[Dev Log] Tourney: The medieval tournament sim

[Tusky]

It's February! whew what a year January was! Lots of dev got done on Tourney! Here's a rundown:

Jousting Menu

Up till now the joust was only resolved by the AI. But now, when your knight is heading to compete in a joust you get a little notification which allows you to select tactics and potions etc - allowing control over the scores resolution. It looks a little like this (apologies for the cacophony of menus)



Dropoff Wagon

My third party helper completed a nice wagon model that will drop off the first level visitors:



So what's next?

• A menu that allows the player to "train" their knights and make them better
• Implement the visitor dropoff wagon into the game
• More menus! This time, ones to be used for the beer wagon and hog roast

[Silver Wolf]

Loving all the updates.

[Tusky]

Loving all the updates.

Thanks sw 

[Jubal]

The new cart is fun - neat stuff

[Tusky]

As tusky towers goes into hermitage mode, dev time is being ramped up. Within a few days I've already ticked off a few things that I'd had down on a timeline needing a few weeks, so there may be a fair few of these over spring. 

Visitor Dropoff Wagon

Finally got around to making the vehicle that delivers the pezzies to the tourney. Was quite pleased with the shire horses



Training Menu

When your knight does pretty much anything whilst competing they will earn achievements that you can spend to train them and level them up. This also unlocks titles which grant various small buffs.



It's still a bit basic graphically speaking, but functionally works really well. I just hope it's not too complicated!

Outlet Menus

Finished off the beer wagon and hog roast menus so that you can alter the a.b.v. of the beer and grease levels of the meat. That's fun to mess around with and make everyone drunk, or need the loo quicker - but also can be used for exploiting knights.

Next...

• Finish some other menus: The stand, decorations and surgeon. I don't think they need any paticular options so I think those will just have a sell button and a description
• Weather! Rain will provide a decent reason to place covered stands

[Jubal]

Ooh, will you be able to salt the beer? That's the historical classic for messing with people on that front

[Silver Wolf]

A bit of nitpicking here, but do you think you could put some tack on those horses pulling the carts?

[Tusky]

A bit of nitpicking here, but do you think you could put some tack on those horses pulling the carts?

Yes, that's a neat idea. Don't know why I didn't bother in the first place tbh. Probably too excited to get them finished.

Ooh, will you be able to salt the beer? That's the historical classic for messing with people on that front

Nice! I could do, so that looks like something that was done to beer when it was not especially pleasant - i.e. when it was cheap? So it would be a way to have the keg earn you more money at the cost of how satisfied people are when they drink it

[Glaurung]

I'm not sure that salting the beer makes it taste very different (it might not have tasted very good anyway), but as I understand it, the salt makes the drinkers thirstier so they buy more beer than they would have done otherwise.

[Tusky]

A bit of nitpicking here, but do you think you could put some tack on those horses pulling the carts?

I acquiesced

I'm not sure that salting the beer makes it taste very different (it might not have tasted very good anyway), but as I understand it, the salt makes the drinkers thirstier so they buy more beer than they would have done otherwise.

Ah ok, thanks

[Jubal]

The tack looks nice! Good job.

And yeah, what Glaurung said. Though having them be less satisfied but spending more could still work, if "satisfied" is the thing that means "doesn't want to have more drink for a while" and if "spending more" can be analogous to "buys more drink". 

[Tusky]

It's been a funny old month. I've had periods of great productivity, followed by others of no motivation at all. HOWEVER! I realise I've actually accomplished a tremendous amount on the game. Heaps of testing and bug fixing, and today I am happy that I played through the first level and didn't spot anything new that needed fixing. It works serviceably as a game! So in theory it won't be too tough to start "third party" play testing or to get a demo together.

There is still a whole bunch left to do before any kind of proper launch, though. Options, save & load, sounds, music, optimisation and lets not forget that there needs to be another 3 levels of content - I've only finished 1 :/

Anyhoo, before I talk myself down into a sad huddle here are the main things I achieved this month:

Objectives

For some time I have had the story script written but not really implemented. I have also been finding excuses to practice portraits and using my graphics tablet for pretty much as long as I've had it. Now I've finally got good enough so put it all together with some code glue and UI



Rain

Not much to say about rain, is there? The visitors don't like it so if you want to mitigate the happiness slump you'd best build some covered stands



Happiness Menu

As you can see in the above, things can get a little hectic. So to help I've added some handy menus to help see what is going on and identify issues. The first of these is the happiness menu where you can quickly gauge what most people like and dislike.



Random UI stuff

There have been lots of UI tweaks that I won't bore you with, but one I am particularly pleased with is the new money icon. Can anyone guess what coin it is based on?



Next

- Level 1 end of day menu
- show outlets & show staff toggles
- Finance Menu

[dubsartur]

Do you know the story of the Eglington Tourney which was rained out in 1838?  Or the Ballad of Pennsic Pour?

[Tusky]

Wow! No I had not heard of either of those (until now). Thanks! Really interesting.

I've only created a "bit of a drizzle" to be honest, rather than a deluge like they had. Although I like the idea of adding a hazard that someone's broadsword gets struck by lightning  But then I suppose the player would need to have something they could do about it...

Maybe little medieval umbrellas?

[dubsartur]

Or you could introduce signs of worse weather, and make the player decide whether to play safe and call things off, or chance it and risk hilarity ensuing and the visitors fleeing to shelter.  I have been at Ritterfeste where a sudden burst of rain hit and everyone sheltered under roofs and awnings and sails.