Barony Gets An Update

Hiya, guys! So as the title says, Barony just got a big update, so I've decided to be generous and share it with you guys. Here it is:

http://www.baronygame.com/download.html

I don't think any of you have been very good raving fans about this game, so I'll give you an update of what's happened since I last hyped it to you:

Optimizations!
Completed ranged weapons!
Weapon and item depreciation!
Enhanced AI!
More levels!
Bleeding and first aid!
Rings of teleportation!
Amulets of strangulation!
Tricks!
Traps!
Trolls!
GUI enhancements!
Scorpions!
Balancing!
Bug fixing!
Readable books!
And last but not least, a pause menu!


Egads!

Also, if any of you are interested, I'd be happy to play the game with you over the internet later today, though I really have to sleep now since it's 5am here and I am dead tired.

Uhm my avatar when creating a new character is invisible, so is my fps weapon, and I encountered an invisible wall saying 'you hit the door!' and something like 'you broke the door!' when I hit it with my invisible weapon thingy

Thought I would let you know

This is a strange bug I've encountered only on systems with really really old graphics cards. It possibly has something to do with having too little VRAM. Not quite sure yet.

tl;dr get a better computer.

Unfortunately, definitions of "really really old graphics card" differ between devs as well as between gamers...

Well it is a laptop, and it is ~3,5 years old.

To help you indentify the problem: windows 7, 32 bit (<- it is strange but true )Installed RAM 4 gb. Virtual ram recommended: ~4500mb, allocated: ~4000mb or 8000mb (I am not expert at this, this is what system properties said). It is not the virtual ram I think, but it might be outdated drivers or such. Then again not my expertise.

It's much better than the very first version (it was horrible truly speaking)! But I miss 'saving' feature for settings, plus if you set small resolution (I'd prefer it in such games), game dialog (console?) it too HUGE (covering half of the screen). And to my taste player walks too slow sidewise and backwards. All-in-all looks pretty sweet! Keep it up!

Downloading right now, I'll post some feedback later (or tomorrow)

The "first version" you're talking about is not something I'd call a first version. It was just a demonstration of what I was working on at the time and wasn't meant to be criticized or judged for its fun factor because it didn't have any.


You can save your settings. Unless you mean save your game, in which case that will never be in there because we intend the game to ultimately be beatable in 1-2 hours. Surviving the trip will be the hard part.


I don't recommend you set the resolution to anything lower than 960x600 at this point, otherwise gui elements will start overlapping each other and cause you loads of grief.


We get that occasionally from people, but ultimately they get used to it. The reason we do it is because it eliminates exploits like running backwards from enemies and forces you to commit more to whatever direction you're looking in. In real life you cannot move backwards at nearly the speed you can move forwards and there's good reasons for that. Just watch where you're going.

Okay so I've tested it a little and this is what I've noticed so far:

- When chaning the resolution too high (I accidentally clicked 1200p instead of 1080p) the game crashes and doesn't start again.
- I wonder if there's something like blocking or dodging enemy attacks?
- The backwards walking speed is indeed uncomfortably slow, but maybe I'll get used to it.
- The GUI could/should be bigger on higher resolutions.
- Also the inventory doesn't seem very intuitive (to me), I'd prefer an inventory like the one in Minecraft where you can easily find objects because of their thumbnail.
- The graphics-style is nice, but you could add a little shading. With the current lighting the little 3D-blocks on models aren't really visible.
- The game is hard as fuck (...but maybe I'm the one to blame for being bad at it)

These are just my first thoughts about your game. Even though they might sound a little negative I really like Barony, keep up the good work.

You can fix this by manually editing the default.cfg file in the game's directory to a proper resolution. In a later update we'll fix this so that the game can return to a safe resolution without crashing if/when you make a mistake.


No, but enough people have raised this suggestion that we're seriously considering it. A higher level of interactivity and skill in the fights would likely make them more fun anyway.


We're always working on that.


I've seriously considered redesigning the inventory window to use draggable thumbnails since other people have said this same thing. We'll see what happens.


To be honest they're not really meant to be. We've experimented with different forms of shading on the models and found that things look best when the faces of each cube are the same shade (no contrast) because the blockiness of the objects is left unexposed. As an example, this is the way the rat currently looks in the game:


But with added contrast:


This may be a matter of opinion but the first image looks far better to me than the second as exposing all the sharp corners in the model seriously reduces its ability to seem "alive," particularly when the creature is in motion. I guess it's because the first image has a more "impressionistic" look to it, whereas the second one looks far more blocky and rigid. I don't know.


To be fair the difficulty curve is not perfectly in balance yet and I am constantly reevaluating the game to see whether its too hard or not. Personally I've reached the "end" of the game a number of times before both playing by myself and with other people, but even for me I will often misjudge the state of my character's health and get into a fight I cannot win or run out of food before I can restock. The game's not forgiving, certainly, but I've made it through enough times that it feels "fair-ish" to me.

Thanks for your thoughts so far anyway guys, I (and the others on my team) appreciate the feedback.

Didn't notice this post until now:


In the grand scheme of things this game is not graphically intensive at all, but if you try playing the game on a laptop or any other computer that doesn't have a dedicated video card (ie you're using one of those integrated graphics chips from intel) you will probably not going to have a good time.

But as fate would have it I happen to have a computer in my house with this exact same problem (invisible models), so I suppose I can look into it. I've ignored the issue so far because it's an old piece of junk but I guess if I can get the game in a working state on that computer it should fix the issue for anyone else in the same situation too.

,

I don't know if you ever want to sell this commercial, but I don't think it is wise to ignore laptops and the junk pc's. I personally don't mind it, I play games on my desktop pc and sometimes test things on my laptop. But considering your grame is not graphically intensive, your target group includes people who don't have the fastest pc's (so that includes most laptops). So I think it is good you have started looking into it (again I personally don't mind, just some friendly advice to help you make your game more popular).

Also out of curiousity, which engine do you use?

The game engine is custom built.

So I looked into the issue with the invisible models today and figured out what the problem was. Turns out we were never explicitly enabling vertex arrays before we called glDrawArrays, so on some setups you just wouldn't get anything at all. Yeah, I'm a real graphics guru here.

At least it's fixed, though! If you want a patch now I can upload some fixed binaries here, otherwise this is just going into the next release.

I don't mind waiting for the next release. Congrats on fixing it!

For all those who are interested, we released a new version of Barony today:
http://baronygame.com/download.html

This version primarily contains a metric ton of fixes for issues people have brought up with the game, but it also introduces some nifty new features, specifically: shops!


The GUI's not great, but as a feature it's a pretty major one and I'm glad to have it in the game. It ties together a lot of things regarding item value and gives purpose to things like gold and gems, which were previously nothing but dead weight.

Enjoy. =)