Official "A Whiff of Steam", the LövelyRPG project topic

[Robin]

Bart, Robin - what do you think, we should attack those before or after code cleanup?

I'd say after, or possibly during. Bugs in clean code are more easily squashed.

[Ryne]

Seem's interesting.

I'd like to do some art if it's needed, let me know!

[partymetroid]

What's the current design for the combat system?

[giniu]

Seem's interesting.

I'd like to do some art if it's needed, let me know!

Well, of course, that would be great! For now, we lack art even for current prototype, it means some tiles, bushes (up to knees approx) and road sign - and of course - some character we would move around map (without animation for now), mr. Blocky is only temporary solution So for now, it would be cool if you could redraw what we have (tiles and esp character ) - check at github:resources/images what we have, what are sizes of images, etc.

What's the current design for the combat system?

As someone who wants to get promoted to dev trough story contest, you out of all should know best, that all that is known about fights is what is already in focus/docs:

• they are on separate detailed tactical view
• will use timed turn based system and action points, that can be spend on movement or other actions
• they will be optional as non key element of gameplay

and because they are optional and not that important - more details isn't designed yet - but will be eventually, around prototype 4 probably, who knows. Remember, that the game will be balanced and you will be able to play trough all or most it without fighting (duh, that's what optional means) - for example see sentence: "there will be more skills than those related to fights, there will be also plenty of practical skills, and what’s new, social skills. All built to same level of complexity." So don't concentrate on this - there are more important things to do for now, like coding working prototype, or story (story is more important because it was decided so, when we voted for key gameplay - 1) exploration, 2) story, 3) NPC interactions - elements so we stick to it) - and don't forget that story in games means also (and especially when we have NPC interactions that important!) all dialogues, descriptions, logs, notebooks, notes, letters, books and all stuff that is inside game and is read/said to character/player, character/player can read or character say/select it - because that's what player see and is in contact with, so there is plenty to do with it

[partymetroid]

lotsa text

Ah, of course. Sorry, totally forgot about all that. ^_^;

I'm still working on making this the best storyline it can be.

[Ryne]

I'm looking at the perspective of the graphics, it seems really weird. Is there any reason for that perspective? Why not isometric or orthographic?

[giniu]

I'm looking at the perspective of the graphics, it seems really weird. Is there any reason for that perspective? Why not isometric or orthographic?

Well, it's trimetric projection, so it is a kind of orthographic projection! If you want to catch the projection, take a look at whiff.wings file. It's empty scene for Wings3D where I saved the view with correctly rotated camera (see downloads at github). You can co things there, then from saved views select one named "Whiff" and switch to orthographic and you have the view used in Whiff (though it's not pixel perfect, it's gives good hint how things look - at least it's not true for tiles because we need to take extra care for tiles to join on edges). That's how the current character was made .

Anyway about projection if you want to make such view in other 3D app - we first rotate around Y axis by pi/6, then around X axis by atan(0.5) and finally project to screen plane (Z=0) - so as you see it's orthographic. And it's one of few possible orthographic views where you don't have approximations on X and Z axes, there is only 3.28% approx on Y axis (height), so it is easy to get integer values. If we take 1x1x1 meter cube, the projection matrix looks like:

Code: Select all

| x'|   | 40          0  20   0| |x|
| y'| = |-10 -38.729...  20   0|*|y|
| 0 |   |  0          0   0   0| |z|
| 1 |   |  0          0   0   1| |1|

and we approximate it to be

Code: Select all

| x'|   | 40   0  20   0| |x|
| y'| = |-10 -40  20   0|*|y|
| 0 |   |  0   0   0   0| |z|
| 1 |   |  0   0   0   1| |1|

so with very small approximation (less than 3.28%! - and because it's in height not width or depth, it won't even be noticed - if it was in width or depth, you could see the difference when character is rotating) we obtain integer pixel values when moving from tile to tile. (x,y,z) is in world space of course, and (x',y') is in screen space.

About why trimetric not dimetric/isometric - well, we showed samples to community and there was voting done for trimetric, so we picked it - it was also picked by other games like Fallout or SimCity 4 to name a few (see wikipedia page I linked at beginning of post for references) so it cannot be that bad

[Ryne]

I see, It just looks awkward when you can see the edges of the map, like theres something wrong with my eyes. I'm sure when the map is bigger it would look fine

Ill see what I can do for a character, and some tiles.

Edit: I made some.



These tiles are only for use on this project, in case some random floats upon this post by searching "tiles" in google.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7905642/Whiff%2 ... /Tiles.rar

I have ideas for A LOT more tiles. These are really standard tiles for "outland" areas, not really towns, cities etc.

[partymetroid]

stuffs

Looks great, Ryne! Good luck with the rest!

[Ryne]

stuffs

Looks great, Ryne! Good luck with the rest!

Thanks!, I'm going to try and work on a basic character for the dev's to play with as well.

Feel free to ask something specific if it's needed.