Today got the first prototype of the new RPG framework by the coder Anima! I think that today can officially mark as the beginning of the RPG gameplay development, that will surely take a good amount of time to finish (have still to define the skills and design the battle GUI). But is a very important step, for the first time I can feel the project is going to become a reality next year

I almost didn't believe it myself, finishing the first milestone this year that is.

Most people seeing the prototype would be probably disappointed, but for me finishing the mainloop has always been something pretty great.

Seriously I could spend hours watching the vicious battle of the two virtual warriors, a drama only told trough text messages.

Of course, those hours can be better spend. There is still a lot to do, but we are finally on track again.

Hehe, well this time with this game want to try something different, before designing 1500 skills I want first to get the BASICS working, simulating lots of battles with AI to determine the best attack/defense values and then gradually add skills or special attack step by step to balance everything more carefully, since what seems to work "on paper" very often doesn't on the actual game!

Today did a "stress test" of 1000 battles AI vs AI. It was fun to watch, and I even played a bit with the attributes even if everything is a bit temporary now:
[code]All team the same TeamA win: 577 TeamB win: 423

TeamA has 120hp TeamA win: 899 TeamB win: 101

TeamA has 15 accuracy TeamA win: 950 TeamB win: 50

TeamA has 15 evasion TeamA win: 990 TeamB win: 10
[/code]
as you can see the evasion attribute is the one with the highest impact for now

This is good since in the final game I will have an idea of how each attribute has an impact - of course the human player should be smarter, but at least now I have some unquestionable stats on which I can base the item creation, enemy, etc

After some weeks of "pause" to release Heileen 3, I went back to working on the colony building simulation metagame. So far I have this:

http://i.imgur.com/36mh6.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

not much, but once I get the artist to do the assets will look much better, I promise

Great, I really love the kind of games where you build up a city/fortress/whatever almost more than RPGs. Having a mix of the genres is like heaven. :-D



My only question is: I would not have thought that RenPy supports this, may I assume you needed to add quite a bit to make such a metagame possible?

Yes is a lot of complex coding. Well, easier than in other languages IMHO, but still definitely not simple. Not like "New Game->Create Building Sim->New"

Without giving away anything spoilerish or specific, how is the story in #2?



At the risk of sounding like a douche, I found the first game's story to be, er, um, weak. (I'll leave the critique at that out of politeness )



It doesn't take away from the fact that it was an enjoyable rpg as far as difficulty, and tactics went. That was a fun thing to encounter especially now-a-days where so many game developers (main stream and indie) are afraid to make things actually challenging. I am just curious as to whether more effort has been put into the story this time around, or if it's more of an expansion of the playability that worked so well last time.

I know Jack1974 tapped Aleema to write Planet Stronghold too (she wrote Loren), so I do think the story will be better.

No worries, the story of the first was poorly written by myself so I can understand the critics.

PS2 was initially written by Aleema but now a new writer, Shaun, is taking care of it, so Aleema can focus on Loren sequel (since I think what everyone is more interested into!).

I'm glad to hear there is some semblance of a working battle system. I can't wait to hear more about it!

From the http://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2014/03/roommates-officially-out-video/#comments

Because that’s a cursed game

Uh oh...



Does this mean anything like moving in a new direction, or is this only about the delays you mentioned?

The new writer is writing, very slowly, but the quality is really great IMHO. It's also a rather difficult game, because has lot of branching, side-missions, etc. So I have to say that's harder to write than my other games.

Anima is still coding the framework, has some small issues but even with it is going forward. Artist had some health issues, but she said will try to do one drawing a month. As you can imagine one-drawing a month is not really much since there are all the talking poses to finish (I think 4-5 missing, don't remember).



In summary is just a really weird case of combined bad luck, but I think in the end will be worth the wait: the new framework Anima is doing will be much more powerful and flexible and will be used also on Loren 2 and future RPGs. For the artist, worse case I can use the standing sprites during beta and put the final images once the game is out. For the writing... I'll try to push the writer faster, but to be honest right now is not a big problem if he keeps writing like this every day. He's motivated but doesn't have much free time

So is there any estimated release date? Last i heard of it was Q1 of 2013

You must not believe those rumors!

I honestly have no clue right now (still writing, coding, some art missing), so I don't want to say any date, but I can tell you that for sure NOT this year. Unfortunately that's the only thing I can say

Will you still be working on this?

Yes of course. Had lots of troubles with writers and artist but now at least the art is basically done, and I could ask Miakoda who is writing PSCD to write this one. Of course, won't be out anytime soon!

K

So i'm wondering if PS2 will just be for PC or will be on all systems like Android and IOS and Kindle because I just got PS1 (and promptly beat the s*** out of it (hardcore gameing weekend)) on my kindle. This is the first winter wolves game I got (loved it) and i don't want to have to buy a PC just to play one good RPG.

Yes, on Android should never be an issue While for iOS basically depends a lot on external coders (it's a much longer/complicated work so I don't have time to do it myself).