Reprisal’s original Skirmish mode is heading back to Reprisal Universe!
If you already own Reprisal Universe on Steam, you can play with the beta right now by opting in. You can read more details on the Beta thread here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/319560/discussions/0/624076751552064772/
So this little chap has become an important part of the game.
Work has begun on the all important hand holding to help new players understand what to do in the game, and how to do it. This in itself has been a big job but it’s almost there.
The first two levels out of the thirty in total will be tutorials from this little guy guiding players on what to do and where to click.
Work continues with an official full beta version just on the horizon …
Testing the Reprisal engine, running all 4 teams, 3 CPU controlled against each other. Debugger stats are on show showing minimal frame lag! Boom times!
Friday, Day 224 into development.
So I decided to quickly do a little round up. Looking at Mine Craft today I realise how easily the game could have taken on some of its game play mechanics. The early engine for Reprisal was based on a ‘block’ generated landscape (see above image) and was very fast to create.
Wanting to move it towards the current angular less block feel did take a fair bit of thinking about, maths and code but from a design point of view I think its working a treat. I do however like the idea of making players mine or gather resources to let them build and terror-form land rather than waiting for mana collection. I’ll be thinking about this a bit more.
In other news the game will now be including different world types which is purely cosmetic at present and has easily double and tripled the graphics workload! Also been addressing some usability UI issues to help you locate which tile your on easily. Hope to get my head down with a new release update soon.
Some updates to the engine adding more particle systems (v0.3). Fire rain now has some impressive earth scorching effects. Sprite walk cycle animations have been tweaked. A new bitmap selecting system has also been added behind the scenes allowing different world environments such as snow, rain, desert etc. Great more work!
Also started a parallel dev blog over on TIG forums
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22508.0
Good session this eve. Fire mountains added, various code tweaks and also a new tidal storm effect added. Boom!
My broken jaw has almost mended and I can get back onto solids in 4 days time! woo hoo! Anyway, down to a screen shot update. The interface is gradually taking shape, with mana collection for the ‘specials’ stored under Earth, Wind and Fire options. Above screen shows a fire column just being unleashed …. boom!
On the sound front, if you need old school 8bit sound effects I found this hand 8bit SFX maker which is proper handy and easy to use:
http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr
So I broke my Jaw on one side and fractured it on the other, not a great thing to do. While getting used to the metal plate and eating through straws here’s a new screen shot taken from the current version. I’d managed to blitz through some land tiles which I’m quite liking.
Converted
So all the code is now converted to AS3 and the overall performance increase can really be noticed. As i geeked offin the last entry, the ms counter now barely registers 2ms even with over 100 people and 100 buildings! The conversion process took probably just over an hour, however a lot of tinkering was needed for a final version to run smoothly with all the features from the AS2 version.
(Showing 61 buildings, 41 roaming population and no slow down in the engine! The MS counter is actually 2ms it’s just when I grabbed this screen it had dropped to 0)
One of the biggest differences between AS2 and AS3 is just how strict AS3 is. All variables need to be declared and typed correctly. In the long run this is a good thing as it leads to good programming. However users of AS2 who may have become at home with AS2’s lax nature (as I had) will find the change at first frustrating. One of the biggest bits of additional code that the port needed was checks to make sure the function’s weren’t trying to access array’s out of range, something that wont tend to bother AS2 :p
Another change is the way bitmaps work and the introduction of a new object simply called ‘bitmap’. You now need to set up your bitmapData, then create a bitmap from this, and then attach this to your child! OK I’ll admit it’s only one extra line but come on! :D
In finishing up it’s fair to say that I put off opening Flash CS3 for ages, but now I have it could be that I wont go back to coding in AS2. I’ll still be using Flash 8 for drawing, but the performance increase in AS3 is well worth the investment.
