More delays.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Real life kinda threw a wrench into things and progress will be slow for a while. I did manage to get some equipping going on so it hasn't come to a complete halt yet. The player can now wield swords, knives, potions, corpses, etc.. Of course just because you can wield something doesn't mean it will do any damage but it's still fun to see my human swinging a goblin corpse around. I tweaked corpses so that they can do some damage so you'll be able to beat things to death with a corpse if that's how you roll.

Delays...

Between the heat and people getting sick I haven't been able to get much done. Hopefully by Monday everything will be back in full swing and I'll be able to do regular updates again.

Thee Speaks?

The base stuff for NPCs and dialog are now in. You can now ask NPCs questions and they'll give me a reply. It's very basic right now and I'll need to flesh it out more as more content and lore gets added. I got it to wrap properly so if you get a long winded NPC it won't look too weird.

I also spent some time tweaking the menus. The menu being close to the upper left corner didn't really feel right so I moved it over to the right of screen center. I also made the conversation and item selection windows scroll better so you can tell when you're at the top or bottom of the list.

Remaining Features for First Release

I'm taking time out today to try to organize what features I need to complete for an initial release. As stated earlier, the first release will be very basic, with only the bare essentials of content. The list is as follows:

*At least one type of non-hostile NPC.
*A system for generating and displaying NPC dialog.
*Basic quest generating and handling.
*At least one skill increasing quest.
*World map with some varying features. For an initial release the world map will be pretty small. No point in making a large map when there really isn't much to do in it.
*Basic village generation. There may only be two or three villages on the world map in the first release.
*Add furniture to buildings.
*Some pathfinding optimization.
*A couple more combat commands to liven things up and make sure command switching is working right.

That's all I can think of for now. I may need to add more to this list later. The hardest stuff will be with the quest and dialog systems. Everything else should be pretty straight forward.

You can run but you can't hide!

Something that I'm sure some of you will be glad to hear. I went back and added some proper pathfinding. Of course being the lazy bastard that I am I couldn't be arsed to code all that myself so I just downloaded some code from the internets and plugged it in, which probably saved me a week's worth of headache. It still took me several hours to figure out how to work it into my program but it's functioning flawlessly now.

Now the goblins are a lot more relentless, chasing me no matter where I run to. I'll need to go back later and re-implement a hide and seek mechanic.

Name Brand Furniture 50 Percent Off!!!

I got a few pieces of furniture drawn up. It's really hard to get them to look recognizable from a purely top-down view. I think I did an okay job though. The only one I think might be a little confusing is the table but it shouldn't take long to get used to. Here's the graphic file I'll be using in the game. The stuff in color is just me testing out how they might look and aren't exactly how they will look in the game.

You Must Construct Additional Pylons!

I've been spending the past couple of days playing around with building generation. I think I got it to where it looks good and generates reliably. The hub system seems to have been a good idea. Surrounding rooms tend to blend in with each other rather than overwrite each other so that's good.

I'm going to take a break from the programming side and add some additional artwork. Maybe add some furniture and containers. It's stuff I'm going to need finished in order to work on other aspects of the program anyway.

I've also been considering writing up a laundry list of items I want to have finished for an initial release. Don't expect very much. Most of the game basics will be in place but there will be very little content. You may only see goblins and farmers to start with and the variety of items will be very limited. The idea will be to test out and demonstrate the features of the engine before I move on to adding more content.