Sunday, April 3, 2016

Future of The Islands

Hello!

The project is on hold till I recover and find a job. I haven't written for so long because I was focused on the development of The Islands, self-improvement, and looking for a job that I would actually like. I picked Java as it will benefit the game itself.

The Islands

I've decided to use Sprite Lamp combined with pixelart to create cool normal-maps. I am going to use them for the tilemap and map objects. You can possibly see example image on the right side of this paragraph.

As for the lore, I've decided to use deities, but without a religious feel to them. Each deity will have it's own aspect, which they will excel at. For example, "Ultaretus is the god of fire and blacksmithing." - that means he is the best of the best in using fire magic and blacksmithing amongst deities. It might be possible to be better than them at some point in the game, making you the best in that particular aspect. You don't need to be better than any god to become a deity, but I prefer not to say on how you can ascend right now.

Armor and armor penetration make the weapons and armor an actual choice, instead of just putting on armors with the highest stats possible. There will be only melee and magic attacks, although magic attacks can be elemental. Here's a quick Melee Calculator based on in-game damage calculator.

Prototype

For client-side scripting I've decided to use JavaScript, as it is commonly known language, although V8 JS engine is a little slower than LuaJit. So I have sacrificed some speed for, in my opinion, a better syntax. Also, JS can be heavily compressed in comparison to lua. JS files will be sent to client, and these scripts will use API bindings from the Java side. I only hope that V8 will not get exploited ;_; Server-side scripting will use native Java classes.

Questions and Answers

Here are some answers to the questions about the game.

Q: I hate zombies! Are you going to add them to the game?
A: There will be no zombies, as they can't swim.

Q: How will combat work in The Islands?
A: In combat you will use abilities, which are unlocked by leveling up your skills. Skills are similar to RuneScape, you gain experience for each skill separately, mainly by using it.

Q: Will there be dungeons in the game?
A: There will be a lot of raids in The Islands, I've designed it in similar fashion to the raids from World of Warcraft. You gather a team, create a party, get to the "instance" zone and go through the instance. They will include at least three difficulty levels. First one designed for solo, second one for parties and hardcore players, and the third for a raid party. The difficulty will affect the damage, health (they are not going to be sponges), attack patterns, and how many players can be attacked at the same time. Boss attack type in The Islands will also depend on the armor that players will be wearing.


Job


I'm looking for a Java EE job. I am currently developing a website using Java Spring for backend, and Angular.js for frontend. You can see the source here: github.com/TworcyGierStrona

Health


I've been diagnosed with Lymphocytic colitis. I can't eat gluten, milk, or even pizza! The worst thing about it is not the food, it's the debilitating brainfog for more than a week after eating any of things that I am allergic to. I can't do any projects, or even think about them. It's going to take a long time for me to recover, so the project will be on hold for a longer period of time.


That's it for now.
Thanks for the support! : )

Monday, June 23, 2014

Setting up Server and Client

Hey! Daniel writing,
Today’s post is mostly technical, again.

Possibly I will have a second programmer soon, who will help me do stuff quicker, so I can focus on more aspects of the game, rather than just programming.

In the last week I've been focusing on core aspects of design and efficient server architecture. So far, I've set up gitbucket and dynamic library dependencies for client and server. I've chosen Kryonet for simple tcp/udp object sending between server and client. It is easily scalable through a great and simple API with really quick serialization. Tomorrow, I am going to focus on connecting and sending map data over TCP.

Below you can find some trees in their current state. They are placeholders and will change once the art style gets chosen. This will be decided after pre-alpha I think.


Well that's it for today.


Have a good day~!


Friday, June 20, 2014

Rewriting the game


Hey, Daniel here,
Yesterday, after battling with lights, XNA/MonoGame, shaders, and GUI, I've decided to switch back to LibGDX. Dunno why I’d decided to use XNA/MonoGame in the first place...

Below you can find the list of reasons for switching over to LibGDX from XNA/MonoGame:
MonoGame uses terrible shaders.
MonoGame is DirectX/OpenGL, so I don't really have control over these, unless I really exhaust myself searching through their code. I have also never used DirectX.
No GUI in MonoGame/XNA, LibGDX has one of the most awesome GUI systems I've ever seen.
I have more experience in using LibGDX.
LibGDX allows me to use low level functions of OpenGL, while still having big, high level API.
Once again LibGDX GUI.
I can use box2dlights in LibGDX.
I had experience with box2dlights before.
LibGDX API ++++++
MonoGame/XNA content pipeline...
I would find more reasons but I don't really want to waste time, going to code~!

See ya

Friday, June 6, 2014

Millions of blocks


I have just tried to generate an island the size of Graham Island. Just a little more than 150km in length. Aaand I have cancelled the experiment after 2 hours of waiting.

Stats:
blocks in total - 145010400
blocks width - 241684
blocks height - 600
block generated ~ 24506758
RAM usage - around 6gb
parsed 40859 out of 241684 lines (16.9%)
time taken to generate - experiment cancelled after 2 hours

estimated complete time - 7h 6m ~ 9h

Init Post

Hey,
I am Daniel, the creator of The Islands. I have decided to create this game due to the lack of real survival games in the game industry. I have been inspired into making it thanks to games like Stranded 2, Terraria, Starbound, The Forest, and the movie Cast Away.


My main goal for this game is to make it fun with kind of real aspects of survival, while at the same time keeping the world mystic and open to travel, well, at least after beating the hell out of dangers that will try to stop you from doing it.