A lot of progress was made today, 'thanks' to the lack of real work this week. I added a vertical button list to the left part of the screen. They link to the most common commands like reload, use, open the map or the inventory. Moreover, five of those buttons are configurable (like the quick-bar in Diablo'likes and MMOs). You can link those to any useable item from your inventory. It's also now possible to lock the aspect ratio of the game so the image doesn't look stretched (especially on 16/9 screens).
Also, a prototype of the Industrial District map type has been put in place. The sector is ugly as hell, but the generator will be reworked later. The main goal here is to have all elements to begin the production of goods. The various activators (containers, work benches and so on) have been modified to accommodate the factories and facilitate the job of the yet to be included couriers and factory workers.
Next part is to add the 2 jobs mentioned earlier, add containers to shops and link the cash register to the said containers. After that and a lot of tuning, the basics of the economic tree will be completed. Related illegal jobs will then be added (thief and pickpocket) for both the player and NPC.
Holy Shit, this is by far getting so epic. Hey I saw over at the bay 12 pages they were all complaining 'bout you. (crimelike thread). And I wanted to say, I didn't think you did anything wrong. You were just giving suggestions and being polite. Way to go mate.
ReplyDeleteOh and btw on a concept idea:
Newspapers (like Legends mode DF)
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Newspapers act as to where we can see the economy being projected. The crime statistics for a certain are. "your city name here" crime ratio. Pretty much everything important going on in the city. Do you think this is possible?
Housing Apartments (like in the old .12 of DF)
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Your player can buy an apartment. And make it a place to save your game,(and world), and a place to make into a drug den, or a place to just lay low from the cops. Or even any kind of criminal or legal thing someone would do inside their home... (porn) jk. But even get married to an npc. Or something along those lines.
More Hospital Uses
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Disease, viruses, colds, flus, broken bones, or anything related to medical problems. These things would make the hospital more useful than just going to to heal and recuperate from a bullet wound to the chest or etc.
End Comments
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Serial Kicked, thank you so much for all you have done. This is by far coming along with more potential and ability than any game I have ever seen. Indie or not, this game kicks major ass.
Thanks Serial.
Yup, it's taking form :)
ReplyDeleteYeah I know about bay12, I dropped the issue as it's not necessary to add more fuel to the flames, and decided to stay away from the topic, even when it brings a spike of visitor in here.
@Newspaper:
Yes, it's perfectly doable. I've already dabbled with dynamic news systems in the mods/plugins I released for X3:Terran Conflict. So, something along those lines will definitively be included sooner or later.
@Apartments:
Buying or taking over buildings will be possible as soon as the faction tree of the roadmap is completed. I don't know yet exactly how the system will work, it's a bit too early for that.
No marriage, though. Even if it would make sense for the purpose of generating new NPC, the time scale isn't appropriate, and NPC-to-NPC (or NPC-to-Player) interactions are the weak point of my AI system. And as a player only solution, it's not really relevant to a GTA themed game.
@Hospital Stuff:
Yes, hospitals/doctors will be expanded when illegal drugs will be released. Using drugs and alcohol may turn NPC and the player into addicts. Hospitals will be used to 'clean' them. repairing broken bones will be included as soon as localized damages will replace hit-points.
As for viruses, it's an interesting idea. I will consider it.
@comment:
Thank you for the encouragements, but there's still a fairly long road ahead of me. :)
We can pick up cash when a ghost.
ReplyDeleteYou would give a HUGE hand to tileset makers (like me) if you made the game to make the "front" walls of buildings different from side/back walls. This way we could make pseudo-isometric building sprites and turn city into something better than a serie of nondescript squares :).
ReplyDeleteAn example of such buildings can be seen in any graphical 2d game which has a bit advanced graphics.
Example: http://silveiraneto.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mini_mall_pixel_art_open_tileset.png
@Toupz: Dully noted.
ReplyDelete@Deon:
Hum, it seems i have stolen the computer from this particular tileset, oh well ^^.
Anyway, I see your point but it's not gonna happen sadly. I'll try to explain why: from a coder's perspective it makes things much harder. Adding even pseudo-isometric tiles is not a trivial matter. As an example, when I tell my code to build walls for a house, I simply have to 'spam' the wall tile around it, one wall per square, no matter how the house is shaped. With another view type, I would have to check for corners and select a specific tile for each of the 4 possible corner. Plus, I'll have to add a new layer for the upper part of the wall and put the related 'roof' or 'upper part' corresponding to this particular bit of wall in the correct position.
Doing so is fairly easy with fixed maps designed with an editor like rpg maker as everything is told to the engine through the editor. But when the map is directly built by the game using randomized (or procedural) methods that should support any shape or form of building, it gets much more complex.
It would require me to rewrite from scratch not only the display engine, but also all the editors, the general structure of the game and map generators, and so on. Basically 50% of my code. Funnily enough, it would be easier for me, to switch to 3D using my old OpenGL engine I built years ago than using a 2D pseudo-isometric view (and no it's not gonna happen either ^^).
Actually it would only check if there're walls under them. I don't ask for full isometty, just the bottom walls.
ReplyDeleteIt would just make it much better-looking :). But oh well.
Tsss Deon, always spamming developpers with strange tile requests :p
ReplyDeleteSK, what tool did you use for the "economics" diagram?
oops i missed your question, i used yED Graph Editor. It's free.
ReplyDelete