Future CRPG Developments

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Thanks to those of you who were kind enough to send me documents, resources and even your own 3D models for Unity 3D. I’ve not had the chance to go through everything yet but they look really useful and have given me a real flavour of the possibilities of development in Unity. I’ve decided that I will be moving my development projects over to Unity 3D from now on; the benefits far outweigh the negatives in my opinion.

I believe I must have spent hundreds of hours working on my Alternate Reality port development and if I’m honest it’s not as complete as I expected it to be. If I’d known when I first started looking into it and poking around with the maps that I’d still be working on it in 2013 I think I would have run a mile! It’s become very hard work at times as the project has reached a significant size. I’ve learnt a lot from working on the project and I’m still learning all the time as well as improving my skills but a lot of my time has been spent “recreating the wheel”. At this point with some significant code changes needed in ARX to properly handle objects I don’t feel it would make sense for me to continue using my current home brew system.



Trying out a free model in a Unity scene

Unity 3D has the advantage that it’s an all in one development system so I can do a search on creating a mini map, an inventory system or rain effects for example and I will get dozens of links and videos suggesting how to produce the effects or functionality I’m looking for. It’s all provided in one, nice integrated package. You only need to do a quick search on YouTube to see there are hundreds of tutorials and examples of Unity and how to use it. Compare that to my current development where I need to read up on issues relating to C++, OpenGL (for 3D), SFML for my media library and Visual Studio or Code Blocks for my development environment. That’s a long list! SFMLs use of OpenGL has also nagged me a bit as many Windows players don’t have the correct OpenGL drivers installed. I’ll be doing some tests on older kit with Unity to see how well it runs.

Once you have a working Unity game you can publish it to Mac, Linux, Web and mobile platforms relatively easily (ok I’ll need to buy into optional upgrades of Unity for Apple IOS and Android versions but it’s there ready to tap into when the time is right).



Web Player, PC or Mac?

Now I’m not naive enough to believe that Unity is going to write my game for me but I do think it is likely to make me more productive and so far I’m having fun using it which is why I started doing this in the first place. I’ll still have to write lots of code (in javascipt, C# or Boo) but there are thousands of examples online and it all appears to be well documented and a lot of the core game functionality can be handled through game objects or properties. So far it’s been a pleasant environment to work in. So far I’ve had an on screen graphical inventory up, a menu system and and my own mountains and wilderness to explore created in very little time. I think once I’ve got a better grip on the basics I believe I’ll be able to make much more rapid progress.

When it comes to creating additional scenarios or environments the other problem we’re already running into is limited art assets. Unity has an extensive asset store with a mixture of free and payable assets, many of a high quality. It also supports a variety of 3D model types. It took me minutes to find and download some reasonable free models and import them into my Unity scene.

From the messages I’ve received most people seem to think that Unity is a good move forward. I think it will provide some security for the project as Unity seems to have a large community and in the event that I stopped working on it, others would be able to pick it up and continue work. A more polished engine and game are likely to get more players interested in the game who will in turn improve the chances of the complete series being developed.

Hopefully you’ll agree that this is the right way forward and still feel supportive towards the project. One chapter may be coming to a close but I think an exciting one is about to begin.

Exploring Unity 3D

Acrin1 2 Comments

I’ve just got home after being away for over a week so I’ve not done any further work on Alternate Reality X during that time. However I spent a few hours today familiaring myself with the basics of the free version of the Unity game development system and I’m pleased with the results so far. On first use it seems like a very powerful system to use.

Exploring the Wilderness in my first Unity 3D effort?

I’ve tried out Unity before but have never really sat down with a clear objective in mind and tried to learn some of the basics. I’m reading Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity by Sue Blackman and so far I’ve managed to put together a few scenes and have my character move around in a full 3D environment. After creating some simple terrain using the built in tools and then adding mountains, hills and clearings I was able to add my character and walk around the landscape I’d just created. I have to say I enjoyed the moment where I climbed to the top of a clearing and a series of mountains loomed into my view.

My map from above and players view in the game window

I also played around a bit with creating the user interface and found some nice free assets on the Unity web site for creating menus, text and buttons. I’ve also been researching how Unity would work for more traditional 3D Dungeons and walls such as those in but without the limitations or visual restrictions that my current system has. From my research and the contents of the book it seems that people have used Unity to create all sorts of games from role playing games, first person shooters to 2D point and click adventures.

The next thing I’m keen to try is converting one of the City or Dungeon maps into a Unity scene with a few nice extras which I would have struggled to implement. I’m excited by the possibilities but I won’t rush into making any decisions just yet.

Let me know what you think.

Alternate Reality X – Release 0.61 Now Available!

Acrin1 3 Comments
“New” Dungeon gate graphics

Release 0.61 of Alternate Reality X is now available from the downloads page at www.crpgdev.com.

I’ve switched from Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 to Code Blocks for development and also upgraded to a newer version of the SFML library. These changes uncovered some bugs which had previously gone unnoticed but might have caused players to experience crashes. Compile times on Visual Studio 2010 were much slower for me than the 2008 version and I liked the option with CodeBlocks of using the same development environment and project files to compile native versions of ARX on Linux and Mac.

This release also has a few visual changes with the addition of some new encounter artwork from Ted to replace my placeholder images. I think they work really well and can’t wait to see what Ted comes up with for some of the other characters. I’ve also added some images you might not have seen before from the 16bit Amiga version of the City and the unreleased Amiga version of the Dungeon. Hope you like them.

The main changes in release 0.61 are as follows:

  • Switched to CodeBlocks and MinGW for development
  • No longer requires Visual Studio C++ runtime installed
  • Switched to latest version of SFML 2.0 (downloaded 1st March 2013)
  • Improved compatibility for players using Intel graphics cards
  • Fixed Bug #019: Offer menu won’t page back when offering to Pauper
  • Added check for arx.ini configuration file when the game is run
  • Flags for Trolls, Goblins and Oracle now correctly included in save games
  • Added “Loading…” message when loading image resources
  • Added 3 new encounter images from Ted for use with alternate wall textures
  • Removed the Might & Magic 6 encounter placeholder images
  • Added Amiga City & Dungeon interiors for use with alternate wall textures

With the major changes behind the scenes in this release there are likely to be some new bugs I’ve not seen yet but hopefully you enjoy the release.

Thanks for your continued support,
Acrin1

Alternate Reality X – Release 0.61 Status

Acrin1 1 Comment

Release 0.61 of ARX will be released as soon as I fix a bug when entering guilds
which leads to a crash.

The main change in this release is that at
least on a temporary basis I’ve switched to the CodeBlocks development
environment using the MinGW C++ compiler. There were 2 main reasons for this –
firstly compile times increased significantly with Visual Studio 2010 from a few
seconds for a change to about a minute which was really making small changes
very tedious, and secondly CodeBlocks is available on Linux and Mac making
native versions of ARX much easier to produce as the same environment can be
used across all platforms. The switch of environment has raised a few new compile
bugs though which I need to deal with before releasing 0.61.

From a
player perspective the other major change I’ve made is that I’ve almost 100%
dropped the use of “RenderTextures” in the SFML media library. My use of these
created lots of problems for players with Intel onboard graphics and a few
issues on newer machines I had access to. My code was also messier and harder to
debug when I had these in. My new 0.61 version works much better on old harder
which I’m much happier with. I don’t see why a player shouldn’t be able to use
an old laptop to play something based on a 25 year old game series just because
it has intel graphics.

I’ve also added code to better handle monster
vulnerabilities and invulnerabilies to various damage types. Bit more work to do
there though to make it complete.

There are a few new encounter images
which I’ve been sent as well which are included for players playing ARX in a
full window. These will hopefully gradually replace the handful of placeholder
MM6 images I’ve used currently.

Hopefully I can have this release wrapped
up fairly soon.

All the best,
Acrin1

Alternate Reality X – Release 0.60 Now Available!

Acrin1 3 Comments

Release 0.60 of Alternate Reality X is now available for download from:

https://www.crpgdev.com/downloads.html

It contains the following additions and bug fixes:

  • Implemented City and Dungeon encounters as a single set using same encounter object format
  • Combined encounter images into single set using Dungeon images for majority
  • Added all Dungeon fixed encounter specials (32 in total)
  • Added weapons for encounter specials above
  • Added a Dungeon Quest
  • Fixed Bug #002: Delay of a couple of seconds when entering some shops / modules due to music loading
  • Fixed Bug #003: Mini map edges don’t refresh properly
  • Fixed Bug #004: City map wrapped at some points instead of leading to Wilderness
  • Fixed Bug #013: Lyric strip appears over shop / module image at 800 x 600 resolution
  • Fixed Bug #014: Daggers only type of weapon dropped after winning an encounter
  • Fixed Bug #001: Goblins and Trolls don’t recognise that you’re carrying rival ring half
  • Fixed Bug #016: Oracle offerings did not include weapons etc
  • Fixed Bug #017: Pauper could not accept all positive items and never rejected offers
  • Fixed Bug #018: City encounters didn’t drop weapons

Hope you enjoy it. There should be another release out soon in February.

Thanks for your continued support and feedback- greatly appreciated.

All the best,
Acrin1

Release 0.60 – Coming Soon

Acrin1 4 Comments

Release 0.60 of Alternate Reality X is coming along very nicely with a particularly productive late night / early hours to bed development session last night. So far I’ve completed the following for release 0.60:

  • Implemented City and Dungeon encounters as a single set using same encounter object format
  • Combined encounter images into single set using Dungeon images for majority
  • Added all Dungeon fixed encounter specials (32 in total)
  • Added all weapons for encounter specials above
  • Added one of the Dungeon quests
  • Fixed Bug #002: Delay of a couple of seconds when entering some shops / modules due to music loading 
  • Fixed Bug #003: Mini map edges weren’t refreshing properly
  • Fixed Bug #013: Lyric strip appearedover shop / module image at 800 x 600 resolution
  • Fixed Bug #014: Daggers were only type of weapon dropped after winning an encounter
  • Fixed Bug #001: Goblins and Trolls didn’t recognise that you’re carrying rival ring half

There are a few more things I’d like to add before release but I would expect to have this available for download by the end of the week.

Encounters

Acrin1 9 Comments

I’ve now merged all the City and Dungeon encounters into a single set as previously they were treated as two separate sets of encounter types meaning that a thief in the City did not behave the same as one from the Dungeon. This led to some confusion for players and made some of the code more complicated than it needed to be. I think I’ve been holding back to some degree but I think I’ve realised that if I’m really going to make Alternate Reality X a true, single game or environment then I need to make some aspects of the game more consistent across the different scenarios. This includes content such as encounters, weapons, items and the game mechanics. I have decided to keep the individual graphics for each scenario just now but even that may change over time.

I’ve also added all the fixed encounters for all levels of the Dungeon. There are around 32 in total. Now I’m modifying all the encounters covered by these fixed encounters so they have the correct weapons (e.g. Ebon Blade for an Undead Knight). I then need to add some more of those treasures that they are protecting!

I should have another release out in the next few days.

Keep on supporting the project in whatever way you can as this keeps my spirits up and let’s me know there is still interest in the project.

Thanks,
Acrin1 

Alternate Reality X: Release 0.59

Acrin1 7 Comments

Release 0.59 is now available from the downloads page at www.crpgdev.com. This release fixes and adds a number of features around experience awards, levelling up and level up bonuses for the seven primary stats. There’s more work to be done to make experience points accurate across the whole of ARX and the City.

Changes included in this release are:

  • Removed levelling up cap (previously level 5)
  • Added stat bonuses when levelling up
  • Added Strength, Intelligence and Charisma bonuses for repeated successful actions
  • Dungeon encounters now award correct experience points when you defeat them
  • Dungeon encounters now award correct experience points for 50% of hits during combat
  • Removed “spinner” special from Dungeon level 1 map (location 40,15) as it left player trapped
  • Added Knight to Dungeon encounters & related alignment adjustments
  • Added Pauper introduction message
  • Added text for quests to Oracle module
If you like what I’m doing with ARX then please consider dropping me a note, spreading the word online or making a small Paypal donation towards my time. 
All the best,
Acrin1