It's time for another Maerchen Progress Report. This week has been a busy one at school, so I haven't accomplished that much, in comparison to an average week. Nontheless, here is the meager changelog:
- Added enemies: They don't have AI yet, but their animations are smooth and fluid.
- Remade tree sprites: They now look far more artistic, with handdrawn shading, and a more realistic shape.
- Added shadows to trees: Adds a level of depth and immersion.
- Re-wrote render sequence: Now allows for unlimited sprite arrays.
Of course, this news wouldn't be worthy of modDB if it didn't include a screenshot, so here's a little shot of the new trees, as well as the first enemy: the Arch Vampire Mage.
Expect fully functional enemy AI next week, and maybe even a spell system. I hope to release the next version of the SDK by Christmas, which would include my prototype modular scripting language ("NFX_C"), but I won't make any promises yet. Going into 2005, I'll code mp3-playback capability, so there will finally be some in-game music. Additionally, I'll be working on adding demo quests, and even a quest-creation system. This is where I'll really start needing help from a programmer knowledgable in Visual Basic. Please contact me if you've got skills!
Now that I have a stable platform engine upon which to work on, I'm looking into the possibility of incorporating netcode into Maerchen, and a 2D MMORPG "Shangri-La", that is currently in the planning stage. Stay tuned!
All that in visual basic?
O_o
looking good!
Nope, that is in C++, under the DX9 SDK. Only reason that I mentioned VB, is that I want the quest/sprite/level editors to have a nice interface. They'll just generate some scripts, that the game itself will recognize.
I skipped VB in my programming curriculum at school, so that I could get into game programming faster. At the time, it seemed like a wise decision, but now I wish that I had spent some time learning it, so that I could make a sleek editor, without all the hassle of MFC.
ahh, i gotcha.
Yuo could try to do a cube style ingame editor, but that could be to complex.
That would be pretty cool, and actually not that difficult. That is, as long as it would only be used for object placement. If I were to incorporate the quest editor into the game itself, that could get pretty complex. That doesn't mean that I won't try though!
Good idea dude. :D
I also had an idea of how I could actually incorporate it into the gameplay: You can conjure items, and place them around the map.. I don't know if that would work very well, but I'll think about it a bit. I mean, it would be pretty cool if you need to cross a deep lava crevice, and do so by conjuring a bridge.
grovvy