Overhaul Part 1 - Combat Elements A

12.30.2020

The point and click navigation felt nice,  I wanted to do that with the 'Next' game. But - I also had a game just lying around. I started rebuilding CR to work with the new hud elements.

 

 Moved over the radial style menus from the test environment. Instead of clicking a name in the bottom right, you click the character and the menus move accordingly.

 

 With a the new backgrounds and positioning:

 

Intro: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/interaction-travel-concept-test.html

Part 1: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-1-combat-elements-a.html

Part 2: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-2-menu.html

Part 3: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-3-travel-and-menus.html

Part 4: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-4-dialouge.html

Part 5: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-5-final-notes.html

 

 

 

 

Revival

 

 12.30.2020

It's been a while. Anyway. A personal note for those who care or came to wonder what happened to CastleDev.

I'm doing alright thanks. A lot has changed since I first started the project.

As far as life, When I first started the project I had just wrapped up my enlistment and was working security jobs for a little over minimum wage. I did quite a bit of the game development while on the job - you have to stay up at night. I was also in school again, or well off and on again.

CastleRock had some issues. A lot of beginner mistakes as far as game design and programming. I thought of making this grand game of something for everyone with all these things I wanted it to have. And I wanted it to look nice - as I was an 'artist' first. I created an Asteroid game in Java, and I jumped right into this one. I was commissioning Art from others, and music, and made all that social media crap - dived right in.

I was pretty naive. On the game dev side, I was running into bigger hurdles for the things I wanted to implement. I would spend days doing trying to get something to work, and it would drain my will to keep going you know, but I would come back after a week or two and keep going. After that 4th release, I was really getting held back by my lack of experience and the terrible coding I've done prior. I felt like I was letting Anons down. I stopped accepting donations on itch and patreon. Then when I finished something, I felt as if their was never enough content to justify the wait between updates. All this work was under the hood. I had this abstract realization. - I have all this game, but with no game. - I had sprites, and pretty menus, and a duct taped game engine for turn based combat, but it wasn't a game.

Anyway, so what now? 

I'm doing good. Finished school. Doing IT at a cushy place where I can drink during lunch. Life's good. Unrelated to CR, I completed some non lewd projects.

 About the Game!?

It's done with in a way. (Is anyone surprised really?) - It's becoming something else. And my scope is smaller. My intention is to finish up a project and then go from there. I plan to leave room for growth. 

 I created the following for a new navigation system, clickable background items, clickable npcs that open dialog options, and I think still pleasant to look at. The randomness of the older system grew frustrating.

Intro: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/interaction-travel-concept-test.html

Part 1: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-1-combat-elements-a.html

Part 2: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-2-menu.html

Part 3: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-3-travel-and-menus.html

Part 4: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-4-dialouge.html

Part 5: https://castlerockgame.blogspot.com/2020/12/overhaul-part-5-final-notes.html

 

 

M.I.A.

September 3rd, 2018 - Neglected Blog

Happy Memorial Day, I realize the blog, this one, has been somewhat neglected in terms of other platforms. It was brought to may attention there hasn't been an blog post in months, and users who haven't checked the Tumblr links, haven't seen any sort of progress in a while. Also with Tumblr's safety filters, visitors probably need to register to see the link because its marked as mature content.

Work Continues. The Male Player Character option is in the game. Male PCs are going to have Slaver related perks instead of Brood Mother ones. There is a new inventory system for changing and managing clothing items during the game. So far there are 4 new enemies and 10 new animations. A big save overhaul for independent saves and party member persistence.

Whats Next?
There are several things that are still incomplete. A LOT of amatuer code from the first year has been replaced, but somethings need to be reimported like the clothing cosmetics. Some more specific character customization like naming and class selection. And a boss battle or two.

Other than those smaller things, some bigger picture changes to be introduced is some more party member interactivity and finally some base/map changes to improve and give purpose to the gameplay loop.

So when will the next update be?
I don't have an ETA. I wouldn't expect one for at least 2 - 3 months.

Any Other Questions Comments?

Check out the Forum, https://castlerock.boards.net/ , You don't have to register, and despite it being a bit of a ghost town, I check it often.

(Impromptu) Progress Report - Merry Chirstmas

(Impromptu) Progress Report
--Less formal than usual--

Lewd Jam 2017 – First two weeks of December was more or less used for lewd jam entry that did not make the cut. Goal for the entry was a MetroidVania. Something similar to Parasite in City, but with a male protagonist. Also with the native resolution (exactly that of CastleVania SOTN) of 256x208. It started progressing well using some simple things from the CastleRock engine, but also required a lot of new things. At the end of the two weeks I had a basic platformer, with no lewds. Despite the failure, it was a good experience and I learned a bit. For example: Those that have played CastleRock before it had HexTiles, will remember the terrible collision detection that existed when moving around the map. This collision detection / interaction with the environment, was solved quite nicely in the failed entry. Some other things that were experimented with in the Lewd Jam entry, will indeed be carrying over to CastleRock. Screen Scaling/Full Size Windows was done successfully in the entry, and is currently being converted to work with CastleRock. As of today, the Combat State and MainMenu States can be scaled any which way and work properly. However the Control Hub State needs a bit more work. Specifically the way the Hex Tile Map responds to mouse activity while outside native resolution , needs further work.

Alpha 4 Compatibility Issues – Alpha 4 had a lot of unexpected compatibility issues. One of the key problems was a testing workspace for the New Avatar System. While not being used and accessed in the released version, a new shader was still being compiled. This caused some users to crash at run time. The workspace was cordoned off in a way for the patch, but the big underlying problem is, anyone that could not run the Alpha 4 release initially, won’t be able to run the new male/female avatar system when it was released. So targeting compatibility issues is a primary goal right now. Also while troubleshooting ctd’s I discovered some potential memory allocation problems, which might have been the cause for users with older computers that could run the pre alphas, but not alpha 1 or 2.

There is a new awareness that as CastleRock gets more advanced, some of the current player base won’t be able to play it. So, the plan.

The Plan – There will be a couple more Alpha 4 patches introducing some debugging tools, the window sizing, options for command line-error output. Any new content in the works will be saved for the Alpha 5 release. The new avatar system is on hold for the time being, but I have some thoughts in regards to a male pc option or at least a recruitable male party member in Alpha 5.

Happy Holidays.