brontanius Wrote: First post will be a summary of the whole update and I'll double post with a full word for word update from the skype logs if people aren't interested in the summary. I will post a third time when I have checked out the WIP demo to give you guys a short amount of info on what it's current state is.
Second post and full word by word via skype. Now do note that I do not like sharing private conversations like this but due to the overall obscurity of the project, I felt that you guys kind of deserved to know. I will not be doing this again in the future unless I am told that I am allowed to. Also I dunno why the time stamp of the conversation shows up in some of the messages but not all of them. Probably my fault by not copying them in the correct way or something. Meh.
"hey, i promised to give you an update today. but i actually have to make it short again:
- one of the (three) devs has left the Team pretty early, the one responsible for the low Level development (graphics engine related). he left by not responding back for a while so we were forced to remove him to make further Progress.
- an other dev has joined the Team (we are three again), sadly no low Level developer.
- since all this low Level stuff has to be done to make Progress, i stepped Forward to fill up the gap. even though i am an experienced programmer, i never did something like this, game related before. so i made a few conceptual mistakes which led to a couple of redesigns of the very base of the engine. it took me a while to figure out a good concept.
- as said, the current development is done in a small and private session. this was because some Things changed rapidly (like the leaving developer that opened a gap) and i did not take the time to spread out updates to a wider audience as i was very busy and disappointed with the Little constructive feedback from the public. the last Point may be because we had nothing visually to share and People always want to look at something.
- i really want to go more public again soon. but first we Need to finish some work here so we have something to Show.
- we have sketched out many of the Features to a degree we could implement them. and most of them are implemented, some in a Basic Version. so many of the games function do already work. These are breeding, buying and selling monsters and items, traveling between regions, placing npcs in the regions and talking to them, turn based combat, alchemy, missions, and of corse Basic functionality like the extensibility, loading/saving games and the Animation system." (cobalt)
"we are missing a few Things though. These are:
- extensibility. while the Basic concept works, we need to refine this before going public with this. it works with manifest files and MANY Things can be inserted into the game to enhance and alter it. but currently, the definitions the game use for those manifests Change almost on a daily Basis. and if we want to release it to the public, we want this to be a Little more stable. we dont want to let People create Content when they have to update the manifests every few days to make them work with an updated Version. we want this to be more stable first.
- tooling. we have been working on an Editor that lets People generate These manifest files and test their Content (like easily check if their textures work well with the selected animations). also, the game engine currently relies on compiled Content, even textures have to be compiled to a different file Format . this is to enhance Performance. and the Editor can compile These ressources to our required Format. 1) we want to enable the game engine to work with other filetypes (like JPG) aswell, 2) the Editor is not yet complete. so currently, even if we would publish all the current modding capabilities, it would be of no use as the People can not compile their ressources. i think the Editor will Need a Little more work. the Option for the engine to use .JPG files will come soon.
- details. while all the functions are working, many will have to be enhanced. for example stats for monsters is currently very Basic and only affects the combat. its a Basic stat set with strength, agility, etc.. but These Details will come in time and will all be discussed in public." (cobalt)
"[14/09/2016 19:43:17] Cobalt: some more missing…
- the Website. this has been sketched out but is not finished. we have implemented some APIs for the game and the tooling. for example the game will be able to Display all online available Contents and offer a simple download through the Options menu. These Features are running on a test Server and can be made public as soon as the rest of the Website is finished.
- art. I really negleted this part so far. internally, we have been working with simple black and White Sketches, nothing fancy to look at. the art our current Artist has provided is not getting near anything we want to make official art for the game. i've contacted a few artists that i found suitable but i don't have any serious results so far.
[14/09/2016 19:45:19] Cobalt: but as said, the art part was negleted by me. just like the public communication. both have to be adressed more intense"
"does this all make sense?" (cobalt)
"Well it is a lot to take in and I can wrap my head around most of it after a quick read. Ill read all of it again in a little while to fully understand it though. You caught me literally as I was about to shut off my pc to install a new harddrive." (ME)
"[14/09/2016 19:58:43] Cobalt: no Problem. i will send you more Details soon (for example how the Things are implemented so far, etc.). i will try to wrap this all in better-to-understand-information. and provide some graphics to illustrate Things.
[14/09/2016 19:59:52] Cobalt: oh and i can send you a WIP demo of what we have so far. but this will not be for public release. just for you to maybe better understand what we are doing and what we are thinking
[14/09/2016 20:02:31] Cobalt: oh, we may not have the art up to standard yet, but we may have someone making us a Soundtrack:
https://soundcloud.com/zeriphon"
"Right well I will check out the sound cloud before I head offline but hold off on sending me the WIP demo till probably tomorrow. My hardware issue(hard drive) will probably take a few hours as I have to install the OS as well get all the necessaries to make it work. When that is done, feel free to send me all the info/graphics/wip demo because I will be free to look over everything." (ME)
"rgr" (cobalt)