FOSDEM talk: "Anatomy of a role playing game"

Arthur's talk was delivered at FOSDEM with great success. Audience feedback was positive.

 

The video is available on Youtube, thanks to the people involved in recording video and sound.

www.youtube.com/watch

 

January 2012 Progress Report

Hello, and welcome to FreeDroidRPG's first monthly progress report for 2012! Here are some of the highlights of what's been happening:

Programming department:

• The formula for calculating the cost for repairing a hacked bot has been improved and simplified, as specified here. Thanks to Sebastian Offermann.
• Excelling at the takeover minigame now has its rewards; if few charges were used by the player, the heat cost will be smaller to match. By Sebastian Offermann.

Graphics department:

• Matthias Krüger replaced the inventory images of some items with images of a higher resolution.
• A bug was fixed that involved the list of animated obstacles in a level and caused the creation and saving of obstacles with negative index values was fixed, thanks to fluzz.

Writing department:

• The dialog with Dixon has been restructured and reworked a little; cookies have been replaced with variables; also, the peaceful players may find they have some more options. By Sebastian Offermann and Xenux.
• Sebastian Offermann and Matthias Krüger gave the dialogs a general cleanup, with cookies replaced by variables, extra spaces removed, bugs and typos squashed (yes, typos can be squashed. We checked) and other improvements and simplification.

Some of the smaller changes:

• If the player chooses to repair a hacked bot but then chooses to destroy it through the wonderful hcf.py, the costs of the repairs would not apply. Thanks to Matthias Krüger.

All in all, 23 changes were made in January.

We wish to thank everyone who contributed and helped improve the game. If you have an idea, something that bugs you or an issue you want to fix, don't be afraid to contact us and talk about it, tell us what's bugging your game or try to fix it yourself. Try it, you might even find your name on this list!

It is well worth mentioning that Arthur Huillet is going to do a talk about FreeDroidRPG in FOSDEM on Sunday, February 5th. The talk is titled "Anatomy of a Role Playing Game", and if you're attending, you might even get a T-shirt showing some of the bots! Oh joy!

 

-The FreeDroidRPG Team

December 2011 Progress Report

A Happy New Year to the FreeDroidRPG community! This is FreeDroidRPG's monthly progress report for the month of December; our new year's resolution for 2012 is to make the best open source RPG ever! These are some of the things we managed to sneak in before 2011 closed, right after the release of version 0.15:

Writing department:

• Variables in dialogs now have a consistent form, following the rule: "A variable that is solely for one dialog starts with the dialog name". Thanks to Sebastian Offermann.
• The npc_says, tux_says and cli_says functions now use arguments instead of the rather intrusive concatenation (which was marked by pairs of dots, or ..), which eases translation. Thanks to Xenux, Miles McCammon and Sebastian Offermann.
• The has_item function now checks if the player has a certain item and not how much of it; instead, that is performed by the new count_item function. Thank to Sebastian Offermann.
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• Matthias Krüger, jANaM and Sebastian Offermann made various corrections to the language in several dialogs, as well as general reformatting and cleanup.

Some smaller changes:

• Some sounds and sound functions were removed in a code cleanup, by Miles McCammon and Matthias Krüger.
• Some parts of the code was translated from German into English. Thanks to Matthias Krüger.
• The depracated zpipe tool which was once used in the proccess of making graphics for the game has been removed! Graphics armies everywhere rejoice. Thanks to Matthias Krüger.
• The calculations that are affected by the screen resolution are delayed until the video mode is initialized, which prevents bugs such as Tux (the player character) being off-center. Thanks to Józef Kucia.
• The hardcoded resolutions are no longer listed in the resolution selection menu to prevent confusion. By Józef Kucia.
• Lily Stone, the town's shopkeeper, now only traffics ammo to members of the Red Guard, as per new intructions. Of course, there are other ways to win her favor. By Miles McCammon.

All in all, 132 changes were committed in December.

Once again we wish to thank everyone who contributed, and ask anyone with an idea, request, bug report or fix to contact us, report that bug and maybe even submit a patch to fix it. Who knows, you might even find your name here next month!

It is also worth mentioning that several contributors have taken up on our suggestion from two months ago to wash their llamas, and since our code was compiling and our graphics were rendering, we decided to oblige them! We would never do it again, though. Ever.

 

-The FreeDroidRPG Team

FreedroidRPG 0.15

FreedroidRPG 0.15 is out - just in time for Christmas!

 

0.15 was made from 0.15rc2 without changes - if you are playing rc2, you don't need to upgrade.

FreedroidRPG 0.15rc2

FreedroidRPG 0.15rc2 is available.

Changes from 0.15rc1 are the following:<br/>

• Multiple fixes in dialogs
• Fixed walls displayed incorrectly on MS Windows
• Added a Win32 installer

FreedroidRPG 0.15rc1 is out!

The FreedroidRPG development team is happy to present FreedroidRPG 0.15. FreedroidRPG 0.15rc1 comes almost exactly one year after 0.14.1, and brings a lot of improvements: more than 1700 changes were made! This release was done by the usual suspects but also our four Google Summer of Code 2011 students, as well as many people who made their first contribution to FreedroidRPG.

Below is a condensed list of the changes that were made for 0.15.

Engine

• A new way of commanding your army of take-over droids is available: Multi-Bot Broadcast. Now you can issue one command to all of your droids that are on the same map level, making management of a large number of bots much simpler.
• Loading a saved game saw a dramatic performance increase.
• Armor rules were improved: armor gives you damage reduction. Hit/miss is handled separately.
• The Network Mapper in-game program has been added: It displays all the enemies on the current level on the automap for a short time. Remember, you need to have the automap enabled and turned on (default key TAB) to use the skill!
• Positional audio was implemented: now you can tell where and how far away that pesky droid is!
• The level editor interface was improved, making the process of level creation much simpler and more intuitive: map labels, enemies and their relevant information can be placed, moved around and edited inside the editor and using the mouse, rather through a text file.
• The user interface now properly handles various screen resolutions and aspect ratios (this is still a work-in-progress however).
• Damage is now calculated and applied to NPCs only when the weapon actually lands, greatly improving the feeling of the slower weapons such as the sledgehammer.

Graphics

• Tux, the player model, has gone through a makeover: it is now taller, more handsome and more plump. Furthermore, new types of animations are now supported for different types of weapons.
• A new droid model, the Lawnmower, was recently added. Though seemingly cute and benign, it is known to be quite ferocious when angered, so... Keep off the grass! Kevin owns one.
• The shotgun weapons now fire actual shotgun shells with pellets and spread.
• Multiple layers of floor tiles are now implemented, enabling various combinations of transparent floor tiles.
• The Exterminator gun is a fearsome weapon, the strongest in the game; firing it is not for the weak of character, and it now shows in its blast graphics.
• Each add-on now has its own unique graphics.

Maps

• Slasher Mountains and the Worker mines, the levels south of the town, have been remapped.
• An automated robot factory nicknamed the Hell Factory was finally added to the game. It is the final level of the game.

Dialogs

• A new character, Will Gapes, has been added to the Hell Fortress with its own quest.
• Several new quests were added (no spoiling!).
• Content was added to various signs throughout the game.
• John, a new character, has been added as well as a puzzle game involving teleporters.
• Some characters will now speak in a slightly different manner if the player is followed by a Red Guard.
• A new quest involving a new character, Ewald's long-lost servant robot, has been added.
• The beginning of the game (the conversation with Francis) is now more fast-paced and involves more action.
• Chandra, the town sage, now knows more about Linarians, the player's race.

Various

• Breakable brick and glass walls are now clickable and are highlighted when pointed at.
• A materials tab has been added to the add-on crafting UI, specifying how much of each material the player has and how much is required to craft the add-on.
• C-net, the town's community network, is now horribly meme-aware. Don't be tempted to run any programs you might find on it...
• Performance improvements in OpenGL mode (up to x5!) and SDL mode, making the game playable on all computers that still run.
• Many spelling and grammar errors, as well as other linguistic unacceptabilities have been corrected in the dialogs.
• Many Win32-related bugs were fixed.
• The game now starts in windowed mode by default.
• Small memory leaks were removed (and a few new ones added!).
• Exits and entrances to underground levels are now displayed in yellow on the automap.
• Unaffordable prices in shops are displayed in red.
• The widgets in the level editor are now semi-transparent for easier overview of the map, particularly in smaller resolutions.
• The meme plague continues to claim victims across the world of FreedroidRPG, and even Kevin's girlfriend started showing symptoms of it; avoid infection, or something might happen to your base. All of them.
• For easier testing of new graphics, obstacle and item graphics can now be reloaded without restarting the game using a key combination: Left Ctrl + Left Shift + Left Alt + G.

October 2011 Progress Report

Hello, and welcome to FreeDroidRPG's monthly progress report for the month of October! Here are some of the highlights of what's been happening:

Programming department:

• The formula for calculating the chance of an attack to hit has been changed, solving the bug where the chance to hit would go over 100%. Thanks to Sebastian Offermann.
• Damage is now calculated and applied to NPCs only when the weapon actually lands, greatly improving the feeling of the slower weapons such as the sledgehammer. By Bryan Conrad.
• The game no longer crashes when loading an old or malformed save file. Thanks to fluzz.

Sound department:

• Arthur Huillet fixed a potential crash when playing a positional sound with an unknown emitter or listener position.

Writing department:

• A dialog loop with Duncan's quest has been fixed by Miles McCammon. Thanks to Starminn for reporting.
• The strange end-of-game message that is shown after the game is won has been removed, by Bryan Conrad.
• Francis now gives a small reward to the player, depending on how helpful the player was. By Xenux.
• Countless more spelling, grammar and language fixes in all in-game texts, by Miles McCammon and Starminn.

Some of the smaller changes made this month:

• The town guard that is supposed to escort the player around town now does his job properly, thanks to Sebastian Offermann.
• A bug was fixed that caused a crash when an NPC couldn't find a waypoint. Thanks to Bryan Conrad.
• Sebastian Offermann separated the settings of hacked bots, meaning each preference can be adressed individually.
• Xenux fixed a bug with the stamina bar which would cause it to be longer than its frame.
• The countdown for the takeover game no longer overlays Tux's head in low resolutions. Thanks to Bryan Conrad.
• Innumerable small bugfixes, much polishing and many under-the-hood changes in all departments by all contributors.

All in all, 46 changes were committed during October.

We wish to thank everyone who contributed to the game, as well as to urge anyone with an idea, request, criticism, bugfix, or llama, to contact us, report a bug and maybe even submit a patch, and we will wash your llama for a nominal fee. Who knows, you might even find your (or your llama's) name on this list next month!

 

-The FreeDroidRPG Team

 

Disclaimer: There is no chance in the world we will actually wash your llama.