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Development Info New Knights of the Chalice 2 Development Update

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Heroic Fantasy Games; Knights of the Chalice 2

Pierre Begue penned a new development update on Knights of the Chalice 2 over on his Heroic Fantasy Games forum. As some of you may have noticed just now, it's in the KotC Buyer subforum, so not everyone can read it. What an unfortunate instance.

I will now just quote the section in which he talks about his plans for the near future and then later post the entire thing in the comments thread for everybody to see. Here you go.

So what's the plan now?

The plan for me is to continue developing the engine and hopefully have a somewhat feature-complete engine in 2016. I wish I could say for sure that the engine will be feature-complete in 2016 but the amount of work remaining is so overwhelming that it could very easily take longer.

Once the engine is somewhat feature-complete, I'm thinking to submit both KotC 1 and KotC 2 to Steam Greenlight. Also thinking to launch a Kickstarter which, depending on the result, may or may not allow me to work full time on, say, the first three modules.

Here is a list of the work that remains to be done just for the engine:

* Graphic upgrade of editor screens. Not too complicated but I expect it will take two or three weeks to upgrade the remaining screens using the new interface design.

* New character classes. Also not very complicated but it will require some time to implement the new classes I talked about in the previous update.

* Creature wizard upgrade. The editor's creature wizard, used to give class levels to monsters, needs to be upgraded to take into account the new classes and new class features like the Druid's Elemental Sphere.

* Combat actions. This includes a lot of coding of the interface and mechanisms associated with combat actions like Bull Rush and Trip. Includes work on the implementation of the various feats. Also includes the implementation of a looting screen after the party defeats a group of enemies.

* Spells. This includes work on the spell database, intricate graphic work on particle and projectile animations, work on the interface for specific spells, work on the application of spell effects, plus work on displaying magic effects and conditions on characters.

* Enemy AI. The recreation of the AI from KotC 1, adjusted to the new system. Very intricate work, needs lots of testing, lots of time. This includes a script system to control AI actions each round, if that is desired by the module creator.

* Help entries. Not as important as the other parts, of course, but still important. Adding help entries on topics like feats and conditions will claim a solid chunk of time.

* Magic item database. This refers to non-weapon magic items like magic rings, boots, belts, amulets, cloaks, bracers, potions, robes and helmets, plus a few artefact weapons, shields and armour. A quick look through my notes reveals around 93 items I want to implement, plus 46 potions. You know what kind of items I'm talking about, there are many like that in Neverwinter Nights 1 and Neverwinter Nights 2. For example, an Amulet of the Gorgon that provides the wearer immunity from petrification. Other examples include a Bag of Holding, a Necklace of Fireballs, a Belt of Battle, a Circlet of the Healer, etc.

* Polishing. This essential part includes disparate things like adding a tab-key function to highlight things, adding character-sheet buttons to cycle between party members, adding a few animated sparkles on item stacks on the floor, implementing additional interface and environmental sounds, adding spell shortcuts (maybe at the bottom of the combat-actions list), making sure that all the keyboard shortcuts work, etc.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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The entire update (minus the section I've already quoted):

Welcome to a new update! I know I'm not doing these too frequently, but at least they are big and give you all the details about the game! Unlike a game like Seven Dragon Saga, where updates are much shorter than I'd like! If there are no updates, it does not mean that development is slowing down. Quite the contrary! Because releasing an update takes much time, too. If I maintained a blog like Rampant Coyote, I don't know how I would be doing any development at all.

So what is this new update focusing on? Firstly and primarily, on the new interface graphics. It's still a work in progress since I'm expecting a bit of additional interface artwork from the art designer, but otherwise most of the changes that I wanted to do have been made, and I have enough screenshots for a full update. (Click on a picture to enlarge)

New Interface Pictures

First, let's have a look at the party creation and character creation screens. These few pictures are in high-quality png format but most of the next ones are in the lower-quality jpg format to save website space. In the character-creation page, there is a dice icon to re-roll the ability scores. When you click on the icon the game plays a dice rolling sound. On the topic of sounds, I've also added new interface sounds, including a soft mousing-over sound and a couple of page-flip sounds that are appropriate to the new scroll-based interface graphics. On the subject of character creation, I have already implemented the new sub-races, but I have yet to implement the new character classes like Samurai. On the subject of interface graphics, you can see in the pictures below that I have implemented a new mouse cursor in the shape of a medieval armoured glove (gauntlet). There is also a tiny finger animation when the user is pressing a mouse button.




Now let's have a look at some character-sheet screenshots below.

Of particular note is the tab list, which gave me a bit of a headache, but now it's done and I'm happy with it. In the respec tab (pictured below), I am planning to add a box dedicated to automated character settings. These settings include combat manoeuvre settings, for example, if you want your character to perform a trip attempt as a Swift Combat Manoeuvre every time the character performs a melee attack of opportunity or ready-versus-approach melee attack. Note that it will be possible to do so only if the character has the feat Greater Trip. See the list of feats for more information. Other automated settings include everything related to spells. For example, you may want to set your wizard to auto-cast Mage Armour every time after resting, as in KotC 1. Each and every spell that lasts the whole day is worth considering for auto-casting, as it would be boring to have to re-cast them manually every time the party rests.





Now let us have a look at some inventory screenshots. I don't yet have a good inventory screenshot showing lots of items like crowns, plate armour, rings, boots and cloaks, but I do already have lots of graphic icons for all these, as mentioned and pictured in this earlier update. New item icons have also been added, since that earlier update. KotC 2 definitely will offer more item variety than KotC 1 did.



Now let's have a look at the crafting screens. There are three different ones, one for enchanting weapons, armour and shields, one for creating a new weapon, armour or shield, and one for recharging a wand imbued with a spell. I'm also adding a couple of screenshots showing the information screens for weapons and for items.





Now let's have a look at the screens associated with levelling-up and the selection of spells and feats.



Now let's review the screens associated with the quest journal, party formation and saved-game selection. The screen for loading and saving games features a picture preview, as mentioned before.



Now let's have a look at some screens dedicated to the help and modifier lists. Modifier lists can be useful for debugging. By contrast, in RPGs featuring a real-time-with-pause combat engine, it can be difficult to know for sure whether a particular bonus or penalty has been taken into account by the engine.




Now let us review some of the screens associated with the module editor, below. However, I have yet to upgrade the interface of most editor screens, so you won't find a picture of the script editor, item editor or character editor. On the subject of the editor, in the last few months I spent some time on a new creature-template modification tool. Say you have a template for a human arena guard. You have placed ten such guards in your module and each one wields a longsword. But now you want them to be wielding both a longsword and a shortsword. Without the new tool, you would have to edit each guard instance manually. With the new tool, you simply open the original template of the arena guard, give it a short sword, give it the two-weapon fighting feat, then click the tool button to re-apply the template to all the ten instances that exist in the module automatically. You can exclude certain instances if you want to avoid overwriting unique features that you may have given to a particular guard.




Combat engine development

Concerning the combat engine, you may have guessed that I haven't been able to work on it as much as I would have liked, due to all the new things described above. I did implement three new things:

* Weapon icon at the top of the screen: the game now displays the icon and name of the weapon you are going to use at the top of the screen, before and during attacks. It also does it for the enemies, of course. I really like the weapon icons, so I wanted them to be more visible in combat, and not be restricted to the inventory screen.

* Ranged attacks: ranged attacks can now be performed when a character has a ranged weapon equipped in his ranged-weapon inventory slot, as well as appropriate ammunition in his ammunition inventory slot. This includes both the standard attack version and the full-attack version. The arrow animation is similar to that of KotC 1.

* Detailed tooltip information before an attack: I've spent some days expanding the combat-information tooltip. It was already displaying the percentage chance to hit. Now, when you mouse over an enemy, the game provides full data about the damage range, percentage chance of a critical hit, damage range on a critical hit, energy damage range for weapons like a Flaming Greatsword, and percentage chance to apply the magic effect for weapons like a Blinding Mace or a Slaying Arrow. If the creature is immune to your weapon's energy damage, the game will tell you so. The game will let you know if damage reduction is going to be applied, and how much. If the attack is a ranged attack, the tooltip will give you the name of any creature providing soft cover to the target.

Now let's have a look at some combat screenshots. I'm also adding a screenshot of the exit-game confirmation screen. In the last screenshot, you can see an arrow flying towards its target.





A look at familiars and holy symbols

I liked how wizard familiars existed as inventory items in Temple of Elemental Evil. So I've decided to have them as inventory items in KotC 2, too. In addition, Clerics and Bishops will have a holy symbol depending on their alignment (good, neutral or evil). Here are the icons for both familiars and holy symbols. The familiars are in the first picture below, together with a few other unrelated items. The holy symbols for evil, good and neutrality are in the second picture below, in double size.

familiars.png

holy_symbols.png


I think that holy symbols will offer a minor enchantment, such as the possibility to cast Bless once per day if the item is activated while worn on the neck/amulet slot. It will not be possible to transfer a familiar or holy symbol to other characters.

On the subject of Temple of Elemental Evil, I recently played through the player-made module Keep on the Borderlands and I've written a page of comments about it, but I haven't found the time to make a post about it yet (it takes time especially to arrange screenshots). Also played a bit of Drakensang River of Time and wrote some comments, but I didn't like the game, it was too slow on my computer.

A look at some source-code statistics

In this section I want to talk a little bit about how huge the KotC 2 code has become, even though the engine is far from finished.

Recompiling from scratch takes about three minutes and a half. There are already 60 header files and 53 source-code files. Header files (also called h files) are text files that contain function and class declarations, while source files (also called cpp files) are text files that contain the implementation of functions and classes.

By contrast, Battle of the Sands has 31 header files and 24 source-code files, while KotC 1 has 31 header files and just seven big source-code files. Granted, the tools of KotC 1, like the map editor and character editor, are external tools, while the tools of KotC 2 are integrated with the game's code.
 

CryptRat

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Once the engine is somewhat feature-complete, I'm thinking to submit both KotC 1 and KotC 2 to Steam Greenlight. Also thinking to launch a Kickstarter which, depending on the result, may or may not allow me to work full time on, say, the first three modules.
:takemymoney:

The character sheet screens look OK. The combat screen looks weird as it is. Anyway what we need is something similar to KoTC1 with some more classes, what the game looks like doesn't matter.
 

likaq

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I can't wait to see kotc 1 with $25 usd price tag on steam.
And steamtards reaction to that price.
 

m_s0

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Once the engine is somewhat feature-complete, I'm thinking to submit both KotC 1 and KotC 2 to Steam Greenlight. Also thinking to launch a Kickstarter which, depending on the result, may or may not allow me to work full time on, say, the first three modules.
Hell has finally frozen over?
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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I don't mind the art so much as you guys do. Doesn't need overhaul just some tweaking. Some of those tokens are 'special' though.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
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A lot of the code and knowledge from that was reused for KoTC2. He was working on revamped AI and pathfinding but needed an application in order to measure success.
 

getter77

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Glad I've got him tempted at experimenting with itch.io at the very least---there has to be some good practice to be had there for figuring out a good Steam page pitch alongside surely at least some influx of eyes and new sales compared to only being done direct.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

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Never gonna happen. He has the Cleve disease except worse...in Pierre's case it's degenerative.
I don't see them much the same at all other than their eccentricities. Beague delivers, Cleve does not.
 
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Why does this game look so much worse than the previous game?

Why would he choose the worst camera perspective known to exist?
 

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