Struggling to create the dialogues and storylines for the small part of the cristal wasteland that I’m currently implementing in the game, I was reminded of these epic scenes of writing from an underapreciated gem of a film. The main character of the movie ends up solving his own “blank page syndrome” by a process of murdering, getting shitfaced drunk, blacking out and waking up to a new brilliant piece written on his computer.
The Creator (Albert Dupontel, 1999)
I’m not considering murder yet. But between the times when I don’t know what story to tell, and those when I don’t know how to tell it, I haven’t made nearly as much progress as I would’ve liked.
At the moment, we have 9 quests spanned over 4 locations. Two of these locations are reaching completion, while the other two are still far behind. And if I’m being honest, the locations that are reaching completion are pretty small in size.
I already have 4 other locations planned, 2 of which are central to the main storyline, and one is a Steel Ranger bunker (we cannot NOT have us some Steel Rangers). That’s a lot more scripts and dialogues to write, and it doesn’t make me very optimistic about how much more time I’ll need to at least make a game that can be played from beginning to end.
It’s a bit unnerving : everything was moving so fast when I was just working on technical stuff ! Just to get back some of that feeling of getting stuff done, I implemented a feature that allows animations to show projectiles being thrown in a customizable curved trajectory, rather than straight at the target. Took me under 30 minutes. Then I went back to writing dialogue lines for an important NPC, and I barely managed to complete one minor segment of the dialogue in two freaking hours.
Mandatory screencast of the curved throw that took 30 minutes to make
But, hey. I’m still going. And I kinda know where I’m going. I just have to keep on filling those pesky blanks.
It’s been almost a year since the last update, so I figured it would be appropriate to report on the progresses that have been made in the past year.
First of all, we’ve received the help of Salv-a-Door and LazyTortoise, which helped the project respectively with the writing and development efforts. It’s always a good thing to get support from our community, and their contribution will be a great help in bringing this project to completion.
Up until last year, one of the main unknown with this project was that I wasn’t sure of the story we were going to tell. We have a much more precise idea now, and the first chapter of the main storyline is almost fully implemented. It’s a small chapter, mind you, but it’s already an important step that we’ve taken.
We’ve established that the story happens within the Crystal Empire, a region that has rarely been explored in the many Fallout Equestria fanfictions that have been published on fimfiction. This allows us to write our own story without colliding with the original Fallout Equestria story or the main fanfictions.
This does mean that one of the most iconic places will probably be the ruins of the capital city of the empire, destroyed by a balefire megaspell. Since then, only ghouls and mutants live there, and people only think of the place as a mausoleum to Princess Cadence, who is believed to lay dead and buried under the rubble of her castle.
My work has been focused on other places for now, and while I’ve made great progresses in designing the towns and their inhabitants, the most time consuming tasks consist in scripting the NPCs, with their dialogs and quests. The smallest side quest can take up to three days to implement, full-time !
It wouldn’t be so upsetting, if I could spend most of my time on this project… but I do have to care for the career as well ! And while, little by little, piece by piece, this world is starting to come together… the amount of work that remains to be done is considerable.
Mood
In the past year, I’ve also had the opportunity to discover quite a few content creators that were doing Fallout Equestria related content.
Among them, I found out about SkyBolt. He does a lot of things, one of which is being a talented singer with an amazing deep voice and a taste for ponies. He ponified quite a few songs already, some of which with a Fallout Equestrian theme. They were a perfect match for setting up the mood I was looking for the menu and worldmap ambiances. With his permission, some of his songs will appear in the game. Here’s a taste of what he does:
Once his soothing voice is done taking your ear for a ride onto those gentle hills of harmony, don’t forget to smash that click button and subscribe to the likes.
It’s been a while since the last update, so here’s a quick glimpse at what I’m currently doing :
Drawing clothes is a tedious task : each outfit needs around 160 frames. Most look pretty similar, but it’s still a lot of work… and I’m not exactly an expert at drawing sprite (but I’m learning) !
This one is the steel ranger scribe uniform, inspired by a concept art for Quillwright, a character from the « Fallout: Equestria – Of Shadows » fanfic :
I made a lucky find, some time ago: it turns out that Fallout Tactics used the same ratio as us on their isometric tiles. Tactics was more ambitious than I was in their tile system, so it still took me some time to import those resources, plus some updates to the roof system… but I think the result isn’t too bad !
New tilesets for stable, raiders camps, tents, and buildings (concrete, wooden and bricks)
With these, we can now start working on the level design for the first playable areas : I’m currently working on the two locations near the beginning of the game, and I direly needed these tilesets to give a face to the towns.
On another note, I also realized I completely messed up when building the game on Windows. Here’s the updated client, which, on top of some bug fixes and the new tilesets, is also about 20% lighter !
At long last ! The technical demo is there ! It features a tutorial level, a couple of random encounters, and a small town to explore. Including 5 quests to find and complete, all designed to highlight the possibilities of the engine !
To play the game, you must first unzip FoE-demo.zip, then launch falloutequestria.exe.
N.B: It’s likely that the music won’t play, unless you have the proper codecs installed (which is unlikely nowadays, since you probably use VLC like any other sane person would). You may install the codecs by running K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1670_Basic.exe.
A bit more about this milestone
Wow, has it been a while since this all started ! The thing with projects like these is that they are never really completed. There are a million thingies I could still try to improve… which is why it is important to set deadlines, and stick to it : because when we don’t, there are always good reasons to postpone. As such, the deadline is both a curse and a blessing: pressuring when time is getting short, but liberating as it forces us to pick the course of action that allows us to deliver the best game at a given time.
So I had to set things in movement for today. I’ve spent the last few days arranging playtests with friends, made the last tweaks and fixed the many remaining issues that I couldn’t notice on my own. There’s a lot more I would’ve wanted to do, but I’m now confident that this project is ready to show the world what it’s got.
All that’s left is to publish that post and wait for your returns : positive or not, feel free to comment ! Negative feedback is important, and it will be appreciated as well. Please report any bug or issue of any kind (if you have performance issue, try to give some details about your setup: OS, CPU, graphic card). I trust the comment section of this post will be enough to track your reports !
What next ?
Well, now, we have to start some serious work on building a world, writing the story, designing the locations… and implementing all that into the engine !
To that end, we will need artists to draw art, writers to world build, and scripters to implement the quests. I’ve opened a Discord room I *will* open a Discord to coordinate our actions. Feel free to join if you want to help. I haven’t had enough time to set it up properly before tonight (and I’m already late to the party !), so I’ll update you later on this once it’s done.
Notes about the demo
Just a small warning. There are a few things I noticed during playtests that I haven’t been able to fix yet:
There are missing translations. I’ve done what I could to patch up the holes, but I might’ve missed some.
Some coloring effects look weird on Windows. This only affect user interfaces.
Gamepads apparently don’t work on Windows either. At least none did during the tests, but I have yet to try with XBox controllers, which apparently might be the only one to work with libXInput, which is the backend for the gamepad library we use.
And that’s all folks ! Here we are, ready for a prolific new season ! Happy new year to everyone !
Hi ! I haven’t had a lot of time to work on the project lately, but I’ve still made some progresses, focusing on implementing a little sample town which would feature various mechanics that I figured would be commonly needed for towns and their quests: things like cut-scenes, go-fetch quests, character routines, shop and merchants, town guards… I wanted all those things to be as quick and straightforward to script whenever needed, while granting as much options as possible to the player. And I think it worked out pretty good. You’ll be able to see the result in the technical preview that will be released later this month, since it will feature both the cavern of trials (which serves as a tutorial) and the sample town !
New rendering engine
I’ve also chosen to completely rewrite the rendering engine. As I was implementing the sample town, I went into pretty crippling of performance issues. And the biggest weight was the rendering. So, among other optimizations, I started experimenting with alternative rendering solutions. And the results were pretty satisfying : not only is it faster, I now have access to shaders ! Put simply, it’s code that runs directly on the graphic card, allowing fancier visuals with less overhead.
In turn, this allowed me to implement the day and night cycle ! Giving a tint to everything would’ve been far too hard on the CPU… but with shaders, it runs on a GPU designed for that kind of thing. Levels can now chose between these options: 1) follow the day/night cycle, 2) define their own ambient color which can be updated by scripts, 3) display without any ambient color.
Documentation
I’ve also re-organized the Game Editor documentation, and added new sections to it. There’s still a lot missing, but if you’re interested, skimming through it will tell you a lot more about how things are going than anything I write here: check it out over there !
That’s all for now ! Next post will include the installer for the technical preview ! See you then !
Just because the game isn’t 3D anymore doesn’t mean we have to get rid of the Z axis altogether. At first, I wanted to do things simple, and didn’t plan on implementing floors. But the project matured, and implementing floors seemed like a good idea.
Well. I guess it’s still a bit rough over the edges.
No. I’m not dead yet. Things haven’t been moving as quickly as expected… but that is mostly because, as the game engine has been shaping up quite a bit, I’ve increased my expectations for the technical demo. And since I haven’t written in a while, I figured I might show a little bit of the work I’ve been doing to provide the best and most complete technical demo possible.
Tutorial
Back when the first Fallout games were released, games used to be sold with a small manual. Most of the time, you wouldn’t need those to learn how to play a game, but they were sometimes very helpful in easing the learning curve.
Well. I didn’t get the manual when I first got the game. The year was 1998, and didn’t have an Internet connection either. So I realize full well how non-intuitive the gameplay in the two first two Fallout games can be.
Which is why I’ve turned the technical demo in a tutorial. It’ll be similar to the chosen one trial in Fallout 2, though the level design will be more direct, and feature a few illustrated manual pages, designed to appear when the player might need those.
I figure this is already a huge improvement on the old Fallout game, making it less likely for a non-initiate to just give up the game merely for not understanding the controls… this is nice, but not enough.
Gamepad
I’ve never been a sucker for gamepads… but when considering old-school Fallout gameplay, I thought about all the shortcuts you’d have to remember, in order to play efficiently. Then, I wondered whether a gamepad could actually bring a better and easier experience. So I implemented gamepad support.
While controlling a cursor with a gamepad is never as fitting as a mouse, having the ability to control the camera through a gamepad is a huge improvement over the mouse.
Plus… as controlling the cursor was a bit harder, I thought about a feature to compensate: I would use two of the gamepad directional keys to loop through potential targets. When triggered: – The cursor moves directly over the target, and you just have to push the A button to click on it, – The targets are sorted from closest to furthest, – You can press the left/right directional keys again to navigate through the available targets.
That feature was so handy that I also implemented it for keyboards users, with the Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right shortcuts.
This seems to me like a major improvement on Fallout’s original gameplay, and having played through the tutorial quite a bit using the gamepad, I now believe using a gamepad will be the best way to experience the game.
Coincidentally, it appears modern gamepads almost feature the right amount of buttons to give the player quick access to all of the interface’s features. I’m only missing one for the “Pass turn” button, which is pretty damn useful during combat. I’m considering the Back button, but I’m concerned about the mental sanity of those who will accidentally pass their turns by double-clicking the B button.
Inventory UI
Well, my computer is getting a bit too hot, and the clock running a bit late, to start capturing a video of a pony throwing dynamite all over, so the second best thing I can do right now is to show you the new inventory interface:
Hi ! Here’s a small update on one of the latest breakthrough we’ve made. It’s a small but crucial thing, and having that part of the project rolling really makes my heart burst with glee.
Having a world full of diverse characters really makes a difference. And using 2D spritesheets makes this goal much more achievable: with a little bit of programming wizardry, the possibilities quickly become endless !
On the picture above, you can see part of the process: we start with a naked pony, a mane, and a set of clothes. We apply color filters on the body and mane, merge the layers together, and ta-da !
This system will greatly speed up the process of creating NPCs. Moreover, with permission from Akumath, I’ve been using some of his numerous MLP-themed spritesheets to further diversify our bestiary, as well as our ponies manestyles.
The sprite displayed above has been made by tinkering over the work of Akumath and ZEkA10000. Check out their Deviantart pages over there:
Hey ! I can hardly resist showing off some of the progresses I’ve made in the past month. The basics of the engines have been completely implemented, allowing me to start working on the fun stuff.
Having decided that the first step of the project is to release a short demo that will serve as a technical preview, I’ve been implementing bit by bit all the pieces required to achieve the objective : optimized rendering performances, making the user interface more usable, and of course, implementing the gameplay elements required to implement a dungeon-like experience.
Images speak louder than words, and I’ve made a couple of short videos showcasing some of the features I implemented lately.
Traps
What would a dungeon be without traps ? Traps are objects that are hidden to the player, until it gets triggered or detected. Trap detection is determined by a character’s Perception attribute.
The first trap I implemented is a landmine. Traps can also be attached to doors or storage objects, but the most simple traps are just laying on the ground, waiting to be triggered by an unwise passerby, or disarmed by a knowledgeable explosive expert.
As you can see on the video, detecting a trap stops your character (so you don’t accidentally walk on a trap that you detected). Once a trap has been detected, you can either walk around it, or try to disarm it using the Explosives skill. Of course, if it doesn’t work on the first try, you might not want to insist too much, as no one’s ever safe from a critical failure. Which is exactly what happened to me while I was recording the video…
Dynamite
Sometimes, the shortest route towards your goal is to blast a hole in a wall. And to achieve that, the player needs to be able to pick up explosives, set the timer on those, and drop them in front of a destructible object.
Of course, sometimes, it’s just funnier to drop the dynamite in another character’s pocket and see what happens.
Playing with explosives is dangerous though. Just like in the old Fallout games, you may fail to properly set up the countdown, resulting in your dynamite not exploding exactly when you expected it to. Or, on a critical failure, you may very well just trigger the device in your own hooves, and leave pieces of yourself all over the place.
Combat
Last but not least, good dungeons need critters and minions.
It’s a pretty complex thing to implement… but luckily, it’s one of the part that I was most able to salvage from the old Fallout Equestria project : field of views, diplomacy between factions, pathfinding, have been mostly copy-pasted with a few little tweaks.
As a result, it’s been pretty quick to scaffold the whole combat system. Now, I just have to write better AIs: if I’m not too sloppy on this, it will be possible to make those pretty smarts. They’ll be efficiently able to find cover and coordinate between each other to find the best way to end you !
Conclusion
Note that these are just previews of the last things I’ve implemented… truth is, in a single month of occasional work, I am already way beyond the previous attempt at making this FoE game. I’ve been having loads of fun tinkering this thing around, optimizing it, and getting that warm feeling one gets when a bunch of pieces you’ve carefully crafted start working together !
To finish with, the game engine is now ready to start working on the technical demo. I’ve already started working on it actually (we’re about 10% done) ! My plan however, is to provide two different builds: a production release, for those who just want to check out the kind of games we can make with this, and a development release, including the Game Editor and tutorials to learn how to create or mod games.
Indeed, the next step is to make a full game. It’ll take time, efforts… and if people want to join in, I need to welcome them with the proper material. To that end, I’ll be working both on the demo and tutorials, trying to release both at the same time.
Note: the pony sprite you see in those GIFs were made by ZEKa10000. I didn’t ask permission for using it (yet), so I hope it’ll be ok.
Fallout: Equestria RPG 