Messages

16

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: May 08, 2017, 10:13:50 am »

I'm curious why did you decide to use sqlite over Lua, XML or plain text for defining your items and spells and all? Isn't that more work for little to no gain? Do you just like SQL or sqlite DB Browser?

Good question. When I began implementing this game, I didn't know much about gamedev with C++ so I just sticked with what I knew. The custom config (ini) files were just a way for me to learn how to write a parser and as the config files stayed simple enough, I never changed to something more sophisticated. Using a simple text editor, they are also more readable than XML.

Regarding the database: I started using it because I needed a simple solution for the localisation. With a database, you never have to reload all strings when changing the language and you don't have to keep much in memory. It's really fast and convenient. Items and their properties are all nicely packed in one intelligent file that is kept open while playing. And just imagine the possibilities when balancing the item's stats! Want to know about all items that have a "health" attribute that is at least 5? Easy.

SELECT item.item_id FROM item INNER JOIN item_attribute ON item.item_id=item_attribute.item_id WHERE item_attribute.max_health >= 5;

I'd say it would require more code (and there's overhead) to do something like this when using Lua tables.

Also, there is Lua 5.3.4 and you have compiled the Windows exe with 5.3.1.

Oh, I've never updated the Lua version since I first got it. I guess it's time to do so, thank you

Also also - shameless plug - I happen to have a nice LuaConsole that happens to work with 5.3 too. It's very convenient.

That's great, I need one anyway for "cheating" (inserting gold and items into the player's inventory, checking and changing quest states etc.) These functions are already in the API but I got no ingame console - yet. So I'll check it out

17

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: May 07, 2017, 08:40:20 pm »

Hey all! We're back with a new pre-alpha release for Cendric. There's finally an end in sight - 70-80% of the content is done.

Changelog

• Finished chapter III
• Added jump sensibility (it finally feels like a true platformer, eh)
• Added cross-map teleport (see gif below)
• Item stats can now be compared with the equipped ones
• The text for dialogues is now a sf::Text and is better readable than the bitmap font
• 3 new bosses
• 5 new enemies
• New levels: Jack's Lighthouse, Rainy Forest, Cathedral of Gandria, Forgotten Passage, Crypt of Gandria, Bridge in the Swamp
• New map: Marshlands, The Red Pearl (Brothel)
• Several new quests and items
• New NPCs and dialogues
• Enemy AI upgrades
• API upgrade for npcs and enemies
• Several bugfixes

You can get the release here: https://github.com/tizian/Cendric2/releases/tag/v0.5.0 but as it is the second-last or last release before the final release, maybe just wait for that. But if you want to test it anyway, we'd be happy to hear your feedback

Cheers,
Ironbell

18

General discussions / Re: Resources and discussion about good game engine design and clean code

« on: February 20, 2017, 11:33:25 pm »

Great idea. I already know some of the articles/books you posted and will surely take a look at the others.

Creating an engine that is maintainable, efficient and also has high usability requires a lot of skill in my opinion and it's never wrong to learn from the experience of other devs. It's particularly interesting for devs working with SFML because SFML is no game engine but a library suitable to develop one.

The main insight I've gained developing an engine is that the engine's code should not grow when adding content to the game. Everything content-related should come from outside, using scripts/xml/databases/other files but no code. You don't want to recompile your game only because a line in a dialogue changed.

I've managed to apply this insight in my engine to dialogues, npcs, level/map files, special enemy behaviour, items, equipment, quests, music, translations, weather, triggers...
I didn't manage to do it for enemies, sound and special game objects (like a trampoline for example). I'm still working on it because having to create a c++ class for each enemy is not as flexible as it could be.

I'm currently also working with Unity and try to distinguish which parts of that engine are good and which are rather bad ideas.

Anyway, thank you for this thread. If I stumble upon a great article regarding engine design, I'll post it.

19

SFML projects / Re: Zeran's Folly

« on: January 19, 2017, 04:15:49 pm »

Voted  . Good luck with the greenlight campaign, love your game.

20

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: January 15, 2017, 10:17:49 pm »

Pre-Alpha Release 0.4.0



Hey y'all!
We're back with the promised demo release: 0.4.0

You can get the newest build and its source code here (Mac/Win/Linux)
https://github.com/tizian/Cendric2/releases/tag/v0.4.0

Chapter 2 of the game is now complete. If you want to test the game, you can load the prefab saved game "Chapter 2" that will let you directly start at the beginning of chapter 2. Your old saved games probably won't work anymore. If you're still want to use them, you can send them to me and I'll update them for the new version.

In chapter 2, you can join one of three mage guilds - which one will it be? Depending on your choice you'll learn other spells and get other gear.



There are also other changes like new enemies and levels, but you'll see
Lua is really awesome by the way - - -



Feedback for this chapter of the game would really be appreciated, we need your help to create a better game. But if you don't want to be spoiled for the final version, you'd better not touch it.

Cheers,
Team Cendric

21

SFML projects / Re: 2D RPG/ARPG Game

« on: December 11, 2016, 05:54:24 pm »

Cool, love the spells and the graphics! What will the story/theme be for the game? And where will the RPG part come into play? ARPG like Dark Souls with only a few decisions?

22

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: December 08, 2016, 03:38:05 am »

Progress Update for Cendric

Hey all! Long time no update here in the forum, as I was too busy adding stuff to the game. It finally seems like it's getting somewhere. The main problem with the game is that it's getting way bigger that we had originally assumed. The initial plan was to have 5 maps with 3-5 levels each, but the (single) map I'm currently working on has already 6 submaps and 4 levels, and there are still at least 5 more to come. But even if it's a hella work, I'm not going to give it up - it's just sometimes hard to cope with the scale of an RPG as a nearly-one-man project.

Also this is kinda shocking

(we've expected to have ~100 items in the final game, and now it's about 40% finished)

But it's also a lot of fun doing everything - drawing npc portraits, npc spritesheets, enemies, tiles - writing the story, dialogues, quests, routine scripts and code - designing maps, levels, puzzles, bossfights - creating sound effects and lately even music (I'm not good at it, sadly).



Change Log (heavily summarized)

• New quest lines in Gandria (prequests for necromancers, clerics and thieves)
• The prison in Gandria and the Gandria map are finished
• New levels: Mines of Gandria, Syrah's Basement, Sewers of Gandria, Secret Library, Jonathan's Laboratory
• New maps: Basilisk Inn, Sewers of Gandria, Jonathan's House, Syrah's House, The Barracks, Prison of Gandria
• New enemies: Bat, Ooze
• New skins for existing enemies, spells and tiles
• New dynamic tiles: Trampoline, Disappearing, Doors
• New sound effects and music, music is now fading
• Interface improvements, more user options
• Buying items can be restricted with reputation
• Added an alchemist who will brew potions for the player
• Updated SFML version to 2.4.1

The game's version is now 0.3.2 and is going to be 0.4.0 as soon as the player can join all three guilds, I'm currently working on the prequests to go there. If you're brave enough, you can play the newest release:
https://github.com/tizian/Cendric2/releases/tag/v0.3.2 (currently only windows, but we'd build for mac and linux too, if requested)

Playing the whole content takes now a bit more than 3 hours. That's a lot of time, and I encourage you to wait with playing Cendric until the next major release (0.4.0) or even the beta or final release. To still see how the game looks like now, take a look at the freshest screenshots I've made:
http://cendric.ch/screenshots



Comments, critics, feedback and bugreports are as always really appreciated.

23

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: October 10, 2016, 01:43:25 am »

Which version did you play and on which OS? The 0.3.0 stores the save files to <user>/Documents/My Games/Cendric/saves on Windows or ~/Library/Application Support/Cendric/saves on Mac. The 0.3.1 version tries to store the saves where the game folder is.

24

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: September 10, 2016, 03:48:28 pm »

Thanks for the nice words CleverBoy 

Hey all, we're back with another
Progress Update
for Cendric!

First of all, I'm proud to announce that our team has grown. While there are still only two people working on code, sprites and content, we've found

• a composer who writes beautiful and amazing tracks for the game, check her out on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/susi-aubert
• a translator who will translate the game to Spanish. Like, why not a fourth language.

Regarding the game's progress, we've been working on a new mechanic. As we have a thief guild, we wanted to have some sort of stealing in the game, which turned out to be rather challenging in a platformer game.
To solve this problem, we've added so-called "observer spells" that look like eyes and float around in houses where thieves are unwanted. If the player tries to steal something while such an eye is watching, he will be sent to jail. The eyes have a predefined path and the thief has to steal the items without being seen.


An observer spell

The whole jail-thing then opened a wholly new challenge. How to get out? Will there be different paths? Is it beneficial to get caught?



Well, it surely isn't a nice place. The player will have to work in the mines until he has enough gold to redeem himself. If he's lucky, he  can get more gold by gambling with a fellow prisoner. And yes, there are other possibilities to get out

25

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: August 24, 2016, 07:29:45 pm »

Hi CleverBoy, thanks for checking it out!

The error you experience is due to the fact that there are currently two projects packed into that repository. One of them is the game itself (Cendric) and the other one is the dialogue tool I mentioned above. The dialogue tool is only built for Windows (it also runs on Mac, but not Linux), because it is a dev-tool and we don't really use Linux to develop the game.

You can just switch it off by changing the cmake option in the CMakeLists.txt to

option(CENDRIC_BUILD_DIALOGUE_TOOL "Build Dialogue Tool?"OFF)

It won't influence the compilation of the main project. I hope this helps. 

26

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: August 06, 2016, 09:39:32 pm »

Short Progress Update

For the last few days, we were working on a tool to make the process of creating dialogues easier. To accomplish this, we've  used ImGui and the nice ImGui-SFML binding from Elias (great work btw!  )

Here's a screenshot of the tool in action:


The tool is not yet very polished, but creating dialogues already takes less time. It's funny to write c++ code that writes (SQL scripts and) a Lua script that, again, links to c++ code. May seem redundant but in the end, it was worth it

Meanwhile, the progress of the content got delayed a bit because of the tool, but we're still on it!


Cheers

27

SFML projects / Re: Racod's lair - a coop dungeon crawler [Demo Release]

« on: July 29, 2016, 12:30:31 am »

Thanks for the explanations

Music: Yes, I mean you can  hear where the track ends and restarts.
Window Resizing: It just shouldn't be that a user with a bigger screen (resolution) sees more of the level. Playing the game in a small window shows significantly less of the dungeon. Not fair
Fullscreen: We've also had to fight with the SFML fullscreen bug on Linux (and Mac). I'll drop you a PM.
Ramp: a "slope". It was just unexpected, regarding the wall shape.

Anyway, I'll keep playing and exploring then looking forward to see more of that great game.

28

SFML projects / Re: Racod's lair - a coop dungeon crawler [Demo Release]

« on: July 28, 2016, 11:40:57 pm »

Nice! I've been waiting for this

Tested on Windows 10, x64

First impression
Dark, creepy, love it! Especially the music. You wrote you used certain samples, so I guess you've created it yourself? It fits pretty well, menu and ambience. The only thing I'd change is to make it loop smoothly.

Well, then I got a list of issues that I noticed while playing it. I know it's a pre-alpha and there are lot of things that you'll change, but I'll list it anyway.

Issues

• Fullscreen The game's options say "fullscreen" but it isn't. It actually creates a borderless window with the given resolution. SFML supports fullscreen and if you want to stay with a borderless window, you can read out the resolution of the users screen and use that if fullscreen is checked
• Window Resizing ... doesn't work as expected. The canvas is fixed. If you want it like that, don't give the user the option to resize the window.
• Close Button If you are inside a dungeon and press the close button, the game switches into the menu (pause). I'd expect it to close.
• I'm dead, help me! As I'm a noob in roguelikes, I died very very soon. Is there anything I can do  to revive my char? If there is, make it clearer. Otherwise, show an option on the screen to return to the main menu.
• Saves There is an option "autosave" in the settings.  Is there also an option to save manually?
• Collision Some corners (and barrels?) behave like a ramp, but they're drawn like a square. If you are able to have ramp collision, why not draw it as one?
  Also, this strange behaviour:
  
  It shakes when I try to walk against a corner. It doesn't when I walk against straight walls.
• Mana I played as a rogue. What is the mana for? (Give us a special attack ) Shooting arrows doesn't need any mana and I can just spam them by staying on space. There is no penalty for this behaviour. Maybe change it to attack only when space is just pressed and not repeat if it's always pressed.
• Chests How can I open a chest? Interact doesn't work. Isn't it implemented yet?
• Levelup I know we programmers start counting at 0. But levels usually start at 1
• Interface It isn't directly clear what the several bars are in the interface. Maybe use xp text for xp? Mana and health are pretty clear on the other side - if you're used to gaming. Also, showing the difficulty in the top right corner seems a bit weird (is this the debug mode.. or is this the real life) - it's no information a user needs to see constantly.
• Shifting Objects Nice to have. But what for?

Well, overall it makes a pretty good impression. I didn't experience any crashes so far, but I got stuck in the first dungeon. I'm lost. It's dark and creepy. I don't find any more enemies and I don't know how to return to the lobby / change the dungeon. Where is that RACOD, he needs to die!

Final question: Are the levels handmade or randomly generated? I know that a lot of roguelikes have randomly generated dungeons, which saves the developer time but also introduces limitations, of course.

Cheers,
a fellow "bell".

29

SFML projects / Re: Cendric: An RPG Platformer

« on: July 11, 2016, 02:49:07 am »

Wow, thank you again for your very detailed and useful feedback, we really appreciate what you do for this game. We have already implemented/fixed half of the issues you mentioned:

Fixed

• The AI seems to like living on the edge: http://i.imgur.com/sjutwQM.png Adjusted bounding box
  
• When you have the inventory open you can still attack even when you click on the non-interactive UI elements. Maybe attacking while clicking on the game space is fine, but IMHO click "through" the UI feels a bit This is no longer possible
  
• The information that you can't equip items inside a level only shows when you try to unequip something and not when you try to equip it. The information will show now
  
• Why exactly are there two check points? Seems a bit odd: http://i.imgur.com/qzULIvQ.png Fixed
  
• Bridge collision path seems a bit off. Like in the picture I'm standing perfectly on the bridge, but I can't move over it in that position: http://i.imgur.com/VsqHHQR.png Fixed
  
• Would be great if the save games were sorted after the date with (newest at the top) Done. Also: Autosave and an option to continue with newest game when it is restarted.
  

Regarding the jaggy cutscenes, I don't really see what we could change here. The way it's implemented is as follows

cutsceneImage.setPosition(oldPosition + velocity * frameTime.asSeconds());

Where the cutsceneImage is of type

sf::Sprite

Do you mean we should round this float vector to an int vector first and then set the position?

Maybe I clicked too fast, but for me it wasn't clear that I needed to bring multiple and different meat types to the wolf-man. Also not sure why it failed.

The quest failed because you attacked the NPC. Quests can be viewed in detail in the quest log (open with J, for Journal). I think we should add a hint for the quest log. Expecting the user to try out every key or to take a look at the keybindings is maybe not the best thing to do.

Why can Visps sometimes shoot through platforms and sometimes they can't?

They always can (their spell ignores colliders), but maybe they just choose not to.  No, but seriously, did a collider stop their spells?

And regarding the boss, we'll work on it. It's a fine line between challenging and frustrating. Maybe the player could get some hints or information about the bossfight from other things, for example, signs or documents.

"Thanks for playing!"

Yeah, thank you . We are going to check/think about your other points as soon as possible. And keep you posted.

30

SFML projects / Re: Screenshot Thread

« on: July 11, 2016, 01:58:37 am »

I'm working on a new level for Cendric and thought I could share it here 
Who can spot the important books in the library? (view original size)