The Mod, the Project and the Real Life.

Well, If you were checking Terraria forums on my mod thread, you probably knows about this, if you didn't, check this post I made, first: https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/n-terraria-mod-rpg-races-classes-quests-and-other-things.542/page-422#post-1710571

Now you may be either thinking "might be a good idea" or "why would he do that?", and I'll tell you:
As stated on the topic, while modding Terraria, I had to do the changes while keeping what makes Terraria itself, which is why even though you have leveling, classes, races and etc on the mod, the progression is still like Terraria progression. But keeping that part of the game demi intact were causing me problems to add new stuff, or even modify, without counting the fact that the source I'm using for the mod is old, doesn't even support the new font style.

The problem actually get critical the more I continue, though. Because of the changes done to Terraria over the past years, Terraria has been turning harder and harder to mod on, because the decompilation bugs were getting harder and harder to fix, and the latest patch decompiling bugs were way too much for me to bear, I simply can't fix them, so If I were to launch the season 7 of the mod, I would need to use the current source I have.

The problem were up, until a few days ago I were talking to a friend about rpgs, and then came the idea of instead of modding Terraria, I could try making a new, different game, instead. That new different game I could place any kind of thing that comes in my creativity, and also try to make it any way I want. And that's where the next problem rises.

I don't really have the time to work on another project, the Tamers Network Project I'm already working on it in sluggish steps (even more since I should be working on the other parts of the game, but instead keep doing changes to the combat and battle systems), with two game projects to handle, both games will take longer to be finished, and since I work alone on those games, well, It would be like dividing 1 by 2, each project would get half of me, literally.

That's the problem I've been facing latelly, the idea of building a completelly new game using what I made on N Terraria is very tempting, but I'm talking about creating a new game, so compared to modding, will taking waaaaaaaaaaaay longer to see some result for it. And that's why I've tried to learn how to use Unity.

If you didn't knew yet, I have a low end rig, for both gameplay and development, so my pc is literally a Comodore 64, like a friend says. It's still 32 bits, so I can't install the latest version of Unity, but for luck's sake, when I tried to install Visual Studio 2017, It came with a 32 bits copy of it, and so I was happy, even looked at tutorials to learn how to mess with it, until I were having problems with the animator.... A friend said that could help me on the learning process of building a game on it, that looked great, until at some moment, he asked what version of Unity I were using, I told it, and he said that it was a very old version of it, from 2016... I literally felt really down when I read that, but not entirelly down since I still could make use it of... Beside not updated... And possibly unfinished...

Now I'm questioning myself if I should even try to make a game on it, since I can't even stand the way the character animations work on it. And even wonder what would be of the game project I had on mind. So currently, I wont be trying to put into practice the game project idea, I'll focus on TNR project, and keep going until I be able to take it out of it's tunnel.

On other news, TNR project is still alright, I've done some changes to the Defense system of it, instead of using a solid number that wouldn't give you a clue of how much defense you have, It will instead show a Percentage, that will give you a clue of how much damage will be reduced when your creature is attacked.

Following TNR news, I'm trying to figure out how I could make the status system do some intervention in combat, like for example in the following case:
MonsterA casts a skill on MonsterB that makes so 20% of the life stolen by it be passed to the caster.
MonsterB uses a life steal skill on MonsterC, 20% of the stolen life value goes to MonsterA.

That's the kind of thing I'm trying to figure out how I'll do, without making the code clunky, off course.


Another thing I've been thinking, is if the maps of the game should have their size increased by 5 times, currently the maps have a size of 80 width and height, If I increase the size by 5 times, each map will have a size of 400 width and height instead, making some maps less cramped, and bigger.
Maps like Towns will benefit from this, now field and dungeon maps I would need to think about what to do to them. Beside instead of changing the map size, maybe I could try instead to create a virtual map placement in the world, so the size doesn't really matter, as long as it's well placed in the world, but that could lead to causing a confusion on the placement, and having maps overlap one on another... Too much thing to think...

Also, the Quest system is getting a reformulation, but I will need to think on how it will work, how I'll make the quest events happen and how the trail will work...

As for monster spriting, I'm giving a hiatus to it, since my mouse is having problems on the left clicking, so trying to do pixel art with a mouse that clicks whenever it wants, or double clicks when you don't want is a test of patience. The last time I tried to sprite with it, I nearly used it as a whip to hit it on the wall repeatedly. Good thing I have hold on my patience a bit, since If it broke, I would only have the keyboard to use on the pc.

Well, sorry for the testament, and that's all for today's news. Sorry for not bringing any spoiler or anything again.

Tamers Network Reborn has now 10 monsters!!

Hurray! Tamers Network Reborn project has managed to achieve 10 monsters, that is quite a lot of monsters for the game, but I still need to add more.

The game also got some core changes to add a few physics to the battle, aswell as changes to how skills behaves, aswell as the animations of launching spells.

That's about all for the news, I'd like to talk about each monster in the game right now, aswell as show them, but I really am not feeling like it... Maybe I'll do that in a future oportunity.

I still have to take on at programming the quest system, but I still haven't a solid idea on how I could make the quests, aswell as make them accessible from the dialogues, or even interconnected with the world. I surelly have some thoughts to do, and since I haven't a chalk board, I'll have to improvise...

Until then, see ya on the next news.

What have I been doing with my time? [TNR News]

Well'p, for a break of schedule of weekly news, I guess not even the weekly news are being able to be done, even more since I've been having problems to find time to work on the project.

Anyway, once I got into working on the project, the first thing I did was this monster animation :/.

 It's kind of a over long animation, but at least serves to the purpose, that animation also made me implement on some skills a system to find the time of the next trigger of the animation (generally used for when damage is to be inflicted, but also can be used to change phase or something), that allowed the monster to only toss the bomb when the animation of tossing were near the end. Even when I'm fooling around doing over framed animations, something new for TNR system has been implemented because of.

Well, I guess I should talk about some extra parts of the video.
The monster on the lower left is the Bombermaus, beside on the source it's still named Maus Bomber... It's name tells his role, it tosses bombs at foes. In the future it will gain more skills that aren't just ranged, maybe it can be good for melee combat, too.

For the news, that's about all, I'm working at my own pace on the project when I get moments of peace, and good music to listen, beside thanks to that "good music", I had to record the video three times, because I forgot to turn off the media player while recording, beside Bandicam weren't also recording videos because I also forgot to set it to game recording, haha.

Anyway, That's all, folks!

Edit:. Ops, after checking the video, I forgot about a little fact. The Cait Sith still uses the old skills from the old... Cait Sith, so It's using "Scratch" attack, explaining why the sound of paper ripping is playing when it attacks.

Another revamp on the status system, and visible changes on TNR Project

Hey guys, today I've been doing a second look at the status system of the game, and also redid the entire status system.

Now three things will define the monster initial status: their base status, which is the status that are actually their own, in other words, if the game had a monster database, the status shown on that list; and their extra status and level; Now the third thing is of course their size, their size will have also impact on their behavior, but I may talk about it on the future.

The base status causes most of the impact on the monster health, defining literally what the monster is, If the monster have high VIT, It will have good boost on both Max Health and Physical Defense, if the monster have high STR, It will have a good boost on Melee Damage.

Just to compare, I'll show some of the monster status.

That's the Kangaroo Monster you know very well, his size is M, but as you can see, it has good Physical damage, compared to Ranged and Magic damage. The Physical Defense is also higher than Magic Defense, since VIT is higher than INT.

 The Dog Mage has a good change on the status, you can notice by sight that his HP and SP are different from the Kangaroo Mob.
His size is S, so some of his status are lower, and others higher.
Due to having a high INT status, It's Magic damage is better than both Physical and Ranged damage, not only that, but his Magic Defense is also higher than the Physical Defense.
The VIT status is causing it to have a lower HP and Physical defense, too, while the INT is causing him to have high SP and Magic Defense.

Ps:. That guy is a deadly caster.

And the Big Foot, whose size is L, his highest status is STR, and as you can see, his Melee Damage is higher than the one from Kangaroo Mob. The Size also did changes to his status, being that just by checking above, It's better for Physical Combat than Magic Combat.

I'm still testing those changes, since the status are partially not making me happy, even more on the part of the damage, since the combat with some monsters is like facing a sponge, even if you have a monster of the same size of the other monster.

Anyway, that's all for today's news.
Until next time.

Edit:. I forgot, I also revamped the defense rate system of the game, but I wont talk about it now.

A Demi open game? Good or bad idea?

I've been wondering for some time about the possibility of allowing the graphics of TNR game be editable, so you aren't bound to the original game graphics, and can add or create your own to enhance your game experience, the idea is still in a draft, but I kind of wonder how it would work.

I dunno if XNA would allow me to do that, or even if the idea would be welcome, beside, I don't have anything to hide graphically related. Now about the game codes, of course I can't, or else in case I get multiplayer to work in the game, It would be a hack heaven. So It's not a good idea to have the game codes open aswell, beside If could, I wonder how I would do that...

Beside there is a feature that I still am wondering if will need player script or not, but not only I wont discuss about it now, but I wont also work on it now, or at least until some time after the game release, which is also unknown.

On other news, I've been working on improving the new cait sith attack animation, the old attack animation was bad, I tried making the new one better.

The first frame is also the new standing animation, and I didn't placed basic shading on the rest of the animations, the animation still doesn't look great, but at least look better than the old animation, the old animation would look nice if the game were metroidvania, but It's a monster training/adventure game.

Well, that's all for today news. Until next time.