Added Tile Properties

It took me a while to sort out the new file format for the terrain objects but I've now got a simple machine/human readable format which I can reuse for the monster and item files. Now that I've done this I've thinking of splitting game objects into 3 different areas - terrain, monsters and items. The map/item format is very simplistic just now so will probably need to be expanded at some point.

As always I'm wasting time changing little image files instead of sticking with a handful of basic tiles and adding features to the editor and game. Anway I finally added some properties for the different types of terrain in the game. Decided to leave out animation and visibility for tiles just now. For now I've kept it very simple with tiles having a small number of properties:

• Tile no - the image number from the tile sheet
• Name - a text description for look commands
• Passable - can the tile normally be walked through
• Map link - does the tile offer an entrance or exit to another map level (E.g. staircase)

I'd like to really start making Demons Eye feel more like a game. I might add a player status and inventory pages and some simple console style messages. It would also be nice to be able to have a bit of simple treasure hunting and combat!

Demons - Slow Progress

Progress is slow mainly because I keep going back and fiddling with little things rather than adding new features to the engine. There's still no actual functionality or properties to tiles so this is really something I need to make a start on - it's not difficult.

Anyway there are a few cosmetic changes. I've added an Ultima style border dividing the screen into three main area - overhead view, messages and the character status/inventory browser type area.

The 16x16 font has been replaced with an 8x8 one - currently Joshua Steele's Ultima 4 Upgrade one. I wanted to be able to put quite a lot of textual information on the screen for combat, conversations and intentory details but this was difficult with the larger font and a smaller font also leaves more space for item graphics, status bars or icons which I think will make the display a lot more interesting. This font is good for now but I'll keep my eye open for something a bit more unique.

I've reverted to the David Gervais tileset and RLTiles tileset. Both are good tilesets with plenty of intersting to tiles though there are a number of typical tiles I'll need to create/find elsewhere to complete some content.

Really need to add some simple tile properties. Are tiles passable? Can they be seen through? Do they link to another map? And so on...

Bitmap Fonts

Added some bitmap font functions. SFML already has good font support for many popular types of font built into it but I was wanting to use a simple fixed-width bitmap font. The font in the picture is from Alternate Reality: The Dungeon. A simple map loader has been added (loading in an Ultima 5 map in the picture) but I still need to add a save function.

Inspiration from other games

I've been playing some of the old games that I like and thinking about what are the positive and negative features of each game and which I want to incorporate or avoid in Demons Eye. I've just been playing Ultima V and this has given me a few ideas. One of things that put me off playing Ultima V more when I was younger was that some of the exploring seemed quite tedious. For example exploring a castle meant a lot of searching for secret doors (all of which seem to be locked) and also moving potted plants around to get to said secret doors. These are fine if there are interesting things behind them but if not then they just annoy me and take a lot of fun out of the game. This specific issue seems to be worse in Ultima V.

Ultima V manages to make fairly varied maps out of a limited set of tiles (256 terrain tiles + 256 monsters/items). I spent a lot of time over the last few days messing around with lots of tiles adding them to the tilesheet and probably not using them. I also need to think about how I want to handle lighting and line of sight in Demons Eye. Personally I often find that limiting the view this way detracts from the game. Maybe it would work best in Dungeons where there is more tension about unknown creatures coming out of the darkness.

On the combat front I think I've decided on a single player rather than a party. Party combat is too tedious I think unless it has an automatic option where most of the party fight under computer control. It also means that you can focus on really developing your single character rather than having to share out experience and items between a party. I know a number of Ultima players like to play with a small party (or single character) as it makes play a lot simpler. There will still be the option to summon various helpers through magic or possibly get help from passing good characters.
In summary:

• Good design using a small number of tiles rather than hundreds of different tiles.
• Sparing use of secret and locked doors.
• A decent number of searchable objects (e.g. chests, baskets) should contain some objects!
• Night and day cycles and Line of Sight shouldn't limit the view too much.
• Single player rather than party.