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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in nancygold's LiveJournal:

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    Tuesday, January 21st, 2025
    11:08 pm
    Streamlined the character development
    I want the game to offer rich and diverse characters.
    Yet micromanaging characters is really annoying.
    Especially when there are like 25 of them.
    I really couldn't bear XCOM because of that.
    So I just got rid of the entire skill training system.
    Just I got rid of the player managing characters inventories.
    In fact, player is no longer required even to click train to the next level.
    The less menus and clicks there, the better.

    I still provide several ways for player to influence the characters development.
    Mostly by moving characters to specific locations.
    Including the characters in squad empowering each other.
    Because forming squads is something the player naturally does.

    Obviously that works with the xp-less character development.



    Current Mood: accomplished
    Friday, January 17th, 2025
    2:33 am
    How €500 board game looks like. Guess now im certified 101% crazy


    Current Mood: amused
    Sunday, January 12th, 2025
    12:06 am
    Outfit Constraints Language
    I don't want to overwhelm the player with inventory management.
    So I have introduced a system where characters buy appropriate equipment.
    The stuff they buy depends on their talents, skills, gender, rank and wealth.
    So that there will be larger variety of characters.

    That alone requires introducing a DSL to express the constraints.

    Thankfully Symta's syntax allows for easy JSON style declarations,
    but with the full power of LISP sexps.




    Current Mood: accomplished
    Saturday, December 21st, 2024
    4:30 pm
    The Spell of Mastery Progress
    an oriental outfit



    Current Mood: accomplished
    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
    Real-time chess
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7VtSK23_Jg





    Current Mood: amused
    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/148627.htm
    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: contemplative
    Current Music: The Birthday Massacre - Beyond
    Friday, November 22nd, 2024
    2:57 pm
    Doom Ported to Unmodded NES
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXSUhJXSv-c

    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=sJaNiJhmN9Q



    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: accomplished
    Current Music: The Birthday Massacre - Hide and Seek
    Monday, November 18th, 2024
    12:47 pm
    How do I report these ухилянты to ТЦК?


    Current Mood: amused
    Current 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: accomplished
    Current 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-medieval-fantasy-locations

    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%27s_Shit

    In my perfect world artists should be machines,
    following precise art direction.
    Hopefully one day AI will be able to do that.

    Current Mood: contemplative
    Current 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
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