Orchaldir's Dev Blog

Pyro Update

2010-11-18T18:30:00.004+01:00

Some days ago I found working code of Pyro! Today I uploaded it to GitHub. Here is the link to the source code:

And a screenshoot :

Realm Building Prototype

2009-06-15T22:18:00.012+02:00

Another project is a prototype of a realm building game like Civilization or Total War. The prototype concentrates on the map editor.

I choose hexmaps, because I like the way they look and I already used square maps with the roguelikes.

Features of the prototype:

paint terrain types
place roads and cities
define realms(red border)
rotat- and zoomable 3d camera

Lessons learned:

don't use 3d cameras for 2d maps
hexmaps are great for realm maps

Another map style.

More on Formations!

2009-03-31T10:55:00.004+02:00

I rewrote the Circle pattern to make more sense as a battle formation. One line of soldiers isn't very effective. I also added orientation so that all soldiers face outwards:

New feature: Every soldier can die and leave an empty slot.

The next step was the ability to move forward and fill the hole.

At the moment I am playing with different patterns and which slots can replace which slots and in what order.

Formations

2009-03-28T11:00:00.002+01:00

One of my current projects is a prototype about steering, formations and pathfinding. Well, at the moment it is a prototype about steering and formations.

The goal is to have realtime battles like Total War, but thats the far future.

The current features are:

change type of formation
move formation
rotate formation
dynamically add and remove characters

How does it work:

The formation calculates the target position and orientation for each character and the characters try to reach it with their steering behaviors.

Patterns:

They define the shape of the formation. I currently have:

Steering behaviors:

If you want to know more about them, look here.

At the moment I only use Arrival, but I will soon implement Obstacle Avoidance and others.

Results:

In the first image I changed the pattern from a box to a circle and in the second I rotated a box.

The white dots are the target positions.

Pyro(Python Roguelike)

2009-03-21T10:51:00.001+01:00

This time I will talk about one of my old projects. It was a roguelike written in Python.

Here are some of the features:

2D pixelart

I always wanted to make a roguelike with images instead of characters, but where to take the art from? Buy? A friend?

In the end I decided to make it myself. I really liked the art style of Three Hundred Mechanics and started copying it. It was great fun and soon I started drawing completely new creatures.

Here are some examples:

single tile, multiple tiles and snake bodies

It was possible to have huge creatures(giants, dragons, ...) with a body of 2*2, 3*3 or even bigger bodies.

They couldn't use smaller corridors.
They had more adjacent cells.

Snakes had one head tile and many body tiles. Think of the old snake games.

behavior trees

Behavior trees are a great way of building your ai out of reusable building blocks.

I had behaviors for attack, flee, patrol, wander and investigate.

Villager: wander or flee
Skeleton: attack
Guard: patrol, investigate or attack

They always pick the behavior with the highest priority: Villagers normally wander around, but if skeletons are near they flee.

If you want to know more about behavior trees, go to http://aigamedev.com.

sensory system

Different creatures had different ways of sensing the world.

Seeing: distance, occlusion
Hearing: distance
Sense Life: distance

Villager and guard: Seeing and Hearing
Skeleton: Sense Life

I even had a wall type, where you could see through, but nor move through(the yellow wall):

I am really sorry that, I can't give more or newer screenshoots or even a playable game, but I don't have a functioning version anymore. I lost the newest version and now even my backups don't work. I don't know why, but hopefully it will run someday again!

Lesson Learned: I now use git, a version control system.

Welcome!

2009-03-20T09:04:00.000+01:00

In this blog I will talk about my past, current and future projects. Here is a list of topics I am interested in:

3d graphic
AI(A*, planner, behavior trees, ...)
procedural generation(plants, buildings, cities, terrain, ...)
rpgs and roguelikes
turn-based strategy games
many more

Time for some screenshots: