Also, with the addition of the isometric tile transformer utilities, I've been able to easily experiment with new tile configurations and arena layouts, such as the one pictured below.
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| I call this one "Pounded". |
Accomplishments:
- Based on a suggestion from the Indie Video Game Developers Association, I lightened the color of the data font by 50% to make it more readable against the dark background.
- Added a few more random gameplay tips to the Loading screen.
- Designed a good HUD layout. Will create a high-fidelity prototype of it soon to see if it's really as good as I think it is.
- Decided to change a rule regarding character training: Now when a character is retired, its equipment, character type, and level of training determine how many coins are returned to your team's budget. So you still can't sell training the way you can sell equipment, but you are compensated for it when you retire the character. This change has been implemented and tested.
- The clients now transition into the game state automatically when the server does. The game clients wait for a specific message to arrive from the server. When it does, they begin loading the game screen.
- I enhanced MHFramework's sound player so now you can give it an array of sound IDs and it will play them one at a time in sequence. This functionality is required for the narration voice-overs.
- Recent changes to the game application have made the standalone server app mostly obsolete. Not entirely obsolete, but I have stopped developing that application for now. I may return to it later when we begin heavier testing.
- Added an Options screen with buttons to toggle sound and music. The sound toggle works, but music has not yet been implemented.
- Began a discussion on the logistics to make it possible and convenient to work with voice-over artist Karina Martin-Moore. There's more to come on this issue.
- Created a utility for splitting a texture into floor tiles and saving them to PNG files.
- Created another utility for converting a texture into right facing, left facing, and corner wall tiles, and saving them to PNG files.
Known Issues:
- Intermittently, the captain will not show up on the team roster the first time the team screen is opened. It works almost all the time, but not always. This issue is caused by network latency, and all attempts to correct it have failed so far.
- However, there is an easy workaround -- opening the Help dialog (or any other screen) and closing it again triggers a full refresh of the screen.
- Chat messages sometimes get lost when a user in multiplayer mode switches between the lobby and the team/character configuration screens.
- When a player drops off, their team data is orphaned. The server needs to recognize this and place the orphaned team under AI control.
- Once all the human players have all connected, the server needs to create the AI players. Those players need to be able to configure their teams and signal ready to the server.
Next Steps:
High Priority:
- Create the AI for the lobby state.
- Needs to be able to create a team, spend coins at random, and then signal ready to the game server.
- Figure out the best way to organize the game maps and tile images.
- I am leaning toward the creation of a directory that contains everything involved in game world creation, including the map data files and the tile images. Experimentation is necessary.
Medium Priority:
- Finish voice scripts for narration.
- Investigate palette manipulation so we can color the team uniforms.
- Finish asset lists for current set of level designs.
- Evaluate Sarah's level designs, too.
- Formalize the flowchart for the AI logic. (Due January 3, 2011.)
Low Priority:
- Finish the team creation screen.
- Put in the floor image for the captains to stand on.
- Replace plain gray buttons with captain character images.
- Create team color oval beneath each character's feet.
- Create command line interface for server so it can be launched and configured remotely.
- Finish the level design guide.
- Design the TLC web site.
- Get coin display graphics from the art team.
- Add it to the team configuration screen.the character configuration screen and the recruitment screen.
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