Hi everyone,
I've been putting a lot of work into my RPG engine and I really feel
like it's coming along well.
I've been through a number of radar systems trying to design the
best exploration experience I can and I'm pretty happy with my latest one.
I'm releasing a copy for everyone to try so we can see how well
others can get used to the radar system.
Let me give a big thanks to Allan who has been providing me with
lots of great sounds to use in the game and who has been giving
valuable brainstorming and feedback.
Unfortunately he has recently suffered an injury that has reduced
his computer use significantly.
Let's all hope and pray that he gets feeling better soon.
I'd also like to thank Kai for giving me permission to use the Swamp
footstep sounds in the game.
There are a few other Swamp sounds I am using in this dev version as
place holders until I can get them replaced.
Let me give an explanation of some of the exploration mechanics,
especially the radar since it deserves some explaining.
I have 4 sound radars in the game and a forward scanner that uses speech.
I plan on removing all the sound radars except my latest one but
will describe them here so you know what else I've tried.
You can still toggle through them in the game by pressing R.
Radar 1, Near radar:
My first radar was pretty similar to Swamps with a few minor tweaks.
I only play the radar beeps in 3 locations and have some code that
hacks the right and left sounds to always sound far right and far
left even when they are right next to you.
You could press O to toggle the radar speed as it is easy to hear at
slower speeds.
The collision beeps only play if a wall is within 5 tiles of you,
otherwise the open space sound plays.
Radar 2, far radar:
This radar plays only one sound in front of you.
It changes it's pitch based on the distance from you and can extend
out 30 tiles.
I don't think it's that useful anymore but it was great to get me
used to changing the pitch of sounds which I use later.
Radar 3, reactive near radar:
This radar was a big step forward.
Instead of playing radar sounds all the time which can be annoying,
it only plays sounds as the environment around you changes which can
happen as you turn or move.
You can force it to play the sounds again by pressing Q.
It plays sounds on your left, right, and ahead of you.
As you walk forward towards a wall no sound will play until you are
within 5 tiles.
Then different pitched beeps will play indicating how close you are
getting to the wall.
As you walk away the same pitched beeps play until you are 5 tiles
away and then a sound plays indicating open space in front of you.
This same thing happens for the left and right.
And so if there is a wall right next to you on your right and you
walk forward then an opening on your right will play the open space sound.
Then as the opening ends and the wall begins again you will get the
collision radar pitch sound.
You can use this to walk down a hallway in the tavern and hear the
doorways on your left or right.
Or strafe down the hallway and hear the doorways in front of you.
It had a few minor problems, mostly inside buildings as the space is
smaller and sometimes you would want to hear an open space sound
when a pitch sound would play or you would hear pitch sounds on both
your left and right as you strafe right.
Radar 3.5, automatic Forward speech scan:
At this point I added a forward scan that announces regions, walls,
and units in front of you.
You can get this announcement by pressing the left mouse button or the E key.
Here are some examples of things it might say:
Map Boundary 22
This means there are no interesting regions in front of you and the
map boundary is 22 tiles away.
intersection 1 3, Karen 3
This means there is a region labeled intersection that stretches
from 1 to 3 tiles away from you.
Then a unit named Karen is 3 tiles away.
It does not announce what is behind Karen.
intersection 1 4, east west road 4 17, intersection 17 20, Map Boundary 22
This shows 2 intersections with an east west road in between.
Notice that the last intersection ends 20 tiles away and the map
boundary is at 22 tiles away.
The space in between has no region.
For a while I used this speech radar combined with the reactive
radar and found it quite good at informing me of what is around me.
It too is reactive and automatically interrupts itself when the
forward view changes.
It is off by default in the latest radar but you can turn it on by
pressing control + S and I recommend you do because it is definitely
worth trying.
Radar 4, reactive heading radar:
This is my final attempt at radar and what I expect to be the radar
everyone uses in the game combined with the automatic speech scan
for those who want it.
I have a few tweaks / bug fixes I am still doing for this radar but
the core of it is working.
It is the default radar when you open the game.
This radar is reactive, but it also works differently based on the
direction you are travelling.
Basically it uses the pitch radar from radar 3 for the heading you
are travelling.
And for the sides of your heading it uses only 2 sounds.
1 is a sound to indicate that the side has become more open and the
other indicates it has become more closed.
By open and closed I mean the nearest wall is either further away or
closer respectively.
The heading radar still uses a range of 5 for the pitches but the
side radar uses a range of 10 since it doesn't need to adjust based on pitch.
So if travelling forward you get the pitch in front of you and the
side radar on your left and right.
If sidestepping right you get the pitch on your right, side radar
for openings in front of you, and nothing on your left.
If walking backward you get the pitch for behind you and side radar
on your left and right.
When you combine 2 directions such as walking forward and side
stepping you get pitch in both those directions and no side radar.
I'm really pleased with this radar and think it does a great job of
telling you about openings and letting you know when you are coming
up to a wall without overwhelming you with beeps you don't need to hear.
Other navigational mechanics:
People who play swamp will recognize the north, east, south, and
west speech when you are facing those directions.
NPCs talk pretty often to let you know where they are.
I actually want to replace these sounds since I don't want custom
voice acting to be required for every NPC so I'd like to use very
non specific sounds like mumbling, grumbling, coughing, sighing,
laughing, or humming a song.
When an NPC is in front of you a sound will play to indicate it.
When an NPC is in front of you and very close the NPC will say some
version of hello which indicates you are close enough to interact with the NPC.
You interact by pressing enter which will open a menu, but this is
not yet implemented.
I have a very faint sound that plays where beacons are located even
when the beacon is not turned on.
You can press M to bring up an overhead map that can be explored
using a Tactical Battle grid.
You can press control + B to bring up the beacon menu.
shift + B silences the beacon.
Pressing B tells you how far away you are and will tell you the
direction to the beacon once I finish it.
Entering and leaving regions is announced and will not be
interrupted by the auto speech scan.
I recommend reading the Keys.config file to find out what all the keys are.
Most of them match Swamp keys and you can turn with the mouse and
move forward with the right mouse button.
Even though you can turn with the mouse I find I prefer using the
snap right and snap left keys when travelling.
Sometimes the game will think the control or shift key is pressed
when it's not so if the keys don't seem to be working try pressing
and releasing those keys.
There are still a number of improvements I plan on making for the
first person exploration and of course there are a lot of
non-exploration things to be implemented so the game is far from done.
I hope you can get used to the exploration mechanisms. Let me know
how it goes.
Here is the link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/43120001/RPG%200.01%20dev%206.zip
Ian Reed
