Tiny Places (Working Title)

[Vandar]

Some time ago I decided to quit game development and focus on asset creation. But recently I had been checking game options for the Raspberry PI, and found a game engine of sorts, called Löve2d.

Löve2d is a Lua wrapper around a set a of librariers that are useful for game development, and it makes using those libraries rather easy.

I had been using Lua in the past, so I figured it won't hurt to refresh that skill and see what this Löve2d thing can do.

The start was very easy, and the project evolved into a client-server system (the server is coded in Java) which at the moment is mostly a collaborative map editor. That is, changes to a map on one client will be broadcast by the server to all clients using that one map.

I plan to add a chat and simple rpg system at some point. And the option to use selfmade assets for map design which will be shared through the server. But just this feature probably means that I cannot run a public server, due to legal stuff in my place (the server provider will be held responsible to check the shared content and I cannot do that)



Programming Lua is easy on one hand, but since it's a dynamic typed and interpreted language it lacks some checks that e.g. a C or Java compiler provide. So I keep making a lot of these mistakes. But for what it's worth, Löve2d made the start of this project very easy and it seems to perform quite well. I like it.

The source code is here:

https://github.com/Varkalandar/tiny_places

The tool which I use to manage the tilesets is there:

https://github.com/Varkalandar/tilemaster

[ffaf]

Good idea, it would make some RPG sessions with friends easier and more pleasant (especially in Corona virus times!)

[Vandar]

Thanks. I hope I'll get it into a usable state before the virus kills me

[Vandar]

Besides a number of bugfixes, there is now a "game mode" which allows a map to be played. At the moment there isn't much functionality there yet, but the server can broadcast move commands for player avatars and the clients can move them.

So, let's bounce!

https://youtu.be/yNOE9D9gxwk


youtu.be/yNOE9D9gxwk

[Vandar]

I feel my motivation dropping ... but I made two new map backgrounds and tweaked the UI a little.

Wasteland ground:



And rough grass:



I published the wasteland and grass textures on opengameart.org:

https://opengameart.org/content/wasteland-background
https://opengameart.org/content/the-ver ... rass-patch

Likewise the trees that I've made:

https://opengameart.org/content/80-more-isometric-trees

[Vandar]

I started to work on code to handle creatures. It seems I'll have to handle creature AI all on server side, and send a lot of control commands to the client to make the creatures move and act. Overall there will be two types of maps. Places where players can meet and chat, and places to solve quests. I'm not entirely sure how to handle this best.

But here, some imps set up vs. the player:

[Jastiv]

It looks really awesome from just the graphics. I know the fsf listed a bnet replacement as something to remove due to the non-free dependency of diablo 2, but if something like FLARErpg was modified to make it multi-player that would be a real fix for this.

[Vandar]

Thanks! Making it look good is a big concern of mine. But graphics are only my secondary skill. I'm more of a programmer.

I've been playing Diablo 2 a lot, so there will be influences to this project. I must keep things more simple though, to have a chance to get this to a usable state. The server already implements a chat command, but the clients lack text areas for that. While really good in graphics and sound, Love2d strangely has no support to edit strings by user input. One has to handle everything by oneself, cursor movement, delete, backspace ...

There is multiplayer RPG named crossfire, open source. I'm not sure if this is the same crossfire that I saw many years ago in a Linux distro, but it seems to be? It's actively developed and hosted on SourceForge.

[Vandar]

I wrote some code to shoot projectiles. This actually goes over the net and through the server, but I'm not happy with the amount of messages being sent. The projectile graphics and light effects are placeholders to see if my idea how to display such light effects works, before I start to work on real magic projectiles. Looks all fine to me right now and I think I can use this implementation.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGWbxXN ... e=youtu.be

[Vandar]

I've started to work on life and mana gauges. The idea to have the UI kinda isometric like the map definitely did not help there.



Oh, if only I was better at making animated graphics and sound effects. This would become an orgy of light, colors, booms and bangs. Ah well, one can dream ...

[CYBERDEViL]

It looks nice! I've just tried it and it responds well.

Have you considered using something else then GitHub?

What kind of sound effects are you looking for, maybe I can help?

[Vandar]

Sorry for the late answer. I have some mental issues ... felt a need to hide after your message.

Effects ... a particular problem are looping animation of smoke and similar. I'll need that for auras, portals and many lasting effects. Then, attack animations and also death. Even if it's only a cloud of smoke rising.

And as mentioned in another thread sound effects. Many many sound effects ...

E.g. "More flash for the bang":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3TPhekDseM

It would be nice to have small explosion clouds growing and rising from there the fireballs hit. Maybe not really for the fireball spell cause that is not that strong, but some skill will need mini-nukes as result.

https://youtu.be/QtNzhj2ZhYE

Here I need some low grinding sound for the vortices. And actually I cheated ... I cannot animate anything with limbs. So the vortices, even if nice, are just a workaround for the basic problem, that I cannot make proper animations.

[CYBERDEViL]

That's all right, I can't think of anyone that doesn't have mental issues (including myself).

I've been playing around with creating some sfx, let me know what you think of them.

Samples: https://filebin.net/mkttlgoghknfqkh5/sfx_0.tar

[Vandar]

Very nice! Thanks for making these.

"Windy grind" 1 to 3 are really cool if played in a random sequence! I'd like to use them for the vortices ... which licence are they? And what kind of attribution would you like?

Edit:

Artillery duel video: https://youtu.be/Xpi2I7QvMr4
Needs better explosions.

[CYBERDEViL]

Great you like them! I've done some reading on asset licensing.
How does CC0 sound? With CC0 attribution is up to you.

[Vandar]

CC0 is a very generous license, thanks a lot for that.

I could link to your github home, https://github.com/CYBERDEViLNL to credit you? That might bring some more attention to your projects.

[CYBERDEViL]

I could link to your github home, https://github.com/CYBERDEViLNL to credit you? That might bring some more attention to your projects.

If you like to link then please use my notabug address: https://notabug.org/cyberdevil
I'm going to delete my GitHub account one of these days.

[Vandar]

I see ... the github account seems gone right now. I'll use the other address.

News: Players now start in a lobby area and can move from one map to another through portals. This still has to be tested in the multiplayer version. Just yesterday I found and fixed a whole lot of issues that all seemed fine while there was only one player logged in to the server. Still no hitpoints and collision checking.

https://youtu.be/AXn25l84ec4

[Vandar]

Somehow I have the feeling this will become a spell "fireworks" effect showcase - I'm no game designer for sure, but I like the way Love2d makes such stuff easy.

Now much new to report today, was busy with other things. But I imported some of my wall graphics to make a sort of ruined house for this map.



I've made high res versions of the walls (and two more wall types) available here:
https://opengameart.org/content/almost- ... geon-walls

I still want to polish the fireball spell and the effects there some more, but my mind is set on a lightning spell. I had that on mind fairly long, but no proper idea how to animate it.

[Vandar]

Took a while to get back to coding, but the projectiles now actually can hit something. And my explosion animations from last summer finally came to use in one of my projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEHjPvNfN_0

Everything has one hitpoint, except the player who is immortal for the moment. The player has a sort of spectre or ghostly avatar here ... might even be that the game will be all about ghost wars. I have some ideas, but it's too early to talk, need to see if it actually makes sense.

[Vandar]

Probably too early, given that the game has no items to pick up and use yet - but I felt inspired to make a inventory UI screen. It will be needed anyways. Right now I think I should keep things simple and 5 inventory slots will be fine. Must see if that assumption holds. Adding two more is easy without breaking the design.



The corner and borders were created using two public domain svgs:
- https://freesvg.org/rose-corner-decor
- https://freesvg.org/border
Thanks to the creators!

[Vandar]

Progress is now notably slowing down. I've been moving hard coded data and values to data files for easier management and started to work on a new "desert" map type. I think I might borrow some ideas from my former "Jewelhunt" RPG project, and make the player hunt for just these jewels again. Just with a different focus this time - more action, less heavy AI and simpler, smaller maps.

But to make things not too easy and thus boring, there have to be enemies. Say "hello" to what started as "tank crawler" and developed into a crossover of maggot and porcupine.

The upper version is the baby version, the lower is the adult with fully grown spikes.

Actually I had a wood louse in mind when I started to work on it. Sometimes things change much while working on them <.<

Edit: Need to give them a meaner looking set of eyes.

[Vandar]

Spiny sand crawlers in action ... fwubfwubfwubfwub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSudTSGECl0

[Vandar]

Damnit ... finally found out how to make cyclic smoke and cloud animation with my tools (took some years ...) just to find out that I have a bad desync of creature positions between client and server in my project. I kill a creature and the death animation plays quite a bit away. It definitely plays where the server had stored the last creature coordinate. Just the client was showing it someplace else. I actually had allowed temporary desyncs but felt confident that at the end of each move the coordinates should be in sync again between client and server. Only moving creatures were supposed to have a small desync because the server and the client run at different time-per-frame speeds. But not 50 or even more pixels >.<

So no video today of the new death swirls for the sand maggots ... must wait till they show at the right place.

Edit: Fixed the desyncs. Stupid rounding in a loop on server side made the creatures move differently there. Client code was correct.

[Vandar]

Many years I had been wondering how to make cyclic animations of smoke and such with my tools. Just recently found a way. It's pretty (w)hacky, but it allows me to do things like these:





The last one might become a portal in Tiny Places ... well the need for magic portals was why I started experimenting in the first place. All the results that I have so far are published here:

https://opengameart.org/content/animate ... l-variants