The CRPG Dev Blog is moving!

I'm planning to shortly make www.crpgdev.com the home of the CRPG Dev blog and will be integrating the blog pages into the existing CRPG Dev pages such as "Downloads". My old pages on the website were created with online tools that are no longer available which made updating pages a chore. I'll be switching from using Blogger to using Wordpress as offered by my webpage hosting company.

I've migrated all the existing posts and comments over from here so they should all be preserved at the new site. I hope to set up some redirection shortly but in the meantime if you're planning to comment then I'd suggest posting over at www.crpgdev.com so your post isn't lost during the migration. Thanks for reading.

Alternate Reality X - Plans for 2017

Following my review of 2016 I wanted to follow up with a taster of what you can expect to see and play in the coming year. There are other projects and interests I want to cover and talk about in 2017 but this post focuses solely on Alternate Reality X which is my top priority. Here is an outline of the key areas of development I'm planning to complete during 2017. There may be some changes to the order of this list but this is the general outline I'm working to just now.

Complete Item and Inventory Changes (currently in progress)

Basically updating all the existing code in the game to use a more flexible item and inventory format, essential for implementing future changes to custom items, enchanted items and procedural generation of City clothing items. Currently this code supports weapons, armour, clothing and a number of special "quest" items.  The changes to the City Smithies and Damon & Pythias shops are completed. I need to add in the procedural generation of clothing in the City Shops (where you can buy a compass) and update the existing code for unique items scattered around the Dungeon and quest items (E.g. the troll and goblin ring halves). This has taken a long time as the items and inventory touch so many different areas of the game but all the time consuming, hard work is now complete. In the next release you'll now be able to pick up and use weapons which your opponents used, introducing a lot of new weapons for the your Alternate Reality character to play with.

The Dwarven Smithy

This is partially completed. The main new features it will introduce to the game are the option to sell old weapons and to have a custom weapon made. The main work to do is getting the correct menus in place and the custom weapon creation code which I don't see as being too difficult. 

Despite having finished the Dungeon for the first time a few years back, I had never saved up enough gems to have a custom weapon made. One thing I thought would be cool (and easy with the new ARX item system) would be to allow the player to name their custom weapons but on looking through the original code for the Dwarven Smithy it looks like that feature was already in the original game! Alternate Reality continues to surprise me after all these years :)

Treasure Items

These include those unique items on the Dungeon floor which I've not added yet and the special items you find after a successful encounter - wands, trump cards, horns etc. This won't make it into the next release due to all the work I've done on refactoring my existing code to work with the new items and inventory but is high on the list for future releases. Only a handful of City items remain to be added to ARX.

I need to introduce a new "effects" system which holds timed and temporary events (e.g. if wearing a crystal belt you get a stamina increase, you've drunk a potion of invulnerability sharp). The effects system is also required to enable the remaining guild spells to be implemented. I don't see this as being difficult to implement as I've given it a lot of thought but it's a substantial piece of work. I also need to do some research into how encounter treasure selection works so if you have any ideas on that please let me know. Once implemented I think the results will be quite visible to players so hopefully a good boost to gameplay. For me the Dungeon always had some of the best treasure of any CRPG.

Dungeon Quests

Basically adding in the few special locations which are still missing that are required to complete the Dungeon and the necessary dialogue and quest items. A lot of this is already complete but hasn't been tested in a long while. I seem to remember the Oracle took a lot of work and might need some bug fixes. Off the top of my head I think the Clothes Horse and Great Wyrm may only be in game as placeholders. Occasionally I go back and find that I've already started part of AR though which is pleasant surprise :) When the Dungeon Quests are complete there will be enough Alternate Reality recreated in ARX that you will be able to play the City and Dungeon through to completion!

Updated Display Options

I've already added some support for multiple screen resolutions and windowed vs full screen displays through the arx.cfg configuration file but there aren't currently any good scaling or filtering options available for players to make best use of those larger screen sizes. I'd also like to make it easier for you to adjust display options whilst the game is running so players can easily skip through options to find the one that best suits them. With so many people running larger displays now it's not really acceptable for me to limit development to only a couple of window sizes. Emulation front ends like RetroArch make use of some very high quality filters and scalers it would be great to introduce these into ARX if it wasn't going to be too much work. I also want to introduce some new (optional) display elements along similar lines to the automap that may add to players enjoyment or reduce frustration. 

Multiple Media Packs

One of my original goals was to have multiple media packs for ARX and thanks to the superb work from Ted Cox and Furious we're pretty much there. Due to a few different reasons I'd temporarily removed these but I'm keen to reinstate these in the next few months and hopefully expand them further.

Mac OS X version

There are quite a few Mac ARX players and I've now reached the point where a native Mac OS X version will no longer be the big piece of work it once was - partly because I'm just much more comfortable with coding and development tools than I used to be. I have another couple of versions in mind for other platforms but I'll see how well the items above progress first.

Release 1.0 of Alternate Reality X?

You may well have looked at the list above and thought "When can I expect to see X?" or "Will Z be included in ARX?". As you can see from the list above I have a LOT of ideas for areas of work planned for development and completion. Sometimes I think something will be difficult and it comes together fairly quickly, other times the opposite happens.  So I'm going to hold off on any release 1.0 date predictions - at least for the time being. What I can promise you is that I have lots of plans for further developing ARX in 2017, making it a lot more complete and hopefully more enjoyable to play.

Finally I just wanted to say a massive thank you to so many of you for sticking with me on my Alternate Reality remake project through the years of development.  I know it's been a bumpy and sometimes inconsistent ride along the way. I've often been amazed by your kindness, support and sheer enthusiasm for what I've been doing and for Alternate Reality in general. I'll do everything I can to try and deliver on the promise of the original project. Wishing you all the best for 2017.

CRPG Dev - 2016 Review

I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. Mine was fine though I was left with less time than I had hoped due to a leaking hot water system and helping my son build himself a PC - something I knew was going to take more work than he expected. I'm pleased to say that both hot water system and PC are now fully working.

As 2017 is now upon us I've been giving some thought to my CRPG Dev activities in 2016 and my achievements against my goals. I'm planning to talk about my plans for 2017 in a separate post but will inevitably touch on a few items here as some goals and projects carry over into 2017.

I think the biggest change in 2016 was that I now feel much clearer (and happier) about what I am trying to achieve with Alternate Reality X. I went back to the roots of the project and put aside some of the diversions I'd explored in 2015 to try and make some solid progress. After the lack of any new "classic" builds for ARX in 2015, I released four builds during 2016.

These builds weren't massive advances in features or content but they added some very important and long overdue items such as including all the Dungeon encounters as well as their encounter animations. The project took a big step by starting to pull a lot more real AR data into the game which I think we'll really start to see the benefits of this year. I also began the major task of expanding the inventory and item systems which was essential to recreating Alternate Reality.

I also chose to focus solely on my use of C\C++ for programming rather than Unity 3D and decided for ARX to stick to my procedural coding "style" - I use the word loosely - rather than try and move ARX to an object oriented programming approach - I'll keep that for a new project. Basically I'm trying to do what I think works best for me and my productivity rather than what I think I should be doing. I have cleaned up and restructured a lot of the code and I hope to continue that gradually as I add new features and revise existing ones where necessary.

I had planned to complete the 1.0 release but some of the major rewrites of core sections of code took a lot longer than anticipated. I'd also become preoccupied with some important personal issues I'll talk more in my follow up post about what the next steps for ARX are but I think I'm just going to focus on adding and prioritising the remaining features rather than talking too much about dates for a 1.0 release.

I actually played and completed a game at the beginning of the year (Fallout 3) as I inherited my son's old Xbox 360. This felt like a new game to me as it was only 8 years old! I played a bit of some of the other games from the 360 collection but struggled to get into a groove with any. Maybe this year.

My YouTube channel now has two Alternate Reality X videos uploaded to it. These weren't great but allowed players to see the game developing and are likely to bring a few more people into the ARX community. Expect some more in 2017.

On the personal side I have some big challenges ahead of me in 2017 on the family and financial side so they will take priority but I expect to be able to continue with some very solid ARX development. Another ARX release is well on its way so watch out for that.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported my efforts for CRPG Dev and Alternate Reality X, whether through your emails, Patreon, Paypal, here on the blog or on Facebook. As always I greatly appreciate your interest, your time and support for what I'm doing and it really keeps me going and allows me to continue doing this and gives me the inspiration I sometimes need.

Wishing you all the best for 2017.

Alternate Reality X - Release 0.8, Items and Inventory

Following the release of 0.75 of my Alternate Reality X (ARX) project I have been working on the next release. As this will be a big release and add a lot of content (item wise) this is likely to be the 0.8 release. The main focus here is to complete a lot of the remaining programming around items and the player inventory in the game with a particular focus around Dungeon items. If you look at my existing code for ARX a significant portion of it focuses on inventory and item handling. A lot of what makes Alternate Reality a great series for me is the excitement of what items you might find after a successful encounter or in the case of the Dungeon a special unique item at a certain location (E.g. Sword of the Adept, Robin's Hood).

The existing ARX item code is probably the area of development that was most time consuming to develop to date and cuts across so many different areas of the two scenarios. AR had a very sophisticated system of inventory and items compared to other games of the time but this makes it much more of a challenge for someone like me to recreate for a remake :) I had planned to make some very major changes to the item and inventory system, very closely mirroring the internal representation used by the Dungeon.

Why change it you might ask? It seems to be working ok? The current system does work ok but it lacks the ability to allow for items to be truly unique or modified in game easily. A good example of this are the clothes items in the City shops. These are currently limited to a subset of the original games options. In the original City these items were made up of a handful of randomised attributes which meant that the City could have dozens if not hundreds of different variations of clothing. My current system doesn't allow for this. The other key areas which I can't implement with the item system in 0.75 are the enchanted weapons from the Weapon Enchantress where she will (for a hefty price) add a number of enchantments to your items. modifying their existing attributes and the Dwarven Smithy who I also believe will create varying qualities of weapon depending on how well you pay him.

Some of the goodies you can find in the Dungeon for release 0.80

In the original Dungeon a block of binary data was used to represent all "active" items in the game. These included items on the ground, carried items, curses, diseases, spells and monster corpses. I was planning to recreate this system in ARX but I've now come to the conclusion that you probably wouldn't see the next release until 2017 and I'm not even sure people would really see or recognise the benefits! The key things for me are to be able to obtain the flexibility of the original system above, minimise the amount of changes I'm having to make just now and be able to make full use of the original binary data (which I've done successfully with the monster data).

I've already written code to read all the original item data into ARX for release 0.8 so that part has gone well. I've extracted all the item names and addresses so it's relatively straightforward now to pull out additional information for items as required. I'll also be able to use this code to extract all the weapon data for the Dwarven Smithy items as well which will save a lot of time and messing around with text files to represent objects which I'm moving away from with the last few releases.

My original item / inventory system used a similar premise to the Dungeon with a single "Item Buffer" type array which holds all the active items in the game including what I call "volume items" (E.g. gold, silver, torches, compasses) that are effectively represented in the player structure as a single numeric value. The only issue with the current system is that it doesn't directly hold lots of the attribute data representing items directly instead pointing to a fixed representation of the item - this need changing.  I've decided to expand and build on this existing system rather than directly copy the Dungeon internal system. This should save me a LOT of time changing existing code and systems that work well already. The existing system probably addresses about 70-80% of the item requirements for AR so it doesn't seem like a good use of my time to rewrite lots of code for that extra 20% of functionality.

The "Item Buffer" in use showing carried items as well as "volume items" on the Dungeon floor

I've thought of another way to expand the item system to allow for the dynamic items such as enchanted weapons so these features will still be in the game, just using a different internal representation to the original Dungeon. The current system will still be able to access all that new binary item data that I've read into ARX as well so item effects for special items will still be accessible within the game.

Alternate Reality X - Release 0.75 - Changes

With the public release of Alternate Reality X 0.75 looming for the end of September 2016 I thought I would talk a little bit about what you can expect to see, what I didn't manage to add and my general approach to have the completed 1.0 release in your hands before the end of the year.

I had planned for this release to complete ALL the elements of the City and the Dungeon that I see as combat and encounter related. I didn't achieve that for a number of good reasons but I did make some very significant steps that put the project in a much stronger position than it was in before. One of the big changes was to add all the remaining Dungeon monsters as to date only the Well Lit Area and Fixed Encounters had been added and to animate them all.

One major change which I had not committed myself to making was using the original 8bit Dungeon monster data directly from the binary files. I was previously using simple text files which whilst easy to update had numerous errors, lacked a lot of information from the real data and were prone to spoiling of the game / opportunity for cheating from players. In addition to this I had built up similar text files for weapons in the game - an amalgamation of weapons the player could buy, monster weapons and unique items you could stumble across (e.g. the Sword of the Adept).

One of the great features of Alternate Reality (the Dungeon at least) was that it had a very flexible system for customising monsters and items in the game. Many games at the time would have had fixed object sizes with no opportunity to modify those objects in game. The Dungeon in contrast allowed very rich items and monsters which contained a mixture of attribute data (name, bonus to hit, sharp damage) with effects (curses, give off light) and directly included 6502 (the processor used by the Atari 800, Commodore 64 and others) code. In game objects could also be dynamically created in game (clothing in the City) or modified through player actions (weapons having enchantments added at the Weapon Enchantress).

So after a lot of thought I made the decision to use the original binary data. Using some great information provided by Brian Herlihy a few years back, I replaced the original monster loader and also added in support for loading in all their weapons and attacks. These are stored as part of the monster data. This was a lot of work for me but once I had these changes working I felt it made an immediate improvement to the feel of the game as well as adding all those additional Dungeon monsters - about 50 in total. Thanks to Brian for this information without which these changes wouldn't have been possible.

Another major change in this release was the introduction of properly timed / processor speed independent encounter animation. I had information on encounter animation from old emails from Jim Norris - thanks Jim! - so I used these to hopefully produce a fairly accurate recreation of the Dungeon encounter animations. As part of this work I totally rewrote the main encounter loop and the way that monster and player "turns" are taken during combat and how multiple opponents are dealt with. Monster attacks now use the proper attack descriptions (whomps, slashes, chokes etc), can hit multiple player body parts and can also knock the player to the ground.

Behind the scenes I re-organised some of the game code, introducing more source files to try and better segment and compartmentalise different code areas (e.g the actor source files refer to encounters, load in the binary data, create their weapons and attacks etc). All these changes meant a lot of knock on changes - some foreseen, others not. These took time to sort out. I've probably not caught all of these issues yet.

With the introduction of all the new Dungeon monsters and only limited new encounter art I took the decision to temporarily disable the new media options - these will be back in a future version. I also disabled the W command to force an encounter as it seemed to be a source of problems and encounter frequency checking has been re-written in this release to check regularly for new encounters. I had to tone this down a bit as encounters seemed to be happening back to back!

The other feature missing from this release is the ability to pick up monster weapons after combat. There was a very practical reason for this, namely that all monster weapons are now stored in a new format and location whilst the player inventory / object buffer in the game uses a totally different system. In order to allow for the custom weapons of the Dwarven Smithy and enchanted weapons from the Enchantress this system will need to be updated and this in turn will impact on all the existing shops where weapons, armour and clothing can be bought. This work will be the focus of the next release with addition of adding in the original item binary data from the Dungeon to introduce all those special objects into Alternate Reality X such as Trump Cards, Eyes, Wands and Horns. Trying to add these into release 0.75 would have added a lot longer to the development time and I was keen to have a release out before then.

In order to have the 1.0 release ready for the end of the year I have had to focus tightly on what needs to be finished and priority on the gaps that need the most work and will add the most to the game. This may mean that some of the extras will go on the back burner for the time being but I think it will be well worth it to have a complete, integrated City and Dungeon Alternate Reality world to explore! Hopefully these decisions make sense but as always I'd love to hear your thoughts. Watch out for release 0.75 coming very soon. Thanks.

Alternate Reality X - August 2016 Dev Update

Here's a new video providing a glimpse of the new encounter animations and further plans for development.

Alternate Reality X - The Final Stretch

Following my announcement that I'm planning to complete release 1.0 of Alternate Reality X (ARX) for Monday 5th December 2016, the final stretch of development work has begun! It's great to have that clear goal in sight. I'm pleased with progress since the announcement but there is still a lot to complete before December to get all the features added so I'll need to push myself hard and stay focused. I'll be devoting the majority of my free time to making sure I meet my target, chipping away at small issues when I have a bit of free time and maximising the time I spend on development. I want everyone to be able to play a complete, fully integrated City and Dungeon for Christmas 2016! Visualising that goal tells me it will be a great personal achievement for me - and hopefully players will enjoy the results too!

As I go into this final stretch any assistance people can provide through donations to the project, however small would be particularly helpful. This support helps in a few different ways - it allows me to better justify the (very considerable) time that I spend on coding ARX to my family, helps cover some of my small development costs such as webspace and small hardware/software purchases and permits me to spend more time focused on development. The PayPal and Patreon details can be found at the support page here.

If you've donated in the past either through PayPal or Patreon then you have my sincerest thanks - it makes a big difference to me and has really helped me to keep developing ARX - probably more so than people realise. Alternate Reality X would not have been possible for me without your support. I've been thinking about ways to better convey my thanks once the project is completed and I have a few ideas which I think players would like.

My main focus for development is ensuring that 100% of the original City / Dungeon content and features are implemented for the 1.0 release in December. I've temporarily disabled some of the alternative graphics and music options to allow me to focus solely on ensuring the original games are completely re-implemented. Hopefully everyone is ok with that as a temporary measure - for me it makes managing the project easier and allows me to focus better on the key features which aren't in place or fully completed yet.

I've worked exclusively on encounters and combat recently. I've rewritten the main loop that deals with combat so that ARX now has a sensible turn structure with the player and opponents taking turns as well as adding in options for surprising characters, deciding whose "turn" it is first. One of the main reasons for rewriting this was so that animation effects for encounters as well as backgrounds (rain and other weather effects) could be added. I've added the encounter animations now which I think makes a big difference to making the game feel more complete. I'm now working on adding more encounter features. Release 0.75 will focus solely on encounters as there has been a lot more work involved in rewriting this part of ARX than I anticipated. I'll also be adding all the additional encounter weapons that opponents can carry such as Unholy swords, flaming pitchforks and diamond daggers among many others.

Release 0.76 will focus on all the other items and treasures that you can find in Alternate Reality (horns, eyes, tarot cards). I'll have more updates and possibly a video shortly once I sort out my screen capture software. It's going to be a bit longer before I have the next release out as I'd like to add more new encounter features first. Thanks for your support and interest in ARX.

Alternate Reality X - Release 1.0 - Target Release Date!

Time to draw a line in the sand. I first started the current form of my Alternate Reality: The City & Alternate Reality:The Dungeon remake project back in 2009 - A long, long time ago. I think I even still had a full head of hair back then! Alternate Reality X (ARX) as it's now known has come a long way since that 0.1 release back in 2009 and I've found myself diverted or distracted on occasion but the project is now well and truly back on track and developing on a daily basis.

Based on the solid progress I've made with development of ARX during 2016 I now feel that I can confidently announce a target release date for release 1.0 of the game. I have always envisaged 1.0 as completing my original vision for my Alternate Reality remake project - a full recreation of both The City and The Dungeon in a single, easy to use, seamless game for modern systems.

At the beginning of 2016 the game was still a confused mangle of code which I'd built up steadily between 2009 and 2015. It was full of workarounds, hacks and was very difficult to expand and add new features to. I've spent a lot of time reacquainting myself with some of my earliest code during the last few months which was a big challenge. I kept asking myself "Why did I do that????" Back then the main problem was that I was learning a lot about game programming for the first time and at the same time trying to develop the game. This often led to me making short sighted decisions without realising their longer term consequences. Later I would then struggle to bolt on a new feature to an increasingly precarious code base.

I'm pleased to say I'm now a lot more confident in my programming and game development skills and I've managed to gradually start to restructure my ARX code into a more sensible project. I've learned and read a lot about programming, C++, SFML and game development so I'm a lot better equipped to complete the project. I still have more work to do (and plenty to learn) but I expect to have a complete, well organised and (easily) expandable game by the end of 2016.

There is still a lot of work to do and features to complete before then but I feel really confident and excited that this is achievable and realistic. I can't think of any area or feature that I'm particularly daunted by. I know that completing the game will be hard work, challenging but also extremely satisfying. If the 1.0 release is well received then I can look to really expand on the Alternate Reality universe during 2017 with additional scenarios and other enhancements to the City and the Dungeon.

As you can see from some of the screenshots here I've finally set up Alternate Reality X so that you can finally encounter some of the more exotic Dungeon encounters that haunted the corridors and halls of the original game. I'm also continuing to add in the special behaviours and actions for each encounter type.

So, without further delay I'm pleased to announce that my target release date for Release 1.0 of Alternate Reality X is:

 Monday 5th December 2016 

It's a date I'll be putting in my calendar! Hopefully something of an early Christmas present for some people. This is likely to be Microsoft Windows only initially and will focus on completing 100% of the original features from The City and The Dungeon. You will also be able to complete all the Dungeon quests and complete that scenario.

I just want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to those people who have supported me through Paypal, Patreon, the AR forums, Facebook or by sending me personal emails of support and encouragement through the life of the project. It has made a big difference to me personally that you've had faith in what I've been working on and continued to support the project. If you have questions about this release or how I plan to achieve it then please post them here, on Facebook, the forums or send me a private message / email.

I'm not announcing this release date lightly - I take it very seriously. It's not only a commitment to those who've supported the development of the game - some from the early years - It's also a big commitment that I'm making on a personal level to myself. I think for me setting this release date will only strengthen my resolve to complete the game and help me focus on reaching my development targets. Regular releases of the game will continue to appear leading up to the final 1.0 release. Release 0.75 will focus on numerous improvements around City and Dungeon encounters. Thanks for your patience and support.

Alternate Reality X - Encounter Update, May 2016

As mentioned previously the encounter code in ARX had a lot of issues and really needed some serious work if I was ever to make it complete and feel authentic to the original Alternate Reality combat. I've basically taken apart most of the encounter code before refactoring it and putting it back together again. This has taken me a lot time and a lot of hours but I feel I've made a lot of progress.

The encounter code is now much more sensibly organised and structured and it is much easier to add in additional encounter features. The code is hopefully a lot more readable now, not only saving me a lot of time when I add to it but also meaning that others will be able to understand it a lot more easily should they want to.

I'd crammed a lot of only vaguely related code into the encounter module including the character and monster encounters themselves as well as their weapons so it was desirable to split these into their own source files. My plan is to gradually make these much more object oriented with player and opponent objects sharing a lot of code and functions for much better consistency.

I've been adding in new encounter features that were previously missing in ARX such as the player surprising encounters (or in turn being surprised) or being stunned and missing a turn. I'm still doing a bit of testing of the original game to understand exactly ow waylay and snatch should work but it's good to have them in the game finally. You can see these illustrated here. The next change will be to add the Dungeon style combat messages and implement different body parts for the player which aren't fully active at the moment.

It shouldn't be too long before the next release is out. This will be focused on completing the remaining encounter features. I feel this will make ARX feel a lot more playable and authentic and will herald a big step forward for the project. Thanks for your support and patience as always.

Alternate Reality X- May 2016 Update

Work on improving the encounters in Alternate Reality X is going well. I've been stripping down the old encounter code, seeing what works and what needs re-working or simplifying as well as adding in the new features such as blocking, knock downs and special encounter actions. Lots of late nights but hopefully you'll think the improvements make a big difference and all the long hours have been worth it.

I've been reading up a lot on game programming (mainly C/C++ and SFML) and how to better organise my code for CRPG and Roguelike style games. I'm resisting the temptation to just build on some of my earlier shaky code as I really want to make ARX maintainable and expandable - it's the only way it will possible to expand the game to include other scenarios and new features.

I'm thinking of splitting the encounter updates and item updates into 2 separate releases to keep up with my plan of more frequent updates during 2016. Thanks for the continued support.

Alternate Reality X: Planning Release 0.75 - A Major release!

I have a good feeling about this next release and hope to address some of the features that I've left incomplete for a while. I'd like 0.75 to be something special and really take the project to a new level of completeness and quality.

Everything here is subject to change but here are my initial ideas and plans for release 0.75. There is a big focus on the Dungeon as that is the overall encounter / item system I'm planning to use for ARX, though I've added some of the unique City features such as Charm and Trick as well as Potions that were removed or modified for the Dungeon.

Encounters, inventory and items work closely together (at least in my eyes) hence the long list below. If I could complete a lot of the items below then I would really feel I'd made significant progress with the development of the game. The heart of Alternate Reality for me has always been the encounters so it's important to get these feeling right.

Encounters:

• Modify encounter frequency - Previously too frequent or not frequent enough!
• Review use of Dungeon encounter binary data file - this includes encounter weapons
• Review existing combat mechanics, damage types, influence of armour and overall balance
• Add all Dungeon encounters - Including weapons, attacks and special abilities
• Add additional Dungeon encounter tables
• Add message customisations for different types of weapon and multiple body parts
• Knock downs, disarming and stunning
• Add "Surprise" menu including Waylay, Snatch, Leave etc
• Add encounter animations
• Review all fixed encounters

Items:

• Expand the underlying item format to allow use of custom weapons, enchantments and randomised clothing items
• Review use of Dungeon item binary data file - this includes encounter weapons
• Add all unique "treasures" to the Dungeon map
• Add any treasure items that are unique to the City not included in the Dungeon set above
• Add encounter corpses (where appropriate)

Modules / Special Locations:

• The Chapel
• The Dwarven Smithy

General:

• Separate media packs and add validation to check for media packs

Hopefully everyone will be keen to see these features completed or added to the next release. For me this will be a major release which really takes some of the core game mechanics to a whole different level. Watch this space. Comments as always welcome.

Alternate Reality X - Update, March 2016

Since the start of the year I've managed to get back up to speed and into the process of continuing the development of my Alternate Reality remake. This is based on Philip Price's unfinished series of games originally for the Atari 8bit range of computers. Originally only the City and the Dungeon scenarios were ever released.

I've gone back to my original project goals to regain my focus over the last couple of months and this has been a big help. These are:

• Create a full port of both The City and The Dungeon for modern systems
• Move your characters seamlessly between scenarios 
• Provide a quick, easy to use alternative to emulation
• Expand upon the original scenarios to include new quests, locations, encounters and items
• Provide the option of using the original or updated graphics and sound

The wording here might differ slightly from my original webpages but the key goals are still strong messages and still feel very relevant to my current thinking. These will be my key focus over the coming months. I'll not be losing sight of these again or heading off on any other tracks where my Alternate Reality project is concerned.

I've released two updates for ARX during March 2016 so far. Whilst both are only small updates I've now got an established development and release process which means I'm not losing time because I'm disorganised. I'm making use of Google Drive to keep my ARX files accessible online regardless of location so I can contribute free time to development. I'm also freezing any updates to the development environment and multimedia library I'm using - what's there currently is more than capable of seeing my Alternate Reality project through to 100% completion and my current build is fully Windows 10 compatible. As I'm now (and sticking to) using SFML and Code::Blocks (it's quick and light to install compared to Visual Studio) again ports for Mac OS X and Linux are achievable (at a later date).

At a high level the main areas I'm going to be looking at over the next few weeks and months are:

• The core engine - specifically remodelling items, encounters and tweaking the display
• The City - What is required to make the City 100% complete?
• The Dungeon - What is required to make the Dungeon 100% complete - starting with level 1?
• The Arena & other scenarios - Bit by bit expanding the Arena content but also laying any groundwork which might be required for future expansion into other scenarios. 

My plan is to expand these key areas into more smaller, achievable items in the next week or so. I'll publish these plans online with everyone so you can or point out anything I've overlooked.

I'm really keen to get feedback from players whether that's bug reports, general comments for improvement or ideas for new features - content or story. Email, Facebook, the Blog and the forums are different ways of helping to develop ARX so I'd encourage you to make use of them if there are things you'd like to see. I try to  read all the comments and the feedback and suggestions I receive really do help determine what I work on next and how items are prioritised.

Alternatively if you like my what I'm planning or the work I've completed to date then you might consider making a small donation via Paypal (link in the right hand panel of this blog and on the webpages) or as a patron on Patreon. These are a great help for my website costs, occasional small hardware additions that help development and the odd book or software licence I buy.

As I've mentioned previously my planned approach is more frequent but probably smaller updates. I'll be tackling some of the bigger items mentioned above in the next couple of releases which I think will help take ARX to a whole new level. Thanks for your support.

Designing Alternate Reality: The Arena

One of the things that has struck me when play testing my current build of Alternate Reality X is that there are still numerous places where the player comes across the entrances to the unfinished scenarios - The Arena, The Palace, The Wilderness and Revelation (there aren't any for Destiny).

As I'm planning changes within ARX to better support the City and Dungeon, it's helpful to think ahead as to how the other scenarios might develop and what features and content they may include. I thought I'd collect my ideas here as the beginning of a design document for Alternate Reality: The Arena. I see the Arena and the Palace as quite tightly interwoven in terms of features and story so there might be some cross over here. Through your trials in the Arena you can obtain fame and fortune, increasing your social status and gain initial access to the Palace.

Entry to the Arena can be gained through an unsuccessful enounter with a gang of slavers, as a spectator or persuading one of the local lords to support your entry to the Arena with the goal of becoming the Champion of Xebec's Demise and receiving the royal seal which grants access to all areas of the City (including the Palace). Whispers in dark taverns mention other, more secretive ways of entering the Arena.

Starting with the Arena map we have two areas available - one on the City level and a larger area within level one of the Dungeon. There are also a few "Arena Pits" on level two of the Dungeon. These two areas provide ample map space for the Arena scenario and interesting content.

The upper level houses the Great Arena itself as well as smaller Arena pits and shops which support the day to day running of the Arena. Both commoners and nobles visit the Arena from the City to watch the games whilst fighters seek their fame and fortune or meet their fate on the bloodstained sands of the Great Arena. Combatants can also move around with a degree of freedom between events looking for ways to improve their skills. A successful Arena fighter will make use of the weapons masters and trainers that have forged a living selling their services within the walls of the Arena.

The lower level of the Arena houses the darker side of the Arena where the poor souls who have been press ganged into slavery as Arena fighters live as well as housing the exotic creatures and traps that feature in the most deadly tournaments and games. Few have lived through the legendary Trial of Kings, a fiendish maze of traps and ferocious monsters that only the strongest and most cunning can hope to survive.

CRPG DEV - The 2016 Update and future plans

January 2016 has passed but I hope you had a good Christmas / New Year or holiday.

I'm sorry for not posting anything for such a long time. I've found it difficult to focus and use my time well to make the significant updates to Alternate Reality X which I've wanted to despite putting in some serious hours. I started some major structural changes as well as trying to make the code fully object oriented. Looking back I tried to change too many things at the same time and my experience of full object oriented coding isn't really good enough. I should have stuck with the style I'm familiar with rather than what I thought I should be doing.

The SFML media library I use also underwent some other changes which broke my 3D view code as it relied on some no longer supported OpenGL functions. I've considered going back to a previous version of the SFML library, though I'd prefer I was using the current version.

I've given it a lot of thought and planned out some more realistic short term changes to ARX. I'll stick with my procedural style and concentrate my efforts on the areas that really need attention to allow progress to be made with the game. With the New Year I've given a lot of thought to what I want to achieve this year - professionally and personally - and making significant progress with ARX (and CRPG Dev) is high on my list.

I'm now working on a simple 0.72 release (as my past official release was 0.71). Once I've fixed the 3D view I'll make this available - the purpose of this will be to update ARX to the latest version of SFML and also make use of the new Visual Studio 2013 build. I'm no longer using Code::Blocks as my development environment as I'm trying to improve my coding and many of the tutorials and books I've been studying use Visual Studio.

I've lots of plans but I'll not say anything more about those just now until I've proven that ARX is still ongoing with a couple of new releases. So hang in there! 

Thank you for your past support and interest in what I've been doing - it's really meant a lot to me. So with that I'd like to wish you (a belated) all the best for 2016.

Alternate Reality X - Modifying the display

Example Dungeon screen (672x480) from the Atari 800 Emulator

As mentioned previously I was investigating a possible move to using SDL as an alternative to the SFML media library. Whilst I'm not a 100% certain I'm going to stay with SFML it's looking extremely likely. The main reason for this is that I understand from what I've read that unlike SFML, SDL isn't able to easily mix it's native graphics with an OpenGL view. One of the things I found useful with SFML was that I could limit my use of OpenGL to just drawing the 3D City / Dungeon view whilst using SFML's 2D functions for everything else. The disadvantage I've found with SFML is that a number of people have had issues with the OpenGL support and video drivers on their Windows machines. There are a couple of changes I can make which might address the problems under Windows and flag up the possible impact on gameplay at start up for the player.

I've been spending some time trying out the City and Dungeon using the Atari 800 emulator (version 3.0.0). This emulator seems reliable and hasn't yet crashed on and lost my emulator settings which I found to be a problem with Atari 800 Win Plus. One of the first things I'm doing is making some changes to simplify the display options to make Alternate Reality X look more authentic and make best use of the original Atari 800 graphics as I didn't like the way some of them appeared when stretched by my multiple screen options. In practice this is likely to mean more limited screen display options (at least for the next release) but will hopefully make for a better Atari 8bit look which most players are apparently using when playing ARX. I will still be leaving in the support for alternative media but it's not going to be a focus in the next few releases. 672 by 480 pixels is likely to become the base resolution for the game from the next release with options to have black borders or not. This will give you a very accurate, double sized version of the original and will allow me to match the display very accurately with the original versions.

One of the benefits about my investigations into the SDL media library was that I've been reading a SDL game programming book and this has made me rethink some of the ways the game programming could be improved to make better use of the features of C++. These would probably simplify development, improve my code reuse across multiple shop type modules and reduce the risk of crashes due to my ill informed programming techniques. These are general C++ game programming techniques - just as applicable to a SFML game as a SDL one.

These might seem like very trivial points for me to be focusing on but having the display "look right" for me will make a big difference to me. Release 0.8 is now under development so watch this space.

Alternate Reality X - Back to Basics

As I'd said previously I wanted to review what I'd achieved with Alternate Reality X (ARX) and what I needed to do to take it a step closer to completion. I've given the project a lot of thought and wanted to post an update.

I found some of my early AR images on the internet dated 12th June 2004. Eleven years ago! These are very old when I was using Mike Robert's excellent TADS 3 Interactive Fiction system to read the AR binary map files and display an overhead view. Thanks to Mike for answering my often off topic questions when I should have been using TADS 3 to write more adventure games :) Here are the images:

My early Alternate Reality port using TADS 3!

Another screenshot but with a different font and a very simplistic 3D view

My next move after moving away from using TADS 3 was to post a little SDL based demo of some randomised Dungeon combat with various Dungeon denizens things have changed a lot. My original demo looked very authentic and just worked. I liked that version :)

My original goals for my Alternate Reality remake were to:

• Produce an easy to use version of AR that would run on modern systems
• Allow players to move seamlessly between the City and Dungeon scenarios

It was not my original intention to improve the graphics and sound or to try and complete the other scenarios. The display and audio options as well as multiple screen resolutions have all added to the development time for me. Not ideal when this is really my first proper programming project :)

Since then a lot of time has passed and over the years the project has started and paused a number of times due to other commitments and changing ideas about direction. My conclusion now is that the best direction for now is to return to my original goals for the project and try to bring it to a sensible conclusion, or at the very least bring this stage to completion so that there is a solid foundation for myself or others to build on (e.g. adding a new scenario).

The original Alternate Reality:The City

The other conclusion I've come to from the emails and messages I've received over the years is that the vast majority of people are really looking for a fairly faithful port of the original games - including the original 8bit graphics and sound. I really need to pair back the project to its core so that I can rewrite some of the dubious code in the background. This is turn would provide a solid platform for possible future scenarios to be added - once the City and Dungeon are 100% implemented.

There are a couple of other things I've considered. SFML's use of OpenGL causes a lot of issues foe people who don't have fully compliant OpenGL video drivers on their Windows PCs. This is a big concern for me with Windows 10 now on release.  A switch to the SDL media library which I believe doesn't use OpenGL would probably help a lot with this. I've also decided that for ARX any ports to Mac OS X or Linux would probably have to be carried out by someone else. Unity 3D I'll use for new projects rather than ARX.

So where does that leave the project? 

Here's my current plan and thoughts for Alternate Reality X development:

• Microsoft Windows only
• Staying with C++ and a media library (SFML or SDL)
• Review each section of code, rewriting where necessary
• Concentrate on adding the remaining functionality
• Stick to the original 8bit look and feel for now

August 2015 Already?

Is it really over six months since my last blog post and even longer since my last game upload???

You might have wondered if I was still interested in CRPGs and game development or whether I had hit some serious problem in my personal life. I'm pleased to report that there have been no major disasters but plenty of other things have taken up my time and my personal interests including my game development has suffered as a result.

I'm taking part in a year long training programme which has seen me travelling away from home a lot more than usual and whilst it's been enjoyable and interesting, it means that when I'm back home there is a lot more to catch up on with my family and around the house . I've also completed some other training and exams (work related) that I'd wanted to do for some time. I'm doing some major redecoration and clearing out of our house which has been really time consuming. To top everything off numerous things in the house have broken, developed faults and either need fixing by me or more often replaced or fixed at great expense by others. Additional hassle I didn't need. Net result that the last six months of 2015 have been a total blur.

On the more positive side I did complete a review of Alternate Reality:The City for inclusion in the excellent The CRPG Book Project. This is shaping up to be an excellent book once it's complete. The current version has over 200 pages with around 100 game reviews. Felipe Pepe has done an amazing job putting this together so please check it out if you haven't already. You can find the current version at: https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/

I have also really enjoyed playing Rocksmith 2014 which I bought just before Christmas. If you're unfamiliar with this "game" you plug in a real electric guitar or bass and play along with real songs and play the actual guitar parts.You can slow down sections to practice and vary the difficulty or accuracy. As you improve and depending on your level and playing style (rhythm or lead) the computer gradually adds in more notes until you're playing the authentic guitar parts with all the notes and nuances. It hasn't made me a guitar master but it really is a lot of fun and feels very productive compared to something like Guitar Hero as my guitar playing really is improving as result.

On the game development front I'm thinking through a few ideas at the moment - some about how to progress Alternate Reality X and one of my own CRPG projects which isn't AR related. Unity 3D looks like the most likely choice of platform for anything I do though, mainly due to its rapid deployment to other platforms including web options. Anything I produce I suspect will have a distinctly "classic" look. It probably won't look anything like a normal Unity 3D game :)

Thanks to those of you who have asked how things are and for your continued support and interest in my projects. All the best.

Two Paths to Alternate Reality

Over the last few months I have been giving a lot of thought to my two Alternate Reality related projects and with the move into 2015 have been thinking about my next steps. I think I'm now fairly clear on how I'm planning to develop during 2015.

I've spent many years working on my original project (Alternate Reality X or ARX) which was originally focused on bringing the City and the Dungeon together into a single game which could be played on a modern PC without the inconveniences that sometimes come from using emulation such as swapping virtual floppy disks. I think I succeeded in meeting the majority of those goals allowing players to move seamlessly between the City and the Dungeon as well as making a number of adjustments so that (hopefully) moving between the two scenarios isn't too jarring. Over the years I introduced a variety of display and audio options with replacement art from Ted and myself and music by Furious. However the flexibility in the options has meant that a lot of time has been spent on say for example making display elements appear in sensible positions across multiple resolutions. Whilst some people will appreciate all the effort that went into these, I suspect may just want to play the game. In addition I found myself in a slightly odd position where I was trying to please everybody retaining the old and new. In a single game there were limits in how successful I could be with this approach.

ARX had become a bit tangled code wise and needed some significant work to make it more stable and less buggy before I could really complete it. This in part made me decide to put a hold on it last year and start work on a new version of Alternate Reality which used the Unity 3D game development system. I've released a couple of short demos using Unity and I like it as a system. It's relatively easy to use but provides a lot of power for someone like me that I couldn't hope to develop myself. In addition it's cross platform support is amazing. I was able to create Mac OS X versions of my Alternate Reality demos with a few mouse clicks compared to the weeks of work it took me to produce one Mac build from my ARX SFML / C++ code.

The conclusion I've reached is that I would like to continue to work on both projects but change the focus of each of them so that they are more clearly . From the feedback and comments I've received from players it looks like there are a sizeable number of people who enjoy ARX with its traditional graphics and sound but with the flexibility of the City and Dungeon being a single game. There are also a lot of people who are looking for a much more dramatic update to AR. This just wasn't possible to produce whilst retaining the old look and feel in a single game. I'm now considering focusing ARX on its original Atari 8bit roots whilst my Unity 3D project (with a working title of Return to Xebec's Demise - RXD) can focus on new graphics and sound, an updated map and a more flexible environment closer to more recent games but still attempting to retain the classic Alternate Reality atmosphere and spirit. The wonderful encounter graphics and music Ted and Furious produced can hopefully be used within the Unity project. This approach will make the ARX downloads much smaller as well.

So what can you expect to see? Firstly I'll be updating both SFML (now on version 2.2) for ARX and Unity 3D (now up to 4.6) for Return to Xebec's Demise so that I can produce small updates of both to get my development environment up to date. Internally things like items, encounters and the player are likely to be very similar so I'm playing with a few ideas as to how to possibly re-use some code between the two. One option would be to use the C# language with SFML as this is the language I use for scripting in Unity 3D.

Hopefully what I'm describing above makes sense and will be pretty clear once you have an update of both projects to try out. Let me know what you think and any better titles you have for the two projects. Thanks as always for your interest and support.

CRPG Dev - Still here for 2015!

You may have wondered whether I had been dispatched by a Nightstalker or become hopelessly lost wandering the streets of Xebec's Demise but I've simply been very busy with work and home commitments as well as the build up to Christmas and New Year. I hope you had a good Christmas / holiday if you haven't been working.

I've also been looking into some of my other interests, reading up on them and I'll post about them over the next few weeks as they are relevant to computers and gaming to some degree. I've also just found that after work and family things all I've wanted to do some nights is sit down and catch up on some TV or movies that I've been wanting to see for a while. My working environment is also less than ideal at the moment which isn't conducive to game coding and development or even blog posting. I'm surrounded by clutter. It will be easier once the Christmas decorations are packed away in the next few days.

Unity 4.6 is now out of Beta so I'll be using this for some projects and have found it works very well. The on-screen GUI development will speed up game development a lot for me I think as you can see what is on the screen as you're working without having to go through a slow modify / run, repeat process for every little change. My plan is to focus on gameplay mechanics and coding within Alternate Reality X and put the cosmetics to one side for now until the gameplay is a little better established.

Some of my other computing interests have sparked an interest in dusting down my older SFML Alternate Reality X as I'd still like to bring that to some clear conclusion (Windows only though for this one). I'm toying with a few ideas as to how to complete this without it taking too much additional development time. I could for example strip it down to a single resolution such as 800x600 and 8bit graphics and sound as the new versions from Furious and Ted have a natural home in the Unity 3D version of ARX. I'll give this one some further thought.

The website and blog are likely to be merged together into a single site using Blogger as the basis. I'm looking at ways to make updates easier to maintain and You may notice some oddities whilst I experiment with various options on the blog and website(s).

Thanks for following CRPG Dev through 2014 and taking the time to comment and offer suggestions for the games. If you have supported my development through Paypal, Patreon or by contributing code or content then I am especially grateful. I would have liked to have done much more development this year but it hasn't happened and I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

I hope you've had a good 2014 and would like to wish you, your friends and family all the best for the New Year in 2015. Hope you have a good one.

Supporting Future Development and a New Game

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.