Heart of the OHR Contest 2018

Yes! Those tall thin walkabout sprites look great! Really nice style.

Haven't posted anything here for a little while, so here's a look at a new map (and new maptiles) from a few scenes I just finished:

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

I love everything about that screenshot, especially the pirate captain (?) .

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vvight.wordpress.com

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I really wanted to share what I'm working on.
Over 2 years ago I uploaded a demo for Drydocks, A Merchant RPG, and I mostly abandoned the project for awhile because of college and life, but I wanted to finish it, or at least make it playable and release it for the HotOHR contest.

Let me show you some of its wonderful features!

There are 10 cities across the map, several biomes, and many small villages, some are landlocked, some you can only get to by sea with a ship. There are 6 different types of trade goods: food, cloth, timber, brick, ore, and finished goods. Each city produces 3 of those items, and you can sell the other 3 to that city at its market. Each producer like a farm or a mine only produces a certain amount per a certain amount of time but you are able to increase supply they produce by investing in certain industries.

You are able to buy from farmers or from mines out in the countryside outside of cities, and sometimes they will want different things, maybe gold, maybe some cloth, or another trade good. Sometimes they might even want you to do some work for them or go on a quest in return for their glorious wheat or fish.

The prices for each good in cities are displayed once you enter the city, and you can check them at any time using a map you can open in your menu. In this way, you can see which city will be good to trade in. Merchant ships and caravans travel in-between the many cities to sell their own goods, and each time a merchant trades there it changes the price goods can be sold there slightly, which is to say it in incredibly dynamic. But that is not to say that you can't influence the demand in these cities.

In between trading like this, there will be an entire world to explore! I want to put a heavy emphasis on going out and exploring the different regions and finding what secrets they have to offer! You might find treasures, quests, new companions, new ways to influence the economy, and new business ventures to leave your legacy as the greatest merchant who ever lived!

Please finish this one. This is the kind of game I wish we had more of.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

I remember Drydocks. Glad you stuck with it, because this looks incredible. The graphics remind me of early strategy games like Lords of the Realm, Master of Magic, Civ2.

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vvight.wordpress.com

Yay! That looks awesome. Are those ships using the npc pathfinding?

I am reminded favorably of "Uncharted Waters New Horizons"

Yes! That makes making NPCs look like they're just moving from place to place naturally so much easier. I loved Uncharted Waters, I am definitely borrowing a lot of ideas. I'm also trying to look at Catan and its expansions, The Guild series, and a few others for inspiration.



I'm glad that the work I put in redrawing everything and whatnot shows. Thanks!

Thank you guys for the feedback!

@dantedynamite:

Also looks like you opted for a different resolution and it works perfectly for this type of game! I'm excited for this too! I think the item counters on the left don't appear nice visually. I think perhaps you could make a custom textbox or sprite to place behind them so they appear better. Maybe something that looks like a torn scroll? Maybe all your textboxes should look like torn scrolls... just my opinion though.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

I agree, that would be pretty neat. I will have to redo the entire UI anyway, as I need to add a few more stats. I want to have just the right amount of information and not make it feel cluttered. I liked how in Breath of the Wild you could turn the UI off save the hearts and the ambient sounds would tell you the same information. I might be able to do something like that with sound effects.

Yeah maybe have a button or something that slides the UI off/on screen in an animated fashion. You might even consider making a code using "dissolve sprite (handle, dissolve type, total ticks, start tick, backwards, automatic)" as this will allow you to choose from a variety of built in animations to show and hide your icons. The available animation options are: random scatter, crossfade, diagonal vanish, sink into ground, squash, melt, vapourise, phase out, squeeze, shrink and flicker. Each of these animations can be performed forward/reversed to hide/show the icons respectively.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

Viridian Dreams update.
It took a few weeks, but I finally finished converting my code to make use of Slice-based unit data, instead of OHR Hero/Enemy data. Now that I don't have to distinguish between "Hero" and "Enemy" units with each and every script, I've trimmed a significant amount of unnecessary code from the game. One of the things stored in each "Unit" parent is their location on the 6x3 battle grid, which was very important in implementing the first Area of Effect attack. This GIF demonstrates the auto-highlighting of a 2x2 area based on both the individual target that's been selected and the direction the cursor is moving.

(sprites are currently a bit mis-aligned, I'll get to that later)

Positioning and movement adds so much to the depth of a combat system. Have you started programming combat AI for the enemies yet?

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vvight.wordpress.com

Yes, but it's extremely basic at the moment, and I don't plan to do anything especially complex with it this year unless I have some time left-over. The current logic is as follows:

1. Is there at least one valid unit in my attack range?
   
   • Yes: Select a target at random and attack, then end turn.
     
   • No: Proceed to step 2.
     
2. Is there any space I can move to that will allow me to attack a valid target?
   
   • Yes: Proceed to step 3.
     
   • No: This is possible if the enemy is using an extremely short-ranged weapon; with no useful place to move, retreat backwards by 1 space (or randomly move up or down) then end turn.
     
3. Can I move far enough to reach my desired destination?
   
   • Yes: Move to the first available space (chosen from left-to-right, top-to-bottom) from where an attack can be launched, then attack and end turn.
     
   • No: Move as close as possible to the desired space, then end turn.

Optional character Marina does not approve of slime hunts. Be careful when you recruit her into the party if you want her to stick around for the whole game! If she leaves prematurely after you've helped her out of her initial situation, it may be possible to get her back later on... but if she refuses to join you in the first place, no such luck.



Far to the east across the sea is the homeland of Goukenhawa... where most of the locals don't speak your language. You'll need to find someone who can serve as a translator if you want to get very far around here.

(That is Japanese hiragana by the way... but the textboxes using it are either gibberish or something silly that doesn't actually translate into the "translated" textbox at all. XD If you think about that one city in the original Final Fantasy that had people just say "lu-pa, lu-pa" until you found the item that translated for them, you're on the right track.)



Another random little new feature that I scripted up the other day... a screen that shows how far along a character's spell-learning progress is!

Since the scripts use a 100-point scale, displaying them as a percent was the obvious choice. There is some funkiness as a result (like a spell showing up at 105% when you had enough points to learn it a few battles ago, but haven't leveled up yet), but maybe I'll go back later and make anything above the 99% mark display as 99% as long as the spell hasn't actually been learned yet.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]