The hunt for the lost rainbow jewels

[charlie]

Wesnoth looked hideous when it was originally released to the public. Make the gameplay first, and the graphics will follow. That's how successful Free Software projects operate. (Or artists make amazing artwork and eventually programmers come and help). The important thing is to keep moving forward with it one step at a time.

[Vandar]

I'm a bad game designer. So the "gameplay first", is a hard and also, not-so-interesting road to me. I'm neither a good graphics designer, but over the years my skills have improved, and it actually it is a interest of mine to make good looking graphics, so I am working on improving my skills there fairly regularly.

The mentioned disapointment, particularly about the pond comes from there - the idea in my head, how such a pond should be, and the execution had a big difference, and I was unable to improve my execution to come sufficiently close to my idea. So I felt disapointed that I was unable to make what I had in mind.

A problem there is, that my head usually doesn't work visually. So have no "image" in my head to work with, but rather a bag of associations that go with "pond", and it is quite hard to transform this to an image. Same problem with everything that I do graphically.

Education wise, I'm a computer scientist. Unfortunately this neither helps with game design, nor with graphics design, but it helps with programming. Graphics design is an interest of mine, sound and game design are likely my weakest skills.

Past projects of mine seldom have become games, rather something like sandboxes or toys. The newer ones usually look good, but for gameplay I'd need someone who likes to design games, and is willing to work together with me.

The only complete game I have made so far, is a breakout clone with a few additional ideas:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/brickdoh/

.. and since it is a clone, I didn't have to design any gameplay there :/ I guess that already tells how bad I am at designing games. I can at best copy ideas from other games.

A fact that puzzles me is, that I would like to work on good graphics effects for magic spells, but there is also some (psychological) obstacle to actually try. Not sure what it is, maybe a hidden fear to fail horribly at it (which is likely). Maybe I should do a separate project just to practise such effects, all in the secrecy of my ivory tower.

Likely road for Jewelhunt: Work on graphics and technical isues like the item system, and hope that some day a good game designer joins and helps with the other areas. Sound I'll be able to do in a "good enough" manner, at least I feel confident that I can, even if I usually don't treat sound as a top priority.

[charlie]

Keep progressing it, and write your ideas down on scraps of paper / in text editors so you can crystallize your thinking.

[Vandar]

I like the look of the pond. 12mb doesn't sound like too much to be honest, in this day and age.

To be honest, I love Winter =P No hot hellishness like Summer But, well, tastes differ I suppose =P

Thanks

Yes, there are people who like winter. I've been born in the wrong place on earth, I belong somewhere closer to the equator. On the other hand, 50 centigrade difference between summer and winter really make it difficult to like all seasons in this place.

I've uploaded a new snapshot, because two things felt so unfinished in the last release. There was the pyramid, but you couldn't enter it. And there was the experimental item graphics overlay feature for the PC, which had a shield overlay, but no weapon. Now there is also a weapon overlay, that is shown if the PC is actually wielding a weapon, and there is a new map generator for the pyramid. It only produces a group of empty rooms though, but well, at least you can actually enter the pyramid.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelh ... hunt/r021/

All changes since r020:

- Added pond and waypoint graphics.
- All item defense values were multiplied by 10, to make a +5% mod more meaningful.
- Added new blacksmith graphics.
- Added stronghold graphics, not used in game yet.
- Fix: Monster lairs should no longer overlap.
- Added pyramid dungeon.
- Added PC graphics sword overlay.
- Added UI spell icons.

[c_xong]

I think you should work with someone who you can trust in giving honest and constructive feedback. This should help allay the fear of failure, and give you confidence in releasing more of your work to the public. You obviously have a lot of energy for this work, it would be a shame if most of it is kept private.

[Vandar]

Usually I discuss ideas and question in forums, there is little that I don't want to publish before a new release. The problem is, that the more intresting questions are quite specific, and I have little hope to spawn a fruitful discussion. Some went pretty bad in the past even, e.g. when I asked about item pricing, i.e. how much items should cost in the game. 50% of the answers were just silly or meaningless, a number told me that the game is not ready yet to think about item prices, and only 1 suggestion was actually useful, but eventually didn't help either.

I guess many people thought that such a "simple" question is not worth being discused seriously, on the other hand, everyone complains about "broken economy" in games, if the items prices are not well balanced ...

Having someone to discuss such questions sure would be helpful. But the problem is also on my side - I'm very erratic with my hobbies, doing this for a while and then something else. I don't think any sort of co-worker would bear with that.

[Vandar]

I finished the basic code for a new game mechanic: Items with gem sockets, and the option to place gems in those sockets:

jwh-r021-sockets.jpg (32.89 KiB) Viewed 4062 times

Calculations of the effects of gems in sockets are missing currently. It's only the data structures and the UI to add gems to items that's done. Calculating the effects will be the next step to implement.