SC2Mapster

A mod/map with a lot of RPG elements in it, planned are an RPG like combat system where you can dodge/riposte/resist attacks/spells, 5 different classes each with their own unique set of skills/fighting style. Another important feature is the AI, it is designed to be worth fighting against, to provide unique fighting situations/encounters through differing combinations of at least 2 dozen + types of enemies with different tiers of difficulty. It is intended for players who want a challenge worth ragequitting over, don't expect an easy game, expect to be very involved.

The storyline itself will be fairly parodic in nature, can expect a lot of bad humor with many of the bosses/quests. I'm not expecting to have a working Alpha until at least March or April, knowing my perfectionist tendencies it could go longer. Will add details and screenshots as time passes, currently still in working systems out/force the data editor to do what I want phase, not enough on the surface to show much yet.

Update(02/17/2012): Have changed the name to the Horologium Super-Cluster RPG, figure a super cluster with a length of 550 million light years, 330,000 + galaxies and 1 quadillion(10^15) stars will give me enough creative freedom to do what I want in my map, lol. I don't plan to have the mod limited to one .SC2Map file anyways, plan to have it use several with time. Getting most my information on this super cluster from http:www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/superc/hor.html, I predict some galaxy pictures might be very similar to other galaxies for good looking load screen purposes.... Here is one of the galaxy clusters located inside of the Horologium Super Cluster:

Update(02/18/2012): Have finally decided on class names (their abilities been laid out awhile now), will outline those now, plan to do a bestiary sometime after alpha. Storytelling isn't my gift, and this RPG does have a parody element to it, so expect these to be a laugh, lol.

Jack Daniels Mage - Voted the worst cleric on earth 20 years ago, this guy resorts to drinking to deal with his failures. However, his drinking has led him to getting shipped to all sorts of terrible places. A competetent fighter from his drinking history, this guy definitely prefers the haymaker approach to attacking. This allows him to focus on healing between attacks, although he might heal the enemies more than allies...

Bob from Accounting - Not a terribly exciting fellow, he one day aspires to be the Executive Director's Assistant's Aide. Fate would have it that he accounted for the Ancient Indian Burial Grounds and Necronomicon Agency. He one day discovered he had the gift of zombifying coworkers through paper cuts and causing horrible diseases through slight sneezes. Guess he shouldn't have volunteered to sort the files in the dark hidden necrotic powers filing section. He relies on flesh of enemies, flesh of himself, and random dead things from long ago to attack his enemies.

Knight of the Shire - Probably the most confused character in this entire game, this halfling believes himself to be a knight of ages past, to have immense strength, and 3 arms? In reality he isn't sure how to tie his own shoes. However, he is so convinced of his own thoughts that they become reality to everyone else, including his having 3 arms. He is able to equip weapons in 3 slots, either 3 1 handers, 1 2 hander + 1 1 hander, or.... a 3 handed weapon? On top of this he finds himself with dark and light knight abilities at his own delusional disposal, but delivers most his damage through his 3 arms.

Imp - He has a strong, if not evil viewpoint on politics, religion, gender equality issues. He has only one interest, in blowing them and everything else up. To fulfill this he utilizes water, fire, electricity, and summoning. His summons aren't exactly pets though, he tends to throw them at his target. To further help in his efforts, he has also mastered how to double, quadruple, and even octuple his damage for brief periods at a cost.

Casper, the Gunfriendly Ghost - As the name might suggest, this guy likes guns. Pistols, Sniper Rifles, Machine Guns, Flamethrowers, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, Mortars, Grenade Launchers, BFGs, Railguns, Gatling versions of shotguns/rocket launchers/railguns, this guy has cancer even though he doesn't smoke. His only limitation, he uses energy for ammo.... He has little issue with ninja swapping guns however, with the ability to put 4 different guns on hotkeys for quick access.

More to come later, I may add a sixth class if a fighting style seems uncovered/my life doesn't have enough stress. An alpha is still a long ways off at this point.

Update(02/20/2012): Not a lot to report this time, mostly decided to actually add DATES to the updates, so can see how recently this has been updated, so I can remember such details, etc. Did get some basic items up and going, mostly guns, and a nice little hotkey setup for casper so he can pick up any guns and swap between up to 4 at will easily. I suspect the potion belt will also be roughly based on the work I did on the weapon swapping. Only took me a night and a half to get the weapon swapping working how I wanted it, believe this calls for hot chocolate and irish liquer.

Update(02/26/2012): Mostly been working on game mechanics some of which will never be seen(but you sure would see them if they were WRONG), such as banking, inventories, equipment windows, and I had to revisit weapon swapping to ensure it works when players do things like move items, drop them, pick them up. Definitely have weapon swapping optimized now, at least until I throw a full equipment window into the mix. As far as the bag for sellable items and such goes, guess 50 slots will be large enough, for any packrats out there. Will free me up to work on abilities/monsters/bosses once I got inventory/items setup right, or to be more specific are setup to go with my ridiculous ideas of what a standard should be.

Update(03/27/2012): So been awhile since I updated this, possibly because I have been bad and mostly playing other maps, watching cartoons, and just overall not doing a lot for a couple weeks worth. I have finally gotten going again, giving Casper about all the abilities he is ever going to get, gotten started on the Imp, and probably Bob pretty soon as well. Started to give the map some actual shape/design attention, which is certainly better looking than the voidless mass of crap and dirt I was using to test stuff out on. Granted, only have the town space and Area 1 going at all, and the rest is a big mess of white chalk outlining planned out for later, quite literally. Most importantly, I have the Area 1 and Area 2 monsters worked out, including one of the biggest thorns I've ever had in my side, the wolf. 6 more Areas to go, not including bosses, at least for the first map I had planned. Have decided to put inventory/equip on a nice backburner until I have most the rest done save the weapons slots, no one gives a rat's ass about gear if the game sucks.

Update(05/27/2012): Been slacking fairly hard as of late, due to RL and other things. Apparently so much so that the automated system marked the project as inactive for a short while. Anyways, there has been some progress, such as being able to actually pick a hero at the start, area 1 respawns monsters, bob has been given some abilities, imp has been given a lot of abilities, so much so that I implemented a page change system for his hotbar to flip through what he has.

Update(06/05/2012): Have been giving this map a lot more attention lately, particularly in the inventory section. Has been a real bear making it work for me, but finally got something set up so I can keep track of the inventory at all times to make use of algorithms I've had worked up for a long time. I would say however I am most proud of the potion using system I've implemented recently. Basically you get 2 hotbuttons connected to 2 potion bags of 8 slots each. The potions themselves are 1 charge, 10 charges, or 20 charges, so could potentially cram 320 health/energy boosts into your bags. No more opening a bag and scrambling to click a potion with your mouse, all it takes is one key pressed on your keyboard to get a heal instantly. Cannot count the amount of times I've died looking for a potion.

Anyways, in other news I have updated several existing abilities to be more user friendly, show the area it will hit, that kind of thing. I've also noticed a lot of the new abilities been taking a LOT less time to create, comes from making a ton of difficult abilities early on I guess. Still not to the point where I want to announce an Alpha testing date, but getting a lot closer. Hopefully my new job doesn't distract me too much.

Update(06/12/2012): So been playing with the inventory, STILL, but have made more progress. Have added the first tier of basic armor items, some more weapons, gotten inventory set up on another hero type, fixed issues I caused with existing systems by changing names some, all is going fairly well, just need to implement weapon systems for Knight/bob/jack/imp and some equipment equipping systems and inventory should be looking pretty good so I can work on actual monsters and gameplay again.

Update(06/17/2012):So been playing with the inventory, AGAIN, with of course more progress made. One of these days I'll be done with that horrible thing, but for now armor should be equipping properly, Knight can use weapons as he was meant to, either 1 3her, 3 1hers, 1 2her and a 1her, 1 2her and a shield, 1 1her and 2 shields, 2 1hers and 1 shield, well you get the idea. He has access to 3h, 2h, 1h, and shields for his slots, obviously 3h will eat 3 spots, 2h will eat 2 spots, 1h and shield 1 spot a piece.

It turns out it is a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS to make a weapons system for a tri-wielder work, but it now does as far as I can tell. Amusingly I haven't put in the imp/jack/bob systems yet, should be a short ordeal compared to the Knight though. It shouldn't be too long before I'm working on hero abilities and monsters again. Suppose I should actually terrain my boss1, boss2, area2 areas in the near future as well. Terraining just vexes me so, I can think of more enjoyable trips to the dentist. Is probably why Mozared uses such a sad faced fish for his picture......... But I digress, off to sleep for me.

Update(06/20/2012):You know what, I'm really tired of saying I somehow updated the inventory system, but I did again, plus a couple other things. Inventories are functional for all classes now, only a handful of items to put in them thus far(I think I'm at 60 or something), but that can be remedied pretty quickly once I get to it. Got weapon equip systems working for imp/jack/bob, discovered a serious bug in it tonight which I squashed as soon as I found the source. It kept unequipping items that hadn't been equipped in the first place, resulting in negative stat points, that sort of lovely thing.

And finally an update that doesn't have to do with the freaking inventory, finally bothered to put in a respawn system. It is functional, but very ugly at the moment, will refine it more in the future. Been attempting to make better icons for items as well, is a slow going process, have to recruit some real artists I think, as so far I have tried to draw a bracer and ended up with a pair of shoes..... Oh yes, I am just that good.

A leveling system has been in place for quite awhile now, at least in terms of monsters giving XP, leveling at a certain point, but haven't put in a system to buy abilities, gain some hp/mana upon leveling, that sort of thing. I will probably try to get that functional before returning to hero abilities again, so I can design all future abilities around that design. Currently the heroes just have all their abilities at level 0, lol.

Update(06/21/2012): So went backward a few steps last night when I got the 1.5 beta going. Almost nothing that effects the current gameplay, mostly just stupid actor stuff that causes irritating red messages. About 12 unique bugs total. I cleared about half of them up on the spot without too much trouble, couple others are persisting however, no gameplay changers at least, just visually stupid ones. Should be cleared up long before alpha of this map begins.

Have several new icons made for some of the more basic armor by yours truly, as terrible looking as their armor values! I see no issue with making players want to replace the first few tiers of armor quickly, so all is well. I'll probably try to recruit another artist or two if that is at all possible since the item count is fairly large overall.

Update(06/25/2012): For any of those who are curious how a banking system works, it goes something like this. It takes careful planning, tons of organization, and a lot of patience. And when you run out of that, just stay up all night swearing at it just before Monday and it MIGHT work then. As it turns out, saving a bank is much easier than loading a bank. Saving just happens, it doesn't complain about execution times. Loading on the other hand you get to split up into 5 or 6 segments even if you did have it perfectly coded to work the other way. Then you run into all kinds of unexpected errors, which sometimes don't show up until a few loads later. And it is best to finish loading before you begin saving, unless you have decided your life doesn't have enough pain in it and have to bank items with charges too(and care about keeping them accurate). And all your greatly coded save/equip functions/triggers will need some kind of off switch during the loading.

Anyways, needless to say I have been working on banking. It works as far as I know, at least as of 3 hours ago... I don't know how the hell it had as many little errors and bugs as it did, but it certainly did! It currently supports 2 slots, figure 2 is plenty for 5 different class choices, I haven't set it up to let you overwrite slots in game just yet, but that is a pretty simple matter. The hardest part is the whole fact I despise and loathe making dialogs, even adding little buttons. But yea, banking is working more or less, respawning had been working, is almost like a real RPG now. Still got a lot of skills to make up, monsters/bosses to design, add some actual story/plot to what I'm doing.....

Monsters are now dropping items too, quite often in fact. So often that I may need to come up with an item rot system, as just testing by myself the little Area 0 would get quite cluttered with items. The most amusing part is that even though I'm just testing my own map, I still felt the need to collect a full suit of armor. Was thinking a behavior w/ a long period and a kill tick effect would do the job nicely, just have to be sure to remove the behavior when you pick the item up, and possibly re-add the behavior when you drop said item. Pretty sure I could power through it with a set of about 5 while loops, but be nice to use something a little more clever, especially when it comes to dropping said item. That's all for now, let you know on more later.

Update(07/03/2012): So been awhile since my last update, the mod has been difficult lately. Had grand plans of finishing the Imp's abilities this weekend but mostly ended up getting pissed off at the lightning ability most the weekend. It is working properly now, always shoots out 7 range away, visually SHOWS the lightning, that sort of thing. Due to my horrendous understanding of beams and SOPs this was a lot more difficult than it should have been. Once Kueken so nicely gave me a working example though, was able to do that, and make it so it won't go through walls, will only visually show how far it can go (it stops at a wall, impassable area, etc). Still got chain lightning, lightning orb, static electricity, gate, town portal, and throw cow to finish off for the Imp. The throw chicken ability needs a bit of revamping too.

Other than that I revamped the way a hero's inventory is kept track of, it had small hickups rarely resulting in an inventory getting wiped out completely in the bank file. It pretty much saves whenever you kill something, spend any stat points, or do anything inventory related. However, it seems to get really moody when you kill 200 monsters at once or cast a spell that results in monster death after your death. I'm still trying to uncover the exact cause of this issue, but with the revamp its ill effects should be almost non-existent. I will likely add a save button to the dialogs before release (although it really isn't necessary) to give users a backup in case.

By the way, I plan to record a video of sorts once I get done with the Imp's abilities, I know it has been long overdue. The Imp's abilities are definitely going to be the most visually appealing anyways.

Update(07/20/2012): So have managed to get more done lately, but real life has been rather complicated lately, not allowing me to post updates much at all. Anyways, the Imp's primary spells are about done, meaning I need to post a freaking video or two as I said I would. Don't count on there being sound, at least of anything suggesting high quality. I have decided to ditch the summoning ideas I had in mind, like throw cow/chicken/slime, most were already created but bleh, they didn't really fit or have much practical use given his current array of spells. I might add in another ice and lightning ability to compensate for it, they are in need of an OP mass mana drain spell anyways.

I also finally put an Area 2 together, decided on a ruined farming area theme with crops, livestock, flooded fields, storage stuff, that kind of thing. I might add that terraining makes me sad, but think the area turned out pretty well. It gives great cover for the wolves I designed, perhaps a little too good, lol. Annoying things. Respawning triggers also put in for area 2, but the monsters don't drop loot currently, need to be happier w/ my loot in area 1 first, then I'll do more.

So with all these posts probably wondering if an Alpha for this thing will ever be released. Well about that, gonna list current blockers that are gonna have me held up:

Current Blockers:

1. Need some form of an ability buying system, and need to implement banking to that end as well. This is often done through the veterancy system in data, but for what I want the system to do, I've deemed that system crap, and it reminds me of WC3, which makes it double crap.

2. Need to put the first 2 bosses in, + some mini bosses at random in the first 2 areas (in total, 8 areas are intended for the first map). Some door systems need to be put in place as well, as I don't want anyone to even see area 2 until someone has beaten the first boss. A key type system will probably be put in place so if you have beaten boss 1 once, you don't have to again. Although you will probably want to for loot potential.

3. Loot icons/system. I'm not currently at all happy with how loot is showing up, how it very quickly clutters the hell out of the map, and that kind of thing. Also want to get icons in, I know they aren't NECESSARY for a map to work, but I need to be able to look at my map without getting pissed off. I won't go so far as making models for the items, yet, but the icons need to stop sucking.

Important things I need to get done, but aren't blockers:

1. Give my classes all their intended abilities. Casper is 100 % on active abilities including his bandolier system to switch between guns in a flash, I intend to add several passive abilities as well however. Imp is about 85-90 % done on active abilities, may get some passive abilities. Bob has a horrible 10 % of his active abilities, although I don't anticipate his abilities being that difficult to make. Knight has no abilities besides potion belts at this time, but his 3 handed wielding system is in place which was a nightmare all its own. He only needs about 30-40 % active abilities to be testable at this time. Jack Daniels Mage is at a horrible 0 % anything done besides his unit and potion belts, obviously I don't like clerics.... He will improve though, intend to make him THE support class, not just a healer.

2. Monsters for later areas. Have had these planned out for who knows how long now, but have been trying to get triggers/data in order, make the project have a working environment to function in, etceteras. Have already designed 8 unique monster types for the first 2 Areas, with 20 + more planned for the next 6.

3. Terrain later areas, Area 3, 4-1,4-2,5-1,5-2, and 6. Harder than it sounds, as I loathe terraining in a very real way. The fact the camera is set at a custom view to make the map larger by about 100-200 % doesn't make things any easier.

4. Implementing more of an RPG like system for handling damage, hits, crits, resists, ripostes, dodges, etc. I'm sure it won't be that bad once I get going, I have just been putting it off since the combat is for the most part more action/micro oriented. I reserve the right to not create such a system and instead keep it all action, but I do like the idea of ripostes/dodges and that kind of thing, especially for my more melee oriented classes.

5. Making some models/textures for the weapon items, possibly armor. I don't have grand plans of making amazingly animated models or anything like that, but some new models to show what you are picking up would be nice.

6. Cooler looking dialogs, a more customized UI interface with more of a health bar to keep track of your health, give it a more customized feel. This is about at the ABSOLUTE BOTTOM of my list. I have and always will design my projects around playability, not making it look pretty. Perhaps I can find someone more interested in such things to pretty it up for me....

Update(07/26/2012):

So have been making some progress on my blockers to being willing to release an alpha. About have something worked out for having an ability buying system put in place, just have to sit down at some point and get it going. Really not looking forward to the stupidity of making a dialog and buttons that only activate when you are the right level, have enough skill in a different ability, etceteras. But it will get done sooner or later.

Made some progress about the boss areas too, mostly with the logic of it, as I kind of like the idea of getting locked in with the boss once you activate them. Took me all too long to get some reasonable doors in place that would block anyone from teleporting in and out, the rest is just logic and actually designing a few bosses.

Must say the map should shape up pretty well the way the first 2 areas are playing, was just goofing off for a half hour or so messing around in them again the other night, and I've seen these monsters, designed them, know everything about them, and still find them enjoyable to fight against. I can only hope that later areas will add even more depth to the game as my more developed monster designs make their way into the game. I will be honest with you, I am purposely putting the stupidest of the monsters in the first areas on purpose just to break people in, the most challenging will be further in the back, like it should be. That said, they are actually fairly smart monsters for how stupid they are, lol.

I'll probably post again when I got the boss areas/key system working, as that is a big one to me. Hopefully life allows me some time to do that soonish.

Update(08/08/2012):

So real life has been a crap lately, hardly had time to eat it seems let alone work on the project more. I have made some progress though, decided to add a new monster type to the mix for the second boss area since it seemed to fit so well. Still haven't bothered with making actual bosses, although they respawn/open their areas back up after being defeated. This doesn't take much at the moment as they are just their base units crapped in there. Most of the work I've done lately though is just planning however, did get more item icons finished up, nearly got enough to fully populate area1/2 with custom icons on everything.

I guess the main thing I've been doing lately for the map is listening to a lot of music though, in a much more productive way than it sounds. And I do mean a lot, been going through a ton of free royalty free stuff to try to find good pieces for different areas, boss music, that kind of thing. Some editing has been necessary, as some songs fit so well for 70-80 %, then all the sudden, what the hell was the artist thinking segment. Needless to say, finding relevant music for this kind of project has been challenging, I think the overall mood/atmosphere this gives the game will be worth it though. Always felt the music in a game is almost as important as the gameplay itself, some games I find myself repeatedly going back to just to listen to the soundtrack again.

I hope to have more good news in my next update, but the project is still progressing. I really need to pick this up if I hope to have an alpha by the end of August, sheesh.

Update(08/13/2012):

So Blocker #3 is nearly out of the way, just had a long night of insanity as I plugged in 30 + more items, only need a few more for area 1/2 to be completed. All the items have their own unique icon as well. This of course leads me to the need to rant a little about how horrible it is to have 30 + items to put into the data/triggers in one night, lol. This isn't a hard process mind you, but opening up each little image, coloring black to alpha, enlarging the canvas size from 72 to 76, centering the image, changing layer to entire image, then saving it as a dds file gets REALLY old after so many times. It also gets really old duplicating items and changing 8-9 fields for each and every item. And updating my arrays on the trigger side of things got really old too, although not nearly as much as it involves more typing than clicking. Oddly enough the weapon items didn't seem so bad, perhaps because I was looking forward to testing those out, lol.

The item pile up problem turned out to be an incredibly easy fix, I simply have every item that drops on the ground rot in 10 minutes, if you pick it up, its rot behavior is gone permanently, never to be seen again. This should keep items around you want and trash the ones you didn't, I even made the behaviors go from one to the other so you'll know if you are at 9ish mins, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 60 seconds, 30 seconds on how long you got until an item dissapears.

Lastly I have been doing some major renovating of the terrain for area1, soon to do the same for area2, although probably not nearly as much. I imagine the terrains for the first 2 areas, first 2 boss areas will be pretty reworked by the time this month is over, at least enough to get some testing going.

I will probably be moving all these update notes to a different area soon since the whole idea of this page is to get the map some attention, and no one is going to seriously want to read through all this to know what is going on recently, lol.

Update(08/22/2012):

So have been working towards getting past the upgrades blocker lately, but then realized as I was setting up the data upgrade portion of the Imp's spells up that he was still missing 4 spells. Wasn't about to set up a system of upgrades without all his spells being in place, so I have been hammering those out. The spells I gave him being Dry Icicle, Brain Freeze, Lightning Orb, and Town portal. This brings the Imp's total spell count to 19.

Discovered the true horror of making a successful town portal along the way, but think I was pretty successful at making a system I'm willing to use, albeit 20 tries later. I've heard of using massive search effects and that kind of thing, but it just seemed horribly inefficient to me so my town portals will use a more trigger based approach. Most of it is pretty standard stuff that I worked out, being able to only cast the portal in a place you can actually get to, not falling into a portals endless warp trap, only being able to have 1 portal open per player at a time. Some things I did a little differently than some portals is I decided that the duration will be 30 minutes, that is it, I don't care who goes through it or if it ever gets used, it is gone in 30 minutes. Caster types will probably get the option to extend this duration if they so choose. The other thing I did differently was I have decided to color code the portals, using fairly standard color scheme, 1 is red, 2 is blue, 3 is teal, 4 is purp, 5 is orange, 6 is green, 7 is brown, 8 is grey. Well at least it is standard up to about player 5.... Of course this means that you won't get to pick your own color as many are used to doing, but somehow I think people will survive. I will be adding scrolls of town portal as well for the melee types, should be a fairly easy ordeal compared to making the data/triggers work together on that.

The other abilities were quite a lot easier to get working, dry icicle is just an exceptionally hard hitting icebolt spell, brain freeze is a short burst of invulnerability, and lightning orb is essentially a Quake2/4 style BFG blast that doesn't actually explode on anything. So I guess more quake4 really. I will likely lay out all the abilities of the 5 classes in time, but right now I'm just trying to get Imp/Casper loaded up enough to have a working alpha. I suspect my order of classes will go Bob>Knight>JackDaniels in terms of who I finish next.

Until then I'll probably continue to work on my upgrade/ability system as I am most certainly furthest behind on that, will post more on this when there is something to post.

Update(08/29/2012):

So have been making progress on the blockers, slower than I would have liked to, but finally have a working Boss for Area 2. First hurdle was just getting the 5 basic abilities working the way I wanted, second part was making her use them the way I wanted, third part was making them look cooler. End result being a super-size medic who you don't want to screw with. Gave her a fairly strong melee attack, White, AE Knockback, MassRoot, Summon Treants, and of course HEAL. She is gonna be one mean boss to beat I think, will encourage playing with others :)

Update(09/03/2012):

So got a decent shotgun up and running, didn't really follow any suggested pattern, just decided to go with how I remember shotgun blasts landing in RL, doom2, quake, etceteras. I limited the number of pellets that could land on each target so that it isn't too ridiculously powerful, + a fairly lengthy reload time. Still very effective against crowds as it should be.

Other than that I've been trying to revamp how stats work, using upgrades instead of behaviors to boost them. The upgrades currently aren't cooperating, but I'm sure I'll figure out the tiny piece missing soon. Benefits of it working this way will be no extra behaviors on heroes so if I want to later give them beneficial buffs I don't have to worry any about the unique buff limit. It also looks much nicer on tooltips so damage can dynamically be shown with strength effects, delay with dexterity effects, that kind of thing. Rather have my gun say exactly the kind of damage it does then have to guess/investigate anyways.

So mostly I'm just being way too freaking picky about how my stats/upgrades work, which is why progress is stuck in dead water so often. Bosses adds now spawn when they are supposed to, that sort of thing. More progress soon I hope, just been hitting brick walls lately in coming up with solutions I like for what I got left of my blockers.

Update(09/05/2012):

Have discovered that upgrades not only have issues going past level 100, but also have many issues about how you change them. It would seem they go buggy really quick when you do much multiplication/division with them. So instead I'm going through the fun task of changing my multiplication formulas to work as addition instead. Makes the upgrades stronger at first, about the same in the middle, then weaker at end while the opposite was true before. None of this is really that challenging, is just blah, I hate changing it for 500 different things.

Little stumped on what I'm gonna do for boss loot, thinking I might have them drop rings/mods, only issue being I haven't really made any images or anything for them. Them dropping loot period at this point isn't really that important to me, but they really should soon.

So have some other crap I need to get done not mentioned in blockers for the alpha before I release it, so I guess they are their own little blockers...

1.Revise how you pick a bank file, it currently looks like utter crapness, only allows for 2, you have to manually go in and delete a bank file to open a slot up for a different hero, etc. Not really that hard I'm sure, just hasn't been a priority, and it does look oh so crappy right now.

2.Reposition a great many doodads on the map, for some reason patch 1.5.2 screwed them all up a bunch, stupid thing.

3.Make a dialog to show who is in game with you, what level they are (if they have their level visible), what class they are, that kind of thing.

4.Make a dialog to allow users to pick some options, just a few basic ones for now, but more are intended to come later. These would include things like show level, camera follow on/off, etc.

5.Scale down the amount of XP you need to level by a lot, like half at least. It currently takes way too long to level.

6.Add hp/mana/hpregen/manaregen/movement speed to the leveling process, currently leveling just gives you 10 stat points, that's it. I want it to do a little more than that, so it is worth more to be higher level.

7.Scale a few monsters down in hardness, some of them are proving, way too intense, much more so then intended. Was a little hard to spot when I was running my Imp around in mass OP no mana cost mode.

8.Make spell/weapon/armor descriptions much more accurate using DRef fields among other things. I have already done this quite a lot for weapons, but spells/armor are still in dire need of this

9.Give weapons/armor better doodads, they are all currently boxes of some sort for the most part. Be much nicer if you could simply look at the doodad and know whether it is a slot you care about or not.

10.Add in at least ONE item shop, probably a potion shop so you can sell extra crap off and buy potions with the money.

Update(09/10/2012):

Been doing a lot of lesser updates lately, but important ones. Revamped the potions due to how potions like to autostack on me, but only if the potions are the same type. So instead of the 1 potion, 10 potion, or 20 potion system I had going, replaced it all with 20 potion stacks. Not to say all potions dropped will now be 20/20, instead they could have 1 to 5 potions or something like that, depending on the difficulty of the area.

Item Shop is now functional, it currently looks like crap, is badly placed, etc, but will look better before alpha. Important thing is it works. It currently only sells potions in stacks of 20, I am undecided on what other items should be sold just yet. I may end up just making some junky items in the shops that don't compare to what you can get going out fighting. I just prefer people get items from taking risks, fighting mean stuff, rather than hang out in area 1 forever to farm some gold.

Terrain is coming along, slowly but surely. Made some modifications recently to help Area 3 fit better into the story. Considering Area 3 is supposed to be a destroyed city, it made a lot of sense for the main town to be, 'connected' to it. Still a lot to do, might redo area 1 boss area some, probably really need to resize most the trees to be 50 % of what size they are to reduce the land of the giants effect. If I have the time I should add in some aliveness to the town, but that is a very low priority to me at the moment.

Added a ton of descriptions to all the items, spells, etceteras. Is always nice to know how much actual damage you are doing rather than having to guess. Been discovering/fixing small glitches along the way, they are bound to happen when you suddenly decide to add descriptions to 100 different things in a night...

Switching over from mass behaviors to upgrades for stat increases is for the most part complete, this has the added bonus of letting me have wisdom take effect as I wanted it to, actually decreasing ability cost. I will likely be throwing something in to make critical hits happen without having to do some crazy trigger effects soon. Probably something along the lines of upping a hidden behavior's chance of applying a hidden behavior with boosted melee/ranged or spell damage attached to it, and adjusting that hidden behavior's crit boost amount, total duration, etceteras. 2 different hidden crit behaviors of course, since dexterity is supposed to control your chance to do critical melee/range, wisdom is supposed to control your chance to do critical spell damage.

Have drawn 18 new images to cover rings for the first 3 areas, just need to change them into a format the editor likes, get them set up in data and triggers. Decided to have 6 different varieties of rings for now, Str/Dex, Wis/Int, Sta/Agi, Energy, Hit Points, and AC. To that extent there is Silver Smoky Quartz, Silver Blue Quartz, Silver Purple Agate, Silver, Stone, and Copper rings respectively. Might add more later, but figure I should have those basics covered at least.

Added monster spawning to Boss Area 2, which sorely needed doing, just had to do it a certain way to make the wolves there prefer to hunt in a pack. It is working quite well too, hope you didn't mind fighting the wolves in the first part of Area 2. They get considerably worse in a pack. Definitely need to alter how red slimes work a little bit, they currently self replicate a little too zestfully. Treants are fine, just need to reduce tree size everywhere as mentioned earlier.

Boss killing/key system now works! Killing a boss now successfully unlocks the next area for everyone, and will unlock the area in a new game so you don't have to kill boss 1 every time you want to go to area 2. Only 1 player has to have keys to unlock doors, everyone else gets free entry for the rest of the game. This makes it possible to have keys out of order, so will be possible to combine keys to progress further if say you have key 3 from hanging out with your uber friends, while another guy has keys 1 and 2. This will unlock areas 2, 3, 4-1 and 4-2. This will also make it so one person might have key 4-1, another key 4-2, unlocking areas 5-A and 5-U. Having to defeat areas to enter new ones is kind of important to me, it gives a sense of truly progressing further to me. I'm undecided if when I finish this map up I will require having beat this map to enter my next one, or just let anyone in, lol. Got a LOT of time to decide on that!

Update(09/17/2012):

Made a lot more progress lately, even did some work on dialogs. I must really, REALLY hate working on those though, as I actually started working on terraining Area 3 rather than continue on dialogs. For me to choose to terrain over something else is really saying something. Likely will be going ahead and redoing all my dialogs so they are cleaner looking, both for the user and for me.

Implemented the 18 ring items, decided the main bosses for the time being will drop rings for any players nearby, 1 per player, and drop to the ground near them if they have no available slots. Was able to adjust the bosses to function the way I wanted them to as well, Boss1 is definitely done, Boss2 simply needs to have ability energy costs adjusted to scale back difficulty some.

Did a large amount of terrain work on Area 1, 2, and 3. Changed Area1 to have less walls and more pits to allow more visibility, changed BossArea1 to be mostly at the same cliff level, the higher level was screwing the marines up too much. Changed Area2 to have less trees, and shrunk most of the trees there were. Developed Area3 into something more than a giant mass of concrete, now has roads, buildings, an annoying amount of pathing tool work was done, enclosures were put in, some mountains and a toxic river, and 2 bridges to Areas 4_1 and 4_2. Still a lot more to be done, particularly in Area 3, but getting better all the time.

Have also been doing some work on making the Boss areas reset better than they were, particularly in regards to when you are still in a boss area when the boss respawns, or when you town portal away or are defeated. This is nearly flawless, just need to work on it a little more to make the resets more airtight, so a player can't accidentally walk into the middle of one. One might think this would be a super quick procedure, but due to how some abilities work + the adds, something a little more complex is necessary.

Made 30-40 other small changes not worth mentioning specifically, but overall things are looking pretty good in terms of having an Alpha before 09/22/2012 is over. Only real hurdle remaining are the dialogs, who knew menu building could be so monotonous and lame. Oh wait, everyone knows that...

Update(09/20/2012):

Been doing a LOT of dialog work lately. Scrapped almost all of my old dialogs now, probably going to replace the character chooser one before long. Just been an ugly mess of logic. To make a few nights' worth of modding short, I'll just go through what I did in steps:

1. I adapted a different style of dialog making from one of the newer tutorials, altered it to be of a form I could use for my own purposes.
2. I created a new stats dialog, much more compact than the last one, yet it tells you more than it did as well.
3. Cursed at my dialog stats not lining up very well at all, I wanted stats to show up as base + items, so you know what you got at all times. Gave up on this for the time being.
4. Cursed at my old dialogs for messing my new one up, making me unable to test it very well, decided I was through with the way the old ones were.
5. Cursed some more at how/when old dialogs were getting created, decided screw everything about them.
6. Created a new Banking Dialog, slightly larger than the last, but this one allows for loading for up to 3 heroes, and allows overwriting them to make new ones from the game.
7. Wanted to test my stats dialog more, so made a new main menu, starting off as a tiny 25x25 icon, expands into a small menu, small menu downsizes back to 25x25 when you want it to, that kind of nifty stuff.
8. Figured out there was this font called 'MonoSpaceTemplate', used this to make my stats dialog look more the way I wanted.
9. Redid everything about my dialog listeners, oh what a joy that was....
10. Decided it was REALLY stupid that accidentally clicking new in the banking dialog could wipe out a character, so made yet another dialog so users could say yes/no to this prospect.
11. Redid half of my dialog listeners yet again.
12. Redid the logic on when all my dialogs loaded/got populated, this was bugging depending on if you loaded/created new char. At this time I also put in a tiny bit of starting gear for new heroes in preparation for alpha.
13. Decided I didn't give a crap about how awful my yes/no menu looked for the time being, deciding to instead get my pathetic 4 hours of sleep.

Hrrrmm, not sure what part of that list was supposed to be short, but believe me when I say it is nothing compared to the fun I been having the last few nights trying to get my menu system functioning in a way that makes any sort of sense. I feel that by creating a much stronger base menu system, making future submenus off of it will be that much easier. However, I reserve the right to be completely pissed off at future submenus and rant and rave in my future log postings. That is all for now, hopefully my next log post will contain something about releasing an Alpha of this thing, finally.

Update(09/26/2012):

Thought I better post here before I forget again and have even more stuff to mention in one update. So did some Alpha testing over the weekend, got quite a lot done before/during/after that as well. To attempt to keep it simple, I'll just post a list of what got done:

1. Fixed a gamebreaking bug where items would mysteriously dissapear.
2. Fixed another gamebreaking bug where people would desync if there was ever more than 2 players in the map actually playing/killing monsters.
3. Realigned some dialogs, made it a little clearer how to get started.
4. Put a ton of work into ability buying Dialogs, they are getting better all the time, are completely functional, but still a lot to be done if they are going to look how I want them.
5. Enlarged hero model size, apparently they were too small to easily see on screens not as ridiculously large as mine, lol.
6. Added nearly 10 mini-bosses to the first 2 areas.
7. Balanced weapon damages out some in areas where it was most definitely needed.
8. Re-worked wolves to be more dangerous and less buggy.
9. Did a major overhaul of the background behind dialogs so they are easier for me to edit, and should run smoother as well.
10. Added the feature of overwriting existing characters to the bank menu, also added a 3rd hero slot.
11. Added abilities to bankable/loadable parts of the RPG, which was always intended.
12. Fixed some minor pathing issues in boss area 1.
13. Not really progress, but got a lot of positive feedback about this project from almost all alpha testers. Apparently I'm doing something right, lol.
14. Found many bugs to be addressed in future alphas, will list them in the log file when I actually 'resolve' them.
15. Figured out the mysteries of publishing maps to battlenet, along with getting the game variants working in a way that mostly looks good. Not really a big deal I guess, just never done it for the new bnet.

Update(10/01/2012):

Lack of Updates certainly doesn't equal lack of progress on this project, been doing a whole lot lately. I'll just be going with another long list I think, seems to make more sense anyways.

1. Added difficulty scaling based on number of players in game. This adjusts their health, damage, movement speed, and XP value. I'm sure I don't have an exact winning formula yet, but based on how easy the map seemed w/ just 3 people, the scaling was definitely necessary.
2. Reworked how int/wis is applied to spell damage/cost. It was only altering the level 1 cost/damage, which was not cool. It will now accurately change the spell based on its current level.
3. Reworked how abilities are purchased greatly. You will still have to reach a certain level to purchase an ability, but the level requirement will go up for each new rank. This will help players be able to in fact progress and not just crank everything into 1 or 2 abilities.
4. Revised how to update tooltips for abilities, they were only showing the level requirement, now they will show level requirement, current level of spell, current damage of spell, current cost of spell, as well as show a preview of new level of spell, new damage of spell, new cost of spell so you know what you are upgrading to.
5. Revised Shared XP to in fact be Shared XP, just not collective XP. This will always give XP in the player's favor, you won't lost XP over this. IE, a 5 XP monster is killed by 4 people. Now 5/4 is 1.25, but it will award all 4 players with 2 XP. It will always round up.
6. Implemented 8 new mini-bosses that will be seen in areas 1 and 2. Revised/optimized wolf AI while I was at it.
7. Heroes and items are now twice as large, apparently playing on a 32 " HDTV made me unaware of the fact the units were barely visible to most people, lol.
8. Started putting in a death message system. I felt dying wasn't bad enough, now all your allies will get to hear how you died each and every time, with bonus messages explaining how pathetic the death was!

Update(10/11/2012):

Been making some progress, not as much as I would like however. Can just blame the fact that I have 2 newborn twins at home for that. Rather difficult to eat sometimes, let alone mod with them constantly needing things. Anyways, did get some alpha testing done over the weekend to test the map some more, see what overall is working right/wrong with it. Spotted many issues, some of which have already been addresses, some still in the works. Will post another list of what I've done to make it easy.

1. Fixed the error where rams could chain ram you until death. A safety feature had been put in place, but this got screwed up when I made a ram miniboss. It is all resolved now.
2. Increased the size of potions further, elevated their height. Elevated height of shields as well. That hopefully resolves any remaining issues with that. One of the problems with a 260 % zoomed in map, units enjoy sinking into the ground more noticeably. Didn't help I am using odd doodads as item models to better fit item types.
3. Made it impossible to destroy items by accidentally attacking them/nuking them. This wasn't a huge issue, only happening when people directly attacked them, but was rather sad when your shiny weapon dropped only to have it get fried by imp nukes.
4. Started working on Bob's abilities, finally. He has 3 new abilities so far, most of them will be fairly simple to make, besides his ghost summoning abilities, those will be a whole new can of worms for me, as I will have to make additions to several of the monsters for the ghost's possession ability to work properly. To keep up with the Imp's casting abilities, Bob will also have 19 abilities in all. Bob will be more about dots, pets, and lifetaps than the Imp's strategy of simply blowing everything away.
5. Been planning on altering how spells are cast, especially for caster classes like Imp/Bob. Currently for targetted spells, you must select your spell and then click on the point/unit you want to cast on. I am going to add a way to click the spell only, having it autocast wherever your mouse cursor happens to be at the time. Apparently this is LoL style of casting or whatever, not that I've played the game. Think it will be a good addition to add to the fun factor of the game as it can get rather tedious having to coordinate between casting and clicking this way.
6. Updated Casper's ability tree to be much more descriptive/accurate than it previously was. Also spotted an update bug for ALL ability trees. This was a simple logic error, some rearranging of the code behind the dynamic tooltips cleared this up.

Update(10/23/2012):

Been awhile since I posted here, doesn't mean I've had no progress though. Admittedly though the progress is getting really difficult to make. Having 2 newborn twins at home is making it insanely difficult to get anything done. Anyways, a lot of what I've accomplished lately has been to get some actual videos of the project posted, got more of Bob's abilities finished. Bob is at a bit of a standstill lately however, I'm still arguing with myself over how to go about some of his empty spell slots. Sure I could simply make a few diff variations of what he already has, but trying to come up with something more original than that. Want to effectively give him several different ways of being played, using life altering, damage over time, or summoing spells. I have no doubt I'll come up with something, just taking my time on this rather than rushing into it.

Other than that, I did finish 27 images for area 3/4/5 level plate armor, changed how the camera works to enable sound to work better zoomed out than it was. Still shakey on how I'm going to have my camera end up. Have also enabled quick casting modes for Imp/Casper. It works fairly well, although the accuracy leaves much to be desired. I might have to change this yet again in the future to use mouse click events instead. I suspect I'll post again when I have all of Bob's spells outlined at least. I am aiming to get all of my classes with their abilities before I start work on Area 3, will really help out in terms of being able to start the neverending process of balancing between the classes.

Update(11/14/2012):

Seems I've been ignoring this page awhile, project I haven't been ignoring though. Did a lot with it lately, so much so that I'm not sure my list will be complete, but I'll post what I remember:

1. Bob finally has all of his abilities. Took an excruciatingly long time to get finished with them, especially the final few. They are about half implemented into the game so far, the abilities are done so to speak, but need to be put into triggers, be made purchaseable, etceteras. Bob ended up with 20 unique abilities total, and may even gain a couple more to better control his existing abilities.

2. City is finally getting some attention, I have put in most the terrain for it finally, is looking better all the time. Have most the backend for civilians to wander around in it, some hero names/units have been picked out already. Lot more to go, but it is finally getting a little shape to it.

3. My numbering system has been changed around to be more compact in banks, and the overall algorithms are now optimized. Decided to switch from Vigicimal to TreOctagicimal (base 20 to base 83). Although in hindsight, perhaps I should have changed to 69, would have been a much more excellent number base, the Bill and Ted base. Anyways, moving on before I say something else nerd-like.

4. New items planned out , icons for them are nearly done, will be great news for caster types, they are elemental staffs with spells attached to them.

5. Acquired a few testers to find every little bug they can, should greatly help the overall polish of the map.

6. Map is now public, can be played by anyone on the US server. Name is a little weird however, so only people looking for the map will actually be playing it, that name being: 11032012833PMHoroRPG . The map is still alpha, is full of bugs galore, has much to be added before I call it Beta, but you are welcome to mess around in it, is a small RPG experience currently, can burn about 5-6 hours using the Imp or Casper class right now before you've beaten the current final boss (Boss 2, White Mage). 2 areas completed, 6 more planned.

7. Also have it posted on a new site of sorts, not a very amazing one, but free forums nonetheless. I'll make it look better when I have actually released, address is: http://horologiumrpg.forumotion.com/t4-the-upload-that-won-t-happen

8. Greatly altered how Water in area 2 will work. Instead of having blocking edges and such, you can enter from any angle, but will get a slight debuff while in the water (which won't happen after doing a quest planned for later in the game). So is fine to be in water or on land, but in your best interest to not be in water.

Update(12/10/2012):

Been getting pretty good at ignoring this page apparently, doesn't mean the map has been stagnating though. Will make a list of what I remember doing lately, probably end up with the abridged version of what's been happening though.

1. Further refined Bob's abilities, added 3 extra pet commands that all pets will have. Manual Control, allowing you to have complete control of your pet. AutoPilot, makes pet always guard you, will use any special abilities on its own when in combat. Release Control, kills pet/releases possessed victim.

2. Nerfed Bob a bit, his dot spells will fade if Bob dies. Additionally, he will lose all his pets upon death now as well. It had to be done, it was stupid to be guaranteed a kill if you cast a few dots on it. As long as you don't die w/ Bob, he is the same though.

3. Added in Skill tree for Bob, much easier said than done.

4. Revised the dialog system a lot, should now only require about 20-30 % of the variables it did.

5. Added in Energy/Health/Exp bars for self and in group format. Can now easily see how you are doing in these areas for yourself, as well as seeing how your allies are doing. The energy/health bars are a bit inspired by SAO, I especially liked how well that style compacted for the group bar, so don't be shocked if you think it looks very similar to what was seen in that anime.

6. Greatly refined Energy/Health bars as well, health will show as green 60-100%, Yellow 30-60%, Red 0-30%. Probably replaced my energy/health bars about 100 times before I got the look I wanted.

7. Started making Skill Trees not so damn ugly, added in more solid backgrounds, added in connectors for the ability buttons, that sort of thing. The images/connectors don't mesh too well at the moment, but it is a good start. Can focus more on making them pretty when I'm closer to releasing.

8. Added in a buff area along with the energy/health/exp bars. Shows relevant beneficial/negative buffs, along with their names/effects and timers, and allows you to remove positive buffs if you wish to. Rather mmorpg like to be honest, guess I was just getting grumpy without being able to view buffs as I was used to. Is a little ugly at the moment, but as said in 7, can focus more on making them pretty when I'm closer to releasing.

9. Replaced a great many timers w/ recurring threads instead, using threads and waits the map now does its initial functions and loads heroes much faster than it used to.

10. Weakened rams to be only about half as effective as they were, while I still think they are easy to figure out, several testers disagree. Weakened White Mage's Treant spawns considerably to make the Boss 2 Event more beatable by people other than me, lol.

11. Made all the trash mobs fully possessable by Bob's Ghost Possession ability, this included adding the 3 primary pet commands that all Bob's pets get, making all their abilities useable either on autopilot or manually controlled, etceteras. Blue/Red slime duplication will NOT work on possessed pets, as it would be ridiculously overpowering, as there isn't really a limit on how much they can replicate themselves (they get too fast to avoid after so much replication anyways).

Update(07/09/2013):

Been doing an exceptional job of ignoring this page lately, but forcing myself to update it here before the amount of things to add gets just plain way too large.

1. The Knight class has been added to the game fully, instead of the melee only no ability knight that was already there. Have decreased the damage on ALL melee weapons due to the fact the Knight was making them just plain too powerful. I have separated the knight's abilities into 3 different sections:

Combat abilities, that cost nothing but have a recast time to them, sometimes taking quite awhile.
Spell abilities, some basic spells the Knight can use, useful, but will never be as powerful as a pure casters.
Passive abilities, helps Knight at all times, can be a riposte chance, dodge chance, triple riposte chance, damage mitigation, leech, etceteras.

2. Have redone a lot of the Dialogs as quite frankly they were really freaking bad. Embarrassing to look at when testing in fact. Added more description to the character selecter as well.

3. It is now possible to change heroes or pick new ones in the same game, it was an entirely stupid thing not to have implemented, so it is now possible to do it.

4. Area 3 is getting very close to being released, 7 new monsters have been created, some types not seen before, other types are back with a vengeance. Also 5 minibosses will be roaming around Area 3. Will be republishing map when I have a good main boss setup for Area 3.

5. About 50-60 new items have probably been added to the game, with 20-30 more on the way, probably after Area 3 is fully finished.

6. Standardized all weapon, damage and item names. It really won't make much impact while playing other than reducing chance of errors, reducing sanity loss of myself, and possibly speeding up how fast content is added slightly.