-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
posted
nah, only "happy until the next book when you find out your wife is actually an altairian brain slug, sent ahead early to prepare the kingdom for takeover by the swarm army... the swarmy.
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
posted
Word on the street is the next book will be e-book format only and have so much DRM and propriety format that Jesus himself will weep.
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9479 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
Oh wow. It's been a while. I think I started playing WoS when I was 13-14? And now here I am 23, I'm surprised I remembered my user and login. If you put the same heart and soul into this as you did WoS, then the android will be the next phone I buy.
-------------------- easy come, easy go. Posts: 985 | From: New Hampshire | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
Today I implemented 'fishing' and 'farming' (both a little different from normal, I think)
in Farming you get a magic seed back (quest reward) with 10 seeds in it.
Various spots on various maps are suitable for planting "Prickly Rune Trees"
If you successfully plant a seed (there is a farming skill that increases with use), then you see a little cabbage thing.
As time goes by, it rises up from the ground and starts to look more like a monster thing (which, of course, it is).
If you attack it, it becomes a full on monster and you battle to the death.
If you kill it, you 'harvest' it (green Rune Stones).
The longer you let it grow, the more rune stones you get (and the harder it is to kill).
Once you harvest it, you get the seed back, so you can have 10 growing at once. (10 is negotiable at this point)
Green runes pretty much come 99% from farming.
Blue Rune stones come pretty much 90% from fishing (you catch a fish (fishing skill) then it might have one or more blue runes in it) You remove the runes and return the fish to the water (no fish are injured in this game).
Red Rune Stones come mainly from killing things.
Then you 'weave' higher order rune stones using your rune weaving skill (sort of a color mixing game) to make yellow, aqua, and purple runes, from which you can then make white (diamond) runes.
Rune stones can be 'eaten' (like potions) or bound to equipment to give extra attack/defense with an elemental flavor.
---
I need to add tokens to the map view to help you remember where you planted stuff.
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
posted
auction house, I doubt it. dungeons, in one form or another, absolutely.
Rune Runner is light on 'items' and uses this metaphor:
When you create your character, you pick your class (warrior, mage, etc) but what that mainly does it pick your weapon (like the WoS right-hand weapon): sword, wand, staff, hammer, bow, etc.
Once you've picked that, that's it. That will never change over the life of that character (you can have multiple characters, of course).
You will do some quest early on which will grant you your first sword (or wand, etc). It is then a level I sword with no runes attached.
And that's basically the only sword you will ever own. Monsters won't drop swords as loot, you won't have an inventory of loot drops to vend or auction.
However, you can apply runes to your weapon to boost its peformance. Also, periodically you get the oppotunity to re-forge your weapon. Probably as a quest reward. "Bring me 30 Diamond Runes and I can reforge your blade into a level II sword"
Hopefully there will be a graphical difference between a level I, II, III, and IV weapon. But it's the same weapon, just rebuilt, not a second weapon in your inventory.
Ditto for other equipment (shield and helm at the moment). You get one, it starts level I, you can get it up to level IV, apply runes, etc.
IN fact, Rune Runner doesn't really even have inventory, other than your "Rune Inventory" And your quest trophies don't go in a bag per se. You just have credit for them and they appear in your Quest Diary for the quest in question.
I 'finished' the farming and it's kinda cool.. Will be cooler when I have an actual 'plant monster' instead of re-using the same skeleton for everything. I'm thinking along the lines of the typical "scary Halloween tree" style. Big central log/trunk body, with skinny litte wooden branchy limbs,
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
posted
Would the runes currently in the weapon at the time of reforging affect the reforged weapon's stats?
Such as red, green and blue boosting attack, defense and magic; secondaries affecting their components equally but to a lesser degree, etc. So a sword reforged with two red runes in it would be stronger attack-wise than a sword reforged with two green runes in it. And probably stronger, to a lesser degree than a sword reforged with yellow/magenta runes. Whereas the yellow/magenta swords would have that diminished-two-rune strength in another area as well.
posted
Well... that's an interesting suggestion. I have them set up orthogonally at the moment. The equipment has some basic stats... so a sword has, let's say, "attack points"
a level II sword then has more attack points than a level I sword.
But the actual damage you do with the sword is also contingent on other factors, for example, your character's level and STRENGTH attribute. (So the same sword is more dangerous as you level up)
But at the end of the day, right now, you sword will provide X 'normal damage points' when you use it.
Where the runes come in is for 'extra' damage points in each of the three basic colors. red (fire), blue (ice) and green (nature).
If your sword has a green rune attached (only one rune at a time on your sword, though you can change it pretty much at will), then it generates X normal damage points (whatever X currently is) PLUS X nature damage points.
If you have a purple rune (red + blue), then you generate X normal, X fire, and X ice damage points.
And a diamond rune enables all three extra damages (fire, ice, and nature) on top of the normal damage.
Defenseive equipment is similar, where the runes add additional defense against damage. So if something hit you with a purple runed sowrd, and you were wearing red-riuned armor, then their extra red damage would be mitigated by your extra red armor, but their extra blue damage would not be.
Which means you will ultimately want to use diamond runes on everything, but to make a single diamond rune requires six basic runes (or more)
Even so, it won't be so hard to weave the runes you need, so I plan to basically burn the runes.. So if you had a level I sword with diamond rune, and you upgraded it to level II, I might let you keep that diamond rune on it (or I might make it just go away, losing that rune).
probably the latter, since I also keep track of damage to the rune (as opposed to the equipment). So you attach a rune to your sword and as you fight, that rune accrues damage and eventually breaks. At which point you need to replace the rune.
I basically want you to need a lot of runes, so I need to have them wear out, get turned in for quests, used 'as potions' etc to encourage you to need new ones all the time.
----
HOwever, as I translate your suggestion, its an interesting thought to sort of remember all the runes your sword has ever known, and pick up a sort of blended color intrinsic to the sword, separate from the rune which is currently attached to it.
But not if it makes things too complicated. I need this to be pretty simple stuff :-) I'm not trying to replace WoW :-)
I'm trying to have everything about as automatic as possible, as well. As opposed to a complicated UI required to do a million little specialized chores. I have about 15 buttons already (well, not counting the rune weaver and stats screens)
When you level up, you are granted some 'black runes' which you can then 'spend' on the stats panel to boost your character stats: STRENGTH, WISDOM, and STAMINA (I don't even have dexterity/agility)
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
posted
Doesn't that suck? That's why I don't buy them. I think since I have bought 3 tickets since I turned 18.
-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
posted
Oh, that would be an interesting way of doing it. Remembering the average effects of the runes applied to it and the number of runes applied to the weapon, updating it each time a rune breaks. That would definitely give the feel that your weapon was sort of an extension of your character, I think.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
Any news on how the game is going Dan? Im so disappointed this didnt come to wos years ago.. *cries* Now as a previous individual stated I too will have to go buy this andriod and watch my arm turn to a robot.... Im'a send you the bills from the therapist. lol. Hopefully You get it out in time and theirs a actual way to convert it into a pc too, and let us go haywire on the phone users lol!.
Keep up the good work your making me sad i dont have the andriod yet.....
(dan you can always buy me the andriod and I could be a beta testers... )
LOL
-------------------- Evil Within - Sands of Destruction Spank me steve-0! Posts: 148 | From: Straight Fork, Tennessee | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged
I have *most* of the functionality done, I think. I have tails and snapping jaws now (well, the possibility thereof)
My models and textures are still pretty pathetic (and sparse) however. I just keep finding infrastructure stuff to work on instead of adding more actual content (the theory being that if you change the infrastructure AFTER adding content, then you might have to re-do the content)
I need to freshen the screen shots on that web page. Lots has changed :-)
- Dan
Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
posted
Sounds like your doing fairly well on it. Im glad you have something that can keep ya interresting. just dont forget us little people. We are your loyal followers! hahaha.
P.S looks like wos might be getting some players back. If ya didnt already know dan. Hopefully the numbers will grow back to what they used to be.
-------------------- Evil Within - Sands of Destruction Spank me steve-0! Posts: 148 | From: Straight Fork, Tennessee | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
Absolutely stoked. I'm seriously hoping it doesn't have scaling issues on the android tablets. I am looking at the Galaxy Tab, but hoping something with a larger screen.
The 'Samsung' makes me nervous since the low-end Samsungs have had pretty horrible GPU performance, But I don't know if they were OpenVR or not. OpenVR is what the Moto Droid I uses, and I am happy enough with that. And a 1GHz CPU is always promising. Most of the frame rate seems to go to just filling pixels though, so no matter how simple the 3D is, just writing to a lot of screen pixels really slows it down. I am exploring the used of FrameBufferObjects to actually render the 3D scene to a lower resolution (hopefully faster) then stretching it to fill the screen.. but then the GPU is doing that final stretch anyway, so have I really gotten any benefit? I just have to try it. It's kind of a pain to set it up, if it isn't going to work. -s]
posted
OK, something else I thought I would never have... I can now use (simple, no bones, few triangles) MilkShape models in RR.
This should make it considerably easier to make nice looking monsters and such, assuming someone with some talent chose to do so.
Limits are no more than 100 triangles per model. It can have multiple meshes (for UV mapping purposes), but I will render it as a single mesh. Must use a single material (all triangles mapped somewhere on that material).
No alpha. (I might apply alpha to the whole thing at render time, but no alpha in the model itself).
Anyway, such are the limits here on day one.
The original in MS (about 50 triangles)
A Couple instances of it in game
Note that RR has its own little UV mapping paradigm. That would need a lot more documentation before any third-party models could be successful.
Anyway, wewt.
Note that my carefully and artfully designed 'real 3D model' is only marginally more attractive than my hideous 'primitive-generated' model...
posted
I am curious how updates are handled. Is there a separate download, does it automatically do it for you, or is it a complication yet to be worked out?
posted
The Android Market is very nice (at least in this respect).
I upload the game, it appears in the market
you buy the game, it is downloaded and installed
(you keep it for 24 hours without returning it for a full refund)
you now own the game forever on all Android devices (I think), even if you uninstall it, you can reinstall it for free later.
I upload a new version
(within a few days) your phone checks in with the market and notices there is a new version and alerts you (via 'notification' bar)
If you mark the application as "auto-update" then it updates automatically, otherwise you have to click on the notification and push the update button.
It then downloads and installs the update (which I am pretty sure is just a reinstall from the current version, without wiping your stored data (progress in the game, I mean)
If you DO uninstall the game from your phone, it DOES wipe your stored game data (stored game data is saved only on your phone)
Eventually I will acquiesce to google's demand that I implement their LVL protocol, at which two things will happen:
* you will be able to install the game to a removable SD card (desirable not so much for its removability so much as for the fact thaat you can probably get one MUCH BIGGER than the flash built into the phone)
* The game will periodically validate your ownership, hence making it more difficult to steal the game (it's pretty easy right now, and you would think people wouldn't bother to steal a $1.99 game, but people are, apparently, just no darn good any more
- Dan
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
posted
By saved game data, does that mean just the settings, or are our characters saved locally (as per WoS) or are they stored on servers (as per WoW)?
As far as making models go, is this something that as a player of the game we would be able to do regularly, or would it be something that as a volunteer of time we would be submitting for consideration?
posted
Nothing is saved on a server (well, on a synthetic-reality server). Google servers will remember that you own the game, but nothing about the character in the game.
So storage of all your progress is just on your phone, and is destroyed if you uninstall the app (except insofar as 'install to sdcard' lets you remove the card... when/if that is eventually supported)
If someone wanted to send me milkshape models for consideration, I would lovingly steal them with only minor thanks given somewhere in my for-profit game :-)
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
posted
And speaking of MilkShape, I just pushed RR release 31, which has a handful of additional MS models.
Here is my dog-like race (K'nin, pronouced "kuh-neen") riding a 'wolf-like' mount.
I mean, RR31 added support for mounts
Another view showing the 'jockey' pose at high speed.
I think the mounts are slightly better than in Rocket Club (sometimes I learn from my mistakes) and are certainly simpler. The truly radical thing came from my realization that four-legged critters actually have a common skeleton with bipeds.. the front legs are just where the 'arms' go. In RC I made the mount a centaur sinze I was stuck in the mind-set that four legs meant four legs AND two arms.
Which is also nice, of course.
I will be doing a bird creature soon, and the 'arms' will be the 'wings'
posted
Yay, RR now has a THIRD user of the particle system -- fire.
1.) water ripples (as you wade in water)
2.) weapon effects (still primitive, single glowy ball moving in a line)
3.) SET PIECES (campfire to start)
So a MAP has multiple LOCATIONS
LOCATIONS can have multiple SETS
SETS can have multiple PIECES
PIECES have a model/relPos/reOrientation and now, an optional EMITTER
EMITTERs spawn particles AND '3d' sounds.
No emitter gets to generate more than one particle per render (yeah, hardly a dense particle system)
All Emitters share the same particle rate/second, so I can have one master rate button to match phone capabilities, including 0.
Yay, something that didn't take forever and was satisfying after a fairly frustrating day in winsxs land.
I guess I should include a screenshot..
* runeSet1 shows a 'set' of 2 pieces (a sort of floating roof, over a sort of metal campfire thing)
* runeFire1 shows a 'campfire' up a little closer (sound is louder)
* runeFire2 shows a closeup of the fire particles. There are some vertical slices caused by the emulator sampling the screen from at least two different frames.
Of course, as usual, I suffer from fairly crappy source art :-) Still, if you draw enough crappy particles on top of each other, they almost look right.
But mainly I am pleased with the minimal text description required for the scene.
----
Yesterday I added flying mounts and the ability to have book-driven quests that grant mounts, and three easy quests to get the three mount-summoning objects
* ground mounts increase your speed by 25% (these ones do, at least) * when crossing deep water, your speed drops to 33% of normal, UNLESS you are on a sea mount * sea mount can only be summoned when at least your toes are in the water, and auto dismounts if you ride outside the water * air mount crosses anything, at 25% speed boost.
posted
I finally was sufficiently irritated by the wooden idle pose of characters to add a simple posture/pose system. So now when they are just standing around they can shift from foot to foot, cross their arms, etc.
Now if I can just get the lighting to look nicer. Maybe I am over saturating my diffuse light.
Anyway, some random poses
In this one, she is actually looking at the guy off to the far right (both guys are looking at her). The guy on the far right is the current target selection (green shadow for a selected friendly)
posted
Why not make it so when the person downloads the game they have a random chance of getting any of the 60 stories.
So now that same person who paid 9.99 for one story will be willing to pay 9.99 for another random story. The art of chance is a nice revenue generator.
Posts: 967 | Registered: Jan 2010
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
posted
heh. Eventually Google will let us charge additional fees from within a game you already own (with your permission, of course). Otherwise you would be stuck with that one random story with no way to get any others.
A few big ticket changes, and a lot of small change...
The action buttons have been reconfigured and there is now the concept of 'buttons which are appropriate for your current target selection). So the three fight buttons are now gone, unless you have targeted something 'fightable.' This allows me to have special buttons appear when you target a friendly NPC.
And the first such button is the 'chat' button which replaces "tapping on the target's name" as a way to see the quest dialog. (I lie, you can still tap the name. But that's now an EXPERT feature -- and the only way you can 'chat' with a moonster). But the prominent chat button after selecting an NPC should make it more obvious to newbies what they can do.
Eventually I might have actions which appear only when you select a dead monster (skin it?), or when you select something like a treasure chest? Or to start harvesting a plant (which will still be a fight, since I love that)
There's a new location on the main map, where you can find the 'mount master' who has (ez) quests to learn how to summon three different mounts (land, sea, and air mounts). You no longer start off knowing any mounts. Mounts now have special 'physics' such as:
* land mounts can cross land or water, but slow down considerably when in deep water. (as do you when walking). They walk on the bottom of the sea (as do you, when on foot). You are never auto-dismounted from a land mount, and can continue to fight while mounted.
* sea mounts can cross deep water at full speed. When moving forward they rise to the surface. In reverse they sink down. (they hold their depth if you hold still). You are auto-dismounted if you ride a sea mount onto land.
* air mounts can cross anything at full speed. When moving forward they rise until they are at least N meters above the ground below them. Reverse pulls them down. You are auto-dismounted only if you land in water. You cannot fight on an air mount once you are a short distance in the air.
Gone are the "wand-users" and in their place are the "Classes" (player requested!), so now you see "Sorcerer" instead of "Wand-User", but otherwise all is as it was.
Gone are the stiff-as-a-board characters. When standing around, all characters (you and NPCs in particular) now will periodically change their pose, so as to appear more 'lifelike'
New GAME OPTION: Sunlight. This lets you specify whether you want the sunlight on automatic (where it follows the map's desires -- usually a 4 minute long 'day/night' cycle), ot to fix it specifically at DAWN/NOON/DUSK/NIGHT for your pleasure and/or visibility purposes.
New Feature: NAV POINT. (player requested!) When you tap on the map, you set a NAV POINT (that little arrow that has always been there). If you then return to the main screen, the current NAV POINT is shown as a white circle on the radar (along the edge of the circle if it is off-screen). Walk towards that and you will eventually get there.
posted
And Rune Runner gets its own scripting language...
----
And it loads the scripts from text files in the assets folder (one tiny step towards player-driven scripting)
And technically, the scripts are "Screenplays" in honor of our heritage.
Here is an example screen play
; The starting tutorial scene SCENE 100 SAY "Hello, %NM! Back from the dead, I see. Let's see how scrambled your brains are!" END
And that also demonstrates ALL the supported commands at the moment :-)
The cool thing (from my perspective) is how the stuff hooks in.
1.) You still have maps 2.) They have locations 3.) Locations have QVMs (NPCs that are Quest Vending Machines) 4.) QVMs have a list of QuestIds for the Quests they start 5.) Quests have lots of book state (and can be tracked in your quest diary) 6.) I now do a proximity check when you approach (or retreat from) an NPC 7.) I report changes in proximity to the Story Engine 8.) The Story engine checks if you are approaching an NPC that offers a 'Story' quest (as opposed to a normal old fashined quest)
Old fashioned quests work as befor, you see an Exlamation mark, you chat, you accept the quest, etc
But 'Story' quests have a 'StoryId' bound to them. And I send events to the Story Engine. The first being this proximity change event (with hysteresis).
If the Story Engine sees you just got close to an incompleted Story Quest, he pulls the storyId from the Quest description and starts the Story Engine state machine at the SCENE in question.
Tada!
I can now walk up to this dude and he says hi. I can walk away and then back and he says hi again.. All without my pressing a single button, so to speak.
What I expect him to be able to do later is:
* stop me in my tracks * chat me up * change the screen to a full screen picture, play music, and scroll backstory text * change to some map, populate with some NPCs and have them act out some little story (well, something modest along those lines) * auto-pilot my own character, put words in my mouth, to make me part of the little story * follow me around until I complete what he asked me for (but not in the sense of a permanent battle buddy.. that would be a pet. they come later) * detect when I do stuff (so a tutorial can react to my opening the map, as instructed to do, etc)
Anyway, yay! Another great reason to not add story... I have to add OPCODES first :-)
Seriously, this has been a gumption trap, since I really wanted to get the backstory/tutorial stuff solved in a way which was not too unpleasant. And that handled the very real possibility that the user might wander off before I finished telling him important stuff. Now it's all just so natural :-) It's ALIVE... it's... ALIVE!
PLus it's only a couple hundred lines of code...um, ok, 415 lines, including white space.
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
-------------------- Innovation aimed at benefiting humanity is useless if it’s only accessible to a wealthy minority. Posts: 3476 | From: The Bat Lair | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged
Starting to think a little about 'crafting' now (clothing/body designer seems kinda obvious... and if I can get that peer-to-peer sharable.. that would be a key wos-like component to have.)
----
In other news, I dunno what Google is thinking.... I *hope* they are thinking "yes, tablets should/could run android" but I know they are really thinking "tablets should run Chrome"
Which is OK with me, so long as Chrome runs Android in some fashion... but I dunno. I suspect they have two teams working in slight competition and which one will turn out to be <insert name of Google project summarily dropped without warning>
BTW, The Galaxy Tab pricing sucks big time, but I guess that's due to a couple things:
* Google apparently mandates you have G3 support (or you don't get to use the Android Market), so that means Market-friendly tablets have to have Carriers, and not just be wifi.
* Carriers are addicted to charging $600 for a phone (and then giving it to you for free with your data plan commitment).
When I am looking more for a wifi-tablet (like, surprise, the iPad wifi). only for android. which will happen.. unless it's for Chrome instead..[repeat]
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10610 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
| IP: Logged
Topic Closed
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
*cries* Now as a previous individual stated I too will have to go buy this andriod and watch my arm turn to a robot.... Im'a send you the bills from the therapist. lol. Hopefully You get it out in time and theirs a actual way to convert it into a pc too, and let us go haywire on the phone users lol!.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
just dont forget us little people. We are your loyal followers! hahaha.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
