HG Devlog #3 - Mapping

 Hey guys, A small update as in there probably be less development time this week due to studying and I'm seeing a concert and just going to relax from the pc every once in awhile but I'll still blog. But once the weekend hits I'll be doing more work.

I finished Baldur's Gate 3 and it's a sweet game. Thinking of playing it again in the Winter. But I'm currently setting up my Wii to run retroarch on my CRT TV (13' Toshiba TV with a built in DVD-Player) to play some old classic RPGS to get some inspirations in terms of storylines, mapping, and art inspirations. 

I been working on the "template for the maps" Which in this case is me just laying out how the Prologue is going to go and then build it one step at a time. We got some of the basic maps going and will include the 2 locations, 2 caves, and 1 instanced dungeon. This also includes the roads/streets going to these places.

Anyways before I end the blog, here's a quick snapshot of what we got so far:

Thinking about making the first few areas be more LoZ (NES) Inspired.

Of course not everything is final and this is subject to change. Thankfully it's the DEV Server.

See you guys soon! Am planning on a vlog series for this after Prologue is released but we will see!

Slow week

 Nothing much to say. Just been a slow week getting back into the groove of things since I got back from vacation. I am currently learning how to do pixel art and been on the drawing boards for the MUD which I will announce soon. Will give you the engine that I  am working on which is MirageMUD. This MUD will follow the structure of Ember Online but will take place in Space.

I recently gotten Asperite, which was a huge upgrade from libresprite and man its amazing. I will continue to try and work on faces and hoping they look good for Hollowgrounds.

We are still on track for Hollowgrounds Prologue release for early 2024. I am drafting up the quest plan right now while focusing on school.

I just started Week 3 and we're learning how to do security assessments.

Let's do this.

History of the Gaiuss Trilogy (Cartuga, Gralina, and now Hollowgrounds)

Not a dev log but just a quick history of the game series and why I want to make this the way it is now.

At the time of this writing, Hollowground is the current work in project with many other projects I have on the pipeline, which also includes the Cartuga - Definitive Edition. I was able to find the original source, thankfully I had it up on my Github so I will take a look, rebalance it, add some new stuff and re-release it.

2017:

I created Cartuga with RPG Maker MV because I was using the Engine to learn more about development especially since it ran with JavaScript for plugins. I used it this for my final project for my Front-End Web Development class and was able to port it to HTML for people to play during the last week of class. The game had you play as Cartuga, an adventurer who wanted to be like his Grandfather. A short RPG where you discover many of the secrets of the world (Or so you think) and it lasts about an hour. This game will take place about 20 years before Gralina. 

I wanted to create a sequel but make it longer so I started drawing the concept for it in Late 2017 shortly after Cartuga but didn't start development on it until about Summer of 2018. At that time, I didn't know what I wanted to do with the 3rd installment but I know it was going to be a direct sequel. I decided to use the Eclipse Origins engine for the last one for a simple ORPG. 

One of the areas a player could go to

Unfortunately early 2019, I forgot to make a backup when my PC had problems so I lost it when I had to do a reformat. Summer of 2019, I declared the project dead. You can read short and not very detailed dev log here: https://github.com/DjKniteX/gralina

With that being said, the trilogy had come to the halt until 2023. I discovered Intersect awhile back but it wasn't until I was in the Mirage Source discord where I found out that Robin passed away. He was a known programmer in the scene and was mainly the reason why I got back into the hobby. He was such an inspiration that one of my first iterations of my portfolio I stole his theme. He made a lot of groundwork and influenced a lot of the progress done in Intersect so I decided to dedicate this game in his name.

So here we are, we began work on Hollowgrounds which will be the baby project of both sequels that never was. 

Story:

The concept was inspired by the Shaver Mystery by Richard Shaver, while not originally from Arkansas, made an impact in Arkansas Folklore. 

The story begins with Gralina being driven out by her home Kingdom when she tried to warn the Court that the advisor was being suspicious. The Advisor to the King had her kicked out and was forced out West where she discovered that an evil presence is coming. The Advisor is one of the few remaining of his race, a Zardian, a human like race that was one of the first to walked the World to protect the first Angels who discovered the planet. Gralina recruits the players (you) to help stop the Evil from taking over the world. The next chapter focuses on Gralina's cousin who helped her escaped West before venturing up north to another unknown continent before finally making it to the unknown world of the East. (Far East in this case).

I started this project back in 2017, so now it's time to finish it

-Hollowgrounds Series-

Cartuga - Definitive Edition (RPG Maker MV, Cross-Platform) - Coming Soon (Winter 2024)

Hollowgrounds - Episode 1 and 2 (Intersect, Cross-Platform) - Winter 2023

 

Gralina/HG - Dev Log #2

 If you guys are wondering what the HG stands for in the title, it's the name of the game now. So moving forward, Hollowgrounds is the name of the main game where Gralina will be the first Episode/Chapter of the game. With the 2nd Episode, being an expansion. I'm expecting the dev lifespan at the rate that we are going is at least a year and a half. Server will be up until someone beats the game and then after that the server will be up for at least another year or until the server dies (if I decided to get like a 3 year server plan, etc)

So excuse me, if the Dev Logs end up changing titles, but as long as its either HG or Gralina, it's the same game otherwise, other projects will be here as well. But if you are coming here from either the splashpage or mockinbird.dev, then it should be following the labels page, so all the articles/dev logs are in order!

If you guys are on the mockinbird discord, the Gralina category is up so you guys can see what we are doing as well as the Trello board. Most of my Dev logs will include snippets and screenshots of what we did but most of everything is behind the scenes that is available only to developers or known associates. 

Stuff we got done was:

• Custom HUD Icons
• Testing custom drawn armor
• Guild System (Had to implement player variables)
• Connecting to DEV Server (JeeJuz's side)

Showing off the custom icons I made and custom armor that JeeJuz made. The Armor Icons are default but we might change those as well

Hanging out with JeeJuz while wearing his new "Admin" Armor

We have a lot of stuff planned out and I'm hoping to get into more of a developer mode during the holidays but we do have a lot stuff in the pipeline and hoping to push out the "Prologue" build January 2024 with Episode 1, and 1.5 (the 2nd half of Episode 1) in Late 2024/early 2025. 

Not anytime soon, but once we get the CMS up for it in Late 2024, most of the announcements and such will be located there as well as the discord. We will make an official Discord for this game as well but more technical stuff of what I'm doing will be here. 

Gralina - DEV LOG #1

 Hello everyone, welcome to my first Dev Log. A written one at that because I feel like I can probably write what I want instead of freestyling on the top of my head. Anyways, I wanted to let you guys know that I brought Gralina back from the dead. Originally a RPG Maker MV game as a sequel to my class-project, Cartuga, I decided to turn this one into an online game.

Running on the Intersect Engine with minor modifications that I have planned, I was able to get tons of work done today. I even decided to watch RPG Maker mapping videos as the editor was very similar to the series. 

Development of the game started at 10:00 AM and then steady development until about 3:00 PM where I decided to slow down and look up some guides and work on the sites/gh for the game.

Thankfully, I'm not building this from scratch so copy and pasting code should be doable, as I don't know very much about C#.

What I did today was very basic map setup, basic quest setup, and working on learning how to do spell animations. I wasn't able to make any gifs but I was able to take some screenshots

The first fire spell made with basic animation

Fortunately, the event system looks very similar to what I used in RPG Maker MV so making events will come naturally when I developed them into the game. Though, I am a bit rusty, I am still messing around with conditionals to work with the quest system (the quest system was not a Vanilla thing in MV).  

The premise of the repeatable quests that I am writing is simple: Introduction - Quest - End. But depending if you have done the quest already it would like Introduction 2- Quest - End. But it's currently not working the way I want it to. It's probably a line I'm missing in the conditional statement but I'm sure its doable

The first repeatable quest: Kill Slimes (Working title)

I will continue to watch mapping videos but I'm hoping to get a closed alpha out for internal testing for the Prologue with an open beta launch of the Prologue Early 2024 on a hosted server With Act 1 launch near Winter of 2024. I am working on adding in multiple stuff into the code which I will continue to use for future projects (I hope. Would be nice to have a dedicated Engine), which are but limited to, Multiple characters, forum login integration, server select (similar to Ragnarok Online/MS/Runescape).

Most of the story has been written sine 2017 but I will begin to flesh it out and translate it over to Online RPG. Taking place in the same Mythos that I have been creating since then as well. Welcome to another world somewhere in the universe and hopefully it's here to stay. Stay tuned for more stuff.

Open beta coming to a computer near you

* Everything in the screenshots are subjected to change.

Hello World... From Byond!

 Before I get right to it, I just wanted to announce that I proably be closing my original blog that I had running for almost a decade at https://djknitex.wordpress.com. It's seen better days and now that I'm more focused on my professional career than my non-existent esports and music career. I might as well pivot over here. Needless to say, I will continue blogging but I will be more active on this one.

It's been a week and I been enjoying game development at a small pace. I decided to use Godot for a test text adventure game and will use Byond for a couple side projects I will make with my friends. I am planning on two official products for my start up but Mockinbird, at its core, will still be a game jam team. With the goal to complete 2 jams a year and releasing a game every few years (Unless its an on-going online game).

I have been going through a tutorial that I found on the Byond forums and I did my own art. Which I will learn how to do cause I would like to make my passion project in the same vein as Ultima 7/Runescape.

I got the Dream Maker/Byond plugins installed with VSC with a custom setting for Byond filetypes that I got over from Grind Knight's VSC video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DUpNo4nhB8).

It's still a work in progress but I was able to make some Verbs, which are commands that Players can do, akin to Methods for JS objects (among many other programming languages).

What I like to do when I follow a tutorial is always try to implement something that I learned. Either being another Verb or command, or adding in my own graphics. At least that way I'm always applying what I'm learning.

Anyways, that's it for me for the day. Don't know how frequent I will blog but expect at least once a week. I'm hoping to get my RPG project back, I started one a few years ago but lost it because I forgot to back it up unfortunately.

It's nice to see something you created work