The hunt for the lost rainbow jewels

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#21

I could test the v0.19 on a pretty old netbook, an Asus EeePC 900 HD. That was sold in 2008, and was a low-end computer already back then. Single core Celeron at 900Mhz, 1GB ram, some intel onboard graphics. It got Linux Mint 17.2 installed.

Jewelhunt 0.19 runs there, at 30-40 FPS. Basically it works, except for little delays in movement, when pathfinding is triggered. Sound didn’t work. No idea why - my Linux knowledge is too little to really investigate the problem.

I’m fairly sure now that Jewelhunt should run fine on all current systems.

Edit:

Working on graphics for a new game location, a sort of a temple. So far I have parts of the walls and the floors:

1200×768 412 KB

#22

Seven jewels have been stolen. So far, the location of the first one was known. It went down the sewers and ended up in the imp catacombs.

Among the classic locations of importance, pyramids always have been among the most impressive.

And as it seems, the second jewel has been hidden in a particularly pale place, the uncolored pyramid, home of the grey mummy.

http://forum.freegamedev.net/download/file.php?id=9597&mode=view

#23

Was this inspired by Legend of Mir 2, in some way or another?

#24

No. The main inspiration came from Diablo II, how items will be made. Also, Roguelikes, but they share a lot with Diablo II.

The game world is my design, but honestly, I’m still facing problems. After the decision that there are 7 rainbow jewels, I needed 7 locations where the thief hid them, and I couldn’t come up with anything better than the classics - a dungeon, the pyramid, a tower, an ice castle, a cave, and actually I have forgotten the others. But somewhere in my notes, there should be a list of seven locations ::slight_smile:

But as it seems, even if I try to keep things very simple, it will take years to finish all that …

#25

Tried it out again. The delay with the movement still exists. In fact, it took a while for attacking enemies too. Whenever I clicked it didn’t immediately respond. What Java version are you using with this?

#26

Sun/Oracle JDK 7

[i]Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:>java -version
java version “1.7.0_45”
Java™ SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_45-b18)
Java HotSpot™ 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.45-b08, mixed mode)
[/i]

I’ve been looking into the path finding some days ago and noticed it wasn’t very optimally coded. I had done that library for turn-based games some years ago, and obviously I was of the opinion it’d be “good enough”. Since then I optimized it a bit, but I should implement A* some day. Currently it is a simple breadth-first search, even if now optimized it is quite a bit slower than A* in most cases. The next release should be easier on the GC in pathfinding, though, the new code creates 50% less objects.

#27

Just out of curiosity, why aren’t you using Java 8?

#28

Psychological trait: Late adopter.

Can’t say why, but usually I stay with the things I know until there is a compelling reason to change something. Java 7 works fine for me, I’m not very curious or eager to use anything that was newly introduced in Java 8, and compiling my code on language level 7 makes it more likely to run on many other systems, including those who haven’t upgraded yet.

The next release will have an A* implementation for pathfinding.

#29

I’ve published a new development snapshot. This time it’s a more “in-between” version, because the pyramid interiors are not done yet, and the pyramid map is done only partly.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/jewelhunt/r020/

The only noteworthy change in terms of code is the switch to A* pathfinding. My priority queue implementation is cheap, and not optimal, but it produces less garbage than the old breadth-first pathfinder from the former version. I don’t see any performance change on my system, but in theory, this new version should be better.

There is also a change that allows to display “equipment overlays” for the PC, depending on the used equipment. I’ve done only one overlay yet, though, for shields. It’s only a visual goody, and quite a lot of effort to make the overlays, so I feel uncertain if I want to continue this. In the current release the system is active, though (for shields).

#30

I wish I could make better looking water surfaces - today I made a pond for the rainbow temple map:


https://gedankenweber.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/jwh-r021-pond.jpg?w=450&h=356

And the village map got a waypoint:

Today I feel a bit disappointed - the project isn’t looking bad, but I can’t get it the way I want. The controls are clumsy, the magic system is largely non-existing, I have no real idea how to make good looking graphics effects with OpenGL, and still the project feels like bloatware: 12MB download for a walkaround demo - which even stalls on slower systems.

Maybe my winter depression is creeping at me again. There is little to be happy about these days. It’s dark, cold, and the autumn leaves are dropping, soon the world will be brown and gray, dirty. Pale, colorless, like baddies in my project want it to be, too.

#31

There’s a lot about this game that is looking good. Don’t get disheartened!

#32

I’ve always thought this game looked pretty great ;D Definitely don’t give up, take it from me, it feels much worse getting half-way done with a bunch of random projects than it does to complete an entire game, even if it’s not everything you hoped.

I can’t find where a jar of the game is downloadable, and I’m not in a position where I can compile it at the moment. But once I can I’ll play around with it and see if I have any suggestions!

#33

I’m pretty worried that you might end up deciding to give up on this project, so here are some words of encouragement, 'cause you definitely need some.

You see, I’ve been programming for about 5 years. The first 3 years, I just read up a lot about computers and did very simple programming. When I turned 11, I decided to start for real. I first wanted to be a web developer. Then I found Python and I realised that there was much more to learn. I took inspiration from Mojang, the makers of Minecraft. They’re the reason for which I decided to settle with Java. I’ve always really wanted to make a game, but every game I started I gave up on just mere months later.

That’s not how it works. The feeling that your game idea isn’t up to scratch is nothing more than an illusion; it’s simply that you thought of another idea which you think is better than the previous one and suddenly the previous game idea seems much less appealing. I’ve experienced that very same feeling on several accounts and it’s a tricky sort of feeling. Ignore it. It won’t help you; there are always better ideas out there.

I’ve been watching this thread for quite some time now and I’m convinced that this game has the potential to be a true success. Maybe nowadays there’s no market for 2D games, but the moment people hear “RPG” they get excited. Focus on the uniqueness of the game, because that’s what I find most important, especially in an RPG game. And don’t worry about your graphics first. Look at Minecraft; many people say it’s graphics are lackluster and terrible. Honestly, I think the graphics in Minecraft are beautiful because of its simplicity, and your game is the same. I love the trees and buildings. They look flawless in my eyes, except for maybe the water. Remember, game development is an art and when dealing with art, you (yes, YOU) are your worst enemy.

On that happy note, I wish you good luck.

#34

Thanks all, for the encouraging words. I’m dabbling in game creation since about 20 years, there have been ups and downs. In between I had become ill, so that there have been years, when I could not work at the computer, and this was the end of all the former projects. It’s better again, but I’ve no more the stability and power that I once had in the past.

I’m somwhat prone to the the “I’ve got a better idea and start newly” syndrome, but “better idea” seldom is a better game idea, but means to either simplify the program, if the former solution was too hard to use or maintain (e.g. a former RPG attempt had detailed creature body structures, modelling all limbs, which turned out not to be really useful but just a huge overhead and cause of errors), or the other way round, to make something more flexible, becuase the former solution was too limited.

So far I’m pretty sure though, that this time it’s a good compromise between “simple enough, so that it’s easy to work with” and still powerful enough to let my ideas come true. The only big question left is weather to add multiplayer support, and if yes, how exactly. At the moment the decision is to stay with single player.

I’ve uploaded a new snapshot, because two things felt so unfinished in the last release. There was the pyramid, but you couldn’t enter it. And there was the experimental item graphics overlay feature for the PC, which had a shield overlay, but no weapon. Now there is also a weapon overlay, that is shown if the PC is actually wielding a weapon, and there is a new map generator for the pyramid. It only produces a group of empty rooms though, but well, at least you can actually enter the pyramid.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/jewelhunt/files/jewelhunt/r021/

All changes since r020:

  • Added pond and waypoint graphics.
  • All item defense values were multiplied by 10, to make a +5% mod more meaningful.
  • Added new blacksmith graphics.
  • Added stronghold graphics, not used in game yet.
  • Fix: Monster lairs should no longer overlap.
  • Added pyramid dungeon.
  • Added PC graphics sword overlay.
  • Added UI spell icons.
#35

I finished the basic code for a new game mechanic: Items with gem sockets, and the option to place gems in those sockets:

http://forum.freegamedev.net/download/file.php?id=9602

Calculations of the effects of gems in sockets are missing currently. It’s only the data structures and the UI to add gems to items that’s done. Calculating the effects will be the next step to implement.

#36

That’s amazing :smiley: Keep it up

#37

keep it up, i like it :slight_smile: !

#38

Thanks :slight_smile: It’s going slower these days, but I’m working on a UI and some code to transmute items, much like the horadric cube in Diablo II did - the basic idea is to have a magic device that takes a group of items, and transmutes that group into a new item. I liked that game mechanic in D2 a lot.

#39

I finally found the reason for this. I’m still puzzled why the problem did not show up on Windows, but I have a theory …

The problem was, that the code only handled one mouse event per frame. So if you moved the mouse to a spot to click it, most often there were a lot of mouse move events in the queue, and it took a while till all had been handled, and the click was processed. It’s fixed now, but I didn’t want to publish a new release just because of this fix. Still I thought I should post an explanation what’s been the problem, since a while garbage collection was suspected to be the culprit, or the old java/lwjgl versions, but it was the event handling.

My explanation why this showed on Linux but not on Windows is, that Linux reports more mouse move events than Windows does. So on Windows the number of events to handle after moving the mouse is generally lower and the 60 FPS often were enough to keep the queue rather short, while on Linux many more mouse move events were queued.

But it shows again, that I’m not a game designer, but a programmer … I still have problems to create quests and events in the game world, and not purely make it a technology or graphics demo. This was a problem in my former projects, too, and probaly it will be a problem here as well, even if I return to the project now and then to add new things.