Seems I accrue enough for an update every 2 weeks.
All knights have names
I decided to name 13 knights for each of the 13 houses. I know it's not particulary fashionable to do that instead of something procedural but I couldn't see any other way of having a large range of named champions. I had considered a more random approach. That would have allowed for knights to be killed (like they used to do in real touraments) but decided against it. I felt deaths would be annoying to the player, and incongruous with what I want from the nurturing your "gang" aspect. (reminded me of this (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5569.msg118792) interesting discussion that was had)
It was an odd experience naming 169 knights. They vary depending on where the house is meant to be located. For example I had to rummage around on the internet* to find some medieval names from the Spanish region for house El Sid, Saxon / Frankish names for house Von Lichenstone and so on. Obviously some already named themselves due to being references.
Stats
Similar to the above I have now given ratings to each of them which will dictate their stats. There will be a trick to working out who the best of the available knights are when you are choosing attendees from your own house. If you are interested in that, and don't mind a spoiler I wouldn't mind feedback on if the below sounds like it makes sense or is completely non intuitive
(https://i.imgur.com/a8opwAL.png)
Knights will go yay (and boo)
The only visual thing I've completed, knights celebrate winning a bout. Here's Ricaud of house Ronceveaux after disarming his foe.
(https://i.imgur.com/E122ApC.png)
Tournament logic
So I must have watched about 20 billion jousting knockout tournaments. It started to feel endless, but the light at the end of the tunnel has been reached and now knockout tournaments fundamentally work 100% of the time. One of the big things was I had to do a big refactor when I remembered there wont just be one tilt, there could be various other events a knight might also need to attend. To support that I implemented a queue system which works nicely. There is still a bunch of tweaking to do because I'll need to factor in the aforementioned stats, and iron out issues like sometimes there will be a whole bunch of passes where both knights miss, or both hit scoring the same... not sure what to do about that, maybe force a scoring pass after a certain amount of passes?
What's next?
I want to get back to giving the player some information, such as:
- Who is at the tourney
- What is going on at the event buildings
- How much gold and prestige the player has
I also need to introduce visitors into the mix, and make sure they go and watch tournaments when they are started
* that is the official term for it. Trust me, I'm a web developer
Not exactly - those 2 ages were either end of the spectrum to demonstrate. There will be all ones imbetween, and amount of a skill gained by training is worked out by a sum that calculates an arbitrary range.
So here are the 3 best knights of house Lockley - headed up by Robin, obvs. If you look at the stats though the ending stats for Bernardus are better than Rawkin, but the starting stat for Bernardus are way lower. The clue you have that that will happen is that he's had less prior training.
(https://i.imgur.com/Pwq1JwT.png)
I was thinking stats would be represented by stars, something as shown this highly advanced mockup:
(https://i.imgur.com/SDIbucj.png)
In that image there were 6. I need to be careful over the limit for a couple of reasons:
1) The first is that there needs to be some limit or there could end up being stands that look like that anyway. I've done load testing and realistically I can have 150 visitors comfortably in a single level. In the final level you might have 3 event arenas with 10 to 12 stands.
2) It looks better if they have space to walk out when they want to leave to do something else, because the crowd simulation code is not allowed to move static agents - in other words if someone is spectating someone in front of them wont be able to barge past to get out.
You're absolutely right, though. I've upped the limit somewhat to 17, which does look better
(https://i.imgur.com/thCbNEp.png)
150 isn't anywhere near the visitor numbers that used to attend these things. There's also a max of 15 knights. These limits are all for a number of reasons but the cap on knights is chiefly to limit the rounds in a knockout tournament so they don't take forever.
That all looks neat, I like your UI design :) (That's Vinque you're using right for the font right?)
Thanks! I do use Vinque for the "heading" style bits, for normal text I use a font called Cardo regular
Well, time for the first update of the year, and of the decade! So to kick things off... what new stuff is there?
Toilet
Not especially glamorous, but a toilet has been created so that visitors can satisfy that particular need. Here is it at the end of a rather grand avenue...
(https://i.imgur.com/8byaxbh.jpg)
Vendors in the outlets
All of the outlets now has somone manning them, so they are not like vending machines any longer.
For the surgeon I followed the advice of Jubal a little. A knight getting healed involves some medieval style blood letting. Below is a GIF of what it does, I put it in a spoiler since there is a teeny bit of a simulated blood splat. Not terribly offensive but some might consider it a bit PG13
(https://i.imgur.com/8LQnHm9.gif)
A Shrubbery!
(https://i.imgur.com/LpGkP13.png)
Script
I have completed writing a script for the "campaign". It's a good thing to have completed because it means I have confirmed the characters, story and objectives. It lead to a few gameplay adjustments, for example before there were 2 types of accommodation tent: "guest" ones and "house" ones. But instead the house ones are built for you - which hopefully makes things a little less complicated. Anyway I'll work on it a while longer, make sure it's sufficiently humerous and written as well as I can get it!
Next:
- Player to "playing" the joust. Which involves being able specify what their knight does in it: picking potions, a tactic etc - and seeing some detail on how it's all resolved
- Horse and cart to drop people off. At the moment it's just a white cube
- Since I've had a fair bit of practice with my graphics tablet doing 2d characters, I'm going to have a bash at one of the story peeps.