DOWNLOADS SECTION

BlackFire

Project Completion: 1%

UPDATE 10/30/07

Been over a year since last update and I just finished an automated system for getting my alphas of the game going into the downloads section of this site will allow you to get the newest release once unzipped all you need to do is run the setup it will install all necessary files and update your files if necessary. Running the setup again will check for new updates as they are released. This will allow me to quickly do releases and quickly get them out to everyone. This will be especially good when I get the game in beta and it starts coming together and I am doing content releases.

I have completely restructured the game and removed much of my graphical world inorder to make the game more feasible. I am still toying with randomily generated maps but actual hand crafted maps are out of the question. If you are a graphic person and want to help contact me at igloo15@igloo15.com

UPDATE 9/12/06

So i changed releases to a more module thing as I will be building each individual module: Character screen, Graphics, Battle System, Quest System, and Reading/Loading & Writing/Saving system.

Beyond that I have started to cement what RPG ideas I want in the game. For one endless leveling, easy creation of items, skills, powers, quests, maps, monsters, and other stuff. I want to easily be able to add a new race or continent to the system with very little development/testing before releasing it with the game. I want to encrypt these files so that it is harder for people to cheat and just make high level characters. I guess this is mostly for me since I want to have to level when I play this game and not just cheat because I made everything. I also wanted a huge amount of fun quests, skills, spells, and easy leveling. I always wanted to play a game where I was level 100 and could attack a monster for 1 million points of damage or something. Anyways those were my goals.

They were pretty broad but since then I have brought them much farther into spec. Starting with my Job system this is a system where you will get jobs through quests or just talking to people. Upon certain amount of levels at a job you will be eligible for new more advanced jobs. You can then continue up the chain sometimes you will be able to chose between different types of jobs but each job will have a requirement of certian amount of levels in a previous job. Some jobs might be really good but tough to find or get because quest is difficult or time consuming. I have completed a list of all Jobs for 2 different paths that of the Warrior Job and that of a Rogue Job tree. The mahik(or magic) job tree I will be taking alittle bit longer with since I don’t want to give them to much but don’t want to take away that much from how awesome they could be.

UPDATE 2/14/06

Release 1: HUD, Game Map, Player Character moving on map, Multiply maps, Map Editor

Release 2: Random Enemies, Attack only

Release 3: Stats

Release 4: Spells

Release 5: Items

Release 6: NPCs

Release 7: Quests

Release 8: Special events

Release 9: Character Making, Character Saving
Release 10: Automate Features

Beta Release: Options for automation and game resolution

Final Release: Many Quests, Items, Monsters, Maps, NPCs, Spells, and Character Classes

Possible Future Ideas: Character vs Character fights, Professions(alchemy, mining, blacksmithing), New Traits, Resistances, and Armor Graphics

Developed a map scrolling method and also a tile loading and drawing method to interact with the map scrolling method

UPDATE 1/25/06
Well as an update I am going to talk about how maps, items, quests, npcs, enemies, spells, and specials will be created. I am currently working on the reader part of my game in which it reads in the stuff in the game and puts it in the database. I am gonna be doing it file based specifically xml files. Only one map and associated objects will be read in at a time. Though the size of any specific map can be infinite. In a map xml file you will be able to define its width and height so a single map file could be just a house or a spralling country its up to you. Also each map will have 5 important xml lines they are startpoints, endpoints, events, walls, and draws. startpoints and endpoints are basically where you start and end and go to other maps. The other 3 I call layers of a map, the walls are basically all the blocks on a given map, If you don’t want a character going someplace then in the wall layer you would define that place. The event layer is special things like a chest object or a special door that opens on contact or something. Finally the draw layer which basically is a 2D string array of all the image names being drawn at every block. The draw layer can customize the graphic for every individual x and y coordinate so maps will look really unique. The map will also define all the objects being used to do this it will open another xml file indicating the object that way you can use an object on more then one map without rewriting the entire object.

As of yet I have not been able to test the limits of my reader class but I feel that the limit to which map size and amount in them can be almost infinite. Why may you ask am I using xml files and reading in to create the map well I want to after writing all the code for the game being able to just write xml files and put them in the appropiate folder and then the game be able to interact with them with no further coding necessary.

UPDATE 1/26/06

Hmm I have tested and found that most likely I will be unable to go over the 1000 by 1000 map height and width. I tried testing 10000 by 10000 but got a overflow on java heap so most likely. I think am limit to 1000 by 1000 is good enough plus the shear size of tha kind of map is enourmous.