2010 Year in Review

It's hard to believe it's already been a year since I started sharing my progress on SFPC here!  In that time I've gone from what amounted to a simple map viewer and editor that could show a few text windows to something that is really starting to resemble a game, as can be seen below!



Want to try the demo for yourself?  Download it here.

Over the past 11 months, new additions to the engine have included:

• Music and sound effects via the Audiere sound library
• A custom scripting language used both to control game events and logic and construct game assets such as characters and equipment
• A turn-based strategy RPG combat system with basic enemy AI
• Animated battle cutscenes that show the results of each engagement playing out on the battlefield
• A more robust system of windows and menus that tie the game together
• Some slides (.pdf) discussing some of these features in more detail are available here.

I've come a long way as a programmer as well.  The hours and hours of work on SFPC alone have provided great practice, but I've also been reading some great books such as Scott Meyers' Effective C++.  I've been taking my time reading it, applying what I learn to polish and refine SFPC to make sure the lessons stick.  I've also learned a lot from my recent experiences in trying to get a job as a programmer in the games industry.  I'm not there yet, but I'm still trying, learning more and more as I go, and it's only a matter of time now before I finally get my big break.  I just have to keep reading, keep programming, and good things are bound to happen!

SFPC - December Combat Test Video #6

This time around I've got two new features up and running: attack range based on a character's equipped weapon, and target selection and confirmation.  Weapon graphics ended up getting put on the back burner for a bit, but they're still in the works.

I didn't work much on new features for SFPC in November.  I've been reading some good books and sharpening my general C++ skills, so I went through a lot of my older code and did some clean up and general maintenance to apply what I've learned.  Still a lot of code left that could stand to be polished and tweaked, but I decided to take a break from all that and do some new features and a video.

SFPC Items Update

Click here to view on YouTube to go fullscreen and HD



Two updates in one day!  Here we have the Items update, featuring scripted items and the new equipping windows.  Also of note is the new colored text system, which simply *1works like this.*0  The *1 would set the text color to orange, then the *0 would set it back to white.

The next update will probably be another combat one, in which I actually do what I set out to do when I took this detour, which is have weapon graphics display in combat.  Ranged attacks should also be pretty easy to implement now as well.

SFPC Editor Demo Video

Part 1:  Click here to view on YouTube to go fullscreen and HD



Part 2: Click here to view on YouTube to go fullscreen and HD



These are long overdue! Here you can see how I use the SFPC editor to create maps and script events. I'd like to believe that this system is simple enough that a novice could dive right in and be making maps pretty quickly given a little time, documentation, and encouragement. Part of the building up of that "documentation" is videos like this.

SFPC - August Combat Test Video #5

This week the big new feature is combat animations!  They're still pretty basic, no weapon graphics yet, I need to improve the item code a lot first before that happens, but aside from all the punching going on, things look pretty good! 

SFPC - August Combat Test Video #4

Another productive weekend!  Lots of bug fixing, under the hood changes, and asset ripping, but a handful of new stuff as well, hence the video.  Scrolling text may look simple to the untrained eye, a little thing we all take for granted, but it took a good bit of work to get it looking right and behaving alongside everything else.  Battle movement has also received a tune up, characters can move through (but not stop in) squares occupied by allies, and enemy squares are excluded from movement range calculations.

SFPC - August Combat Test Video #3

Another month, another video!  Usually I code for an hour or two here and there, typically in the morning before work, but today I got totally in the zone and put in something like 10+ hours!  Got so much done!  Combat is in a much better state now, cleaned up the existing battle code a ton, the new system is a lot more robust and easier for me to expand upon.  New features since last time include:

- Battlefield Land Effect and Stats windows
- Basic Cutscenes (no character animations) with fade transitions
- Auto-advancing text windows in cutscenes
- Critical hits and double attacks
- Music switching into and out of cutscenes

I also made tons of changes behind the scenes I won't drone on about, but one last thing worth mentioning that I did start on was damage types (physical, fire, cold, etc).  They're not taken into account for resistances or anything just yet, but the skeleton is there!

Obviously the next big milestone is going to be combat animations.  Ideally I can have basic animation up and running for the next video, hopefully before September, but we'll see how things go.  I also have lots of research ahead of me on getting my numbers right for calculating hits, misses, damage, special attack rates, and so on.  Heck, I might be open to taking on a volunteer to help do a lot of that kind of digging for me.  If anyone's interested, shoot me an email or leave a comment!

SFPC - July Combat Test Preview Video #2

So, more updates, more often.  Check!

Finally something that actually resembles very basic but functional combat!  My numbers are still way off, I'm sure, but I now have:

- The basic Attack/Magic/Item/Stay menu is functional.  Magic and Item do nothing, a lot of work needs done before they come online, but Stay and Attack are up and running as you can see above.
- Units can attack each other, do damage, and are removed from the battlefield when they run out of hit points.
- The battle ends when there are no enemies left on the field, which you can see when the debug info goes away at the end of the video.

Other than all the stuff left to do, what I really need right now is more accurate formulas.  None of the FAQs I have sifted through so far have the kind of info I need, at least not at first glance.  For now, I'm essentially rolling 1d20 behind the curtain to see if an attack hits.  A 20 is a crit (5%), a 4-19 is a hit (80%) and a 1-3 is a miss (15%).  Damage right now is just attacking character's Atk minus defending characters Def, +/- 1.  I still need to work counterattacks and double attacks into the mix as well, implement gold and how much gold an enemy is worth, how to award EXP, leveling up... so much left to do, but at least it's coming along.

If anyone has the exact formulas any of the SF games use, or can point me to a good resource that would save me a lot of time and effort doing research replaying parts of the original games over and over and over, please, let me know! 

SFPC - July Combat Test Preview Video

I wouldn't call this the official July video, but I felt like seeing if I could do a quick video this morning and maybe try having smaller videos more often. I had to quickly reinstall VirtualDub and FRAPS first this morning since I forgot to reinstall them when I put together my new PC, and the video compression settings were a little off so the video quality is not where I usually like it.

Anyway, this primarily shows off the range checking code. I've tested it on ranges up through 5 and it works fine, but I just have it set to do a plain melee range check for the video. The game loops through the established initiative order, which is currently just all characters in the battle sorted based on agility. (Is this correct? I don't know! Feel free to chime in below in the comments!) The code looks for any potential targets within range and just lists them in the debug info. Note that the Dark Dwarves are not AI controlled at this point, that's still a ways off, I'm pulling all the strings here with the keyboard. They are, however, on the enemy team. You'll notice for instance when Sarah does a range check near the end of the video, it does not list Bowie or Chester as valid targets. Only units on the opposing team will show up on the target list.

I've been dragging my feet on doing the next post on the scripting system, I should work on that soon. As a hint for the question from last time: what happens to the chest when you leave the map and return later? Also on that note, from the comments, BNC was right about the chest-opening music, and I didn't even think of that part! I'll have to work that in eventually, too.

SFPC Scripting - Treasure Chest

So as I mentioned in my last post on the new features in the June update, SFPC now has its own scripting language used to build content for the game.  Here's a basic script for a treasure chest from the demo:

!SFPC_Script "Chest 1 - Long Sword"

# Only runs after the chest has been opened.
FlagNeeded "Castle1_Chest1"
    DialogueWindow "BOWIE looked in the chest.^It was empty."
End

NoFlag "Castle1_Chest1"   # Only runs if the chest is still closed
    SetOverlayTile 27 44 49
    PlaySound "open-chest.ogg"
    AddItem "Long Sword" "opened the chest."
    SetFlag "Castle1_Chest1"
End

Let's break it down line by line:

!SFPC_Script "Chest 1 - Long Sword" - The opening !SFPC_Script just identifies this as a valid SFPC script file.  The "Chest 1 - Long Sword" in quotes is the name of the script that gets shown in the editor when placing events.  For instance, the many empty barrels that are scattered about the map all run the same script.  If I place a few barrel tiles on the map then write a script for them, I only need to do it once, then I can place as many empties as needed, and I can flip back through the list of events easily to get back to that script and just place more copies later as the map expands.

# Only runs after the chest has been opened. - The # signifies that this and everything past it on this line is a comment, similar to // in C++ or /* */ in C.  The scripting engine ignores everything else on a line after it hits a #.  As can be seen later in this same script, this doesn't have to be the only thing on the line, comments can be at the end of a line after other script commands have already been run.

FlagNeeded "Castle1_Chest1" - Checks to see if a flag named "Castle1_Chest1" has been set or not.  First, a quick aside about "flags".  The game engine keeps a collection of flags, which are just strings of letters/numbers/etc.  Any string of characters between quotes can be a flag.  They're kind of like boolean true/false variables.  Back to FlagNeeded!  This command asks the engine to see if a flag named within the quotes exists.  If it does, move forward and run the script commands on the following lines.  If the flag has not been set, ignore all commands from here until the next End statement, which in this case is two lines down.  The indentation on the commands that follow is optional but helpful, it keeps the script readable and helps show at a glance where one conditional statement like a FlagNeeded begins and ends.

DialogueWindow "BOWIE looked in the chest.^It was empty." - A DialogueWindow is a single window that shows up on the bottom of the screen for displaying text that draws in one character at a time.  The text in the window is processed automatically to wrap from one line to the next.  The manual '^' tells the string processor to show the paused text triangle at that point and wait for user input before clearing the window and showing more text.

NoFlag "Castle1_Chest1" - Similar to FlagNeeded, NoFlag checks to see if the flag in quotes is set and only runs the code between itself and the next End statement if the flag is NOT set.

SetOverlayTile 27 44 49 - Places the 27th overlay tile in the current tileset at coordinates 44x, 49y on the map.  The top left corner of the map is 0, 0.  Similar commands exist for SetBackgroundTile and SetForegroundTile.  The draw order, from bottom to top, is Background, Overlay, characters, Foreground.

PlaySound "open-chest.ogg" - Pretty self explanitory, the AudioMgr code plays the requested sound.  In this case it's an ogg vorbis audio file, but since I'm using Audiere for my sound lib at the moment, it can also play .wav or .mp3 files as well.  The sound plays one time and is not looped.

AddItem "Long Sword" "opened the chest." - Runs the AddItem command, adding the item specified in the first parameter with the text in the opening DialogueWindow from the second parameter.  If we were looking in a vase the text would be something like "looked in the vase." but it could just as easily say "checked inside the fireplace." or "searched behind the painting." or any number of options depending on the situation.  The AddItem code then goes on to attempt to add the selected item to each character's inventory until it finds someone who has room to hold it, or gives up if everyone is full.  I still don't have a working solution yet for the fringe case of opening a chest if the party has no room whatsoever (though I do have some ideas), currently in that case the item is lost for good and the chest remains open, but eventually the item will have to be put back in the chest and the chest will need to be closed back up again.

SetFlag "Castle1_Chest1" - I've already touched on the checking of flags, this command simply sets the specified flag to exist and be set to true.

Now, let's go back and put it all together and spell the whole thing out in english!  If the flag Castle1_Chest1 has been set, we know the player has already opened the chest, so if they interact with it, just show that it is empty.  If the flag was not set however, the item is still in the chest, so let them have it.  Replace the closed chest tile with the open chest tile (27th in the overlay tileset), play the open chest sound, run the AddItem command to actually give the party the item and make sure someone with a free hand gets it, then finally set the Castle1_Chest1 flag so that this chest stays empty.  It's a chest, not a sword dispenser, after all.

There's one thing missing here though, which I leave as an exercise for the reader.  Point it out in the comments, and I'll cover what's missing in the next post on scripting for SFPC!

SFPC - June Update

So here it is, the next big update.  So much has changed since April, here's a list of some of the big stuff:

- Audio: music and sounds now work.  Currently using the Audiere sound library, but that could change down the road.
- Events: In the previous demo, I explained that I couldn't handle events that contained multiple commands yet.  That limitation has been dealt with by implementing...
- Scripting Engine: Way back in the day, while I was just a comp sci undergrad, I worked with Nathan Yam creating levels and scripts for our RPG clones, Dream Quest 2000, Dream Saga, and DWPC.  The scripting system I have put together for SFPC is based on my experience working with the DreamVision scripting language Nathan created.  Other than a very similar scripting syntax, however, it is entirely my own code.
   Many game aspects are assembled via scripts: NPCs, party members, events, game startup, map startup.  Eventually even more systems will be handled via scripting, like items and spells, but for now those systems are hard coded.  I'll be writing some separate posts about the scripting system and showing off some examples.
- Flag System: a backbone of the scripting system is the Flag system.  A script can set and check for the presence or absence of flags and then run or not run commands accordingly.  This opens up a ton of potential.

Keep an eye out for some scripting examples to be posted soon!

SFPC - April Update

Another new video showing progress on events.  Currently events are simple, single commands.  I have a plan to upgrade to complex multi command events, and hope to have that done and a video uploaded soon.

SFPC - March Update

Here's a brief video of some of the updates to SFPC I've been working on recently.  Take a look!

Welcome!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my game development portfolio!  Since this is in a blog format, to read posts in chronological order, start at the bottom and work your way up or click the following links!

About Me

Shining Force PC

Left 4 Dead Custom Level - Celtic

More material will be added as time goes on and my portfolio grows, and as I clean up and reformat some of my older works.

Left 4 Dead Custom Level - Celtic

     Here is a brief YouTube video walkthrough of my custom Left 4 Dead map, a recreation of the first floor of the office building where I work. 



Originally scheduled to debut at a LAN party for charity hosted at my work back in the fall of 2009, but the LAN party got postponed.  Tentatively rescheduled for Summer 2010, I hope to have both floors completed and Survival mode fully playable by then.

Shining Force PC

     Shining Force PC is a work in progress to recreate Sega’s classic Strategy RPG for the PC using C++ and OpenGL.  My goal with SFPC is to develop a robust RPG game engine that eventually expands on the original game’s features while not making it overly complex or losing sight of what makes the originals so much fun.

The Original

     What is Shining Force?  Shining Force is a strategy RPG by Sega from the early 90s.  When talking to others about Shining Force, I always find myself using the phrase “elegance in simplicity” to describe it.  The game features a simple, straightforward user interface, character statistics and game mechanics that are easy to understand, and an overall enjoyable combat system that is quick to pick up but also has a surprising amount of depth to it.  You can see some YouTube videos of gameplay montages from the original Sega Genesis versions of Shining Force 1 and 2 here:

Shining Force 2:

Shining Force 1

    Why Remake It?  First and foremost, because it is fun!  I have many fond memories of the summer back in high school when I loaned my Super Nintendo and all my Final Fantasy games to a friend in exchange for his Genesis and these Shining Force games he had been so enthusiastic about.  I could quickly see why he enjoyed them so much!  To this day, Shining Force tends to stay at the top of the charts of Genesis games at GameFAQs: http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/  While it enjoys its own cult following, it has nowhere near the popularity of bigger RPG franchises such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.  Both of those series’ have had plenty of fans attempt remakes over the years, and I’ve worked in a supporting role on such projects myself in my time with Firebell.  Indeed, it was working on those remakes that originally inspired me to attempt remaking Shining Force, but this time as my own solo project, coded from scratch.  Much of what I learned working on those projects continues to guide how I design and build SFPC.

The Code
    Progress, Features, and Goals:  The SFPC engine currently implements many of the core elements required to make a console style RPG: animated, player controllable characters that can move around on a square grid, a camera that can smoothly transition from character to character, windows and menus scalable to any size that render text from either variable or fixed width bitmapped fonts, and a multi layered map that can be edited with the in-game editor.  My next major goal is to implement a scripted Event system to get all of these individual parts to work together to create an actual game experience rather than the features demo that exists today.  Once events are running, work can continue on the actual combat system, the ground work of which is already in progress with the Land Effect based movement and character stats that can be seen in the current build.  After that, sound and gamepad based input are a little further out on the horizon.  In the long term, I’ll be looking to get an artist or two to help me create original assets to create a full original game.  I would also like to eventually try implementing both co-op as well as competitive multiplayer modes, both locally and online.  This last feature has some interesting implications, as I can think of another far more recent multiplayer strategy RPG based on a square grid that I also enjoy that is just begging for a good online implementation: 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

    Overview Presentation: Look over the PowerPoint presentation I put together outlining some of the features of my code here.  It features details about my classes their and functions, graphs of inheritance relationships, and some diagrams of the flow of certain parts of the program.

The Learning Experience
     OpenGL:  The SFPC you see today is actually my second revision of the project.  The first was built using DirectDraw.  Today’s SFPC benefits greatly from the rewrite on many levels.  First, just in general doing the rewrite let me keep the strongest parts of the old code and shed the weaker ones and the project is far more flexible and easier to work with now than it was before.  Next, while working with OpenGL meant making some small concessions, the rewards are plentiful.  Shining Force operates on a grid of 24x24 tiles, but OpenGL requires textures be sized to powers of 2.  This was easy to get around by writing code that scales a square buffer to the smallest power of two that can hold the incoming image, fills it with pure magenta and an alpha value of 0, then copies the actual data into the buffer.  Any magenta in the incoming 24bit color image gets its alpha value set to 0 as well.  The buffer is then converted into a texture by OpenGL and stored in an instance of my Texture class, which holds the texture, the source data dimensions, and the actual data dimensions.  For basic tiles, this is 24x24 for the data dimensions and 32x32 for the actual ones.  With that one major workaround out of the way, I am able to have alpha blending, texture flipping, mirroring, and stretching, full screen fade ins and fade outs, and tinting of any or all textures to any color, all very quickly and easily.  My DirectDraw based code did not have anywhere near that many features!  While on the topic of OpenGL, I feel I should mention that I learned basic OpenGL using the first ten NeHe OpenGL tutorials from http://nehe.gamedev.net. I wrapped up the NeHe OpenGL initialization code into my own bluGL class, set the screen to use orthographic projection to treat the screen as a 2D space, and things have been running smoothly ever since!

    Static and Dynamic Data:  At the beginning of writing this new revision of SFPC, I was using a lot of statically created data in the GameEngine Initialize function and storing pointers to it inside of my GameObjectMgr.  Commonly used textures, such as window borders and frames as well as GameFonts, are stored in their own singleton based manager classes.  One of the more recent features I implemented was the Shining Force style ActionMenus, which are handled by MenuMgr and are dynamically constructed and destructed.  Now that I am more comfortable with this and am more confident removing objects from GameObjectMgr, I intend to transition away from so much static data in the near future.  This will hopefully give me a lot more flexibility as I move forward with the project!

The Demo
     YouTube: I've embedded a video walkthrough of the demo in its current state below:

     Download: A download of this playable demo is available here.  Requires a Windows based PC with an OpenGL capable video card.