New Website!

Greetings all,

The new Stray Objects website is now live! Please visit www.strayobjects.com for the latest updates!

Tactics can be downloaded there, so check it out! Please note that it has not been updated in a while, but I have plans on resurrecting it in a different form.

Calvin

Time for another update?

About time yes. Summer break has started! Woot!

Ok time for details (also can be read on the youtube video description now):

Additions:

• Knight + Blue Chemist sprite
• Basic job structure + data file
• System for tile side textures
• Extended sprite system to allow for easy addition of color variants (blue + green chemist for example)

Upcoming:

• Finish job system
• Possibly add animations for some of the actions
• Add XP + JP gain on hits
• Add saving system
• Add character placement system pre-battle

An extra tidbit not in the youtube video description the program

Current program size:

• exe: 325kb
• images: 104kb
• data files: 5.62kb
• music: none yet, but ogg/mp3s will be 10 times larger than the freaking program...

As you can see, the program is relatively small. I hope to keep the download size under 1mb. Easy on bandwidth, quick for users to download, and overall simple to carry around.

More updates!

As I promised (not really!), here are some more updates!

• Added two new sprites (archer and chemist).
• Added ranged weapon logic (chemist uses ranged weapons).
• Fixed friendly players shifting in the wrong directions when moving through them.

Upcoming:

• More sprites (especially for party members)!
• Job skills!
• Fix AI for ranged weapon holders (need to change hit percentage values).
• Add potion throwing ability (and animation) + healer AI for chemist.
  

Video:

It's that time again

More updates!

Sorry all for the long wait. I have been working on a website for a Northwestern Innuvation Competition. That has kept me pretty busy, but I guess I also got a bit burned out working on Tactics.

Anyway, there have been a couple of important improvements and fixes made in the game engine:

• Pathfinding algorithm has been significantly improved. Time taken to calculate movement paths for a radius of 7 squares is around 75 ms in debug build, 10ms in release :). This is down from the previous average of 400ms in debug build and 150ms in retail. Net improvement: 433% (debug), 1400% (retail)!
  
• AI has also been significantly improved. They will now move to the square which gives them the best chance of hitting you (the back or the side). So far the time taken for the AI to calculate its move is around 1-2ms, maxing out at around 20ms.
• Lighting has been added to the game! So far the currently lighting scheme is ambient and was used to darken the terrain. Directional lighting and shadows will be added later.
• Camera now moves according to the pointer's location on the terrain. Camera change is also very smooth.
  
• Rotating the camera now accelerates when close to the middle of the rotational period.
  

Minor changes:

• Edited terrain map.

Things I'm working on at the moment (from highest to lowest priority):

1. New enemy sprites
2. Add more terrain textures (system is already in place for different textures)
3. Add system to allow for non-stretched textures on the side of elevated tiles.
4. Add terrain textures to go with the side of elevated tiles (this is gonna be time-consuming)
   
5. Add directional lighting and shadows (maybe even dynamic shadows based on time of day *cough* hopping on the bandwagon *cough*)
6. Replace current sprites with custom sprites and most importantly working attack animations.

So yeah, it seems that I am in need of a video game sprite artist. If you have experience with SRPGs or isometric tile-based games and are interested in this project, send me an email at hobbes.and.me@gmail.com.

Video:

Work work...

If you got that Warcraft III reference, you get a cookie ;)

Anyway, time for a quick update on Tactics' development:

• Added tile heights into the game
• Added Z buffer (occlusion is now in effect)
• Added character sprites changing their facing direction when rotating

Not much in terms on number of bullet points! However, it took an excruciating long time since I am relatively new to the DirectX API. Adding the Z buffer took me hours of research to find out that the background was occluding the 3D terrain (I was drawing from the back to front with D3DXSprite & 2D transformation so Z values were insignificant prior to trying to add the Z buffer). As you can see, I am quite the DX noob :P

Another tidbit of info is that I'm currently developing the game on a laptop with a Geforce2 Go. It has a whopping 16MB video ram and ~500 million pixels/second. For comparison, my desktop computer's Radeon X850XT has a 8 billion pixels/second, and the X850XT is hardly top of the line. Fill rate was used as a quick comparison and is not intended to be a true-to-life comparison of the performance difference. I have also tested the game on a P4 with an Intel Integrated Graphics 82910 chipset and it maintained a steady 70fps (vsynced).

While high fps, or at least steady fps, should be expected of a graphically non-intensive game like Tactics, it is still relieving to know that the game runs at a stable 60 fps on a Geforce2 Go. However, I suspect there is a lot of room for optimization, as there is a noticeable drop in FPS when the character stats are drawn. As I said earlier, I'm really new at this and have been reading articles all over the internet about DX (Gamedev.net for the win), so it will probably be a while before I will iron out all the slowdowns due to inefficient code.

Alright, well that's it for now. I have attached a few screenshots to show the developmental progress more clearly.

Edit: Removed screenshots and uploaded a new video for clarity:

Welcome...

... to the Tactics game development blog. There's not much content to be posted at the moment, but I'll give a quick description of what Tactics currently is and what it aspires to be.

Tactics is currently a clone of Final Fantasy Tactics. However, it does not intend to keep using these sprites - mainly because I do hope to have the game available for download with the option to compete online versus other players (details have not been fully thought out yet). To prevent another Chrono Resurrection from happening again, game details and screenshots will be kept at a minimum. Once complications have been sorted out, game info should be more freely passed on to the players.

Design philosophies that Tactics follows:

• Little or no grinding
• Playability for people of all skill levels (The game does increase in difficulty, BUT players will be given ample opportunity and guidance to improve their skill prior to such difficulty increases)
• Extremely flexible class/job customization (similar to FFT)
• No fake/synthesized AI enemies that you randomly encounter upon walking to a new town - especially no enemies that seemingly level up as you do. Enemy levels will be determined based on their location relative to the beginning in the game world.
• Creative AI tactics (will need to expand past the FFT designs)
• Finely tuned item costs to ensure items are meaningful and game difficulty is not trivialized by being purchasing all "best" items with enough grinding. Players will have to make sacrifices dealing with what kind of item best matches their play style.
• *Possible* Storyline that does not stretch beyond human reason...
• Meaningful (persistent) online gameplay that does not require hours of your life to make a tiny bit of progression. World maps will be the basis for persistent gameplay, however. More info on that later.

That's it for now... I'll have more details in a bit - maybe a screenshot even!

Edit: Looks like you may be getting an even better sneak peak at Tactics. I've just finished recording a video of the "gameplay" (more like demo). Please excuse the quality, it was recorded at half size to save space. The next video will be recorded at full size.