/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

Code is here: https://github.com/timgurto/Hellas

Started in May 2015. Made with C++, and SDL2 for graphics/sound/controls.

>>33710

How far will the tech tree go?

>>33838

This is looking really good so far. How big is the map?

>>33886

How's this been, OP?

>>34018

Looks neat. Do you take pull requests? I do Unity/C# mainly but have an amateur understanding of C. Did a little SDL2 tutorial for a game engine and enjoyed it a lot.

Either way I'll be trying to build this tonight if I can get it going on Linux

>>34021

The networking is done using the Winsock library, which Linux doesn't have. Maybe one day I'll find an alternative. I also anticipate players will just download the client zip (bottom of OP) rather than build it themselves.

What kind of requests? The overall high-level design hasn't really changed since the game's inception, but the details change all the time as I figure out what works and what doesn't, and how the systems interact. This includes feature requests from players. The content is also still very much up in the air.

>>34022

>>34021

i would also like a linux version. i'd give it a try if you ported it over.

>>34024

>>34022

I attempted to modify the Makefile and build the client. The modifications were very simple and the only dependencies needed were SDL2. There was an error stating the compiler couldn't find the namespace std::string_literals. I ran a test and it found the namespace so I have no idea what is causing it. Everything else the compiler spit out looked good, unless author is avoiding all warnings since I still got a ton of those.

If anyone more proficient can explain why that namespace might be causing issues I will continue to work it. I changed all source files using the "SDL.h" include to use "SDL2/SDL.h" instead - an annoying workaround for what should be a simple include dir change (-I) which wasn't working. Changed the standard from 11 to 14 to 17 and saw no difference. I may try reading through the g++ manual for relevant options but it is quite dense and I doubt I will find much useful info.

>>34025

Nice! If you do manage to get it to work, feel free to open a pull request. It'd be great to have a Linux client.

std::string_literals is defined in the <string> header. Apparently (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41080987/s-suffix-string-literal-in-c-gives-error) it's been supported since GCC 4.9 by using

-std=c++14

>>34025

i love you

>>34032

The expression does have an ambiguous type. I guess the fact that it's being assigned to a string means my compiler can figure out what's going on. (For the record I'm using Visual Studio 15).

Replacing the line with this should make it explicit:

weaponSchool == SpellSchool::PHYSICAL ? ""s : std::string{weaponSchool};

I'll also make that change on my end.

Thanks for your effort, and for the nice words! Both are very encouraging.

>>34035

i managed to piggyback off of one of my lutris installs and get the game running, trying it now. only made an account and havent done anything yet.

>>34037

thoughts so far:

>walking around the trees in the boar forest sometimes reverses your controls for a moment, it seems random. actually it happens around any item that impedes movement.

>i couldnt find a volume control or mute button so i can listen to autism in the background while i play

>for the sacrifice quest, i tried clicking the objects onto the sacrifices and it just destroyed them, it wasnt until i clicked on the sacrifice afterwards that i noticed the "add item here" box to actually interact with it. had to get the quest again

(OP here)

>>34038

version.h is generated by generateVersionHeader.sh. It's what's used to ensure client and server are the same version. You'll need to make sure you are at the correct commit. Currently the server version is about 20 commits behind, specifically 0bef98645fe8ef0b5e412d5a896e322351c2219c.

It can be spoofed, though this is generally dangerous. You might get weird behaviour or not connect at all. What that header currently needs to contain is:

#define version "0.12.2-217-g0bef9864"

>>34039

I assume the reversing controls are rubber banding, some mismatch between server and client trying to agree on where the player should be. I noticed it too. I also noticed D/Cing after starting to gather items on a quest the progress dialogue will show 0/X for all items, though you can still complete the quest if you have enough.

>>34040

Oh, duh. I'll look into it tomorrow.

>>34039

you don't lose the water walking skill from your bars when you leave the tutorial. i used it to cross the rivers right south of the starting zone before i tried removing it and realized i couldn't put it back on my bar only to see it missing. that skill is really just cheating in the early game because it saves like 5 minutes of walking both ways per river you cross.

>>34018

maybe have grug have another part of his family near the clay that he points you to mining or something? that would make it really obvious when you find it and give an excuse for better directions. i havent found it yet either though so idk if you already did that. or just ditch grug altogether and have someone more helpful especially if it's that critical of a quest.

>>34042

>you don't lose the water walking skill from your bars when you leave the tutorial.

The intention is that you keep that spell past the tutorial. It does mean that rivers aren't a meaningful obstacle for Zealots (or Scholars). Given the current design it's a cost I'm willing to pay, but eventually it'd be nice to push that spell to later into the game.

>>34039

>i couldnt find a volume control or mute button

Volume controls are in the backlog, but given you're the second person to ask for it I might bring it forward to the next release.

>sometimes reverses your controls for a moment

As >>34041 said, it comes down to disagreement between client and server. It shouldn't be happening much, though, due to client-side collision detection. If it's a constant problem then it'll need to be fixed.

>>34048

I don't have much to contribute and haven't played your game yet, but it looks interesting. Please continue to do your best with it!

turbo autism ahead:

https://pastebin.com/nDD3A8Fm

here's my zealot talent calculator i made like we talked about in game. it's in c.

some notes:

>i assume +1% dodge is worse than tons of hp, this is obviously wrong if for example you have an insane amount of dodge like 100%

>i dont care about resistances or dps

>the calculator assumes that when you heal, you'll only heal at most 60% of your health. if you wait any longer you're at risk of dying. this can be made into a static number for the amount of enemies you're fighting, for example, i could change it to "ok i want to fight three level 15 goats, the max hit they can do is 60hp, so i always need more than 60hp", i just havent implemented that out of laziness.

the basic idea is, you get enough practice breathing to survive the amount of enemies/type you want to fight, then you max out your healing as much as possible. this just assumes what you fight cant do more than 40% of your hp at a time, not very complicated.

it doesnt take into account energy per second either, which contributes significantly to the amount you can heal. for example, i have 3 energy per second right now with horn and cloth cape. with the old selfish request at 10 energy, that means i could cast my healing spell, buffed by reverence a bunch, every 3 seconds, which is longer than it takes 1 level 15 to do the damage that it heals, meaning i have infinite health against an enemy 5 levels above me.

/autism

>>34021

>Do you take pull requests?

It hasn't really come up yet. I suppose bugfixes/robustness would be a no-brainer to accept, but past that I don't know.

i've made a list of bugs and exploits i've found over the 20 or so hours i've played. i'll list them here.

bugs:

>when the server's down, the client crashes trying to connect

>head crack on athlete when out of range (as in, the spell fails to cast) triggers the cooldown without graying the icon. in fact it might make it permanently uncastable until a relog, i dont know, i always died trying it which might reset it.

>when respawning, every single time the rubber banding (presumably that's the cause) always flings me off in a random directly and cannot be stopped until it hits either a physical, player made object or a body of water. this has clipped me "out of bounds" (e.g. on top of mountains that are normally unpassable) twice, once from the default spawn on greece, the other in the tutorial in the rocks right north of where you spawn.

>when you lose a talent upon death, you can't retrain it without relogging. only seen this happen to tier two "skill" talents that only accept one point, probably because they're the only talents with a cap that i've seen/reached.

>trying to train a skill that's impossible to train (like from the above bug) consumes the food anyways

>unlocking recipes from "B" buildings doesnt seem to work? didn't try it too much though

>selfish devotion can show a "miss", but it still seems to heal

>when you leave the tutorial, the script to clear your inventory and talents appears to be a bit overzealous and wipes your gift spell from prometheus. you can still cast it if it's on your bars, it's just gray, but you can't re-hotkey it to your bars and it stays gray until relogging.

exploits:

>destroying buildings gives xp. this makes the best way to train in the game presumably to go to war with random afk/logged out players and destroying their buildings, instead of combat, which is really unfriendly to everyone playing the game ("huh? you have all your ore in those pots, random player? sucks 2 b u i need the xp")

>destroying unfinished buildings gives xp too, so if i log into my main character and make a ton of unfinished ovens for example (what i tried), and then log into my alt and destroy them, my alt gets free xp without the main expending any resources

>this one is complicated: you can "hermes trick" with an alt, e.g. you can set up your alt's hermes next to your main's hermes while you need resources in that area, then log in with your main, die from anywhere spawning next to your alt's hermes altar, then destroy your alt's hermes, allowing your alt to die and quickly warp to the default spawn potentially saving maybe an hour of travel at the cost of one talent on your main and alt

>multiboxing is apparently possible (seen someone else do it), though that's probably not something to worry about for a long time. no mmo really has a solution for multiboxing, for example blizzard just unofficially allows it in world of warcraft because it makes them so much money. i think it's cheating personally.

random comments:

>kiting might be too good, i dont know how you catch up to a kiter. i actually was considering this when working on min/max builds and came to the conclusion you should always carry a staff in pvp in case you can't ever melee your opponent. sprint on athlete costs way too much energy to really be viable unless you go a no-skill melee damage+ health+ build, and even then you get to use it like once every 2 minutes

>it's always beneficial to be at war with your alts/friends since it gives you more freedom to interact with their buildings, regardless of whether or not they're online. it also functions as a friends list.

>costless buildings probably shouldnt have collision until they're done, not only is it clearly better than building palisades it also looks dumb and cheap to other players.

>volume control, key rebindings, and log out without quitting to desktop would be nice features

>destroyed buildings smoke for like a solid hour or two+

>especially because of the hermes trick, nearly every player is going to have a class building next to the default spawn, which will make it a giant mess with more than a few players

>the quest to get kron's kill took me 15 tries, it's way too little time especially with the ui being a little laggy

>>34059

note this is every bug i found from my entire playtime, so please dont be discouraged op. i really like your game and i'll be keeping track of it on github/this thread and stay updated on your progress. all the bugs are really pretty minor, it's a solid game in its current state, and it has a good amount of content so far, me speedrunning it being besides the point (i'm just a neet).

>>34059

hermes thing is retarded, you can just die yourself and destroy your own hermes and die again without an alt, so disregard that.

>>34059

Thank you very much for the info! Most are genuine issues that will need fixing. I'll address the others below:

>unlocking recipes from "B" buildings doesnt seem to work? didn't try it too much though

As far as I know it does; which building in particular failed to unlock something?

>"huh? you have all your ore in those pots, random player? sucks 2 b u i need the xp"

It's probably worth taking away XP from destroying objects. There's still some motivation to do so (crippling his economy; small chance of loot). One of the main risks I see in the game design is that PvP as it stands will suck for players who aren't in cities, or are in small cities. Ideally larger cities have round-the-clock presence, or at least act as a deterrent ("you can't attack one of us without going to war with us all").

I'm working through a few possible solutions to this, to make low-level players less easy targets.

>"hermes trick"

Have you actually tried this? As far as I'm aware, if your Altar to Hermes is destroyed, your spawn point will still be where the altar was.

>kiting might be too good

Impossible to say at this point, since there has been practically zero PvP to test this. Well spotted.

>it's always beneficial to be at war with your alts/friends

I would think it's always beneficial to be in a city with them, so that you can share containers, tools and crops, and help each other with construction projects. If you're at war with someone you can't use their Trade Mats, and when I eventually add direct trading that won't be possible either with belligerents. I and my alts are all in a city, and I find it to be very useful.

>friends list

I'll add it to the backlog.

>costless buildings probably shouldnt have collision until they're done

This is currently a potential exploit (as you said, in lieu of walls). The problem is that another player might interfere with your construction project by standing there, or building something himself on the same spot. Reducing health of construction sites would be a step in the right direction. Short answer is that this is a problem I have yet to solve.

>destroyed buildings smoke for like a solid hour or two+

12h IIRC, so that a player can log in and see if any of his stuff was destroyed. It is quite obnoxious though, and currently also applies to your own buildings that you demolish yourself.

>the quest to get kron's kill took me 15 tries

Getting the time right was hard, given the Sprint ability. I want it to be possible but challenging. I'll take another look.

>>34060

>note this is every bug i found from my entire playtime, so please dont be discouraged op

Not at all! I'm well aware that it's not perfect, but feedback like yours makes it a lot easier to improve.

>>34062

>As far as I know it does; which building in particular failed to unlock something?

i only tried it 6 or so times with campfires and palisades and didn't unlock anything even though they said it was a high chance, so i'm probably wrong. another object that was acting funny was animal fat, it always told me it had a high chance to unlock a recipe and i picked up around 50 and didn't unlock anything on my zealot. these might just be fine though.

>Have you actually tried this?

no i didn't, i thought it was tied to the statue.

>I would think it's always beneficial to be in a city with them

i'm totally retarded and skimmed over the city system in op and only saw it referenced in the picture in >>34018 then promptly spent my first 10 hours playing the game looking for an actual, prebuilt npc thessaly... could you explain how cities work? my comment didnt take cities into account at all, i just assumed there was war or neutral or nothing else, so duh i want to be able to destroy my alt's stuff because otherwise i just cant and it's worthless to me.

>Reducing health of construction sites would be a step in the right direction.

i think that's a good idea, i would've never come up with that.

>12h IIRC, so that a player can log in and see if any of his stuff was destroyed.

that seems just fine, i redact that. in fact maybe it should be longer.

>Getting the time right was hard, given the Sprint ability.

i forgot you could sprint when doing that quest

>>34063

"High chance" means more than 40% chance, so something is definitely wrong.

>could you explain how cities work?

Sure. They're basically like guilds in WoW—self-organized groups of players. One person founds a city, then can recruit others. The big difference is that buildings can be city-owned: if you're in a city, you can cede your objects to it, meaning they are owned by the city rather than an individual, and all members can use it. You also have the option of making a building city-owned when you place it.

It also has political ramifications: if you're in a city, your individual wars don't take effect. But if your city is at war, then its enemies can attack you and your objects.

"Thessaly" belongs to me and my alts, and is southeast of the starting area, on the coast.

This topic isn't touched in the tutorial, and requires a building unlock in order to found a city, so it isn't very intuitive. Looking at your data (Xerxes), you're quite close to unlocking it.

>>34064

thanks for the explanation op, seems sweet. i'll try and figure it out tomorrow and build a city.

>>34064

found another bug: the list of people you're at war with seems to bug out a lot. names will disappear from it and re-appear. for example just now, after declaring war on myself from my xerxestwo account, my xerxes account only showed that one war. then i logged out and logged back in and it listed both my war with xerxestwo and my war with offxerxes that i made testing the commands. then i logged out and back in again, and it listed those two, and my war with undercase "xerxes". so relogging seems to affect it for some reason.

since adding myself to a war from an alt account seemed to cause it to do that weird staggered loading, i got onto another account testman and added myself to another war from that account, and now only my war with testman showed up no matter how many times i log in. then, mysteriously, i sued for peace with testman, relogged, and now all my wars popped up at once.

so, the list seems to be affected by relogging, sueing for peace, and other players declaring war on you. note that i dont know if this affects the actual wars or just the list, because when i was trying it coincidentally i got stuck in a water tile trying to water my flax and got teleported back to the default spawn so i couldnt see if the buildings were pvp flagged still or not.

>>34059

I've fixed most of the smaller bugs. New server version up.

Also added a script that will hopefully restart the server if it crashes, within ~15s, so that I don't have to worry about it being down for hours while I sleep or go to work.

>>34067

Okay, obviously a lot more testing is necessary. I added PvP a while ago but it's never really had a chance to stretch its legs.

another bug i found last night was that blessing of apollo running out dealt damage to me. also while the server was crashing a lot the buff timer seemed to not tick down and stuck at 29 minutes.

>>34071

buff timer for blessing of apollo, to be more specific

if you cast an athlete's head crack on an enemy, the icon gets stuck even after the spell wears off. it seems to stay even if you switch targets and after the target dies, until you deselect targets completely (for example with esc), then select again, then it refreshes to the proper status of the buff for the targetted enemy.

blessing of apollo seems to buff to a percentage of energy now, so if you cast it with a full bar you gain ~100 energy, and if you cast it with a bar that's almost empty you lose extra energy. it should just give you a flat 100 empty energy instead.

>>34087

>blessing of apollo bug

correction: you seem to always gain the 100 energy when you cast blessing of apollo regardless of energy remaining (not a percentage), and you always lose 100 energy when you unbuff yourself by right clicking the blessing. so it's just giving and removing real energy along with energy cap, instead of just the empty, "potential" energy. it's not a percentage like i said, that was false.

>>34071

blessing doing damage when it fades is fixed

>>34059

headcrack when out of range seems to be fixed

retraining skills after death is fixed

impossible training consuming food is fixed

>>34059

selfish devotion missing is also fixed

>>33886

really cool game. Does the world have borders, or is it a sphere or a torus?

>>34194

region_lock

>>34272

>>34195

>>34194

If it's not too resource intensive, might I suggest offering two or three servers? One could be open to global players, one region locked to glorious NA/EU, one region locked to asia/everywhere else

>>34273

For language reasons, that's certainly an option. While I have a small player base, though, I'd prefer to keep everyone together for the network effect.

If you guys think that's likely to cause problems then I can expedite the feature.

>>33710

OP are you Greek?

>>34285

Have you ever played Haven & Hearth?

>>34292

One of the design problems I hit is that new players are very vulnerable, especially when offline. I don't want them to be discouraged by having all of their stuff destroyed by a griefer or raider. The introduction of attack-dog pets was for this reason. (see >>34117)

I really like the solution that I gather Haven & Hearth has provided, which is a hidden container. I may end up doing something similar—a secret stash that other players can't see. If each player is limited to one of these, then I can also make it fairly big without imbalancing the economy.

>>34294

H&H has a couple of systems I found interesting; I haven't really played your game at all.

>Main motivation is increasing item quality. Item effect multipliers are based on sqrt(Q / 10). Everything from damage to stat gain from foods revolves around this

>Timescale is like 2.2x faster than real life, and stuff can take literally days to complete (such as tanning leather or growing crops)

>Gain XP by passively studying certain crafting items over time; XP gain is again based on quality and can be spent on skills and stats

>XP can also be spent to build and maintain territory markers. There's a 3-day period (32 hours) where it can be freely destroyed; after that, it's your territory (a 5x5 square) that nobody can enter unless they PvP flag themselves

>Towns and kingdoms exist (all player made) that cover huge regions, and the owners can delegate permissions such as building personal claims, above

>>34301

Why don't you post in the /agdg/ threads on /v/?

>>34302

No good reason; I guess it seems a bit strange when we have our own board. But thanks for the prompt—I'll post an update there.

>>34303

You'd get people to come here if you linked the board to your post since your project is pretty nice.

>>34194

Holy shit, you actually have people with many hours of game. How is it now?

>>34304

Thanks for posting the link!

>>34305

>How is it now?

Not sure what you mean. It's been live for a couple of years now. Server is pretty robust.

Players come in waves, and the eager ones tend to play for 10–20 hours. I'm hoping that with the recent tech-tree expansion this will increase by another ~20 hours. There have been players from all around the world, and some tell their friends, which is awesome. That's the only way a game like this will take off.

>>34306

>Not sure what you mean

I'm asking about the number of players and how many do you have in total right now, active and also inactive. And also do you interact with the players?

>>34307

Most of the time there's nobody online. Usually in any given month, someone plays—sometimes one person, sometimes a few.

Since the last content update, my brother and sister-in-law have started playing again (~8 hours each in the last couple of weeks) and I've been playing quite a bit too. Unlocking and making new tech is nice and addictive.

I have player data only since last May (I had to wipe everything when I introduced password protection for accounts). Since then there have been 56 characters created, but if I get rid of alts and my family members (so, unique strangers who have played) it's around 35.

Most players give up some time during the tutorial (about an hour long, but can now be skipped). Those who finish it play for 3+ more hours.

I've logged in and interacted with a couple of players: a Frenchman at 49h played, and an American at 34h (who can be seen earlier in this thread). Each has given me a lot of feedback about bugs and usability issues. The value I got from them prompted me to add a bug-reporting feature.

The ways that players interact with each other are through chat, war, trade, and joining a city. War (PvP) is the riskiest part of the project, partly because it hasn't been exercised much.

>>34308

Do you think you could create an effect of scarcity by making a somewhat closed beta in order to get more players and really kickstart it?

>>34309

A closed-beta event would probably help to increase excitement. I guess I don't consider it marketable yet; it's still quite rough around the edges, and not yet feature-complete (three big examples are direct player trading, complex boss fights, and grouping). I also don't yet know how I'll monetise the thing, if at all.

I have no experience at all with marketing or publishing, so this isn't something I've given much thought to. I figured I'd just keep it open until the official release (optimistically, the end of this year), wipe the server, make an event of it and only then try paying for ads or some other sort of marketing.

>>34310

You can ask people to click on publicity for you like some private MMO servers did back in the day. Also, since it's on github, what are the rules for contributing to your project?

>>34311

It's on Github primarily because it's free. I'd be happy to merge pull requests that fix bugs, but more hesitant for anything else.

>>34322

I noticed your github page is down, what happened?

The github repository has vanished.

I would probably be able to encapsulate the network code and make it run on Linux/Mac if winsock is the only obstacle there.

Sorry for the lack of replies; I've pretty much migrated to 8chan.moe. Not that it's all that active there.

I made the repo private, because I don't want copycats. It's mostly the server that concerns me though; I'd like to figure out a way to split the client into a separate repo that can be public.