Codename: Dragon

[Nate]

I tried it again. The stuttering didn't occur with the bat, only with the zombie-with-sword.

Also, when the bat was alone, the pattern under with where small dots flashing in sync with it flapping its wings. When the zombie joined, the bat got pieces of he zombie or bat flashing under itself (still in sync with wing flapping). I have a screenshot.

Thanks for the screenshot! I'm not sure where I'm messing up. Seems strange it doesn't happen for others. Could it possibly something wonky with your video drivers?

Only thing that disturbs a bit atm are those grey squares. Would be great to see some stoney or grassy graphics instead of this one-coloured background.

Good point. Just did an update that uses a background image under the tiles. The image I used may not be the best, but the important part is this is supported now.

I FF I can play your game without a problem. Runs nice.
But I was all alone so couldn't test the fight or heal system.

Cool. You can run the game in two tabs so you have something to kill.

Applet has been updated, as mentioned, with tile images. You now start with 2 characters and you'll keep getting new ones if they die. You can't attack your own characters, so you'll still need two browser windows, or to get lucky and run it when someone else is on. Other than a few minor bug fixes, there isn't much else new. Will be spending more time on effects soon.

[CyanPrime]

Tried it and it is mad really nicely and kinda fun. Good job. ^_^

[Nate]

Thanks CyanPrime.

Been doing a lot on the effects editor:



Click for full resolution. One effect is made up of multiple particle emitters. For configurable properties, an emitter has: duration, life, life offset (fast forwards life at spawn), delay (before it starts, for syncing with other emitters in an effect), emission (per second), size, rotation, velocity, angle, wind, gravity, transparency, tint, spawn width, spawn height, and spawn shape (point, line, square, or ellipse -- edges or area). Did I miss any? Depending on the property, the values can start at a random range and end at a random range, and you can add any number of points to the little chart to make it vary over the duration of the emitter or particle.

Once I get the effect right in the editor, I just save it and use the file name in my game code:

1	target.addEffect("heal");

Creating abilities and effects is very easy, so I should be able to have quite a lot of them!

I have a little more to do before I'll update the applet. I'm going to make a projectile effect next. Then for my first fancy ability, I'll add a fireball ability that has effects as the caster charges up, a projectile effect that flies to the target, and an explosion effect on impact.

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[Mads]

That looks really nice! I only made a development tool once.. But I love when people do it, and we get to see them 

[Nate]

Thanks. I love making tools. Almost more than making actual stuff. That is part of why my game has taken so long. It uses 8 of my OSS projects: skorpios, kryo, kryonet, reflectasm, yamlbeans, scar, wildcard, minlog. The particle editor is in skorpios if others want to use it. I forked it for this game, just to speed things along, but it won't be much work to port it back.

Got projectiles working last night. Will post an update today.

[Nate]

Updated with a projectile ability! You'll need two browser windows so you have someone to shoot at.

[Nate]

I improved the fireball a bit and added a stupid simple AI character. He just wanders around the upper left corner of the map, waiting to get smoked by fireballs. A new AI character spawns if the old one is killed. Now you don't need to juggle two browser windows just to try it out.

[Nate]

Network sync/collision load test, 4 clients with 2 characters each, plus 6 bots that constantly wander around. The upper left client has random lag from 600 to 2600 milliseconds. (click for full res)



Fireballs are cool. Next I'm adding a "cast timer", so the ability button starts your guy casting the spell, but it doesn't actually fire off until after a delay. Getting hit during casting adds time to the timer and/or cancels casting. This is mostly already done with the game's framework, but there is some work needed for the animations. I need to be able to piece together frames of the stock animations to build new sequences. Eg, right now the guys just punch when they cast, which is lame (though a particle flash hides some lameness). I think I can pull various frames from the punch/idle/hit animations to make a decent looking cast animation. Some of the hit animations played backward looks like the guy is rearing backward to cast a spell. Or even the attack animation played backward, then forward when he casts.

After that I might add invisibility next. When active you can't be seen and your location is no longer sent to clients. If someone walks into you, you take any action other than movement, or you take damage (AOE or some attack was in progress when you went invis) then you'll de-cloak. Of course there will be the customary ninja/batman puff of smoke!

[Mads]

The fireball effect looks great.  I get some fps issues when I click the fireball-button so I can't see it fully smooth.

[Nate]

Thanks! That reminds me I need to optimize the effects. It is loading particle images and data from disk on the fly every single time an emitter is created. There are 9 emitters and 3 images for the fireball and explosion (though only a max of 18 particles alive at once). Also the images are way bigger than they need to be. Even with this suboptimal setup it runs only a bit choppy on the Droid.

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[arielsan]

you have to add a chat , the game looks really nice

[markus.borbely]

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00:02  INFO: Connecting: nateshome.dnsalias.com:54777 java.io.IOException: Unable to connect to: nateshome.dnsalias.com/98.237.143.225:54777     at com.esotericsoftware.kryonet.TcpConnection.connect(TcpConnection.java:91)     at com.esotericsoftware.kryonet.Client.connect(Client.java:155)     at com.esotericsoftware.kryonet.Client.connect(Client.java:110)     at com.esotericsoftware.dragon.Dragon.onStart(Dragon.java:130)     at com.esotericsoftware.skorpios.opengl.DesktopGLView.start(DesktopGLView.java:73)     at com.esotericsoftware.skorpios.opengl.DesktopGLApplet$2$1.run(DesktopGLApplet.java:39) Caused by: java.net.SocketTimeoutException     at sun.nio.ch.SocketAdaptor.connect(Unknown Source)     at com.esotericsoftware.kryonet.TcpConnection.connect(TcpConnection.java:76)     ... 5 more

[Nate]

Yea, server is down ATM, sorry. I'm pushing hard to make a bunch of progress. I'll be back with an update after a while.