Hopefully by now you’re aware that I’m working tirelessly on the last build of RPG Tycoon and making the push for launch. This is probably going to be the penultimate development update before release, in the next one (in a week or two) I’ll be announcing an actual release date. Either way, know this. The game is very nearly done and V1.0 will be available VERY SOON.

What’s been going on and what’s left to do?

The Alpha 12 Build of RPG Tycoon put the game at more-or-less feature complete. Meaning that, all of the systems and gameplay mechanics I’ve wanted to add into the game over the past few months have finally been implemented and are in a condition I’m happy with for the launch build of the game. The way that I’ve structured RPG Tycoon – and partly why it’s so mod friendly – is that these systems load all of their content dynamically at launch so I’ve always prioritised my time working on tuning the systems themselves over creating content for them, with the plan to add more content as I reached the later stages of development because it’s so easy to do so.

However, one of the biggest flaws of the game has been it’s lack of support for translations. Most of the tooltips, prompts and various other UI text doesn’t follow the workflow of dynamically being loaded, the majority of it is hard coded as strings in the class files. So I spent about a week at the start of the month searching through every string in the code and extracting any text (about 1000 lines) into a new data file called Strings.xml. In the release version of RPG Tycoon all of the game text will now be translatable for any modders that wish to do purely by editing the text in all of the files in the Data folder. (I can’t confirm any Official Translation, but I’ll be willing to look into it after launch should demand be high enough)

 

I learned a valuable lesson that week. Every game I work on from now on will be using a method of loading ALL game text externally from day one. I never want to have to go through that again. 

Finishing that managed to tick off one of the launch requirements I’d set out, with the other being an improvement to the items system that extends it for players to be able to mod. However, I took a break on development throughout the week to finally get some content done. At this point in time the count of new Buildings and Decorations added into the game is about 15 items, I’ve also added a number of new quests and some new secret items too, with plenty more planned over the coming weeks.

I’m really enjoying being at a stage where I can just sit in Photoshop for a few hours and create things. It’s mainly decorations, so it’s making a huge difference to the types of Kingdoms you can create. I find I’m spending a lot of time in Sandbox mode, I hope this will encourage other players to do the same.

I’ve also reworked Kingdom generation to include some of the new features that have been added in the previous updates. So when starting a New Game it will now spawn more than just Trees and the types of landscape that’s generated will relate to the style of terrain that you choose. For instance, starting a Kingdom on Sand will now generate Rocks, Palm Trees and Cactuses, instead of Trees, Rocks and Water. You can also set the intensity of the landscape, or stop landscape being generated completely and start with a purely empty grid.

One issue with this however, was that when Trees were the only object being generated absolute randomness worked just fine aesthetically. However, once water and rocks were added total randomness caused very ugly patterns to occur when generating a landscape. It was chaos… (Above)

So I refined the algorithm to be more likely to spawn the same type of object and to clump similar objects closely together, instead of just placing anywhere on the map. Creating a much more natural, realistic look to the terrain generation. (Above) I really like this as the maps now appear to have lakes and forest areas that players can navigate designing their Kingdom around and offers some really interesting design options for players.

For me, the heart of games like RPG Tycoon is creativity. So it’s important to give the players as many tools to achieve that as possible and it’s great to be at a stage where I can start offering the player so many more options in designing their Kingdom. I think it’s really going to help improve replayablility and make for more unique experiences in Kingdom building.

Elsewhere in the world, Chris has finished the new Title Music for the game and it sounds fantastic, if you already love the music in the game, you’re going to love this one even more. It’s going to be used as the opening track for the game, currently we’re using Get the Lute which will be moved to Track 04 in the soundtrack, and will play exclusively on the title/main menu screen. It’s supposed to capture the feel of the game (starting from nothing and slowly expanding into a bustling metropolis) and it will debut alongside the release trailer, which is also complete and I’m very excited to show you!

That’s pretty much it for now, I’m going to spend this week improving the item system and carrying on with new content.

Still to do:

• Improve Items System
• Add More Quests
• More Buildings
• More Decorations
• More Adventurers
• More Heroes
• Cleanup UI
• Fix Bugs
• Final Optimisations

Everything is coming together ready for launch nicely and you’ll have more words from me on that in a couple of weeks.

All the best,

Matt