Fourth Age screen shots
 

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fourthage/

FA-0.0.1a : The Storm of Progress
FA-0.0.2a : The Angel of Change
FA-0.0.3a : The Master Arriveth

I've decided to do a naming scheme for FA releases. early on, there's lots of releases, so these could get out of hand. I'll just name them for stuff that happened in the code or was added.

This newest update fixes some sillyness in the sprite movement system, and finally adds all the build methods to the unit factory (however, all the objects built are not really used yet, but they're there and all piled into the unit, which is basically a box of body parts and items as far as the code cares!)

big thing added........ is AI!
the master arriveth. there is now a 'master' class that oversees the creation and control of all computer controlled sprites. it uses mostly generator objects since it is operating constantly as the game is being run (this allows the methods for generation of units and their AI commands to be added as objects held by other objects, and to 'freeze' whenever they are finished with current commands, but to continually be checking for a need to generate another command).

the AI is very simple right now, it only moves the unit to the closes other unit. the big thing is the setup of a way to insert it: with the AI generator objects and a global AI update method. it will be very easy now to add new AIs, play with AI, and test it out. what is really needed is a way for determining what _kind_ of AI each unit should follow. at the moment it is simply hardcoded into the unit instantiation. another possiblity is to have it be part of the unit builds, or perhaps a unit generator attribute (so that all units that generator generates have the same AI, this is actually how nationality works right now).

the new source code is at sourceforge. i won't be adding an .app or .exe until I have the combat basics in place and a wizard mode, then people can test out combat while generating data to use to fine tune it :D

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

This is certainly interesting, but what's Fourth Age again - is this a leak I see before me?

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

not a leak. simply an effort to create a roguelike based in the age after Late Age, the Fourth Age (a play on the fourth age being the one after LA which is a third age of three, and on the fourth age being the fourth game after three). inspiration will be the dominions nations in a 16th century history setting.

it doesn't look like a typical rogue. i wanted a vector and pixel system rather than a raster and tile system (or whatever you want to call a typical 'curses' based rogue). where most rogues are thinking classic rogue, I was thinking ogre battle combined with classic rogue.

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Here are the threads in which Omnirizon asked for ideas for the roguelike:

How different martial arts should be learned in-game
More about the combat model
Ambience and setting: Dominions in the Fourth age

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Hm, (un)fortunately, most LA nations tend to reflect exactly 15th-16th century. ;) Of course, this shouldn't stop you from naming it "Fourth Age" - you just have no need for it...

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I was pretty certain that Late Age was the "Dark Ages". I guess I am just overlooking all the muskets and cannons in Dom3 LA. >.>

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Ah, screenshots! :)
That picture would look a lot better with a sprite graphic instead of a big green blob, I'd say... :evil:

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Kids these days and their lack of imagination.

I clearly see an "h" in that big green blob.

"h" to me, says "hero".

"hero", to me, says -

http://scancoo.com/Therion_Boris%20V...ragon_fire.jpg


Yes, Boris, tell it like it is!

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

yeah but those take precious time, and i'd rather get a game going before worrying about sprites.

speaking of which, I'll have new screenshots soon. i've almost got the character sheet put together, which signifies the fleshed out unit (or character) object.

right now I'm wrangling with equipment slots; i wanted them to mirror the way i've got the body and applying damage to the body setup, but that would require alot of cumbersome hierarchy. while a couple of functions for determining strikes on arbitrarily shaped bodies (represented through arbitrarily shaped hash tables) make dealing with a lot of hierarchy in the body pretty easy, all that hierarchy would have to be included in each and every equipment item (eg. armor[arm][left][hand] : gauntlet; as opposed to armor[hands] : gauntlets). That's too much to include right now. There's also a bit of a problem with equipping items that way. For example, a dog has a thorax, and a breastplate covers the human thorax, but a dog can't wear a breastplate. The only solution with such an equipment system is to have an equipment function which checks if the thing attempting to equip that thorax item also has arms, which a dog doesn't, but say a werewolf does. Then I suppose you could also have a breastplate covering the thorax which requires that the equipper have only legs, which a dog does... But once again, that's getting way too much cumbersome hierarchy. it is certainly possible and pretty straightforward, just a lot of rote coding of content to include. Not something I want to get bogged down in.

So therefore, equipment slots are probably going to be pretty straightforward, similar to what Dominions and virtually all RPG games do.

I'm also trying to get some initial skills laid out. At first, only wielded item skills will be included (that includes shields, which are actually trained as a 'melee weapon' since they are used paired with a melee weapon and typically contribute to both the offensive and defensive action of a melee weapon.) I want weapons to be historically accurate, but not overly specific. Thus, the ubiquitous longsword will be equivalent to the typical RPG 'bastard sword', which is actually what a longsword was (if not an outright 2h sword!). The typical RPG longsword is replaced by 'sidesword' which is a general term for all 1h cut and thrust swords of the Early Modern Period. All sabers, cutlass, messers, falchions, are 'backswords'. all daggers and some messers are 'daggers'. all 1h thrust swords are rapiers. all bastard or 2h thrust swords are Estocs. bastard or 2h sabres, swiss sabers, kriegsmessers would probably be called 'ulmish sabre' or something. All 2h double edge swords are... 2h swords.

Swords are probably the most diverse, other weapon groups hopefully don't need to be reduced so. The reduction here I think is good though. 'Backswords' probably ended up catching the most categories. However I read that training weapons like Dussaks(sp?) were used to train virtually all backswords (any single edged, typically curved, weapon). What I'm worried about here is training use.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Well, you may be certain, but still "Conquerors of Sea" are clearly of the Henry the Seafarer's age, not Dark Ages at all. Inquisition, even earliest, can be seen only from 12th century (and Spanish one is known from 16th century). Pikemen began to be used in Europe in 16th century, and full plate is the armor of the same age. Vlad Tepesh lived in 17th century... Manchurian conquest of China is also 17th century...
Of course, Pythium LA is modeled after late Roman Empire, not late Byzantium. But if you want to use it as base for time-placement it would be even before Dark Ages start - the same goes with LA Arcoscehales (Hellinistic kingdoms) or LA Gath. I'm afraid there are no single nation in LA which would be based on Dark Ages... :P

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Marignon is pretty much the odd man out though... I don't think there's any other nation nearly so far ahead in history as them, except perhaps ulm.

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Ulm, Marignon, Tien Chi, Jomon. Probably Man (closer to 15th centry, but I don't remember when pike/musket system actually became prevalent in England. Two-handed swords of wardens are surely Rennaisance thing). Bogarus is behind, but Russia was somewhat lagging back at that historical period, too... Also, remember that actual civilizations on which Mictlan is based flourished in 15th-16th century - they just looked archaic. And, of course, Cthulhu mythos on which R'lyeh is based appeared only at the beginning of 20th century! :)

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

hmmm I'd not wait with sprites too long.... maybe you are allowed to lend them from dom 3. 2008 next gen graphics are not required but I think that games with worse graphs than say... dom 3 will have not so much appeal.

Having said that.. Screen shots don't mean much to me... do you think there will be something playable (even if it's just 5 min) out for me to see, just how things are.

I'm very interested in this game though.. will it be moddable like dom 3?

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

original inspiration were roguelikes and games like ogrebattle. thus, graphics are not a big deal. if i get monochrome style sprites like in ogrebattle's world view i'd be thrilled.

for time frame i really am aiming to have a very short demo release before i start back to school. (un)fortunately, i didn't take my own advice and have decided to use a hierarchical equipment system to mirror my character body system. i've had to work out a way to represent bodies, a system to parse out items into body shapes, and a way to equip items and determine that characters have the correct body shapes. fortunately, i've finished this. i may have to tweak it though. the hardest part was actually writing the function to parse out the hash tables i store the data in into instances that can be called for equipping and getting values from items. Really, such a function was unecessary since I could have directly coded all items as instances of a the item class with all info filled in; however I really wanted to be able to store items in hash tables because it is a bit easier to modify things that way with a function to parse out the hash tables into instances.

the numbers are the hit points associated with each part of the body...

here's an item:

here, the right leather glove fits on the right hand. notice that since the only part of the hierarchy that it requires is the 'right' ---> 'hand' that it can fit on anything that has a right hand. 'foo' and 'bar' are attributes of the right leather glove. I had to write a function that rewrites this hash table as:

for me, it is easier to just add items to one big hash table that can be parsed out no matter its shape.


things that have more than a 'left' and a 'right' arm will be stored like:

whats important is the shape of a hand since a left and a right one are different. the hierarchy _MUST_ reflect this, thus it may require some tweaking to make things fit right, but hopefully the way it is now will work. the only trouble I can predict is if i have to make explicit that a 'hand' is actually a 'Human' ... 'hand'. notice that already on the 'Human' body I have the thorax, abdomen, ect as values of 'Human' indicating that those are human thoraxes and ect.


at any rate, the equipment system foundation is finished and I will be progressing on fleshing out the game world now. i'll post some screen shots very soon, but there isn't a whole lot more to show in a graphical display for right now.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Wow, looks complex! But lots of potential for amazing coolness. I'm a big fan of roguelikes, but had mostly abandoned them after I got Dom3.

Hey .. don't forget about your Bakemono, they need you! And your lizards skeletons too. :D

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As long there are undeads, I'm happy :D

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Have you ever tried playing a roguelike? Nethack, ADOM, Dungeon Crawl, Tome, anything? DoomRL?

Bad graphics are just bad, but when the sprites become symbols the game gets a whole different feeling. DoomRL also has sound and some other cool things that aren't common in roguelikes, like the floor and walls turning red when you kill things.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

hmm no, and won't.. I remember some old castle exploring game (not a roguelike I think just the way that ancient game was) and I'm not looking forward to playing that.. (seriously, graphs aren't everything but playing a doom game with symbols when there there is the newest version in which there are nice graphs seems masochistic to me.) anyway.. my point was that dom 3 has graphs and he might be allowed to use them, if so he should IMHO (if they are usuable for his game at all no clue there though)

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

I think you really like this then; http://webpages.mr.net/bobz/ttyquake/
:)

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Sometimes bad graphics can be good too: www2.lut.fi/~akuukka/helherron/main.htm

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

My point was that symbols are better than bad graphics. Fourth Age won't have Doom 3-quality graphics, and it can't use Dom3 sprites as more than placeholders because the era and equipment is too different.
With ASCII, it can be as simple as 'G' is a guard, different colors are ranks. If you've seen only red 'G's and suddenly bunch of darker red and orange come your way, you'll know something's up. And then you press 'l'ook, and you see that those are Men at Arms and elite guards. GGGGGGGG Then you go to Ulm, and find normal guards, Guardians and Ghoul Guardians. GGGGGGGG
Imagine how long it would take to do good sprites for just basic guards for all the nations.


As for why anyone would want to play DoomRL instead of DOOM 3: they are different games. DoomRL is turn-based and mostly a tactical game, the gameplay is nothing like DOOM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=682ONClEFMg

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

seems like I won't be able to convince you all... well I'll admit if the story and gameplay are very very good there are possibilities.. but they'd have to be Baldurs gate like quality or else some pplz (me) might rather play BG..

Still can't wait for a sample to play.. screens don't mean much to me (especially if it's only symbols :D) and then I might be convinced.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

I'm not sure what you're trying to convince us about. I'd like to have good-looking graphics for Fourth Age, but good sprites take lots of time. Because of that, Fourth Age probably won't have good sprites, at least for a while. I hope you can agree with this part, at least.

I think this leaves only two choices: symbols, or sprites that aren't accurate (e.g. "those halberds are really muskets", or "that inquisitor is really a shopkeeper"). I don't think there are other feasible options which require so little extra work.

From those two choices, IMO symbols are a much better choice for a project like Fourth Age. I think this is the only thing where we disagree, but since you said you don't want to even try good games that use ASCII symbols instead of sprites, it's quite a disagreement.


P.S. There aren't enough symbols to represent every nation, so eventually it might be necessary to start using sprites. However, that's way to the future of this project (when it's important to know who's the flying Caelian and who's the true-blooded Abysian who can make your spear catch fire). There might even be ways around that, but at that point sprites would probably be a better option.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Wellll.. if you don't mind symbols anyway you could model troops by using more than one symbol of course... a symbol for race, a symbol for type (of something) and a symbol indicating armor/weapons (maybe it's power in 5 degrees) since at a glance you probably can't see wether the enemy is wielding a used or somewhat used halbard but you MIGHT see the difference between a nearly broken one and a heavily enchanted one.

But maybe that is already in your minds since I have no clue about this sort of thing and it might just be annoying

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on 1 you could do a symbol indicating race (and different colors for)

on 2 you could do armor type (color indicating quality)

on 4 weapon type (color indicating quality)

and on 3 something else that is probably usefull but I'm not thinking of.

or just different symbols on the 4 places and color indicating race (so they seem to fit together better and not like a clown with 4 different symbols in 4 different colors.)

well probably not a good/usefull idea anyway but just what I was thinking of without knowing anything of the genre.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Actually, I had a similar idea about representing the unit's nation/allegiance/race with a two-color circle (if the circle below the 'h' isn't just a placeholder).

The problem with this is that it gets harder to understand, and that at that point sprites would be better any way. Good sprites make it easy to tell undead apart from living troops, and different weapons from each other, and the difference between heavy and light armor and various shields.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

another option (I'm not into that ascii thing I think you said he's using) might be different color backgrounds behind the symbol. that color would be most obvious and thus could represent the most obvious thing about a unit.. I'm not sure what would be most obvious though.. race or general weaponry (heavy cavalry/infantry will probably first be noted for being just that... though huge giants will probably be seen for it's race first..
as would undead.. unless they where in heavy armor since you'd not see the bones untill you smashed the armor..

in your first example you used G for guards.. OFTEN the class of a unit is clear through its armor so I'd not use both.. if a wizard is wearing heavy armor he'd probably surprise you by casting spells "IRL" too.

So I'd use a block of color for general appearance. grey = soldier, purple and red = wizard, yellow = noble, brown = peasant etc with differences in that color indicating it's relative power (light grey = light infantry, dark gray = heavy infantry, light brown peasant in regular clothes, dark brown a person in leather armor) the symbol could then indicate race or something, and the color of the letter something else :D..

If you could draw a thin line around a box or just a stripe on it's 2 sides that could indicate casting of a spell..

hmm brainstorming is nice but it'd be better to see what the creator is acutally doing.. all these thoughts are probably wasted since he has a plan anyway and I can't program this for myself :D

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

updated screen shots.

i'm now working on a system that creates and adds NPC objects into the game. In the way I code everything, no functions/objects that are part of an actively blitted screen contain their own while loops. their functions only contain the procedure for one frame. thus:

units and the map are initialized. then a while loop is started containing the procedure for drawing one frame. Is this efficient? I'm not sure but it makes it easy to add stuff. I will write an object to create random monsters/NPCs and stuff and add it in:

each frame the game checks to see if it should add another monster to the map. A screen display can be added this way too. since the screen display will take space from the mouse-clickable area of the map, it will also modify the mousepos.

so that's whats up next. NPC/monster maker and a HUD display. that will inch closer towards a playable game.

EDIT: sourcecode also added to OP for those who are interested. It really isn't commented yet, and I can't promise it is all very pretty... well, everything but the items.py stuff I think is ok. the function that builds the items object by parsing out the items hash tables is kind of ugly. also, i've never had formal coding instruction, i'm completely autodidactic; so I can't promise that my stuff is done to convention or up to those standards, but I try my best.

lastly, I use a ton of typechecking to do all my hash table functions. this gave some of the people in the #python IRC channel fits, but for my purposes I think it is completely justified: to have completely flexible table shapes I had to know ahead of time what kind of data was in the table. most python people I talked to didn't like this and said I should instead know the shape ahead of time. however since the shape of the table is the shape of bodies, this just isn't possible. I could however rewrite some of the stuff to do some broader typechecking though. I could also just not use hash tables, and this was another suggestion from those in #python, however I think it makes adding stuff easier.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

This is actually a rather nifty idea. It might even translate into sprites where putting on a different armor changes the sprite itself, since I think the graphics system allows stacking things on top of each other.


Nice to see the new screens, Omnirizon. It looks like the sphere below the 'h' isn't intended to be just a placeholder.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

well, the sphere should be entirely functional as the unit image. however, its existence doesn't rule out the possibility of sprites in the future; in that sense it is a placeholder. at any rate, nothing about the way it is implemented makes it a necessity; it is literally about 15 lines of code. but as people have said and i know from my own (failed) attempts, making sprites is really freaking hard.

also, i want the images to reflect the size of the units. simple circles do that well enough. I guess any sprite could do that too; it isn't anything to transform the scale of an image after all.

since this is a roguelike, there's always more focus on the mechanics than the graphics. that's what it's all about after all... just think about 95% of big name titles, they have tons of lens flare but no innovative game systems that add mechanics without cluttering up the interface. it takes a small Asian nation to make even simple graphics for modern games, and after that's done no one takes time to flesh out good systems (or the game systems are too intimately tied to the graphics and there's really no option to even develop them...). People demand all surface and no depth, and that's what they get. Reviewers like Yahtzee and his Zero Punctuation make a career out of that fact.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

Well as I said I always prefer a good story and system above graphics (I'm playing dom 3 which should say enough) but I thought sprites could be nice.. of course it's extra work and I know you shouldn't start with it untill later after the most important things are done. (but the fact you have placeholders, so I assume you can somehat easily replace it once you have sprites, sounds great) Anyway IF you can use some spere (which could already more functional than just ascii signs I guess,) to remain behind the symbol you MIGHT be able to use the general outline of a creature too (small humanoid (goblin), humanoid (human, orc), large humanoid (troll, ogre) cavalry (for cavalry) and something for huger creatures (and maybe a special dragon one for the dragon endboss (ok ignore me if you want :D). nothing fancy but the general size and outline will give lots of information and you'd only need like 6 outlines (simple sprites) to cover most encounters in the world, (I'm sure someone here could make soem very functional ones), you could then just use a color for whatever you use the color now (or as I suggested before) and one or more symbols inside it

I was wondering will your game be GB like in it's story, with loads of quests and sidequests (which means loads of text you'll have to write, or more daggerfall like with a lot of general phrases while raoming the lands and searching for loor and maybe some generic quests which can be repeated with generated targets etc and only a main quest which is entirely handwritten or something else entirely. (of course BG is great, but daggerfall's model with all random stuff might be easier for you... you'd probably need half a small asian country to write BG like text for the whole game)

I must say you are a little harsh in you comments about modern game though, there are plenty of nice ones out there. Personally I do like Oblivion and Fallout 3 a lot.

anyway about what I started with.. I just love to brainstorm and really like the idea of this project.. but I can't programm anything and have no idea about what you will do.. so if I'm way off and this is not usefull at all just stop me in that track (stopping me completely will be harder :D).

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You picked two examples which illustrate exactly what's he's talking about.

Not that I agree with him.

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azeal: i don't think i've ever played daggerfall but from what you say it sounds like this game will be more like it, with most all encounters being randomly generated. i intend this game to be more *hack style rather than *band though. *hack style basically means that once something is generated it is permanent, with a *band things are generated wily-nily and levels change each time you enter them. the names come from two originals in the genre: netHACK and angBAND.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

hehe sounds like daggerfall, it was the 2nd of the elder scrolls games (latest one is oblivion and you had a HUGE (like 1000x bigger than oblivion) world all filled with like.. trees and more of nothing. a zillion dots all over the map which where towns or dungeons, the dungeons where all randomly created when entered but then stayed like that as in your exmaple (except a few main quest dungeons.) the towns are random too, but most having a few shops and temples and guild. Depending on stats you could join guilds and then there always was a quest giver who had like 5 different types of quest which you randomly got (for mage guild ti was like: kill this monster in this dungeon since it plagues the neighbourhood (and then you'd search the whole dungeon for a weak imp while it was filled with load and load of way more powerfull creatures strangely enough) or wait till night and kill the assassins coming to this guild. etc etc.) you could fasttravel between dots on the map or walk between them (seeing effectively nothing except trees and some random bears once every hour) walking the whole map... well I've never tried it but probably would take a month RL or something.. I lost my copy of the game though (lend it I think) and after I finished oblivion I tried again.. but... didn't facinate me enough anymore to last more than a few dungeons.

Sombre: Fallout and Oblivion sure have great graphics but you can't really say their story or gameplay is nothing.. even this game fully focused on gameplay will have a very hard time beating them.. sure both aren't planescape torment or BG 1 or 2 storywise because they are meant to roam freely and open ended. And some like the setting of morrowind better than the less original setting (acutally same world of course but whatever) in oblivion.. personally I think the games are nearly exactly the same though except a bit better graphs on oblivion.. the quests and story certainly aren;t lesser in quantity or quality. (note I did read your lines that you didn't agree (= didn't disagree with me) so I'm not trying to convince you, more omni if that is really what he thinks)

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Daggerfall sounds like Moraff's World to me, with somewhat more complicated quests.

-Max

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Daggerfall quests:
1) kill 5 monsters that are in the second floor of that shop you've been to 10 times already. Or any other random building in the town. You'll know the right house when you find the monsters, because there are only quest-monsters in towns. Oh, and rat infestations are REALLY common, because that's what the next 4 quests will be too.

2) Kill the assassins that will appear at a spesific time in the spesific place. Go there and wait until they appear from out of nowhere, and kill them.

3) Kill a monster in this dungeon filled with monster. It has to be this spesific werewolf, you don't have to kill the 11 others if you don't want to. Traveling there and back will take 8 days, total, so I'll give you 10 days to go there and come back. When you come to the room where the dungeon separates into three areas not connected to each other and each filled with several days' worth of constant battle, try to guess the right one, because otherwise we in The Guild won't be your friends any more.

Daggerfall quests suck, even by the standards of random quests. *shudder*

The game had good ideas, but it didn't implement them well. For one thing, total randomness isn't all that interesting. Dungeon Crawl does that kind of thing well, for a roguelike: players have made special rooms that can appear in there. You may find a room with water and lava and strange rocks and chasms with elementals in it. You may encounter a room made from strange stones, or another with walls of metal. Some rooms are perfectly circular. Sometimes you find a small temple dedicated to evil gods. Sometimes the statues in there try to fry your brain.

In Fourth Age terms, there should be random statues and walls and such, so that they can sometimes be Gargoyles or Enlivened Statues or Mechanical Men. Swamps and Forests should have with magical streams and ponds you can extract gems from, and abandoned animist's huts protected by vinemen. Planned randomness.

Not that there's any pressure on Omnirizon or any way-too-early expectations. ;) I'd be happy to just see that interesting fighting system you theorized about.

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I wouldn't say it's nothing, I'd say it's bland, derivative and inferior to games that have come before. I think the setting, writing and overall feel of oblivion is incredibly bland and uninteresting. It's like an 80s american renaissance fair. Everyone you meet is an ugly two dimensional idiot too.

Fallout 3 has an excellent pedigree but it utterly squanders it. It's a very good game but it's not Fallout afaic, it's just using the brand to cash in. It's Oblivion with guns and a more cinematic feel. It lacks the character, writing, sense of consequence etc - basically all the strengths of the previous two games (ignoring the ****pile called Tactics).

Fallout 1 and 2, Exile 3, Arcanum and numerous other rpgs are arguably as open ended if not more so than Fallout 3 and manage to have proper writing, interesting characters and locations, a sense that what you're doing actually matters,.. you get the idea. Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 are 'streamlined' rpgs. By that I mean extremely dumbed down.

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hmm fallout has about same game mechanics as previous settings, definately feels post nuclear and has a lot of background stuff in it and I like the game better than the previous installments. While I agree Oblivion has a somewhat standard setting the mechanics of the game are pretty good and the texts, quests and story in both games are good IMHO personally I couldn't finish arcanum due to it getting pretty boring. Oblivion is not dumbed down compared to Daggerfall I'd say and neither is Fall out 3 compared too 1 and 2.

Hmm I guess we've both made up our opinions on plenty of experience and have had plenty of thought to get to this opinion so we probably won't agree on this even if we talk ad infinitum so we'll just have to agree to disagree in an effort not to hijack this thread (happens to me too often anyway :D)

But I'd advice both oblivion and fall out 3 too any RPG player.

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I think some old fans of Fallout came to the table with the wrong idea..... most had bad experiences with Oblivion, and were expecting to be disappointed with Fallout 3. I'll heartily agree with one particular point - I'm very upset at HOW much they simplified character creation, and the ramifications of SPECIAL. Well, and everything..... armor is vastly simplified, etc.

But on the other hand, it really is an awesome game. Maybe you won't have so much fun if you just grab the main quest with both hands and don't let go until it's done - I was shocked they didn't learn from Oblivion in that regard. However, unlike Oblivion, if you range off into the wilderness in search of interesting surprises - you should be having a LOT of fun, and isn't that why you bought a game?

I think Fallout 3 has some significant (and mostly Bethesda/console inherent) flaws, but that overall it really is quite a good game. Honestly, after 10 years, with none of the original studio working on the project, did you expect it to be identical? It's as if for some people, the game is seeing how critical they can be of the product, rather than just having fun with it as intended. ;)


Still, I think that Fourth Age can eventually be fun, even without SPECIAL, and without first person action, and without most of what made Fallout 1 and 2 great, or Fallout 3 good. ;)

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Oblivion had quite a load of nice subquest too really and the dungeosn where pretty nice too. I didn't find character creation that much different from what I remember of older fall out games but that might be me. I definately find the feel of being in a post-apocaliptic environment with radiation all around and pure water being scares etc much much better in fall out 3.

In oblivion pplz complained about the scaling of opponents (which I didn't really mind myself) and in fall out 3 that has been changed.

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Anyway I'd like to know how exactly a person will be visualized in this game. I think it will be of major importance to the gameplay.

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probably as a circle :D

color will represent nation, the letter will represent race.

perhaps it could be a circle drawn in another, one color representing nation, the other race, and then the letter represents if the unit is militia, heavy infantry, ect.

or it could just be one circle with two letters :)

there will also be the thin black outline, it helps set the shape out and can be used to show when the shape is being selected.

in time the game could perhaps move to figures, or even sprites.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

yeah it seems a general outline of it's type as I proposed wouldn't be much more strain on the game..

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

FA has progressed immensely in the past couple of days.

no, there's no new screenshots, this progression is under the hood...

I've completed a custom data structure for working with my data model in this game. it is a 'deepdict' data structure that can work with nested hash tables, returning values and doing comparisons no matter how deep or oddly shaped the tables are. this has not only made working with my data model much easier, i've been able to deprecate the host of odd typechecking functions that were driving me crazy. i've also managed to find ways to collapse other functions together. in all, everything is much more polymorphic now.

so you need to check if that item can be equipped?
its as simple as:
if item.fit <= unit.body

this checks that the hash table defining what body structure the item requires to fit is contained wholly within the unit's body. if anything is missing or out of place, it would false and the item would not be equipped. no matter how complex a body type or item fit someone comes up with, the interface to check for equipping is that simple, and that's what I'm shooting for. now stuff can be added almost wily-nily, and the game will handle it with grace.

also, i've made a minor adjustment to how items/units/skills are structured in the game data. everything has a unique id number, just like dominions. this way it is very easy to find the necessary data. even if things are in nested hash tables, the custom data structure can find keys no matter where they are, and since each object has a unique key, it is very easy to pull up the relevant data without being afraid of a mistake being made. of course, it requires everything have a unique id key, but I think that's a pretty reasonable requirement.

lastly, if you're wondering, items are stored at the bottom of whatever relevant hierarchy (the body fit for items, the skill tree for skills). i wanted it that way because it makes it a little easier and more parsimonious to add stuff. the deepdict data structure has functions for extracting the path to the requested item/skill so that it can be used to check for fitting or calculate skill bonuses.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

the new screen shots show the working unit generator and selecter.

it randomly generates attributes based upon values provided in each unit. the higher the value for a given attribute, the more the random selecter will favor that attribute. right now, i'm leaning towards having character creation use this too. in fact, waht you see in these screens is character creation using this. i wanted PC and NPCs to be generated the same and have the same mechanics. also, it pretty typical for rogues to use random attribute generation. here at least the randomness is controled :)

oh also a primitive map position generator is working. in fact, those circle's positions on that surface are being generated using a position generator. its simply been given a 'block formation' algorithm.

lastly, that green surface is built from tiles, i have a basic tiling function working. in the early stages of this game, maps can be built by tiling the entire map with a given tile, and then randomly placing some feature tiles. later on some more complex tiling algorithms can be used.

i will begin working on actual game play soon now ;)

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

i've finished reforging FA...

it now has a well defined pattern, with good structure and inheritance flow. i dare say its ready to be hacked upon if anyone else here feels like giving it a go.

i've attached the new source code, but i don't have a README written for it that describes how it is put together and should develop.

i also have a working binary. however it is about 60MB and cant really be included as an attachment i dont think :shock:
i'll be working on whittling that size down. actually most of it is unused images (stuff in original Gimp format, fonts, and other stuff like that). a lot of it is also the entire python/pygame and other libraries i've imported into the game. some stuff with can be dropped and replaced, or simply added more discretely.


next up is AI...


EDIT: nvm, once packed its only 21.something. i think i can include it. but if not i'll get its size down a bit and attach it next update. it's basically just a scolling screen and some colord dots right now anyway :)

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

It seems like you're progressing pretty fast.

Have you considered the unit format yet? If it's simple enough, you might get volunteers inputting some basic units, at least for test purposes. You might have to do national units yourself, but others could do general monsters based on Dom3 summons and such.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

I'd certainly be willing to help.. even to cut down on dom3K a bit for this.. sadly I can't program.. If it can be as easy as dom modding I could easily do it.. stats etc, I could make basic sprites or whatever but that would be slow.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

endo:

this is the current unit format:
the first number there, the thing to which the whole entry is keyed to, is the unit number. i've adopted an indexing system just like dominions.

the numbers on that attributes are NOT the value of that attribute. rather, they are a relative indication of how much the random selector will favor that attribute. thus, my using 1s and 2s would be equivalent to using 100s and 200s; ie its a ratio.

the skills and eq are index numbers. these are in seperate tables and indexed just like the units are indexed. to add skills or equipment, just add the numbers. i'm kind of torn on having set skills/equipment like this... on one hand it would be nice if they could be chosen using a weighted selection just like attributes. on the other hand contingents of troops should be able to be outfitted all the same in some situations... i havn't developed a solution to this problem yet other than having a unique entry for all different equipment/skill variations.

things like base attributes and body are derived from the race entry. the unit factory handles this automatically be referencing a race table:
here the key is a string ('human') rather than a number. I don't know why I did this but I don't expect to have tons of races, whereas tons of units is possible; therefore I think using keyword identifiers will work for races. however, to be consistent, I may begin indexing them as numbers too.

the attributes here are absolute and serve as teh base attributes to which the random selection is added. move is move (the number doesn't mean much right now, but the computations currently treat them as pixel measurements.) body is actually a listing of body parts :) that's right! body parts are indexed and added to unit objects like they were equipment! of course, you can't take off yhour arms... but the unit object is basically a container for several other objects including body parts, skills, equipment, ect. using this system of body part indexes has allowed me to achieve some things i wanted to do with my hieararchical body system, but in a much easier (more engineering logical) type way. size is just size. also right now the number doesn't mean much, but the computations treat it as n^2 pixels in size.

as the systems are developed for the game, the meanings for these numbers can be stabilised. because they are too relative right now, i don't think too much work should be done on adding a bunch of units in. I'd rather get some simple AI and combat working first so I can see just what effects different magnitudes of numbers will have, and standards can then begin to be set.


azeal: anything would be nice :D because i'm not sure how the numbers will all work yet, its too early to enter those. but it will actually be very easy to do. if you feel inspired to make a sprite, perhaps a halberdier, dragoon, arquibusier, musketeer, pikemen... whatever. maybe it can become the desktop icon for the game :D

actually, _some_ sprites from Dom3 are perfectly applicable to this setting; swords, pikes, and flails were all common weaponry in this period. however, i wasn't planning on using them since they are proprietary and I'm not counting on Illwinter ok'ing their use.

Re: Fourth Age screen shots
 

AI is added!
i've pasted the new OP here for reference and an excuse to bump my own thread :)
__________________________________________________ ___
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fourthage/

FA-0.0.1a : The Storm of Progress
FA-0.0.2a : The Angel of Change
FA-0.0.3a : The Master Arriveth

I've decided to do a naming scheme for FA releases. early on, there's lots of releases, so these could get out of hand. I'll just name them for stuff that happened in the code or was added.

This newest update fixes some sillyness in the sprite movement system, and finally adds all the build methods to the unit factory (however, all the objects built are not really used yet, but they're there and all piled into the unit, which is basically a box of body parts and items as far as the code cares!)

big thing added........ is AI!
the master arriveth. there is now a 'master' class that oversees the creation and control of all computer controlled sprites. it uses mostly generator objects since it is operating constantly as the game is being run (this allows the methods for generation of units and their AI commands to be added as objects held by other objects, and to 'freeze' whenever they are finished with current commands, but to continually be checking for a need to generate another command).

the AI is very simple right now, it only moves the unit to the closes other unit. the big thing is the setup of a way to insert it: with the AI generator objects and a global AI update method. it will be very easy now to add new AIs, play with AI, and test it out. what is really needed is a way for determining what _kind_ of AI each unit should follow. at the moment it is simply hardcoded into the unit instantiation. another possiblity is to have it be part of the unit builds, or perhaps a unit generator attribute (so that all units that generator generates have the same AI, this is actually how nationality works right now).

the new source code is at sourceforge. i won't be adding an .app or .exe until I have the combat basics in place and a wizard mode, then people can test out combat while generating data to use to fine tune it :D