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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
nancygold's LiveJournal:
| Thursday, December 19th, 2024 | |
| 7:50 pm | The Spell of Mastery Progress Further fixed the robe so it will work with the cloaks. Still a ton of clothes to port to the uniform base.  Current Mood:  accomplished |
| Sunday, December 15th, 2024 | |
| 12:04 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress Redrawn another character to use the generic humanoid base.   Current Mood: accomplished |
| Monday, December 9th, 2024 | |
| 10:18 am | Animations My gayme does have simple animations.   |
| Saturday, December 7th, 2024 | |
| 12:08 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress Finally designed a semi-robust way to represent castle sieges. Again, the goal was preventing player from using these walls and towers from harassing the melee guards. I also don't want to overload player with micromanagement and picking the target for ranged units to attack. There is also this infamous problem of player blobbing larger number of ranged units, which is usually solved by complicated rules, like the line of sight being blocked by allies. I don't want such complex rules. Somehow I went through all the stupid solutions before seeing the right one. Anyway, the mechanics appears to be unique enough for my game to stand out.  Current Mood: accomplished |
| Friday, December 6th, 2024 | |
| 9:51 am | |
| Friday, November 29th, 2024 | |
| 12:03 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress I dislike the usual alchemy inspired magic systems. And generally I borrow from Master of Magic in my design. So there are no fire/water/earth/air. Instead I have light/dark/chaos/order/cosmos system. The character have affinity towards these. Which dictate how the paths the character can develop. Among other things these paths dictate how character look. The characters don't have predefined classes. Instead they have jobs, akin to Final Fantasy Tactics. And various acquired titles, like lord or king. So there is a "Lord Knight" implicit class. The characters automatically shop for equipment, according to their talents, wealth, social status and training. The player has limited influence over it. Since I hate games like Diablo, where player spends half of the game managing inventory That still requires large quantity of equipment sprites. Which I'm slowly drawing myself. This all looks superficially simple, but it require many systems working together. For example, the aforementioned talents, wealth, social status and training are already 4 separate systems, depending on each other in multiple ways. So again, game design is all about dealing with such systems graphs. And I have hard time seeing the integration. So playtesting is required.  Current Mood: accomplished |
| Tuesday, November 26th, 2024 | |
| 12:12 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress The current sprites are actually liked 3rd iteration. Initially I had this: https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/148 But then I re-drew it to be more fluid looking and less top heavy. Yet I never noticed that the character's center of mass is not supported from the right. That led to the feeling that character is falling. Fixed that be moving the right leg. One of the reasons I don't use 3d software for pre-renders. It doesn't really help unless you know what you're doing. Or you are doing 1-to-1 model, down to mass distribution.  |
| Saturday, November 23rd, 2024 | |
| 3:41 pm | The Spell of Mastery Progress I have decided limiting player access to the units inventory. That is due to a numerous reasons: 1. Managing inventory is a micromanagemnt chore. It doesn't support the core loop in meaningful way. And I really dislike the inventory packing puzzles. 2. Allowing characters autonomy over how they dress themselves would allow characters to be unique, forcing the player to with what they get. 3. Characters now can have private belongings the player can't take away to for their fav character. So basically each character now has wealth stat and they equip themselves according to their skills, goals, means and desires. That is the precise the case where constraints bring diversity. Without these constraints player will just genocide the characters they dislike. As a game designer I should introduce systems which punish the player for being a nazi. Or at least not promote any kind of nazism Anyway, since a different characters require different outfits, I still have to draw a lot. Dunno if this helmet is better with mask or without. Or maybe you should have several variations, with characters picking the more suitable.   Current Mood:  contemplativeCurrent Music: The Birthday Massacre - Beyond |
| Friday, November 22nd, 2024 | |
| 2:57 pm | Doom Ported to Unmodded NES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXSUhJX There were numerous NES raycasters, but this is the only playable FPS. Some time ago I lets played a Dune II NES port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJaNiJh  Current Mood:  amused |
| 12:43 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress The game needs not to be focused on murdering everyone for gold/items. So I have to implement some nicer economy. Farm plots should be a nice start. These can still be guarded though. Still I don't want to turn it into a chiefly worker placement game. But I do need some references to the Mater of Magic, which had a bit of worker placement.  Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: The Birthday Massacre - Hide and Seek |
| Monday, November 18th, 2024 | |
| 12:47 pm | How do I report these ухилянты to ТЦК?  Current Mood: amusedCurrent Music: Powerglove - Gotta Catch 'em All |
| 2:09 am | The Spell of Mastery Progress The first imp was taken captive and sacrificed at the temple. Both captives and sacrifices are implemented through the ECS phases. Capturing beasts will have totally separate mechanics. TODO: animate the shit and implement sending captives to a dungeon instead.   Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: Hitoshi Sakimoto - Fate |
| Friday, November 15th, 2024 | |
| 11:16 pm | Placeholder buildings Making non-placeholder is impossible without first deciding what will look okay. I.e. I tried the multiple columns arrangement, but it just not fitting. So I made larger columns. I also initially had altar for scarifies, but it was not fantasy enough. The round shape wasn't compelling enough either. Going through like 100 AI generations to pick appropriate textures and parts, which work okay with the generic fantasy city style I'm going for. AI tends to generate this nasty WoW/mobile-game art, or realistic historic crap. And it will still require a ton of work converting it to pixelart. So I wont be doing it till everything else is ready. The placeholder was bashed out of the https://dgbaumgart.itch.io/tile-medieva That is one of the more popular asset packs. And it is mostly in realistic historic medieval style. But good enough starting point. TLDR: please stop bullying me. The art is slowly going somewhere.   Current Mood: contemplative |
| 3:06 am | So here is how the temple supposed to work Basically, player captures enemy units and burns them at the temple. What I haven't decided yet if how the capture supposed to be done. Should player escort captive to the city's prison or they get auto-placed there upon defeat? I don't want a lot of boring Starshit Valley micromanagement. Yet captives teleporting to a prison overly-simplifies the logistics. As a trade off I can limit the distance at which player has to escort captives. Say when there are no enemies in sight. Also, beside burning the captives there will be an option to ask for a ransom. If the enemy refuses to pay ransom, they will can say lose reputation, which control several systems in the game.  Current Mood: contemplative |
| Thursday, November 14th, 2024 | |
| 5:29 pm | Regarding "placeholder sprites" Haters accuse me of using placeholders. Well, even if I had money, I first need solid technical requirements. I.e. buildings dimensions and architectural style. These requirements are dictated by the gameplay and setting. So until I have gameplay fully implemented, I can do any final art. Still it is useful to have placeholders for general direction. I.e. if I will be able to have that many floors/windows/doors. And what kind of interior strucutre the building will have. Regarding setting. Take the temple graphics for example. It depends on the ovral city style, the temple purpose, as well as the gods the characters worship. In my case the locals worship some monstrosities, that pass as gods. That is to reflect reality, where dumb niggers worship the bloodthirsty abrahamic god. These kind of entities is well depicted by by AI, which is always good at generating deformed crap.  So obviously the temple purpose is human baby sacrifices, therefore the interior needs a palce for altar or burning stove to incinerate babies. Now the requirement for babies needs them to be present. Either in enemy cities or outside settlements. So yeah, game art is really a functional thing, whose only purpose it to support the gameplay. That is something AAA publishers ignore, making interactive movies instead, where they bolt action gameplay on top of a irrelevant story, But yeah, I will need to pay artists at one point, after I get precise requirements and art style. Because given any freedom artists create crap, just like AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27 In my perfect world artists should be machines, following precise art direction. Hopefully one day AI will be able to do that. Current Mood: contemplativeCurrent Music: Glenn Stafford - No Matter The Cost |
| Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 | |
| 11:50 pm | The Spell of Mastery Progress Spent the time between the clients chasing bugs. Forgot to close my laptop lid, and one of the guys seen the code. To my misfortune the dude is an IT engineer. And he seen through my lies about being a dumb whore from Moldavia. And he began asking awkward questions why I sell my ass instead of programming. What is worse, the tgirl hiding in another room betrayed herself by sneezing. And the guy is fucking discreet. Sucky day.  Current Mood:  annoyed |
| Tuesday, November 12th, 2024 | |
| 2:50 pm | The Spell of Mastery Progress Bashed another placeholder house from the AI art. Still needs a lot of editing. AT this stage I'm unsure if it will be faster to just make one from scratch. It still think control nets renders from a pre-arranged model could be faster. Left the house I edited, right - original AI art puke.   Current Mood: accomplished |
| Friday, November 8th, 2024 | |
| 2:56 pm | Metal Slug Tactics Came Out And they kinda messed up the harder oblique projection parts. Generally the art is subpar compared to the original platformers. Just look at the dog 180 degree view not matching the 0-angle And it even has scale issues - the 180deg is smaller. Even the shadow blob is misplaced. Apparently modern artists can't draw without a 3d model reference. Then again, that was true already for Warcraft II, which used renders.   Current Mood: amused |
| Thursday, November 7th, 2024 | |
| 11:38 pm | The Spell of Mastery Progress Solved one of the harder game design problems I faced so far. It was: how can one reliable place guards in the game. That is in fact a very important problem. Guards can be used to implement the "pick your fights" gameplay. As well as to introduce a natural grace period, when they guard a bridge connecting two players. That is a major part of Heroes of Might & Magic games. In HoMM it was easy, since the game is turn based. And the combat happens in a separate area. That also allowed HoMM games implement stealth skill perfectly. But what about other games? Player could just run past all guards in Baldur's Gate. And Warcraft III had the same issue. And could player agro away the guards too. Or the guards could be pursuing the player indefinitely. I remember a lich in BG2 could pursue player even to the areas in different cities. But these games incentivized player to murder everyone. So there was no reason be stealthy or diplomatic. Other games tried to solve it differently. Say Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat had engagement mechanics. The original XCOM had aliens moving between predefined waypoints. The Dungeon Keeper triggered guards moved towards the players HQ, and there was no way to see them before it is too late. I.e. no pick your fights gameplay or any warning. But ultimately in most games guards are broken. Still in Warcraft III it was hard to use the guards as a reliable map design element. Anyway I found a solid solution for my game, due to a set of design decision I'm making. It should also solve a lot of other issues. So what is the hardest thing about gamedev? My answer would be "the game design." Everything else usually has obvious solutions. Game design is similar to theorem solving. To be able to solve theorem you need a path to it. Which one usually finds by being lucky. Even if one understand the basic elements well. I.e. I understood how guards works since the beginning. But I seen no way to implement them nicely. I had the area they guard. I had the guard zone around them. I had them chasing the player. But it was just not coming in together nicely. Since I was missing the puzzle pieces. Had disallowed guards to move, player could just use ranged attacks on them. Had I allowed the guards to move, the player could just agro them or use a faster unit to bypass them. The game design is full of such puzzles. You go on research, enumerate, make tables, and then discard them. Then you try to build chains, starting from the goal. And you also have to see how it will fail without actually wasting time the to implement it. So yeah, game design is the most math heavy part in gamedev. You don't have to prove anything about matrices or other well known tools. But you have to prove a lot about any unusual game mechanic you include. And design is the only truly important part. Your game may have no graphics. But it must have gamification, good enough to express your ideas. Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: Jamie McMenamy - Elven Warrior's Crypt |
| Tuesday, November 5th, 2024 | |
| 11:58 am | People Keep Bullying Me Now they attack me, mentally handicapped person, for my hobby video game on the following bullet points: * Your gayme is not written in Rust/Godot/etc... * You don't use the latest tech, requiring the latest NVidia cards. * You make some shitty 2d shit, people want 3d action games. * Your pixelart sucks, professional artists can do better. * Your game is not realistic enough. It should be a simulation. * Your game map is not 100000x100000 therefore it is shit. Yet when I ask them for money to fund a better project they tell "go fuck yourself retard" Well, I'm a retard (officially diagnosed), still that is not very constructive. Don't you think?  Current Music: Jamie McMenamy - Strahd's Possession - Undead Forest |
