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Development Info Massive Knights of the Chalice 2 Development Update

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Heroic Fantasy Games; Knights of the Chalice 2

Pierre Begue posted a large update on the development progress of Knights of the Chalice 2 on his forums. Here's a snippet:

You may notice the new ‘Respec’ tab. It is used to change the feat selection, spell selection and psionic power selection that the character received at his last level-up (or when he was created). That way, if you find that a certain feat is not helping your character, you can change the feat selection after levelling-up, without restoring a saved game. Currently, only the selection from the last level can be changed.

You may also notice that I switched the gear/equipment page from being a tab within the character sheet to being a separate window. The reason for this is that the equipment page is too big to be a tab in the character sheet. So, to open the equipment page from the character sheet, I’ve added an “inventory” button in the bottom-left corner.

In the inventory page (see below), you may notice in the bottom-right corner a box for “party items and store items”. When you trade with an NPC, items on sale will appear in that box and the price of each available item will be displayed when mousing over it. When you are not trading, the box will instead be filled with all of the items that the other party members have in their backpack.

This may answer the requests I have heard a couple of times for a “common” inventory page which would comprise all of the items from all of the party characters. So if you have two fighters and the 2nd fighter has a sword in his inventory that the 1st character needs to use, you can just click on the sword in the “party items” box and that sword will be moved automatically from the 2nd character’s backpack to the 1st character’s backpack.

The rest of the inventory screen should be straightforward for anyone who has played KotC 1 as the layout is the same. The space below “backpack items” is for bag items. It is displayed only when you click on a bag or any other container that the character can carry. You cannot move a container into a container.

Since not everybody can access his buyer forums I will shamelessly post the entire update in the comments thread for your convenience.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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Pierre Begue said:
Hi, in the last few months I’ve completed some important parts of the game. A lot has been done and yet a lot remains to be done.

First, the character sheet has been completed. Here are some new pictures of the character sheet.
Please note that all of the screenshots below can be enlarged by clicking on them.





You may notice the new ‘Respec’ tab. It is used to change the feat selection, spell selection and psionic power selection that the character received at his last level-up (or when he was created). That way, if you find that a certain feat is not helping your character, you can change the feat selection after levelling-up, without restoring a saved game. Currently, only the selection from the last level can be changed.

You may also notice that I switched the gear/equipment page from being a tab within the character sheet to being a separate window. The reason for this is that the equipment page is too big to be a tab in the character sheet. So, to open the equipment page from the character sheet, I’ve added an “inventory” button in the bottom-left corner.

In the inventory page (see below), you may notice in the bottom-right corner a box for “party items and store items”. When you trade with an NPC, items on sale will appear in that box and the price of each available item will be displayed when mousing over it. When you are not trading, the box will instead be filled with all of the items that the other party members have in their backpack.

This may answer the requests I have heard a couple of times for a “common” inventory page which would comprise all of the items from all of the party characters. So if you have two fighters and the 2nd fighter has a sword in his inventory that the 1st character needs to use, you can just click on the sword in the “party items” box and that sword will be moved automatically from the 2nd character’s backpack to the 1st character’s backpack.

The rest of the inventory screen should be straightforward for anyone who has played KotC 1 as the layout is the same. The space below “backpack items” is for bag items. It is displayed only when you click on a bag or any other container that the character can carry. You cannot move a container into a container.



Next, I’ve completed the party-creation screen. You can assemble characters into a party from that screen. You can also level-up any character in order to meet level requirements for a module you want to play. You may notice I’ve added an “Ironman mode” checkbox. In fact, I’ve completed the implementation of Ironman mode already, because it’s quite simple. I can’t really promise that the game will be totally bug free (allowing proper ironman playthroughs) but I will try my best. I do think that the way I programme now makes it easier to avoid bugs. Then again, I haven’t started working on combat, which can be a big source of bugs. Whenever I find a bug, it’s always my first priority to remove it.

Next I did some work on party movement and the formation screen. In that screen (above), in the right-side box, you can see an image of the party members oriented as if they were moving towards the top of the screen. You can use drag-and-drop to move a character (any but the party leader) from one spot to another. This will alter the group’s formation. When you return to the game, the game will try to respect the formation you’ve set, regardless of the direction the party is facing (top, left, right, bottom, top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right). I did extra work on the formation screen and party movement so that a large creature (2x2 squares) could join the party without creating problems.

Other things of note in the formation screen include the “Acts” and “Lead” columns in the left-side box. Lead is the column that indicates the party leader. If you click somewhere in that column, it will change the party leader to the character you’ve clicked on. The party leader is used as the centre of rotation of the formation, whenever you move in a direction that is not the top. Being party leader does not necessarily mean that only that character takes part in dialogues with NPCs.

“Acts” is the column indicating who is an active character and who is inactive. You can “turn off” a character by setting him as inactive. He will then not appear in the game and not take part in combat, but he will still be available from the formation screen, should you need the character again later on. The reasoning for the active/inactive setting is that a module may allow you to recruit a lot of NPCs. However, you will not be able to exceed the limit imposed by the module on the number of characters in the party. So, when you recruit someone, you will have to decide who you should keep as active characters and who should be de-activated.

In the game Neverwinter Nights 2, you could recruit a lot of characters and then they would go to the tavern, where they would wait for you to decide to use them. The active/inactive setting simply automatises this process of switching between characters that you know are available.



Next, we have the credits screen. That is straightforward stuff, there’s a smooth scrolling as in KotC 1. It also uses the same scroll image as in KotC 1.

Next, we have the main menu. Again, not much to say here. It’s just a different version of the main menu I used before, which was based on a big cloudy planet picture that was perhaps more appropriate for a science-fiction game. In the new version, I replaced the standard text with images made in Photoshop, to make the menu nicer. Of particular note is that two logos have been made for KotC 2, you can see the two versions in the main menu and in the credits screen. So which one do you guys prefer?

By the way, I will probably call the game KotC 2 regardless of what modules are produced, rather than Fantasy World Engine. I expect this would be good for brand recognition. If someone hears about KotC 2 or a KotC 2 module, and they have already heard about KotC before, then they will immediately know what it’s about. Again, taking Neverwinter Nights as an example, all of the modules of the second game bear the name Neverwinter Nights 2.



Next, we have the loading and saving screens. They are now implemented and games can be saved and loaded. There are also shortcut keys for quick saves and quick loads.

In the loading and saving dialogue box, we can see the total play time, the average level of the characters and whether a game is in ironman mode or normal mode. The box is automatically sorted so that the most recent saved game is always at the top. I thought about adding a mini-preview screenshot picture but I rejected that idea for two reasons: I don't know how to do it and it would make saving and loading slower.

As in KotC, you don’t need to type a name for your saved games. The “name” is an index number that is automatically given. Your saved game is a folder named with this index number (as in KotC). The quick-save, if it exists, uses the number zero. Another thing of note concerning saved games is that I’ve worked on save formats to make them a bit more flexible. It is now possible to add data without invalidating all of the previous saves. I shouldn’t need to add new data, but you never know.

Saved games will not work exactly like they did in KotC 1. In KotC 1, the whole state of the game world was saved to the hard disk. For example, a saved game would say “on this map, there are monster groups A, B and C”. Then once the player has defeated groups A and B, a new saved game would say “on this map, there is monster group C only”. Now, imagine you want to ramp up the module’s difficulty by adding monster group D. You can do so, but none of your saved games will allow you to playtest combat with monster group D, because they will only talk about A, B and C! So you would have to start the game from the beginning.

In KotC 2, the game will save update scripts rather than the state of the world. So instead of saving something like “on this map, there is monster group C”, it would save a script saying “start from the state of the map as it was defined in the module, then remove the monster groups A and B that have already been defeated”. The advantage of using update scripts is that any tweaks made on the module will be passed on to the saved games. So, when playtesting an updated module, there is no need to start a new game from the beginning. When you load an old saved game, any new monster groups will appear, any new items will appear, etc.

Next, we have the options screen (see above). That one is straightforward I think. You can set the volume for music, sound effects and ambient sounds. There is a list box in the lower part of the window. It will contain all of the game options that may be turned on or off. In KotC, I was limited by space, in the options screen. I won’t have this problem now since the list box can be as big as necessary; just use the scroll bar to display more options. Right now, the game options only include full-screen mode, accelerated combat and double walk speed. I’ve already implemented the full-screen mode and double walk speed.

Of particular note is that progress has been made on music. The composer Manuel Marino is responsible for doing soundtracks. He’s already done nine cool soundtracks and some of them are two or three minutes long or more. Here are a couple soundtracks for you to listen to. The first one, I’m also thinking to use it in a promotional video for KotC 1.

Soundtrack 1:http://www.heroicfantasygames.com/FWE/Music/1KnightsTheme.ogg
Soundtrack 2:http://www.heroicfantasygames.com/FWE/Music/2TravelAndWilderness.ogg



Next, we have the splash screen from Roman. The image is faded-in when you launch the game. After a little while, the logo is faded-in on top.

Finally, we have screenshots from the actual game. In those screenshots, you can see I’m using a four-character party, even though the game supports having eight party members or more. Of particular note is the re-implementation of the fog of war from KotC 1. It’s the same but it required extra attention to make it work with inter-square obstacles like doors and walls (as opposed to full-square walls). In the first screenshot (above), you can see the party standing before an inter-square door and nothing is revealed behind the door.

Notice the minimap in the bottom-right corner. Currently, characters are represented with red dots on the minimap. The important thing about the minimap is that it only shows those parts of the dungeon that have already been unveiled. In the following screenshots, you can see more of the dungeon being added to the minimap progressively.

When the game is played in full-screen mode, more of the map gets displayed (as in Battle of the Sands) and you can scroll by mousing over an edge. As in KotC 1, you can move the party either by clicking a destination square or by pressing the mouse button and keeping it pushed. If you click a square, the party will move to that square using the shortest possible path. If you keep the mouse button pushed, the party will move towards the position of the mouse on the screen.



In the second screenshot, there’s a portcullis. So the party has line of sight to what is behind the portcullis, but it cannot move there until the portcullis is opened (lifted). You can also see a spiral staircase.

In the third screenshot, the party is moving through a narrow corridor. You can see that the party’s formation is now broken since there is not enough room for it. Instead, each party member is following the next one. This way, if the next room contains monsters, you will know how party characters will be positioned at the beginning of the fight. In KotC 1, characters would get stacked on top of the party leader, so you might end up with the wizard in the front line.



In the fourth screenshot, you can see the yellow mousing-over selection glow around one of the characters. When mousing over a character, you can click to display their character sheet.

Finally, the fifth screenshot shows how the line-of-sight algorithm is removing the fog of war diagonally, in the top and bottom rooms. Just assume that the doors are not there or are already opened.

In the last few days, I’ve been working on the game’s script engine, another really important part of the game. I’ve made a few simple scripts run successfully but much more needs to be done to ensure that scripts can be launched from various elements (for example doors, activable areas and the dialogue script of NPCs) and to ensure that most script actions are implemented, including “set up a dialogue with NPC”, “open door”, “award XP”, “teleport the party”, etc.

So the plan now is to focus on the script engine and, once that is completed, focus on the combat engine, the combat interface, spell implementation, feat implementation, special-ability implementation, items, weapons and monsters.

I hope you liked the update!
icon_e_smile.gif
Feel free to post feedback.
Now let’s finish with some cool monster pictures:

Efreeti and Stone Golem

Efreeti256x256.png
StoneGolem256x256.png


Invisible Stalker and Inevitable

InvisibleStalker256x256.png
Inevitable256x256.png
 

Darth Roxor

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Should re-brand the title to Massive Chalice: Knights 2, just like HoMM did.

Anyway, it's cool to see that everything is coming along nicely, but I'm still bummed by the visuals. I thought the maptools-like interface that was shown in some earlier updates was just placeholder :/
 

Berekän

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Holy Fucking Shit. I was going to mention how ugly the interface looked when I noticed the fucking logo. What. The. Fuck. That's the most horrendous piece of shit I've seen in a long time.

Still sad that he chose to ditch the art style from the original, had a lot of charm and really liked it, despite people complaining about the perspective. Still, this one's not terrible I guess. Would improve a lot if he gave the tiles some decoration, furniture, anything to make it not look as bland.
 

Declinator

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Being even uglier than KotC 1 could be considered a feat in and of itself. Glad that the Ultima perspective is gone though.
 

Applypoison

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Serpent in the Staglands Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Still unsure about the artistic direction (tokens and all, I get its PnP but damn). Intro screen is pretty enticing, though, and hopefully all the goodness of KotC's tactical encounter design will carry over.
 

m_s0

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That logo is so stupidly overdesigned and awkward in the main menu I actually kind of like it. It's about what I'd expect from this guy after KotC.

Using tokens is a great idea. Looks clear, plays fast, saves development time (and if you think standard graphics with animations would be better just look at that glorious logo again). I agree it needs more props, but that's probably coming down the line.
 
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Thread title made me think they were announcing a crossover between Double Fine's Massive Chalice and this.

edit: "of" and "the" are virtually invisible to me so it reads as "Knights 2 Chalice"
 
Last edited:

Loriac

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Those screenshots aren't bad actually. The boardgame-like layout could work quite well I think, and its certainly easier to see whats going on than the horrible perspective used in KotC. If the art could be upgraded so that the counters looked like actual miniatures that would be quite cool, but even as it stands it looks quite clean and certainly functional.
 

getter77

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While good that he addresses the need to.....improve...the character sheets and whatnot alongside the U/I in general----I can't help but wonder what form it will take in the end. I mean, he's definitely spent a fair bit of time with ToEE, the NWN series, and the Infinity Engine---but it seems like he's trying to find some other path to especially keep in P&P sensibilities and cram in more info...else otherwise the simpler thing to do from the start would be to largely mimic the D&D game screens and such of the past.
 

SuicideBunny

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looks more like knights chalice of the 2 to me... or maybe 2: knights chalice of the.
 

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