If you have supported CRPG Dev through Paypal or Patreon over the last few months then I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you and say how much I appreciate it. I'm also very grateful for the messages of support I receive via email or facebook. It's a hugh boost to my motivation to know that you are interested in what I'm working on and prepared to get behind me to help my future development. Particularly when development is hitting a blockage or a particularly troublesome bug is standing in the way. Unfortunately the number of hours that go into my game development don't always appear to justify / tally with the output, especially if it's something behind the scenes which is essential but doesn't necessarily translate to much gameplay on the screen. I think that's just a normal part of game development. If you are considering supporting then thank you. The Paypal link is on the www.crpgdev.com homepage and you can sign up for Patreon over at www.patreon.com/crpgdev. Every donation really helps, however small. Also please keep the feedback and suggestions coming - I read them all and take them on board.
I've had a lot going on over the last few months which has meant I've had less free time than usual and been away from home more than I like but pleased to say things are settling down again. As I've mentioned recently the next focus of development in Alternate Reality X will be on adding some meat to the bones of Release 0.2 so that it feels more like the Alternate Reality we all know and love. This will come in the form of encounters, items and shops.
In addition to ARX I've been itching to start an all new CRPG which would be developed alongside it. As I've mentioned before I don't see any side projects as taking time away from ARX development as they are more likely to take up time that I wouldn't have spent on ARX anyway.It's healthy to not be focused 100% on just the one project and get burnt out or start to dread working on it. This game isn't what I envisaged Stone of the Citadel to be as it's distinctly different in atmosphere and approach to that design. I would be using Unity 3D to develop the game though.
Game play will be significantly different to Alternate Reality featuring a party of adventurers and a high level wilderness map to explore. Across the wilderness there will be a number of towns, dungeons and other locations to explore. It will be heavily text and menu based with turn based combat. One area I'm considering for this game is procedurally generated content (PGC). This could be used for the towns, characters or items. As many of you may have read previously I'm a big fan of the original Elite space exploration and trading game. I spent many years with my Commodore 64 exploring the galaxies of Elite which used various seed values to consistently generate its 8 galaxies each with their 255 planets. My use of PGC will be very much dependent on the quality of my results though. Another example is the clothing you can buy in the AR:The City - there are effectively hundreds of different items that can be generated based on colour, fabric, quality etc.
My initial objective just now is to build a small but fun game in a relatively short space of time and leave the design open enough that it can be expanded as I see fit. Expect something to try out soon on this front.
Sunday, 26 October 2014
Tuesday, 14 October 2014
Alternate Reality X - Beyond Release 0.2
Now that Release 0.2 of Alternate Reality X is available I have been thinking about what I want to tackle for the next release.
To recap, with Release 0.2 I added:
- Three Encounter types - Thief, Master Thief and Nobleman
- Encounter code and interface for attacking and defending, switching weapons and conversations
- New 3D models to represent solid walls, doors and windows which I created and textured in Blender 3D
- Initial shop interiors for the Smithy, Tavern and Bank using assets from the Unity Asset Store
- New music versions of "Armor" and "Waves" by Furious
- Two new "encounter themes" by Furious
- Atmospheric, environmental sound effects such as birds chirping (provided by Furious)
- Rolling textured terrain to replace the flat City floor including trees and grass which sway in the wind
- Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions released at the same time
My main focus for the next release will be on adding some shop functions, expanding the encounters and updating the items / inventory. I think with what I have planned for this release a lot more of the "Alternate Reality" identity and atmosphere will start to appear in the game. I've said it many times before but for me a lot of the heart of AR is really about the encounters and the items you find. One difference with this version of ARX is that it will be easier (not easy though!) to find out information about the specific strengths and weaknesses of items and encounters. This may come in later releases though. I'd also like to add the other information screens possibly as part of the Inventory or as part of the player display.
I've now switched over to the Unity 4.6 Beta release for development of ARX 0.3. The main reason for this is that it features a brand new, highly anticipated GUI system for building the user interfaces in your games. Previously GUIs in Unity games were typically created through code which had some disadvantages, the most noticeable for me the time it took between making a change and running the game to see the changes in action. The new system allows you to build your user interfaces on screen using a similar workflow to the other elements of Unity. It looks very powerful so far and I think it will speed up development a lot - ideal for what I'm wanting to focus on just now in ARX.
Things have been a bit quiet on the feedback front so not sure what your thoughts are on the direction and the current status of the project. It will take a bit of time to get up to speed to the point where there is enough content to make it really feel like a new Alternate Reality and a real game but I feel very positive about the direction the project is heading in and think there should be plenty of gameplay in another release or two. What is there currently is really only the start and it's hard to fully describe what I'm visualizing in my head but I think it could be something special and worthy of the Alternate Reality series. I would certainly like to be putting out a lot more releases out - for myself as well as any players of ARX - but I can only use the time I have available sandwiched between work and family time. Either way it's going to continue to expand and improve and I'm been itching to get back to developing ARX when time has been tight so that's a very good sign.
For those who would prefer a more traditional 8bit style AR closer to what I'd done previously, I haven't ruled this out completely but would treat it as a separate piece of work rather than trying to capture it all in one project. I think this was one of the mistakes I made previously. However if you want to see this you will need to let me know. Please do let me know what your thoughts are on any aspects of the projects I do as CRPG Dev and as always I really appreciate any support you can offer through Paypal, Patreon, Facebook or Twitter. I will be updating the www.crpgdev.com website soon as well as it's a bit out of date and would benefit from a facelift. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Alternate Reality X - Release 0.2 for Unity 3D
Windows: http://www.crpgdev.com/downloads/ARX_0.2_Unity3D.zip
Mac OS X: http://www.crpgdev.com/downloads/ARX_0.2_Unity3D_OSX.zip
Release 0.2 features initial Encounters, the addition of sound and music as well as various changes to the environment such as the use of terrain and the beginnings of shop interiors. It also illustrates the use of free models to make the environment more interesting and my first models made with Blender 3D. Thanks to Furious for the music and sound effects.
There isn't much interaction in this release but it hopefully gives you a good taster of things to come. Thanks for your support.
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