[Dev Log] Tourney: The medieval tournament sim

[Tusky]

This looks fantastic! Great job Tusky.   I hope you get a chance to use some of those names from the Neofeud cutting floor.

Thanks man!

I did take inspiration from your ideas around GOT mashups (stanniston, tywister etc) and made one house called Nedark :p

[Tusky]

Been a couple of weeks since the last log so figure it's time for an update. Unfortunately there aren't any cool looking new models or mechanics to show off but here's what has been going on:

The UI

That interesting bit of development that everyone* definitely loves to hear about.

I'm making it all myself this time around since it needs to be quite specific to this game. Previously I've not really cared about the UI, so just got third party graphics and chucked those in. This time though I've had to really clarify what the player will want to achieve, and so what information they will need to do that. The 2 biggest objectives are broadly to have your house and knights do the best, and the other is be a tycoon and make lots of money. If the player wants their knights to win then they may be wanting to quickly determine if their knights are in "pole position" out of the attending knights, when they will next be competing etc. On the other hand the player is just interested in getting as much money as they can - they will want to know visitor numbers, gold, and have a way to determine how their outlets are performing. 
So I've sketched out various designs and have been looking at them, imagining that I'm trying to do, or decide on certain things and if / where I can do that. It's strange to me how much about the game as a whole I need to be sure of before I can actually do anything.

Anyway I'll stop waffling on about menus. Here are some graphics I've done so far.



Tournament logic

Up until now I had created a joust event, which existed by itself in a joust tutorial scene. The 2 knights in the scene went over, competed and then finished.

The next step was to implement a full knockout event. This allows for the to player put down a tilt where they want, click it to start a knockout tournament and then all of the knights play a sequence of events in a number of rounds until the overall winner is determined.
This is nearly done, and that will mean the top level logic is in place for the archery and melee tournaments too once I go on to those.

Music

I'm not sure to what extent anyone else finds the process of music production for a game interesting so apologies if this is dreary waffle. I find this part fascinating though, and the auditory output of a game is of the highest importance to me.

I've been talking a lot to Alexei (the composer I work with) about what music should be for this game. The key things to think about for the tracks, is that they need to sound correct with a few things:

• Looking at in game menus, e.g. The equipment of knights, a vendors prices, a pause menu etc
• Looking at knights in a bitter sword fight, or jousting.
• Looking at some lords and peasants eating hog roast, drinking beer and having a jolly old time

It's a lot to ask of a piece of music. I might need to implement some kind of dynamic mixer which I did in the last game where different music fades in when you are fighting.

On top of that there will probably be 4 chapters set in different areas, and each will have a different flavour. It's been discussed before on this thread about the setting. So the first 2 will be in Avalon. The third will be Atlantis. The fourth will be Gulansharo: city of flowers (thanks Jubal ). So there will need to be 3 different sounds for the 3 fairly exotic locations. I don't think it will do to have generic medieval tavern music.

Anyway Alexei informs me that he's in the process of composing the first track - a main theme for the game. He's said it "should be really catchy" and "still have (a) melodic flavour". I'm always excited to hear his stuff. If you want an idea, here's a favourite clip of a tune he did for BioStation.

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/tuskygames/escape-from-biostation-theme-05-clip[/soundcloud]

If you like that and have spotify here is the full OST.

What's next?

• Start providing some of the on screen information I was talking about above
• Create a static list of unique knights available to each house

* no-one

[La Ciguapa]

That music is really catchy. Can't wait to hear what he comes up with for this game!

[bigosaur]

This looks like a really cool game idea. I'm looking forward to play it when it's ready.

[Tusky]

That music is really catchy. Can't wait to hear what he comes up with for this game!

Thanks La Ciguapa I'll post a clip here once he sends me something.

This looks like a really cool game idea. I'm looking forward to play it when it's ready.

Thanks bigosaur! It may take a while, though, I feel like I'm just wading through endless bugs recently!

[Tusky]

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 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

Spoiler

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.



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

[Jubal]

Neat! The stats thing I think works OK. Will all knights start at exactly 21 or 50, or will there be a "young range" and an "old range" for age? And when you say you'll know based on the "start good" bit, how will the player see that if at all?

And yeah, I can massively empathise with watching something run 20 billion times - especially with my current diplomacy system for Exile Princes, which has so many possible permutations and combinations it takes a whole game or three to even get a feeling of the balance of one iteration. :/

[Tusky]

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.

Spoiler

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.

I was thinking stats would be represented by stars, something as shown this highly advanced mockup:

[Jubal]

That all works well and make sense, yes, sounds great

[Tusky]

Thanks!

[Tusky]

Time for a bi-weekly update! My progress has been hampered a little bit due to a small pathfinder campaign I'm DM'ing, but in my defence it's a pretty awesome campaign. HOWEVER it does not mean I've stopped development on tourney. Also it's not only me doing things for this project, so if I don't spend 100% of my free time working on this, other stuff still gets done in the background.

Anyway here's what's new:

Level 1

Started actually building the first of four levels: Avalon woodland. I've laid out the tourney ground borders, pathing grid, terrain etc. Now the assets for the environment are being built. The environment artist has completed the first new models. Here's a sneak peek, the water mill:



The work to build up level 1 includes setting all the equipment, armour, buildings and so on that will be available for the player. There will be more work needed to actually create the models for these but having this done means that the prospect of having a fully playable level draws nearer.

Pezzy logic

Pezzies will go to events that are underway and spectate. They'll periodically check if really want to eat or drink something instead, and if so they'll wander off to do that (Unless they are a big fan of one of the competitors)

UI

I've made a simple UI framework that has everything in the correct place, such as your gold, prestige, buttons to build things and menu buttons. Now I can start creating graphics to fill these in. I've done a new graphic for the leaderboard showing all the attending knights. When you click on their name in the leaderboard the camera zooms to them. Here's how it looks now.



There is a white square there that will be replaced with an icon that shows you at a glance what that knight is up to.

What's next?

- Still need a little menu to explain what is going on at the event buildings
- Have pezzies want to spectate on tournaments from a stand, at the moment they can only watch from anywhere but a stand
- Being able to upgrade buildings. Specifically, adding a canopy to the stand

[bigosaur]

The graphic models look pretty cool, but the lightning is somewhat bland.

I assume you are using Unity? If yes, take a look at this:

https://80.lv/articles/7-tips-for-better-lighting-in-unity/

Unity has pretty poor defaults, but with some tweaks to the lights the game looks can go from average to awesome.

[beebug_nic]

I'm really enjoying watching this shape up and really do love your art style - the modelling is awesome! :-)

[Tusky]

I'm really enjoying watching this shape up and really do love your art style - the modelling is awesome! :-)

Yay! Thanks for the kind words. Means a lot

The graphic models look pretty cool, but the lightning is somewhat bland.

I assume you are using Unity? If yes, take a look at this:

https://80.lv/articles/7-tips-for-better-lighting-in-unity/

Unity has pretty poor defaults, but with some tweaks to the lights the game looks can go from average to awesome.

Yeah I'm aware. It's actually a style choice to make it slightly brighter, sharper and more vintage. Like you're there in the past. Here's a comparison between new (left) and the default (right)



I think a lot of the screenies I'm doing at the moment feature simpler structures which are all supposed to be wood, dirt and grass. Also the only visitors are normal pezzies who again wear muted plain colours (browns, greens, greys). In other words they don't look particularly scintillating for that reason. I added the mid tier knights there to demonstrate a contrast. Later levels will have nobles and kings and lots more colour, hopefully so fingers crossed I'll win you round

[SLiV]

I do think the screenshot on the left looks more vibrant and also more readable.