The Cycle Starts Again

Alright, so the hex-based turn-based tactical rpg thing that I was working on has stalled out. The foundation's there, but I don't have enough information on how the next parts are supposed to work that I can start putting them together. It's a hazard of working with other people unofficially.

On the bright side, I certainly taught myself a fair bit working on it and I can hopefully start putting that to use again soon.

In fact, I've already spent the last two weeks planning out an idea that's been floating around in my head for while now. If it starts to come together I'll post more in depth about it (if not, I'll probably go back to making colorful monsters dance around the screen), but here are the basic things I want.

A game where:
- you have to really work to become a "main character"
- figuring out what's going on is more important than The Next Quest
- actions create rumors, which move, mutate and affect future actions
- npcs have plans of their own and make decisions based on the best info they can get
- detailed numbers for character stats, weapons and such don't exist and aren't missed

It'll most likely be top-down on either a hex or square grid, since I can build on things I've already created there. Even with that, I've got a lot to figure out before I can start on a basic test version. I think it'll work. I've got no one to blame but myself if it doesn't!

Grobbles v0.5!

This one makes me happy. The little monster things now run around, eat each other, and once they've eaten enough, disappear after spawning 5 new monsters. Of course, there's nothing to really show what's going on yet, monsters just run everywhere and disappear, with new ones appearing in random locations when an old one spawns them.

The program should now also be able to use all of any screen size up to 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. That should be plenty.

Things to add:
- Some sort of notifier when monsters get eaten.
- Some sort of notifier when monsters avoid getting eaten.
- Some sort of notifier when monsters spawn.
- A way to exit gracefully (it's still Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, or windows key/Alt-Tab and right-click -> close for now).
- Basic heredity, for colors and stats (speed's the only obvious one of those).

Grobbles

So, apparently I'm incapable of sticking to one project currently. On the bright side, this latest one has taught me a much nicer method for creating a sprite out of multiple image parts, as well as how to make java go fullscreen and a few other tricks. The eventual goal of this program is to have a bunch of little monsters run around on the screen eating each other, inflating, and bursting into little copies of themselves until there's just one type left.

A warning, if you run this one, you're going to have to use ctrl alt delete or alt-F4 to get out of it.

Little Ships

They may eventually fight each other, but for now they just try (relatively unsuccessfully) to stay on the screen. Thrust only comes directly out the back of the ships, hence all the turning and eventual wandering. It's not much, but download is to the right if you want to watch!

Housekeeping

I've got new and better hosting for the programs I linked to previously, and I also added a sprite generator I put together when I was making sure all of those images lined up right. They can be found over to the right, and new programs will be added to that list. I haven't gone back and changed the links in the older posts.