Fourth Age screen shots

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by lch

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

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.

[Wrana]

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!

[Aezeal]

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?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

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.

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.

[Omnirizon]

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.

'Human'	:{
	'Human' :{
		'head'	: 2,
		'thorax': 5,
		'abdomen': 5,
		'arms'	:{
			'left'	:{
				'arm'	: 5,
				'hand'	: 2
				},
			'right'	:{
				'arm'	: 5,
				'hand'	: 2
				}
			},
		'legs'	:{
			'left'	:{
				'leg'	: 5,
				'foot'	: 2
				},
			'right'	:{
				'leg'	: 5,
				'foot'	: 2
				}
			}
		}
	},

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

here's an item:

'right'	:{
	'hand'	:{
		'right leather glove'	:{
					'foo'   : 3
                                        'bar'   : 5
                                        }
		}
         }

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:

itembody['right leather glove'] = items({'right' : 'hand'})
itemvals['right leather glove'] = items({'foo' : 3, 'bar' : 5})

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:

		'arms'	:{
			'upper'	:{
				 'left' : {
                                          'arm'	: 5,
	               			  'hand': 2
...ect

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.

[vfb]

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.

[Thilock_Dominus]

As long there are undeads, I'm happy

[Aezeal]

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)

[Thilock_Dominus]

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

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

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)

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