| Saiko Kode - Dream Quest 2000 Insider: |
On this page you will find up to date information on the developement of Dream Quest 2000. Exactly what part of the game is being worked on etc, so you can see the speed at which a game is developed.
Now on to the progress...
| Progress: |
Wednesday September 8, 1999
Just thought I'd do a little update because I'm bored, and I
thought you all might
like a little peek at where we're at right now.
Wow! That place looks rowdy.
In the bowels of the earth... kinda.
Tayh's arrow flies towards it's target.
Remember, Fighters up front, Mages in the back.
"Run away! Run away! Aaugh! Aaugh! Aaugh!"
Yes, those are Icons you see beside the items.
And yes, that really is a Death Potion :P
That's it for now. And no, I still can't put my finger on a release date.
Currently, my classes take prescedence over working very much on DQ,
so you'll just have to continue to be patient.- bludragn
Sunday August 22nd, 1999
Finally got back from my vacation to Japan, btw it rocked!
Anyways while in Japan I did a bit of coding, and during my the last week here in Canada, I did some more work on the new Windows 95 DirectX Dq2k Editor. This one uses my own custom built GUI code. Its coming along great so far, runs in high res, these pics are shrunk down to a smaller pic, but you get the idea. Anyway this should speed up developement quite a bit.
Stay tuned...
Wow look at the new drawing mode!
NPC Edit mode has also improved..
Editing enemies is now simpler.
Built in homemade text editor!
Monday August 2nd, 1999
(Bludragn) Well, I've finally gotten around to putting up a few screenshots ofmy progress towards Demo2 for all to see. Here you go: a previewof the goodness to come.
In the town of Orynn
Kaelin's House
Behold! No more '?' instead of a head shot
In combat with Angry Crabs and the dreaded Vampire Bat
There you have it. A sample of what I've been up to. Note the new tiles, both indoor and outdoor. Also note thenice new headshot of Kaelin, and the new battle graphics. This is just a taste of all the new stuff that awaits in a few weeks!
- bludragn
Sunday June 20th 1999
It's been a while hasn't it? We've all still been working hard on DQ. Mostly reorganizing the code and design.
Good news is that the maps are now 512k, down from 4 megs! The events are also stored better so that it also takes up less space.
The battle engine has been reorganized to be more efficient, and to run purely on scripts. Good news here is that items, commands, and a magic system has all be implemented.
Select Multiple or Single system has been completed for battle.
Fixed a lot of outstanding bugs in battle discovered when adding new commands. There's still one bug left but that will be removed before anything is released.
Here are some new pics:
Yes, there it is, the famous FF chanting animation =)
Selecting your magic spell.
White magic charge up animation.
Black Magic charge up animation.
It's the first Fire animation. Doing it all an ally.
Doing fire on all the enemies. The battle engine is capable of doing the spells on a single enemy/player or all players/enemies.
Up to May 3rd 1999
Yo, it's me!
Now I know most of you are thinking, where have ya been for the last couple of weeks?
Well the truth is, I've been very busy and haven't had time to work on DQ at all....
I don't think SO!
Actually I've been so busy working on DQ I haven't had time to update this page at all. But now I'm taking a break to update it, so here goes nothing.
First things first, DQ2k is now a Windows 9x application =)
This is good because it allows everyone to play without the likes of Display Doctor, also their will be a major speed increase for some people. The game also looses its DOS in Windows jerkyness as well. The game runs in a window or the preferred, full screen mode. I am totally taking advantage of directX now. DQ now uses Direct Draw, Direct Sound, and Direct Input. I'll be adding joystick support shortly.Now you're probably saying, great its in windows, but that's all that got done in 2 weeks? No way, here's what's new:
- Midi Music Support (Sounds awesome with my SB LiVE!)
- Wave SFX Support
- Item Shops
- Equipment Shops
- Lots more NPC action script commands
- Battle Engine Skeleton 85% complete
- Item handling complete
- Battle Item Handling complete
- Damage Calculation Setup
- DQEdit handles monster placement on maps.
- Monster AI script handling (Check out the Vampire Bats!)
- Battle Damage Control
- Game Over
- Credits
- Intro Screen
- Tons of bug fixes!
- Anything I may have missed.
As you can see, DQ2k has almost everything it needs to be a complete game engine. All that's left to do is Magic and Special Commands, but they will work similiar to how items are used, so its nothing major really.
The rest of the game that needs completion is cosmetic stuff. Which will take some time, but again nothing to pull hair out over.
So shortly after Blu and I get our 3rd demo release ready for public you will see how DQ has progressed lately. There will be something to do in the demo, some point to it, unlike the past demos, it will also include what we have of battle for you to enjoy.
Well its back to coding for me =)
Up to April 17th 1999
Lots more battle stuff done. Also changed the warp out effect due to popular demand to a fade in.
Almost finished everything I need to do on the Game Editor for editing monsters, groups, etc. Just have to add in placement of monster random groups on the map.
Battle is truly REAL-TIME now. Unlike FF my battle system never waits ever, no mater what you're doing the battle keeps going! Should help create some heart pounding action during boss fights.
Finished win battle celebration:
Finished select enemy:
Now you can select enemies you use use the FIGHT command. However its not fully finished because you can't select allies, or all enemies yet.
I also finished making the cool fade away effect for defeated enemies:
Player's attack animation was also fully completed:
Notice how the slash is transparent =)
The titlebar window for displaying messages during battle is also complete, although I think I'll add a que for it.
There's still lots of stuff to finish and tweak for battle. I also worked on putting in sound and music. The music works fine, but I can't seem to get my soundfx to sound right.
I think next I'll be doing the enemy's attack or using items.
Up to April 11th 10:38 Am (PST) 1999
Well did some more quick work, now items that can be used are highlighted in battle and land, and items that can't be used are greyed out.
Also but in a nice battle background temporary picture, put in the players battle gfx too. Just finished the attack animation, looks sweet, just like FF5.
As you can see I've done some of the player animations such as prepare to do attack, and the full attack.
I guess I should put a highlight over the player that is selected at the moment. That will come later.
Just a little side note here, as you can see enemies are not implemented at all. I'll do this later. Shouldn't be too tough because they are simple, and run on their own system the way I am going to design it.
Up to April 11th 1999
Touched up DQ a bit more.
Started working battle. Completed real-time design that should work well for it.
The main battle screen so far.
Selecting your command.
Selecting an item. Partially done.
Up to April 10th 1999
More major bugs removed, some still remain unfortunately though. Made Equip screen window colors look nicer. I'll fix the colors on Item screen window later.
Speeded up NPC action script reading, this should speed up scrolling, and it shouldn't slow down and get jerky when lots of NPCs are on the screen like before.
Later I will be converting it so it loads all NPC action scripts into memory. This should give a major speed increase.
Finished NPC Smart Paths. Now NPC's can find path's to their destinations in real-time:
This is a DEBUG pic of finding a NPC's path. The path the NPC will take is in red. The Dot's are the starting and ending positions.
Improved the DQ Drawing Class. Now the borders of windows aren't transparent, they are opaque like they should be.
Started to plan the battle engine...
Up to April 7th 1999
Whoa! Forgot to update this page!
I have been working very hard on DQ the last few days, here's all that's new:
Smart NPC's. Full NPC path scripts ability is done. NPC full movement, and player movement by script is also done. NPC goto destination completed.
Status Screen completed!
It took a while but there it is =)
Also finished Equipping!
This took longer than it should have because I spent a lot of time squashing an old bug.
Also implemented AddNpc and RemoveNpc to the scripting engine. Now you can add and remove NPCs on the fly!
The scripting engine is basically complete for all interaction without battle in the game now.
I'll probably be moving on the magic & skills next.
Thursday & Friday March 11th & 12th 1999
Finished off the Menu Screen dispplay.
Added current version display, next level meter, gold display, and real-time clock display.
Tuesday & Wednesday March 9th & 10th 1999
Started working on character structures, got the script loader for characters all worked out. Made a start game script, now many different quests can be linked in.
Worked heavily on the Menu Screen display of characters, even added FF7ish hp and mp meters.
Here is a screen shot:
Don't worry I won't be using that Cloud picture in the final version.
Monday March 8th 1999
Got lots of work done today.
Created the InventoryObject class, ItemWindowObject class. Complete interaction of selecting items from the main menu system is complete.
Item descriptions work great, although I haven't even started working on the arrange command I thought I would leave that for later since it's not too important.
Added 2 new scripting commands, AddItem and CheckItem.
AddItem adds a new item to the players inventory, useful for treasure boxes and people giving you items.
CheckItem is basically, if player has a certain item then run this part of the script.
Here is a picture of the item screen as of today:
I'm still not sure whether the window will remain transparent or not, still deciding on it. Adding new items to the game is a peice of cake with the current scripting version.
Sunday March 7th 1999
Looked at my code again. Reorganized my thoughts a bit, planned what I should be doing next.
With that in mind I decided to code items next.
Created the ItemObject class. This class is basically a master list of all the items in the game. The object now loads the list of items from a script file. The code for loading the item list script file, adding items to the list, and checking if items on the list was completed.
| Future Developement Summary: |
Legend:
=======
* - Completed
+S - Simple Task
+P - Some Planning Required
+D - Difficult Task
+T - Time Consuming
Cosmetic:
-=-=-=-=-
+S Symbol Code to Weapons/Armour/Items
+P Weapon Set Code/Gfx
+P Weapon Projectile Code/Gfx
Recoding:
-=-=-=-=-
+T Tile Replacement
+T NPC Replacement
Game Engine:
-=-=-=-=-=-=
+T Skills System
+SP Status Abnormalities
+ST KeyItem System/Organization
+P Level Increase System
+P Experience System
* +SP Select All to Magic/Skills
Interaction Engine:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
+SP Players in Party Movement/Control Code (For
CutScenes)
Battle System:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
* +T Magic System to Battle
+TP Skills System to Battle
+S Run System to Battle
+SP Status Abnormalities to Battle
Supplement Code: (To be done after Engine
is Complete)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
+S Timer/CountDown Script Code
+S External Script Calling Code
+S Enemy AI script commands
* +S Animation Script Commands
+DP Animation Editor/Engine ???
* +SP TileSet Loading Code
+ST BMP Gfx Loading Code
+S More Script Commands
Finishing Up: (Final Release)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
+TP Encode/Encrypt Script Files (For speed,
and security)
+TP Encrypt Save Game Files
+S Tweak Game Stats/Difficulty
+TD Animation Effects