WIP - 'The Young Prince' - Party based RPG

[Matty]

Greetings again,

I've started work on a new game inspired by my own work on the 'maze' game competition (which I may decide to not enter my entry in the end anyway - even though I'm happy with it)

This game is a party based rogue-like rpg sort of thing where you have a randomly generated team of 4 characters and can visit towns, dungeons and so on.

Towns have shops such as:

1. Shops for buying equipment
2. Libraries for buying magic spells
3. Taverns for hiring replacement team members
4. Temples for curing diseases, healing illnesses and so on.

Dungeons come in two flavours:

Quest dungeons and non quest dungeons.

Non Quest dungeons are 'at the level of the player' and reset after being cleared after a time.

Quest dungeons related to the main quest which is:

....rescue the 'Young Prince' from the evil Liche who has kidnapped him.

So the gameplay will be that the player moves around a map, fights monsters and clears out dungeons to level up, does stuff in towns to assist them, and reaches sufficient power/level to fight against the 3 boss monsters around the map.

here is a screenshot of development so far



http://www.mattiesgames.com/youngprince/

...and you can see the map as a whole here (no user interaction beyond the first click)

[Matty]

Town backdrop...buildings to be placed in foreground.

[Matty]

Buttons and modified button class to stop repeating code all the way through my process...



New button code is this:

Code: [Select]

function domode(mode)
{
var lrvalue = true;
//various actions in here
return lrvalue;
}

function dobutton(cat,mode,sx,sy,fx,fy,text,font,clr)
{
var lrvalue = false;
drawimage(images[cat].img,(sx+fx)/2,(sy+fy)/2,0,1,1,0,0,0,1,0);
drawtext((sx+fx)/2,(sy+fy)/2,text,clr,font,true);
if(mouse.x>=sx && mouse.x<=fx && mouse.y>=sy && mouse.y<=fy)
{
mouseover = true;
mouseimg = cat;
mouseimgx = (sx+fx)/2;
mouseimgy = (sy+fy)/2;
if(mouse.clicked!=mouse.oclicked && mouse.clicked==false)
{
mouse.oclicked=false;
lrvalue = domode(mode);
}
}
return lrvalue;
}


[Matty]

A number of interfaces created based off a standard template.....

[iWasAdam]

nice grey and good contrast with purple.
but...
beware of using "a button" for a title as it looks like a button. think clarity and consistency.

check out this sort of thing for ideas. I'm not saying the colors /look is any better or worse, but you at least know what is clickable . or google rpg game ui

[Derron]

@ IWasAdam
nice GUI template you've "promoted" here - albeit it does look "fixed resolution" (button design should be ninepatch based). But also this has issues - look at the "item shop window". Bottom right has the "money area" - and designwise you should never go above 999 Euro (else it wont fit into the circle). Prices for items suggest 200 - so I assume a 4 digit amount of money should be possible.
Also some decorative elements are a bit "blurry" (window decoration) compared to the grainy-look of the circular-buttons.
Aside of that nitpicking it looks pretty cool and I saved that for checking it out later on (eg. painting similar stuff in photoshop to "learn" something out of it).


@ Matty
Do not forget to _center_ your button texts in a "correct" manner. Your text alignment seems to take letters below "baseline" into account. So a "gqp" has 3 letters cutting the baseline. Nonetheless you should only center for text not doing this. means: measure the height of "ABCD" (not Q - as it cuts the baseline) and you get the height of a "standard text". Use this to align your text then (text.Y = button.y + 0.5*(buttonheight - ABCDheight)). For text blocks (eg quest texts) the line height to use of course should be based on a different text to measure - eg. "Qq'_" so it contains one of the "most often" very "at the top" character, and the ones cutting the baseline the most. If you would always align according to the really used texts, the line height would be varying - and no, using a "max(lineHeights)" approach would not work as it leads to little "jumping" if you once replace the text (eg other tooltip content).


bye
Ron

[iWasAdam]

@ Derron.
Yep. it's not mine, but just something that I could link to easily

It's definitely not perfect, but gives an 'idea' of possibly how to approach things.

I think with a little encouragement Matty can take a concept and make it into his own style

[Matty]

Getting a bit further...time to sleep.....

[Matty]

Attached my development notes as I go.

[Matty]

More notes this morning

[Matty]

Quests added (code for it)

Overland map works too

[Matty]

And to show I have not forgotten the 'maze' theme.......

[Qube]

Nice style you have going on there, I like it

[Matty]

Attached below....screenshot from phone with some enemies in one of the mazes.

[Steve Elliott]

Some nice ideas and isometric games can be cool...But have you ever thought of buying in some art or moving away from the graphics tablet?  IMO the graphics need a sharpness and especially detail.  Graphics tablets can give a painterly look, but I don't think that suits small sharp detailed sprites - which the game requires.