Warlock - an update on my competition entry 'The Young Prince'

[Matty]

Good points Derron, thank you.  I'll note them down.

[Matty]

Thanks Derron, made a start on the ui appearance, a few changes...

Attached.

[Derron]

UI will contain a lot of _distinguishable_ icons - so attack, defence, intelligence and steps can be iconified with sword/fist, shield, brain/head, footsteps, ... etc.

UI panels in fantasy games tend to have some "ornaments" or other decals making it look "important" and "theme specific" compared to some generic windows.
You do not need to have final GFX for that for now - you just need to be "aware" of it, have it on your "todo". Also you can prepare stuff in your code so you at the end just need to place the gfx and set some configuration stuff.

Nonetheless: do what you want, you should enjoy creating your game rather listening to some dude who does not speak for the others lurking around and awaiting to play your competition entry.


bye
Ron

[Matty]

Thanks.  That's helpful.

[Matty]

More updates...

Font
Character and town names are generated from syllables not a plain list.
Decals on stuff.
Little things like a border around the progress bar when saving the game.
Bug fixes (final victory was checked wrongly)
Etc etc

[Derron]

They might not be the prettiest or most perfect suiting - but do you by yourself judge it as "better than before" already? I think so.

Regarding decals/ornaments ... make sure that boxes you "cover" have an inner "padding" or "text boundary" so that text does not get covered behind it (like "character" in the attachment of your last post). 1-2 pixels overlap is OK ... especially if the decal is drawn as it if grew above everything. If the text is always readable it could look even better to have a veeeery slight overlap/text-covering.


bye
Ron

[Matty]

Thanks, yes I struggle with some forms of art, simply don't find that kind of neat graphic work that is less like painting and drawing and more like design.

Oh...I have created a learning AI for a bit of fun to test out the demo mode.

I've given the AI a set character, a set dungeon and a goal of 'highest experience points obtained in 90 seconds', while I have breakfast it is playing the game...and hopefully improving.

Should it reach a certain ability I'll use it as the 'demo mode' for when the user sits at the title screen for too long.

[Steve Elliott]

Coming along nicely.

[Matty]

Thanks Steve,

I've had breakfast and allowed the learning AI to go through about 100 generations....it actually plays for the 90 seconds during that time - although I sped the frame rate up to 300fps from 60fps to allow the 90 seconds to be played 'faster'.....

Here it is after 100 generations on a simple level.....

[Matty]

A short video of the game so far....

[Kryzon]

Hi Matty. Your art practice is paying off. I think your graphics are consistent and have a unique style.
I was going to comment on the fonts of the earlier screenshots but I see now that you changed them. It looks much better now, reminds me of Friz Quadrata (Blizzard used it in Wacraft III and World of Warcraft).

[blinkok]

Looking very polished!

[Matty]

Thanks...yes I'm pleased with it.

Yes Kryzon  - my art hobby has been helping with this...improving my skill at drawing....greatly.

I've just gone through and removed 2,250 lines of code (unecessary/block comments etc) and fixed a few bugs....

I'm thinking of adding some form of help similar to my game 'A Knight's War' with a kind of 'advisor' fellow who pops up at times to tell you what you can do, or at least if you press the 'help' button.....

[Derron]

i just skipped through your gameplay video:

- the "quest" giver sign should not be a wide button (give it a "special button skin" - maybe some round thing with the "!"-exclamation mark in it)
- some overdrawing of text regarding buttons/captions
- a "cell by cell" movement animation which should be replace by some "swoooop" animation... so the figure starts moving "slowly", gradually become faster and slow at the end (like a "rubber" which does not want to move first but then "snaps")
- the figure is always in the center: this makes the figure in the outlands move pretty "stop motion like". Maybe allow a certain grid amount to move before camere re-centers. The re-centering could be done gradually too (so "tweening" from old to new position in a smooth movement).

- new font makes a big step already as it does not look too "prototype" then anymore
- tavern owner could offer different stuff ("want a beer and a story for a penny?", "I have this young lady which is keen to join you for a night", ...)

bye
Ron

[Matty]

Thanks Derron.

Some of those things (eg tavern options) are already there, but some of your suggestions I will definitely implement.

The smooth motion is not going to happen anytime soon-too big a change to the isometric drawing routine, due to the draw order to prevent overlaps.  I could handle it fine with my newer renderer.js file but this game is based on the code from 2018 which would not easily allow for it without massive changes.

But yes your ideas are good.

Keep them coming, they always carry a little sting hearing the criticisms but the result is it always looks and plays better when I implement them.

I still have the following to add, thought of this morning at breakfast:

1. Dream sequence to prepare player for arrival of bosses in a few turns.
2. Advisor with context sensitive tips and help who can be 'summoned' (eg the game is called Warlock so perhaps you can summon an imp of sorts to give advice at will)
3. Adjust arcade mode: think about refreshing spells at each levelup or each new dungeon level.
4. In options perhaps allow the player to set the rules of arcade mode based on their preference and level of challenge desired.
5. Localstorage, find a way to handle exceptions when the browser localstorage is full-it happens and currently the game doesn't fail gracefully during saving/loading when it occurs (hmm not sure yet if Javascript even has error catch handlng methods)
6.Fix bug with saving 'interactive' elements on the main map-most are saved but supply wagons position is not always handled correctly and likely the main bosses will have an error there too.
7.Animations-more attack animations have been made, but more are needed.  Potentially look into widening the cells by 20pixels on creatures to handle more interesting animations,  currently it is a bit to narrow to really allow what I'd like. But that would require a lot of adjustments to graphic elements to be made.
8. Fix text boundaries, as you say, overlap occurs-note the same font size appears different on different screen sizes for same resolution on tablet, phone and desktop-I might need a way of working out the font size which is appropriate for each given they sometimes don't work right even though resolution is identical.
9.A problem impossible to overcome is that when updates are made to graphic elements and even code, sometimes the browser has cached old data and will not refresh on handheld devices unless you completely clear the cache.  I don't like this feature and is not something I can easily code for.
10. Potentially look into a Web page to exe converter to allow the game to finally be packaged as a desktop executable... wish list, only if it can be done easily with minimal speed hit.
11. Others to come.

Todo list for now.