Long time no post...

Well, my staff have officially disappeared on me! The game is officially 100% programmed and my icon artists are nowhere to be found. Oh well, I'll have to find more or I'll have to scrap this project. I'll see what happens in the next month.

New Interface

Well, since I was bored today and I can't figure out what else to add to the game, I decided to make a new interface. Here it is:



Hope everyone likes it.

Ki Struggles and More!!

Well, Ki Struggles have been fully implemented into the game along with the AI side of the struggle. As far as my testing goes against an NPC, the Ki Struggle System appears to be flawless thus far. But, who knows what will come up once the game gets into Alpha and Beta testing. More on that later.

I have also introduced into the game a complete hunger and thirst system. They do affect you when it comes to fighting, so you need to stay on top of these. The current strength and dexterity modifiers are as follows:

40% and below - 0.3
10% and below - 0.6
0% - 0.9

With those modifiers, if you had 200 strength and dexterity and your thirst and hunger were at 40% or lower, your fighting strength and dexterity would actually be at 140. If your thirst and hunger were at 10% or lower, then your fighting strength and dexterity would be at 80. Thirst and Hunger also affect your Fatigue stat, so if you become overly fatigued your toon will begin to breathe heavily and you will not be able to move until you rest.

So, as you can see, Hunger and Thirst play a significant part in your fighting abilities. There will be many different types of food and drink such as: pies, berries, apples, oranges, rice, ramen, steak, chicken, pork, beer, sake, water, juice, electrolyte enhanced water, and more. There will also be a few different ways to obtain food such as: gathering, hunting, or buying it from a store. As of right now Sensu Beans are the cure-all meaning that they will restore all of your power, ki, thirst, hunger, and fatigue. This being the case with sensu beans, they are extremely hard to come across. The current ways to gather Sensu Beans are: Go to Korin's Tower. Korin will only have 1 or 2 every few hours. Bosses and some other Elite NPC's drop them on occasion.

NPC AI

I have completed the NPC "SMART" AI. NPC's can now attack, shoot ki blasts, heal, and even blind you and run away! Since this is now completed, I will now fix the bugs with the Ki Struggles.

Another thing that I have been told I should add to the game is Hunger and Thirst. So, once I get all of the bugs worked out with the Ki Struggles this will be next on my list of things to do.

Attack Delay Fix And More

Today, I fixed the attack delay to make it a lot smoother, and I also fixed the ki attack damage calculator. Ki attacks now do significantly more damage and the damage is calculated by your max ki, your level, and the actual attack you used. All of the ki attacks have been balanced accordingly.

While testing this I noticed a few bugs in the actual battle system so those were fixed. They were mostly bugs while fighting with your Split Form.

As for the NPC "Smart" AI, I would say it is now about 75% done, but what I have programmed already is not totally bug free, so that number might actually be somewhere around 60%. I have not had that much time lately to program the game, but time should start freeing up for me soon.

The final update is the racial modifiers during level ups. They have been fully implemented and now each race levels completely different which in turn makes each race play completely different.

Game Fixes

Between late last night and today, I made a few changes to the game. Most of the changes were to the Character Creation screen. I also changed the starting values of each race. Each race is no longer the same to start out with and each race has it's own strengths and weaknesses.

Androids - strength and dexterity are higher than other races. Slow powerlevel gain.
Changelings - powerlevel and speed are higher than other races. Slow strength gain.
Humans - strength and speed are higher than other races. Slow dexterity gain.
Namekians - ki and dexterity are higher than other races. Slow powerlevel gain.
Saiyans - powerlevel and strength are higher than other races. Slow ki gain.

I'm also going to be adding racial modifiers to the game. These racial modifiers will effect the way that you gain stats during leveling.

I have almost completed the "smarter" AI. Right now, the AI will choose between continuing to fight, using Solar Flare (or equivalent blinding attack), or healing with an apple or other food once it's powerlevel is below 10% of it's max powerlevel. I'm in the middle of adding the KI attacks to the AI now which should not take long. Maybe a couple of days at most between programming and testing.

Humans, Saiyans, and Android Base

Well a big thank you to Javier getting the base template done. I have posted some different clothing and hairstyles on the base that will be available to players in the game. I hope everyone likes them.

Note: I did the Super Saiyan 2 model with a green background so that you could see the hair better.



EDIT - Some more outfit and hairstyle combinations.


Credits:
Javier - Iconner
Joe - Hairstyles and Clothing

New NPC Fighting!

The critical hits and blocking have been fully implemented into the game. Now, my main focus is to bring the NPC fighting to life. NPC's will have a vast array of moves and they will use the the correct one for the situation.

For example, if you're fighting an NPC and they start losing the fight badly (under 100pl remaining) they might use Solar Flare on you and run while you're blinded! Or, if they see you coming from far away, they may start the fight off with a Kamehameha or a similar ki blast. In an up close and personal fight, they will of course use hand to hand combat. If you start your Kamehameha they may even start one as well to start a Ki Struggle.

This is going to be pretty difficult so I probably won't be posting again about this for a while. The game is still looking good for a mid August release. I think that the Beta will be pushed back to the end of July or early August though. Hopefully over the next week or so I'll start getting these icons in and start showing the world what's coming. I promise that this game will be a lot of fun and you will never have to play any of those retarded Zeta rips again.

EDIT
I found and fixed a bug with the dragonball's where you could pick up the same dragonball a few times before it stopped you.

Battle System Changes

I changed the battle system around a little bit to make it more user controlled. Now, instead of you randomly blocking an attack, you can block whenever you want by holding down the spacebar. While blocking attacks, the damage against you is dropped dramatically. (ex. damage without blocking is 4009, damage while blocking is 1361... these are not actual numbers, just an example.)

I also added a critical damage system to the game. With each level your Crit% goes up a bit which means that you have a greater chance of performing a critical hit on your opponent. I am also going to add a skill tree with one of the skills that you can add points to a critical hit skill with 5 levels. The highest level adding 15% to your current critical hit percentage.

Character Creation Screen

I got around to adding the character creation screen finally! I'll upload a picture once I work out all of the bugs. On the screen there are some labels that auto-populate with your information and a few buttons for race, faction, hairstyle, and enter world. There is also an input to enter the name you wish to use. I like the way it looks and the appearance will not change from now until release, but as I said before, some of the coding will change to make it bug free!

EDIT - Bug Free!!! Here's the screenshot...

Small Stuff

I'm just fixing up the code and waiting for the icons to be finished so we can prepare to start beta! I fixed the code for attacks, meditation, resting, some gm verbs, split forms, player verbs, as well as some other code I found to be lacking.

More to come...

Dragon Radar Complete

Today, I finished the Dragon Radar!! Here's a screenshot of what it looks like...



Hope it meets your expectations! Comments are welcomed, I will fix things to make it more appealing to the players.

Screenshot about 8 hours late!

Sorry about that, I ended up watching Dexter all night with my wife. Here's the screenshot of the Level Up stuff, and I guess a preview of what the GUI is going to look like.



note: These are not the final icons the game will be using.

EDIT - here's a screen shot with the HUD enabled.

Quests and some new stuff

Well, I finally picked a way to do quests out of the three I was looking at and went with it. I have programmed all of the tutorial quests for Z Force, Red Ribbon Army, and Namekian Warriors. I still have to come up with idea's for the Ginyu Force quests before I make quests for them. Right now it looks like the Ginyu Force quests are going to be trying to get onto Ginyu's team and destroying some villages on Namek.

Along with the quests, I have added some images and more sounds to the game, mainly for leveling up. I'll put a screen shot up of what I'm talking about in an hour or so.

Capsule Items!!!

I have no idea why I never thought of this before, but I just started adding capsule items to the game. Capsule Items are dropped after defeating enemies. Right now there are 3 levels to the items found:
Green - Fighter Level Items - Normal drop rate (1/2)
Blue - Warrior Level Items - Rare drop rate (1/500)
Purple - Elite Warrior Level Items - Extremely Rare drop rate (1/1000)

I have not decided exactly what items each level consists of yet, but that's what planning is for. Right now it looks like every level will consist of Zenni and one or two drops. Green will most likely be weak armors, or stuff that you can sell to get more Zenni. Blue will consist of stronger armors, more expensive items, Senzu Beans, etc. Purple will consist of Elite armors, very rare items (level capsules, stat capsules, etc.), and very expensive stuff that you can sell to stores for a major profit. Depending on if I add Housing to the game, some of these capsules may even drop House Deeds or Furniture, so that you can build a nice house.

Almost done...

Well, after just under 2 months, the game is near completion! Wait... what?! Yeah, that's right the game is near completion. I just need to add a few more touches to the game such as icons, and maps, and a quest system... Luckily for me, my son was born at the beginning of the month so I was able to take some leave from work and dedicate the time to my family... and this game. Right now, the game has a tentative release date for August 15th with Beta starting in the beginning of July. Well, here's the updates for today...

I finally completed the planning of the Namekian Warriors beginner quests, so all that I need to do is the Ginyu Force quests - then I can finally start programming the quests and adding the rest of the quests to the game!

I fixed the Fatigue proc to make it smoother, and I also fixed some of the coding in the Training procs and all of the Transformation procs. These systems are now 100% complete (or very close to it)!

I added a lot more sound effects for transformations, some ki blast sounds, and explosions. It's absolutely amazing what sound effects do for a game. I mean, the icons and turfs I'm using now look crappy and the game is still fun because of the sound effects. I can't wait until the icons, turfs, and questing system are completed because I honestly believe this is going to be a kick-ass game. On to other updates... I balanced the races out a little more and the transformation stats. It's kind of hard to balance stuff with Super Saiyan 4, so I didn't. Instead, I made it so that all of the other races get a massive head start on the Saiyans to equal everything out in the end. Yes, Saiyans are weak in the beginning and need to actually train hard, get over it. Now for the game systems information...

The following systems are 100% complete (or very close pending beta results once the icons get here):

Battle - attacking, death handler, ki death handler

Ki - ki balls, beams, ki struggles

Transformations

Split Forms

NPC - movements, attacking, etc.

Dragonballs

Help Messages - little messages that pop-up during ki struggles, training, beginning of game, etc.

Training

Stuff that I still need to fix or add:

Dragonball Radar - just kind of buggy and I want to add directional arrows to it.

Icon States - just need to add them to the current procs once they're completed.

Maps - I have a basic layout of how I want the maps made, I just need the turfs so I can get started.

Quests - This is still a work in progress as I haven't decided how I want to make the quest engine yet.

Weather / Day & Night - I still haven't decided on this one yet. I think if anything this may be in a version 1.x release, maybe even version 2.

Housing - Again, I haven't decided on this one. I may start a poll for this during beta... we'll see.

Stores - I'm making stores show their items in an interface window. I like it.

I'm going to go ahead and bump that programming up to a whopping 85% completed! If I had to put a version number on what we had right now, I would only give it a 0.4 because of the lack of icons and turfs to make maps. Once I get those I can move the game up to a 0.8 which is Beta status.

Sounds and more...

Well, this mess of code is slowly turning into a game. I started adding the sound effects for pretty much every action in the game, so it looks like I'm going to have to spend a little money on a good server to host it. I am adding the sounds from the American versions of Dragonball Z and GT. This is merely because of personal preference, not because they are actually better.

Current sounds - all attacks (hits, misses, power hits, etc... includes all ki attacks, zanzoken, and instant transmission), take-off, landing, power-ups/transformations, Shenron, and many more... I'm also looking for good music for a sort of ambiance during gameplay.

I fixed up the rest of the code that needed to be fixed, so the programming that is complete is 100% complete. I also added the transformation code and a nice little earthquake effect for enraging for the first time and form 2+ transformations.

more to come...

Dragon Radar and some more fixes

I finally got around to adding the Dragonball Radar to the game. It's still kind of buggy, but it is definitely going to be in the final product. I also straightened out a lot of code that was poorly written and moved a lot of variables from tmp to var and vice versa. Besides the icons and fixing the dragon radar, I will be working solely on the quests for the Namek based factions (Namekian Warriors and Ginyu Force). I finally came up with a few ideas for those factions and I think they will be a lot of fun to play! I have decided that I will be using the skin that I have now for the final release of the game, but I will be starting on version 2.0 as soon as this releases and that will be full screen!

More to come...

Training Fixes

I have fixed the key press code for the training. The player can no longer get multiple correct key presses in one turn. I also made it a little harder because now the arrows do not refresh on each turn. So, if the same arrow comes up twice you will not know unless you're counting the seconds. I made it a nice 1.5 seconds in between each arrow change. I also added a combo system to the training. Say you nail 20 arrow presses in a row, you now get +10xp and if you nail 50 or more key presses in a row, you now get +20xp.

The game is coming along nicely now, just need the icons so I can start mapping out the planets and tutorial area's. I will start programming the tutorial area's sometime next week. After that is completed, the game will be ready for beta stages, but that is being held up by the lack of icons.

More to come...

*Edit*

I also made the speed gain rather difficult because in a fight between 2 people that have even level, strength, defense, and ki, the person that has the fastest speed wins. So, because speed will be a battle decider, it is VERY hard to gain. (Level 1 requires 1000xp, Level 2 requires 2400xp, etc.)

More fixes...

I have fixed the AI attack code and it now works flawlessly. I will continue to pressure test to make sure that there are no errors with the code. This code is used for the split forms as well as Storyline NPC's (NPC's that you can attack).

Something I thought of is adding building and other turf explosions. I haven't decided just how I am going to do that yet, but right now it looks like I'm going to make it so that buildings have hit points and they show a destroyed version that matches how many hit points they have left. Will basically work like the PL/KI gauge except that it's the building's icon.

AI and Ki Blasts

Well, all of the AI has been programmed and I fixed the ki blasts not deleting on contact with the void. I also fixed up the Split Form code and made split form's their own mob type. This allows me to do a lot more with the split forms as opposed to them just being a copy of the usr's mob. Split forms can now help you in battle (they have your level, about 2/3 of your pl, strength, defense, and speed), they can attack you back so that you can learn better ways to approach combat situations, or they can stand there and take your damage so you can kill them and get experience! Keep in mind this is a Human, Namekian, and Bio-Android ability only! (Tien, Piccolo, and Cell use it in the show) I have finished most of the skills/levels learned list for the game and posted them below:

Skill - Level Learned

All Races

Fly - 2

Ki Blast - 4

Kamehameha - 8

Power Up/Power Down - 16

Zanzoken - 22

Rage - 30 (Absorb for Androids and Fuse for Namekians)

Humans

Solar Flare - 6

Destructo Disc - 10

Split Form - 18

Tri-Beam Cannon - 24

Saiyan

Masenko - 10

Final Flash - 20

Big Bang Attack - 36

10x Kamehameha - 60

Namekian

Regeneration - 6

Eye Lasers - 10

Special Beam Cannon - 14

Split Form - 18

Android

Absorb Energy - 6

Rocket Punch - 10

Hell's Flash - 18 (metal androids)

Split Form - 18 (bio androids)

Deadly Bomb - 60

Changeling

Mouth Blast - 6

Eye Lasers - 10

Death Ball - 18

Death Beam - 24

Imprisonment Ball - 60

More to come...

Some adds and fixes...

Adds

CheckName() proc to make sure that the name you choose must be over 4 characters and you can't choose a name used by any of the NPC's.

Pixel movement code, works perfectly so far, if anything comes up I'll switch back to regular movement.

Implemented flying skill.

Name change verb for GM's.

Split form now attacks back.

ANPC movement and attack procs. (Attackable NPC's)

Fixes

Made a lot of the code look cleaner.

Added some better checks for the death, attack, and ki damage procs.

Fixed the hud not updating properly on ki damage proc.

Split form looks better now.

Currently In Progress

Programming quests.

Fixing ki blasts not disappearing on contact with void.

NPC's

Icons

Storyline for Namek based factions.

Blog Started and Game Info

I started a blog for the game today in order to show current progress of the game. Right now the tentative release date for the game is TBA, but look for the game by Summer '10. We are working hard to make sure that we meet this summer deadline. Any information that is released regarding the game is subject to change as we are still in development.

Game Information (subject to change) -

Game Engine

BYOND. I am in the middle of creating a Game Engine using the C# and XNA platform as well. The game will probably start it's transition to 3D about a year after the release on BYOND.

Races: Humans, Saiyans, Androids, Namekians, Changelings

5 playable races all with their own unique skills, as well as some skills that can be learned by all races. The races are all being programmed so that there is no "best" race to play, but each race does have it's own unique quests and unique gameplay, so you may want to play multiple characters.

Transformations

Each race has it's own unique transformations, some more than others. Each transformation provides a great amount of power, at some cost to your toon. Transformation's are a huge part of the game, and the questing system is designed to help you achieve your transformation's as fast as possible.

Questing

Most games on BYOND lack a good questing system. All of the quest's in this game will be the result of months of planning. All of the quests are designed to test you in one way or another, and are always fun.

Story

Dragonball Forever is going to follow the story of Dragonball Z all the way through to Dragonball GT and beyond. Depending on what faction you choose to play with in the beginning of the game will decide on what part of the story you will interact with. The faction you role with may interact greatly with one part of the main story, but during the next part just have their own side-story.

Training

The same old training a brand new way. In DBZ and DBGT, we see our heroes and villains training with gravity, weights, punching bags, sparring, and in the hyperbolic time chamber. All of these training methods will be implemented into the game, but in an interactive and fun way. You will not be just standing there holding the key for your "Train" macro for a while, then resting, then repeat. All of the training will require you to use some kind of brain function in order to complete it and advance your power.

More information coming soon....