GRA Dev Update

The development has resumed, so do the (more or less) regular development posts on this website. I am going to detail in this post the incoming changes and additions regarding in the next versions of GRA, which can mainly be summed up with "destructible terrain", "user interface update" and "combat". 

This is going to be a fairly long post, so before delving into it and probably loosing 99% of the reader-base, I would love to have some comments regarding the current user interface, hotkeys and so on. Basically how the GUI should behave according to you. My current goal is to have something very similar to ToME 4 (great rogue-like, try it, seriously). I am not interested in "bind this action to this key instead of this one" posts as those will be configurable in a near future anyway.  Most menus (shopping, inventory) will stay mouse driven, but original ideas to add and/or errors to avoid are more than welcome.

Design : Map Generator

This is a design document, regulars already know this, but for the others: the following information is not in the game yet, it's about what's going to be implemented next. The explanations are somewhat technical as I have more or less been asked to do so. It may help as there's basically no useable documentation on proper procedural city map generation on the internet.Comments and ideas from other coders are more than welcome.

Design : Artificial Intelligence - Part 2

The first part is available here.

Regarding the improvements made recently to the AI system, I think it's a good time to write another design post explaining how my NPC deal with the environment. Except specified otherwise, it concerns the 0.3.0 version of the game (currently in development). And as usual, this is a design document, containing technical stuff with random ideas thrown in that may or may not be implemented in the long run.

Development Policies

Looking at the recent comments, I think it's best to remind everyone a few facts about the game's development process. 

Grand Rogue Auto, is a pre-alpha software. Gameplay is not representative of the final product at all. You've recently been complaining about the difficulty to open safes, and I caught a few annoying bugs that made  things much harder than they should be, so thanks for that. But keep in mind that most of the game balancing elements are still not in place. The final product will feature trainers in the various skills, alert level reducing  items; player leveling, and such. Even the way cops are responding is not representative of the final product until the Faction tree of the RoadMap is completed. The general idea here is to have a working city first, balancing the player's abilities is not a primary concern for the time being.

A lot of roguelikes follow weird version numbering systems where something like 0.1.7 is some kind of beta/gold product. GRA has a more standardized numbering. 0.25 is, code-wise, basically an 1/4 progress toward the final product. Alpha status will be reached around version 0.7 and Beta status at 0.9.  So I am currently still working on including the general concepts (economy, factions, AI). Alpha stage will be used to polish those new features, and Beta to balance things around the player and fixes remaining bugs.

Also, I am currently creating a GRA Wiki. It will serve as a documentation center related to the game and should be online at the same time as the 0.2.6 release.

Design : Picklocking Mechanism

As pick-locking will be featured in the next version of GRA, I guess it's time to explain how it will be done even if things will probably improved during the development process.

Each container has two randomly determined values: Lock Strength and Security Rating. The first one determines how hard it will be to pick the lock itself. The second is how strong your chance of being detected if you fail to unlock the container.

First your Lockpicking skill modified by both your agility and perception is compared to the strength of the lock. I won't give the exact formula, but know that even if maxing all your relevant stats and skill values will grant you the ability to open the weak to medium locks without issues, the strong ones will still have a fair chance of resisting you for a while. Secondly, if you fail to pick the lock, a formula comparing your stealth skill to the lock' security rating will be made. If you fail the roll your alert level will rise, otherwise you'll stay undetected. Successful attempts will raise your skill by 5 points, failed attempt will provide a single point.

Unlocked containers may be locked back by NPC.

Also, general stores can sell lock-picking tools of variable quality. Using them before trying to open a lock will provide a temporary boost to your lock-picking skill.

Roadmap Added to the blog

As promised, I added a roadmap post regarding Grand Rogue Auto so you guys can ignore the various Design Documents I have written so far and still have a good idea about what the game is supposed to be. This is not a definitive document however, things are still missing and I know that some parts probably won't make sense if you have no idea how to build a full game (or software) from scratch. However it's still better than nothing,.

By the way v0.2.1 will be out Monday with the item editor included (no effect editor, though, yet). A few gang members will also be here to spice things a little bit as I am done fixing NPC on NPC issues.

Battle System and Dev Update

Hi there,

Damn, it's 2011 already, it was a busy new year eve, and i'm still kinda sick. But hey that's part of the fun. Also (and completely unrelated) congratulations to Roguedjack! His Rogue Survivor has been recognized by IndieGames as the 4th best freeware RPG of this year. Good job. Back to business, this article will explain in details the combat system that will be used in GRA in addition to the usual weekly development update. Enjoy!

Note: From my stats, a hell lot of you come from the X-Universe community, which is good. I want to tell you something: What I'm doing now is basically building an engine. This GRA project is a first step. Other projects based on the same engine will follow depending on the success of this one. Yes, it means a X kind of game focusing on content instead of pretty 3D may follow, so i'd suggest you to put this in your RSS reader, just in case. Cheers, SK.

Gameplay

You may ask "all that coding mumbo jumbo is very nice, but what about the gameplay?", and I now realize that you would be right, there's not much about actual gameplay on this blog yet. This first article on that matter will try to correct this. As I am still in a very early stage of development, not much is set into stones yet, but this document should give you a relatively good idea of my objectives. Also, I'll gladly answer to any question you may ask.

The following article is about the Final version of the game, only very little (or none) of that will be implemented in the (late) January release. This first release will be a proof of concept only, it will also be a proof that i'm not messing with you with fake screenshots or anything (an idiot did that some times ago, and it was a hoax. He pulled the ridiculous "it was a social experiment" card).

Design : Artificial Intelligence

This is a first technical draft on the AI that will be used in this game. This is not a definitive design document, so it's subject to changes during the development. However, it should give you a pretty clear idea of how the NPC will act and how the game will try to simulate a (more or less) coherent city. This document won't cover the combat part.

General Goals

Here's a list of the general goals I want to achieve in GRA and a list of things needed to achieve a game similar to GTA. Of course, these are long term goals. The initial version will only have a handful selection of features.

Player and NPC characteristics

Note that most of these posts are not written in stone as I will probably make a lot of changes during the development. This post describes in greater length the statistics defining the player and the non player characters.