If you have supported CRPG Dev through Paypal or Patreon over the last few months then I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you and say how much I appreciate it. I’m also very grateful for the messages of support I receive via email or facebook. It’s a hugh boost to my motivation to know that you are interested in what I’m working on and prepared to get behind me to help my future development. Particularly when development is hitting a blockage or a particularly troublesome bug is standing in the way. Unfortunately the number of hours that go into my game development don’t always appear to justify / tally with the output, especially if it’s something behind the scenes which is essential but doesn’t necessarily translate to much gameplay on the screen. I think that’s just a normal part of game development. If you are considering supporting then thank you. The Paypal link is on the www.crpgdev.com homepage and you can sign up for Patreon over at www.patreon.com/crpgdev. Every donation really helps, however small. Also please keep the feedback and suggestions coming – I read them all and take them on board.
I’ve had a lot going on over the last few months which has meant I’ve had less free time than usual and been away from home more than I like but pleased to say things are settling down again. As I’ve mentioned recently the next focus of development in Alternate Reality X will be on adding some meat to the bones of Release 0.2 so that it feels more like the Alternate Reality we all know and love. This will come in the form of encounters, items and shops.
In addition to ARX I’ve been itching to start an all new CRPG which would be developed alongside it. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t see any side projects as taking time away from ARX development as they are more likely to take up time that I wouldn’t have spent on ARX anyway.It’s healthy to not be focused 100% on just the one project and get burnt out or start to dread working on it. This game isn’t what I envisaged Stone of the Citadel to be as it’s distinctly different in atmosphere and approach to that design. I would be using Unity 3D to develop the game though.
Game play will be significantly different to Alternate Reality featuring a party of adventurers and a high level wilderness map to explore. Across the wilderness there will be a number of towns, dungeons and other locations to explore. It will be heavily text and menu based with turn based combat. One area I’m considering for this game is procedurally generated content (PGC). This could be used for the towns, characters or items. As many of you may have read previously I’m a big fan of the original Elite space exploration and trading game. I spent many years with my Commodore 64 exploring the galaxies of Elite which used various seed values to consistently generate its 8 galaxies each with their 255 planets. My use of PGC will be very much dependent on the quality of my results though. Another example is the clothing you can buy in the AR:The City – there are effectively hundreds of different items that can be generated based on colour, fabric, quality etc.
My initial objective just now is to build a small but fun game in a relatively short space of time and leave the design open enough that it can be expanded as I see fit. Expect something to try out soon on this front.