Acteaus Dev Diary

So it's the end of sprint 4. Which means development on Acteaus has been going on for over a month now. I would like to take this time to go over the current state of development, what has been accomplished, and what is needed to get the game to a playable state. When I originally scoped the effort level of making this game, I tried to keep myself fairly grounded. It was important to me to establish a minimum viable product . To this end, I have attempted in each release to complete features that build upon each other while allowing the overall game to be in a playable state at all times. That being said, there are obviously certain features that are key to actually releasing Acteaus in a state that players would actually find enjoyable. This is why from the very beginning, defining the minimum viable product was an important strategic task. The minimum viable product is as follows: As you can see, we are very close to reaching a playable state of the game. Multiplayer in

Almost the end of the sprint. I didn't have a ton of time for development this week but I did manage to complete everything that I had originally scoped. Acteaus Development Trello

Time flies! Already the end of sprint 3! A lot of changes made during this development cycle. Let's get into it. This time I focused mostly on player versus creature interactions. Once I was finished with the basic combat system I moved on to basic spells. I either plan on cycling back to merchant interactions next sprint or adding the rest of the items to the game. Additionally, I began working on some lighting. It isn't great right now and there are some meshes that aren't currently lit correctly, but it's a start. Changelog Creatures now respawn after a given amount of time after death. Three spells have been added to the game Fireball Transport Gas form Player health has been linked to the player statistics Enemies can now be killed and kill the player Fixed a bug where damage was being calculated at the beginning of the animation instead of at the end Fixed a bug where the player death animation was severely delayed Attacks no l

I've been on a roll this sprint! I've gotten almost everything that I wanted to get done with the melee combat completed and I have moved on (perhaps a bit prematurely) to some basic spells. Take a look! Acteaus Development Trello

Two updates in one night! I ended up ploughing through a lot of the melee combat work and moved on to respawning creatures. Worked well enough! I'm off to bed... Acteaus Development Trello

So I guess I have settled into a routine of releasing a little bit of an update about two times per sprint and for Sprint 3 this is no different. I have been working on a number of bugs in the rudimentary combat system. This isn't particularly special, but I have almost made all of the changes necessary before I move on to more advanced features. Before I move on from melee, I also want to add the extra layer of blocking attacks. After that, I plan on moving onto some basic spells/moves (transportation, projectile spell/run attack/ spin attack) (I actually just noticed the guy at the end isn't facing me while attacking so I'll have to go ahead and fix that!) Acteaus Development Trello

So as expected, my dog's illness set me back a lot this week (he's doing fine by the way, just needs to get a tooth pulled). That being said, I did end up accomplishing roughly the same amount that I accomplished the last sprint. So it seems that it might just be the case that I bit off more than I could chew. So for this upcoming sprint, I am going to keep things simple. I'll be scoping out about half as much work. My focus will be on the combat system as I've previously mentioned. I plan on getting a few existing bugs with it out of the way before moving on to more advanced features relating to it. I didn't finish all of the behaviors for the merchant buying/selling system, but I don't want to tack it on for this sprint as I think it is going to be a little complicated and I want to make sure I get through all tasks related to the combat system. So the remaining features relating to the merchant system will be put on hold till sprint 4. Additionally

I haven't had as much time to develop as I thought I would. I am planning on wrapping up merchant interactions tomorrow which will conclude the sprint. Overall I am pleased with the progress of development. I also made a UI tweak to the health, magic, and experience bar to make them look a little nicer. Additionally, I added a little custom cursor to give the game some more flare. Take a look! Acteaus Development Trello

So I have determined that I will probably only get about half of the tasks I scoped for this sprint completed this week. I am going to focus my attention on completing buying/selling merchant interactions as well as cleaning up the code base. This means I will be bumping combat back again to the next sprint. But this also means that next week I will make sure to focus on nothing but the combat system.

So one of my dogs has been sick all weekend and that has set me back considerably. My dogs, of course, come before development. Still looking to get as much as I can done though. I've already gotten a few things on the list complete. I worked on interiors today. I am working with a free asset that does not include an interior, so I had to resort to some tricks to make this work. Oh, I also noticed I didn't have a good place in the inventory to keep track of player gold. So I added one. I also wanted to open the floor to anyone who has any suggestions on things that could be added to development. I want this to be a game that will give people a sense of nostalgia so if there is something you'd like to see, let me know! Acteaus Development Trello

Not much to demo here that I haven't already shown. I worked mostly on the backend this week. I fell short of my goal by a small margin. I was hoping to complete the basic player combat system this week, but it looks like it is going to get bumped to next week. That being said, I got a lot of the heavy lifting done for the user interface in the last week or so and soon I will be able to move on to more interesting game mechanics. Here is a snapshot of the development cycle burndown chart . As you can see, I bit off a lot (maybe a little more than I could handle in just 7 days) but development looks pretty good. Only 1 card remaining out of 7 for the week. This a shot of what is on the table for development this week. (8/9 tp 8/16). I've actually bitten even more off this week, but I am really psyched to get a few of these features done, so I am going to challenge myself. Changelog Linked statistical information to character. Added a functional stats scre

Hello! Just a quick update on what I have been working on for the last few days. The end of this development cycle will be on the 9th and by that time I hope to have all PVE interactions and UI elements complete. here's a video of some of the UI work I've been doing And a random screenshot just for fun Acteaus Development Trello

Busy week at work! I have completed organizing my Trello page to be in line with my agile development goals. What this means is that I am going to attempt to be totally transparent with what is actually getting done on a weekly (mostly bi-weekly) basis. Every two weeks I am going to select a set of features that are going to be worked on. My goal is to have those features finished and tested by the end of the two-week mark. This progress can be tracked already by visiting the Trello page and looking through the cards from "Sprint Log" to "Done". Anything that is currently in the sprint will need to be completed by the end of the time period. I have cut this first sprint short since I was already working on most of these features before I had put a consistent system in place. As always, the Trello page can be located on the sidebar to the left of this post or at the end of this post So your information. Sprint 1 has been begun and will conclude on 08/09/201