Flash/C++ Game Project

[Nick]

DOWN PERISCOPE! Dive! Dive! Dive, you fools, DIVE!!!

I need a submarine.

And brads game needs giant carnivorous ants. And velociraptors. And perhaps even some velocipedes.

[zourtney]

So...what's the status of this project? You didn't lose all of your motivation, did you?

[Brad]

No, motivation has not yet been lost. I'm currently working on the character (not player) creation/selection menu and communication. You can now create a new character in the client, transfer it over to the server and have it saved in the database. I just need to finish the part where the server sends back the newly created character's database ID to the client. That'll probably be completed this weekend.

Once that's completed I'll be working on getting the actual game components working (walking around, talking to npcs, etc...).

Then finally when that is done I'll start working on the battle system. That's the part that still has the most work left to be done on it.

Speaking of which... the biggest gameplay questions I still need to answer is... What do I do when a character dies? The answer to this can range from permanent death (you lose your character forever) to just respawning back in the nearest town or anywhere in between. I think there should be some kind of penalty to death... but how much of a penalty?

[Nick]

Perhaps starting with reduced stats for a short time, or less then full health as a punishment for death.  It all depends on what dynamics are in the game. Do weapons wear out? Does health just regenerate over time? Perhaps some items in your inventory wont persist past death (food or other perishables maybe.)

[Brad]

You could temporarily lower stats or reduce the character maximum health for a certain amount of time. That would work...

As for your other questions: Weapons do not wear out. Health does not regenerate over time. You do not need to eat food to survive.

[Nick]

How will health be restored? Potions? First aid? Healing spells? Vampirism ?

[Brad]

Yes. No. Yes. Yes.

[Nick]

Wow. I was mostly joking about vampires but cool.

[zourtney]

Wait...don't you have to be a vampire to actually benefit from vampirism? Otherwise, it's kind of like,
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! My jugular vein!!!!!!!!"

But, I'll admit it -- I'm not well learned in all things vampire.

[Brad]

Gahhh! Finally completed all the character creation/deletion/saving stuff today during my lunch break! Yay!

Now I'm FINALLY to the point where I can make the game actually start doing stuff. Up first is getting the map to transfer from the server to the client. Followed closely by movement commands being transferred from the client to the server.

I've also created some of actual game content. I've decided on 6 playable races and 5 classes to start with. I really think it ought to be 6 races and 6 classes but I haven't been able to come up with another good class that fits in with the rest of them yet.

[Nick]

Are any of the classes restricted to only a few races? Or can anyone take on any profession they like?

And I think someone would have to be a vampire to benefit from sucking blood like that.... Otherwise, yeah it would just be biting someone. And probably ineffective. 

[Brad]

Any race can be any class. Vampire is not one of the races (it's more of an affliction or disease) so biting people to restore health is not going to be an option for the majority of players.

[Brad]

I've decided I'm going to be writing a Windows console version of the game client. The server will still be portable to both Windows and Linux. This is mainly due to the incredible frustrations of trying to create a usable interface in the console while remaining portable. I'll try to design with a future Linux port in mind, but at this point I'd rather work on more important things.

Developing only for windows will allow me to do better things like an improved input (no having to hit enter every time you want to move) as well as colored text.

[zourtney]

That makes sense. As long as the API is solid...and I'm sure it will be. The ultimate goal is still a Flash-based client though, right?

[Nick]

Flash is so unportable when it comes to mobile devices. It would be easier by far to do it in flash, but it would be a desktop only app. Doing it in html and javascript would make it compatible with all sorts of things. We should shoot for mobile opera, safari and chrome support I guess. Who cares about IE, no one uses it in the mobile world.