Hello eveyone!
I’ve been a bit silent lately because I’ve had small health issues and life-related stuff to fullfill 🙂
This doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped the development of “The Gate”! It was just suspended for some weeks!
What’s new, man?
The game engine is now complete, I only have to change a couple of simple things but nothing serious: now 90% of the game is based on external content to the core of the game and this means that later I (or you) will be able to create new games using the same core.
As you may remember, I started developing the editor using AMOS but I realized that going forward in that way I would have spent too much time creating the user interface elements that would have slowed down the development too much, so I decided to abandon the editor created so far with AMOS.
Instead I started creating the editor using HollywoodMAL together with the RapaGUI plugin and in a very short time I was able to reach a good goal (even if still far from completion).
Currently the editor allows me to select existing maps and edit them with a comfortable user interface.
Obviously I will make the editor available also for Amiga systems, Hollywood will take care of converting the GUI (which on Linux is GTK) with MUI.
Take a look at this video! (click here, it’s safe and hosted on my Mastodon profile).
what you see is what I managed to do in a few hours of work, and I expect to complete the editor in a relatively short time.
On the right panel there are the maps, on the left one there is the map editor where you can edit doors, furnitures, animations, triggers, enemies and so on and you can interact with the map displayed in the big area with an usefull zoom controller and handy scrollbars.
Regarding the story, instead, I have everything on paper, but the complexity of the game required an additional effort on my part, to organize a visual map that would allow me not to lose sight of any detail. It’s way too easy to forget to insert a key or to add terminal script even if the editor will warn me about incoherent situations.
For this task I am using an incredibly convenient tool called “Articy Draft” that I discovered to have a free version available.
If some of you are planning to make a game with many quests and/or complex story I highly recommend this tool in its free version (link).
As always, if you need more details and a step by step dev log, please follow me on Mastodon (@allanon@mastodon.uno) or simply you can peek at my profile (without registration) at : https://mastodon.uno/@allanon
If you want to comment or leave a reply please do it! I’m happy to keep a contact with all of you!
I hope you all the best and thanks again for your support!
