Closer... Closer...

This past week has been not very productive in comparison to, say, the week before and the week before that. I've only been able to put in maybe 2-3 hours a day tops for the most part throughout this week due to a rather large influx of work at my, well, place of work. It is not common to be this busy. For those of you who don't recall, I am a Security Officer for a hospital. This means I administer medicinal smack-downs as appropriate, so when there is an influx of work, that means things are not going oh-so-well. But hopefully things will calm down after this weekend and I can start putting in more time again. Also, I will be starting the Beta process pretty soon, probably within the next two weeks or so. More on that further on in the update.

Furniture!
Ah, yes, the wild and wonderful world of home decore. With a vast majority of the characters and monsters taken care of, I've turned to producing furniture and such to fill up the various houses and buildings of Aleph. Most of the furniture can be picked up and put down as you like, with the exceptions of larger pieces, such as tables, beds, armoirs, and large benches. These are static objects. All of the smaller items, however, are re-arrangable. This also has an unintended side-effect that I didn't think through originally: you could theoretically fence off areas with chairs or end-tables or whatever and monsters won't be able to pass through and get you. Anyways, here is a 'before' picture:

Pretty spartan. This is one of the rooms in the player-housing area where all of your allies and such not in your party will ultimately hang out. The benches and tables are static. I felt the room looked a bit too sparse, so I went out, chopped some wood, and crafted some furniture. Then I cheated and made myself some paintings and such (you can get them in game regardless):

Now that looks nicer, homelier. Some items serve dual functions, like the clocks which will give you the time of day/night. I still need to work on some of the art and refine it more, but I like how it's shaping up. Being able to customize in-game space always appealed to me greatly in games, which is probably why I loved Ultima 7.

The Aleph

I've spoken awhile back about the general function of the Aleph, to help you locate items, people, whatever throughout the game. I wanted to give a more specific look at how it tends to function once its full ability is unlocked. When talking to NPCs, you will get an occasional mention of a special, magical weapon, armor, or object that will be in a slightly different color:

Any object mentioned that is in that yellow-ish color means that you can use the Aleph to find that particular object. When reading books, you will come across plenty of useable words as well. So, for example, let's say that the sound of the Eye Gouger sword is intriguing and you want to go and find it. So you whip out your trusty Aleph, type in Eye Gouger, and viola:

The Aleph shows you the location of the object. L-16 refers to the grid position. You will have a map that you can look at, which divides the world into a large grid, A-R right to left, 1-22 top to bottom. When you look at the map, you can find L-16 and see what part of the world that is. If the object is in a dungeon, like the Eye Gouger is, the Aleph will tell you the name of that dungeon, and the level it is on. The 023,047 refer to the exact coordinates of the object in the dungeon or in that specific section of the world grid. In this case, the Eye Gouger is 23 tiles to the right, and 47 tiles down from the upper left most corner. You can use the Aleph to find your own position, so you can tell if you're getting closer or further away.

You can type position, or location into the Aleph and it will give you your grid location, as explained above, and your precise x/y coordinate, so you can use this information to close in on a particular object that you want.

Beta
I haven't gotten as much done this past week or so as I would have liked (as stated above). I wanted to have at least 2 or 3 towns full of NPCs, but I only have 1. So what I will probably end up doing is just adding the essential NPCs (shops and such) in time for the first round of Beta. This will make some of the towns rather empty, but that is not important for the first round of testing. I also have a couple of crash bugs that have not yet been resolved that need to be resolved before I begin testing.

I stated awhile back how I planned to breakup the Beta testing phases: 

"The first phase will naturally be the roughest since the game will still fairly be in its infancy. Thusly I would only want 3-5 testers during this phase. The second phase will be more polished and more of a complete experience, and open to an additional 5-10 testers. The third stage will feature the game mostly how it is supposed to be, but for the purpose of squashing any lingering bugs and balancing game-play mechanics, it will be open to all beta testers. It seems dubious to me that anyone would want to test out the same game up to 3 times before playing the finished, polished version, so anyone who wants to participate in Beta at one point or another does not have to participate in all phases, though they can if they choose and are eligible.

Eligibility for Beta testing will be determined by reward tier – it seems the fairest, easiest way to do it. So for the first phase which will need 3-5 people, I will start at top of the reward list for highest backers and offer an invitation. If they accept, then they are in, if they decline (or perhaps want to participate in a later phase or not at all) then the invitation goes to the next highest backer. The second phase will follow the same rules, just with additional open slots for testing."

So in a couple of weeks I will start contacting the appropriate people until I have 3-5 people. The main focus of this first round of Beta will be exploration and combat for the most part. Things like quests, the Aleph system, the dungeon/town raids will not be fully implemented yet. The particular goal this time around is mostly to make sure the foundation elements of the game work correctly and identify any particularly heinous bugs or crashes.

So that will be coming up relatively soon.
I hope you all have a great weekend!

Update Time

Good mornin', afternoon, or evenin', depending upon when you're reading this.


It's that time again... Update time! Bam!

Ever since I placed that first round of testing deadline for myself, I have found myself pushing harder to get the game into a state where it is, in fact, testable without crashing. This is both good and bad. Good because it means a lot is happening to bring the game to fruition. Bad because it makes me go insane and chase people around a large, isolated, empty hotel in the midst of winter with an axe until I end up in a hedge maze and freeze. Again. Basically my schedule is like this: I wake up. I work on Aleph for 1-2 hours. I shower. I work on Aleph for 1-2 more hours. I eat. I go to work. At work, depending on how busy I am, I can put in as few as 1 or 2 hours, or as many as 5 or so hours. When I get home after 11pm from work, I put in 1-3 more hours. Then I sleep. Then I wake up and repeat the process. Every. Day. On days off, it is a bit different, putting anywhere up to 12 or so hours in.

Buuut, hopefully the game will be in good enough shape to be tested within a month or so. Some of the bugs mentioned previously have been taken care of. I found the root of the problem for why the ships are incapable of sailing on water and only sail on land. Hopefully that will be fixed by this weekend. I fixed the problem with the game crashing under certain conditions when the player went to certain locations that had particular fog overlays. The monster and resource spawn system has been fixed and works quite well. I found a source of loading lag (when transferring between 'maps' the game was lagging for 2-4 seconds), so now that is identified, I can fix it at some point. A bunch of miscellaneous errors have been corrected. Equipping equipment no longer crashes the game. Dropping weapons or armor onto the ground no longer crashes the game, nor does it drop the wrong items. Dropping items still crashes the game, though, and I hope this will be fixed by this weekend as well. Right now, searching dead bodies crashes the game, but that is not a bug, I just haven't assigned loot tables yet.

So, as far as testing goes, I can live with a few quirks and bugs, but I will not begin testing as long as the game crashes and I know there is an issue with it that can be fixed. I am sure once these issues are fixed and testing begins more crashes and such very well may be discovered, which is the nature of testing, but I still want to try to make the testing phase go as smoothly as possible.

I've been churning out additional art and revamping existing art. I think it's all starting to look pretty good, and reminds me a lot of certain games from the 90's. It is all still a work in progress, but progress is progressing. Or something. Anyways, I made a bunch of furniture, chairs, tables, cabinets, and the like, along with miscellaneous items like wells, catapults, an animated guillotine, Alephs, statues, skeletons, graves, tombs, and so forth. I realized that my primary 'artistic' inclination was to massively desaturate everything of color, sort of following the 'brown is real' trope of modern games. I decided that I liked the more vibrant colors of older games over the browns and greys of todays, so I 're-saturated' most of the graphics to liven up the landscape a bit.

I've started placing the monster spawners in the various maps and dungeons. I would say about half, maybe a little less than half, of the world currently has monsters and random plant resources (for alchemy and crafting) spawning in the appropriate areas. At first, this was a bit problematic because there are some tougher monsters out in the wilds, and I figured it would kind of suck if you just wandered into one of these areas while exploring and get totally eaten alive. So, I placed a level spawner in some locations as well; meaning that those harder monsters won't spawn until the player is level X or above, sort of like Fallout. This way the player will be better equipped to handle such creatures. I did not do this for dungeons, though, and some dungeons are a lot harder than others. I will try to drop hints throughout the game so you can get a sense of which dungeons might be most appropriate at the time (though this will depend more upon your equipment and party makeup than actual attributes and levels).

So, what exactly is an Aleph, anyways?

Since as far back as ancient Persia (or perhaps beyond), the concept of scrying stones has been around. J.R.R. Tolkien referred to them as Palantirs, the church of Latter Day Saints call them Seer Stones, Jorge Luis Borgais called his the Aleph (from which I divined the name for this game), and there are many other names and types thereof. The general purpose, regardless of what they are called and by whom, is pretty similar throughout history and fantasy. They are a medium in which the user divines some sort of truth or psychic vision; they are used to see things, past present or future, over a great or short distance. That is the cliff-notes version.

How does this relate to the game Aleph, though? In the game world I've created, there exists multiple Alephs. Only a Seer, whom is from another realm completely (I.E. you!) has the ability to utilize these ancient magical constructs. As the Seer, you assume control over the House of the Aleph, which has remained dormant for many years. Upon doing so, you receive a small Aleph, which you can use to locate items and people throughout the world (as talked about in a previous update). The larger Alephs, as you see in the picture above, have a different function. Once you master a particular principle (Bravery, Empathy, Wisdom, etc), and you interact with the associated Aleph, it will bestow a certain power upon you. These particular powers generally grant you immunity from a particular ailment or effect. The Aleph of Wisdom, for example, prevents you from becoming confused or possessed by evil spirits. The last, and the most ancient of Alephs, under the right conditions will bring about the end of the game.

Graves!

I gathered up all of the Kickstarter backer names as appropriate and placed them on their respective grave markers and such and placed them throughout the game. I wanted to make sure everyone's name got used (who supplied one) so I went ahead and did that before it slipped my mind.

So, going forward, I hope to finish, or at least be darn near close to finishing, placing all of the monster and resource spawners throughout the entire game. I will continue to work on making the art consistent and editing old art to make it up to date. Once the spawn system is in place, I am going to start adding shop keepers and standard NPCs (right now I only have the party member NPCs in the world, and the Steward of your noble house). I would also like to work on the items a bit more and make sure they are all working as intended in game. I also have to add furniture to the item database so that you can pick it up and place it where you like. I want most furniture to be interactive in this way, except for large furniture like tables, cabinets, and the like.

Do you have some good ideas?

Part of what I love about the whole Kickstarter thing is that I don't feel like I am alone in making this game - that it is, in at least some ways, a collaboration of ideas. So, I would like to reach out to you fine folk and perhaps pick some of your brains, if you would be so willing.

What I would like is some ideas for dungeon traps, puzzles, riddles, and the like. I have a bunch of my own, but it would be irresponsible for me to assume that I have covered the gamut by myself and have created interesting puzzles on my own. I remember seeing one Kickstarter's ideas for a dungeon and they were things I never thought of, and it really made my day seeing those ideas. And that is what I love - people's ideas that are so much different than my own, that I never could think of.

So, if you have a nifty puzzle, dangerous trap, or head-scratchin' riddle you would like to share with me, it might well end up in one of the dungeons of Aleph. For the sake of not spoiling anything, feel free to send any idea to me via private message or e-mail (personal e-mail: llama32@hotmail.com).

Thanks and see you next time!