the subject of interface graphics, you can see in the pictures below that I have implemented a new mouse cursor in the shape of a medieval armoured glove (gauntlet). There is also a tiny finger animation when the user is pressing a mouse button.
Now let's have a look at some character-sheet screenshots below.
Of particular note is the tab list, which gave me a bit of a headache, but now it's done and I'm happy with it. In the respec tab (pictured below), I am planning to add a box dedicated to automated character settings. These settings include combat manoeuvre settings, for example, if you want your character to perform a trip attempt as a Swift Combat Manoeuvre every time the character performs a melee attack of opportunity or ready-versus-approach melee attack. Note that it will be possible to do so only if the character has the feat Greater Trip. See the
list of feats for more information. Other automated settings include everything related to spells. For example, you may want to set your wizard to auto-cast Mage Armour every time after resting, as in
KotC 1. Each and every spell that lasts the whole day is worth considering for auto-casting, as it would be boring to have to re-cast them manually every time the party rests.
Now let us have a look at some inventory screenshots. I don't yet have a good inventory screenshot showing lots of items like crowns, plate armour, rings, boots and cloaks, but I do already have lots of graphic icons for all these, as mentioned and pictured in
this earlier update. New item icons have also been added, since that earlier update. KotC 2 definitely will offer more item variety than
KotC 1 did.
Now let's have a look at the crafting screens. There are three different ones, one for enchanting weapons, armour and shields, one for creating a new weapon, armour or shield, and one for recharging a wand imbued with a spell. I'm also adding a couple of screenshots showing the information screens for weapons and for items.
Now let's have a look at the screens associated with levelling-up and the selection of spells and feats.
Now let's review the screens associated with the quest journal, party formation and saved-game selection. The screen for loading and saving games features a picture preview, as mentioned before.
Now let's have a look at some screens dedicated to the help and modifier lists. Modifier lists can be useful for debugging. By contrast, in RPGs featuring a real-time-with-pause combat engine, it can be difficult to know for sure whether a particular bonus or penalty has been taken into account by the engine.
Now let us review some of the screens associated with the module editor, below. However, I have yet to upgrade the interface of most editor screens, so you won't find a picture of the script editor, item editor or character editor. On the subject of the editor, in the last few months I spent some time on a new creature-template modification tool. Say you have a template for a human arena guard. You have placed ten such guards in your module and each one wields a longsword. But now you want them to be wielding both a longsword and a shortsword. Without the new tool, you would have to edit each guard instance manually. With the new tool, you simply open the original template of the arena guard, give it a short sword, give it the two-weapon fighting feat, then click the tool button to re-apply the template to all the ten instances that exist in the module automatically. You can exclude certain instances if you want to avoid overwriting unique features that you may have given to a particular guard.
Combat engine development
Concerning the combat engine, you may have guessed that I haven't been able to work on it as much as I would have liked, due to all the new things described above. I did implement three new things:
* Weapon icon at the top of the screen: the game now displays the icon and name of the weapon you are going to use at the top of the screen, before and during attacks. It also does it for the enemies, of course. I really like the weapon icons, so I wanted them to be more visible in combat, and not be restricted to the inventory screen.
* Ranged attacks: ranged attacks can now be performed when a character has a ranged weapon equipped in his ranged-weapon inventory slot, as well as appropriate ammunition in his ammunition inventory slot. This includes both the standard attack version and the full-attack version. The arrow animation is similar to that of KotC 1.
* Detailed tooltip information before an attack: I've spent some days expanding the combat-information tooltip. It was already displaying the percentage chance to hit. Now, when you mouse over an enemy, the game provides full data about the damage range, percentage chance of a critical hit, damage range on a critical hit, energy damage range for weapons like a Flaming Greatsword, and percentage chance to apply the magic effect for weapons like a Blinding Mace or a Slaying Arrow. If the creature is immune to your weapon's energy damage, the game will tell you so. The game will let you know if damage reduction is going to be applied, and how much. If the attack is a ranged attack, the tooltip will give you the name of any creature providing soft cover to the target.
Now let's have a look at some combat screenshots. I'm also adding a screenshot of the exit-game confirmation screen. In the last screenshot, you can see an arrow flying towards its target.
A look at familiars and holy symbols
I liked how
wizard familiars existed as inventory items in
Temple of Elemental Evil. So I've decided to have them as inventory items in KotC 2, too. In addition,
Clerics and Bishops will have a holy symbol depending on their alignment (good, neutral or evil). Here are the icons for both familiars and holy symbols. The familiars are in the first picture below, together with a few other unrelated items. The holy symbols for evil, good and neutrality are in the second picture below, in double size.
I think that holy symbols will offer a minor enchantment, such as the possibility to cast Bless once per day if the item is activated while worn on the neck/amulet slot. It will not be possible to transfer a familiar or holy symbol to other characters.
On the subject of Temple of Elemental Evil, I recently played through the
player-made module Keep on the Borderlands and I've written a page of comments about it, but I haven't found the time to make a post about it yet (it takes time especially to arrange screenshots). Also played a bit of Drakensang River of Time and wrote some comments, but I didn't like the game, it was too slow on my computer.
A look at some source-code statistics
In this section I want to talk a little bit about how huge the KotC 2 code has become, even though the engine is far from finished.
Recompiling from scratch takes about three minutes and a half. There are already 60 header files and 53 source-code files. Header files (also called h files) are text files that contain function and class declarations, while source files (also called cpp files) are text files that contain the implementation of functions and classes.
By contrast,
Battle of the Sands has 31 header files and 24 source-code files, while
KotC 1 has 31 header files and just seven big source-code files. Granted, the tools of KotC 1, like the map editor and character editor, are external tools, while the tools of KotC 2 are integrated with the game's code.
