The latest post on the Guilds Wars 2 blog confirms that the waiting game is nearly over, confirming a full release for their eagerly awaited title some time in 2012. They also say that after a press-only beta next month, future testing events will be “aggressively ramped up” from March onwards. Cor! After five years of anticipation, it’s all starting to kick off!

Best get to polishing those applications, folks. It’s going to be one of the hottest tickets of the year…

Anyhow, the Unnamed Dejenol Demake Project has reached its second milestone and was considerably more work than I expected – I hope this doesn’t set a trend! As the project is still moving forward steadily enough I want to spend a little more time blogging about my progress than I’ve done with my other projects in the past. Yet this is also a slightly scary event, considering I can’t guarantee the project will ever see the light of day, and I’m wary of getting people’s hopes up (even the whole 2 of you who may be at all interested in this ). Maybe the aura of disappointment I spun at the cancellation of Return to Dejenol – nngh, there, I said it – has made me too cautious…

Ultimately, though, what’s the point of hobby-coding if you can’t gush enthusiastically to the world about what puny triumphs you’ve made? It’s about time I started dishing the dirt on what this project might become, and based on past experience and my current level of experience, what features it will and will not have.

Click through the break and let us begin a journey through a +1 wall of text!

It begins with a dream: A vision of an RPG game that reaches back in time to capture the essence of sublime, mid-90s nostalgia, and forwards to preserve it by forging a game more flexible, more intuitive, and more playable than before. The notion of Mordor: Return to Dejenol was born. But see… after glowing brightly, the dream falters and stumbles; slowly but inevitably it collapses into itself under the weight of its own ambition. The memory fades…

…but not entirely, for it is still remembered well enough to illustrate a point. The most important thing I am keeping in mind for this new project is to start small and grow, just as I did with Millenipede. Do not obsess over that which is unimportant. Get it playable, then refine later if need be. With that in mind, here is what I tentatively expect the limits and features of this attempt to be:

• Style the game as a “demake”, with low-resolution graphics and a relatively small set of game content
• Create a storyline that is acceptable to Mordor lore-junkies but explains the game’s primitiveness
• The game will be single-player, with no consideration given to online play
• You will likely control only one character, rather than a party of four, though this may change
• There are no monster companions, nor is there a Confinement in the town
• There are no guilds, as such; the character may pick “perks” at regular points to diversify their skills
• There will probably not be any magic in the first version
• No more than 3 or 4 dungeon levels to explore
• Don’t bother to hide game data in obscure files – store and edit predefined information in plain text

So, already we’re chopping out a good chunk of stuff, for better or worse. Also moved off the drawing board for now is the idea of having individual “user accounts”, each with their own individual knowledge of the dungeon, shop stock, and characters. It’s something I want to put in eventually but after there’s a game for it to fit onto.

Limiting the game so tightly is quite important – it drastically increases my chances of success! If the project becomes playable then it will mean there is a solid base to build from. While I may not be adding things like guilds or monster companions yet, I’m not forgetting their importance for later – I’m trying to design the game in such a way that these features can be added without the need for refactoring (or, in non-gobbledegook, without having to put the code through an industrial shredder and start from scratch).

So far, Milestone 1 has “put something on the screen” by displaying the dungeon and allowing the “party” to walk around. This only involved a re-jigging of existing code from Dalyn’s Quill and so didn’t take an awful lot of effort. But a couple of days ago I got to a stage where I was happy to call Milestone 2 done, and a good deal of code which didn’t exist before is now thrumming away happily:

• A simple file handler was created to read data from a plain text file
• “Monsters.txt” was created and holds at least one monster per spawn type
• The data structure for dungeon spawn areas was expanded to allow actual monster encounters
• Areas will populate themselves correctly from defined monsters, based on area spawn types
• Monsters of the same type and level can be weighted so that some are more commonly picked than others
• The screen now shows what monsters are in a room

Soon after capturing the video for M2 I decided the existing 8px monster portraits weren’t going to cut it, so they’ve since been increased to 32px (David E. Gervais tiles, yay!). I’m still fiddling with the exact encounter display layout – you’ll probably be able to see the results in the next vlog.

For the near future these newly-generated terrors of the underworld will be able to live without fear of being turned into experience fodder for the character – combat isn’t scheduled until M4. Meanwhile, what is to be done? The third important step is to make the game understand the concept of “OMG epic lootz, neeeeed!!” and have UIs added to show the player’s inventory and their stats. In view of the limited 320×240 screen space, this is where I will also try to create a tooltip system to summarise an item’s stats as the player hovers the mouse cursor over its icon, removing the need for a separate “info” pane like the other Dejenol games have used. Given my tendency to nitpick over such things, I must try to restrain my perfectionist instincts and make something reasonable without taking weeks over it!

That’s all I’ll say for now, but as long as the bits of rust keep flaking off the cogs that struggle to bring this project to life, I’ll try and keep up the more open style of blogging about whatever progress there may be. If you’ve enjoyed this random outpouring of words then my job here is done! Should you have any constructive criticism then please, let me know it – pretty much anything and everything will act as motivation for me to continue onward.

I shall see you at our next meeting, when perhaps the project may actually get a name…

I’m nearly done with Milestone 2, and possibly might have had it nailed today were it not for the aforementioned editor malfunction. Tomorrow I intend to finish defining debug monsters for each of the 18 spawn types – as close as I am to nearly being able to list all of the categories off the top of my head, I’ll spare you the detail – and then, I can crosswire the now-properly-loading dungeon spawn area IDs into the part which keeps track of all the monster spawning, and finally the dungeon will be rid of the Random Monster army!

And after that? A change of pace. Items! And a way to look at how awesome they are! And perhaps if I use enough exclamation marks in this sentence, I can persuade myself that interface design is fun after all! Yeeaah… no. Not happening.

What? You don’t think it’ll catch on? BAH. I’d argue the point but a whole flock of Strange Creature 73 has just flown up my trouser leg, so do excuse me a moment…

To elaborate on what’s done today: A decent amount, yet not as much as I hoped. I spent far too long iterating the layout of what I am calling the “encounter panel”, but I think this present design uses space nicely enough for the time being. As you can see, I’m using the Oryx tileset (otherwise known as the retro coder’s best friend) since it’s just so easy to work with and is pretty much the best free set of graphics out there right now. I don’t mind that they’ve been used in so many other things – they can be replaced later if needed and it’s way better than looking at dull placeholder squares. Oh, and I know it doesn’t have chests yet; they’re in a later Milestone.

All that remains before Milestone 2 is complete is to finish getting the spawn areas to randomly populate – by which I mean they won’t take account of what monster spawn types (humanoid, insect, devil, etc.) the dungeon file says should actually appear in any given location. Then it’s just a case of actually feeding that “real” data to the encounter panel. Easy! Except it probably won’t be.

To temper my own excitement as well as any you, dear reader, might be feeling, I should say that I’ll update as often as I feel there’s something interesting to mention. With Christmas around the corner, updates may be less regular, but we’ll see how it pans out.

This video should instantly tell you what game I mean!

Yes, it is of course an attempt at an 8-bit “demake” of the often-overlooked Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, released in 1995 by David Allen and now owned and marketed by Decklin over in Decklin’s Demise. What the video shows is the program’s completed first milestone: It can load a dungeon using the file format of the old game, and have a “party” of one character move around and explore, respecting walls correctly. For the next milestone I will add an interface to displays monsters and get the spawn areas (i.e. rooms) to individually populate.

Ten milestones are planned to take this idea far enough for it to be a playable game engine, some bigger and more involved than others, with one further milestone required to add the final content and make it playable. Any and all feedback is much appreciated to keep the motivation at its current high level!

On a related note, if you’ve played Demise, the strangely-titled rough diamond that was the sequel to the first game, you might be interested to know that Demise: Ascension – an update that includes even more content and the ability to run natively on Windows Vista and 7 – has recently gone into a public testing phase. You need only put your money down to order it from the Decklin’s Demise page above and you’ll receive access to all current and future versions. If you’re into retro RPGs with many, many hours of playability, you really should check it out!

A little while ago it was the Indie Music Bundle to titillate your ears with fantastic vibes, but right now you have a choice of not one, or even two… but four different game bundles to check out – and they’re all asking you to pay as little or as much as you like! One is even completely free to download!

Since a couple of them are also supporting charity, now is a great time if you’re just starting to dip in to the world of indie games and are looking to snag some great deals at the same time as helping a good cause. While it’s possible to take the dimmer view that it’s an easy way for an organiser to make a quick buck, that would be pretty unfair – if you believe in the charitable roots behind a couple of these bundles then they’re doing a lot of good at a time of year when it matters the most. Even if a bundle doesn’t donate part of its proceeds to charity, it’s still a good way to get some games you might otherwise have overlooked for an excellent price. Stocking fillers ahoy!

Read on to see all of the currently running bundles that are clamouring for your attention…

First we have The Humble Indie Bundle #4. From the people who started the whole bundle phenomenon off, this is actually their eighth compilation of games that they’ve offered up, and it’s a darn good one too: Visually sumptuous bullet hell shoot ‘em up Jamestown, pixelly reflex tester Bit.Trip.Runner, acclaimed platformer Super Meat Boy, gritty tale of revenge Shank, and rolling stone NightSky HD as standard. There’s also strategic explosion factory Gratuitous Space Battles and magnificent adventure Cave Story+ included if you pay more than the average price. Eek! That’s a lot of adjectives for a lot of games!

Next we have Indie Royale’s Christmas Bundle. For some titles that aren’t quite so well-known you may want to give this a look – it contains The Blackwell Trilogy: Remastered, a quality series of three point ‘n’ click adventures; Eets, an endearing puzzler that’s far more cerebral than it looks; Dino D-Day, a FPS exploring an alternative WW2; and The Oil Blue, a satirical action simulator of the oil business. Ticks all the right boxes and covers all bases pretty darn well.

Third up is the Little Big Bunch, a newcomer to the bundle party but boasting a juicy selection of five classy indie titles. It features polished platformer Explodemon, the only game I know of with a self-exploding hero, and Frozen Synapse, a fine turn-based strategy game set in a strange blue cyberverse. It has more, too, in the form of New Star Soccer 5 for all you football fans, Munch’s Oddysee for those who love helping aliens, and Serious Sam Double D for those who just want to shoot aliens with literally stacks of guns!

Last but certainly not least is the free-to-download 99 Percent Bundle, a pack of games from developers that you almost certainly won’t have heard of. Does that mean you should ignore them? Absolutely not! It includes a ginormous thirteen games to enjoy, including NeonPlat Adventures (by AGameAWeek’s Jayenkai), pleasant Flash game Diamond Hollow II, and the fantastically-titled Next Time I Won’t Trust The Man In The White Van. I dare you not to check out this pack just through sheer curiosity!

Surely somewhere amongst this selection of 31 titles is a game to tweak your interest. But if there isn’t… word on the street is there’s probably another bundle coming out next week. Just you wait and see if I’m not right

Happy bundling!

A certain game cause quite a stir on Friday and broke all sorts of records, at one point seeing about 280,000 people playing it all at once. I was one of them! Do I get a cookie? No? Pah. Well, fine – I’ll just nom into my bowl of mammoth snout steak, then. Meanwhile, there are still those who feel that Skyrim isn’t the be all and end all of modern gaming, and cling to the glory days they when Morrowind started to grace our hard drives for the first time over nine years ago. Feeling old yet? I am!…

Credit goes to SockandRock who did a good deed by uploading this legendary composition from the one and only Jeremy Soule. I played Morrowind only a little and mostly just as an experiment – I joined the Elder Scrolls at the bit where, just as all those dratted Oblivion Gates were popping up everywhere, someone kindly thought to deliver 15,000 watermelons to Chancellor Ocato. My soul was never quite my own ever since.

Normal service – whatever the deuce that is – will resume next week. Until then, enjoy the memories this tune effortlessly conjures up, and if you just so happen to be fighting dragons in snowy climes, may your Shouts be strong!

Yes, I know both of these tracks are the same tune, and you might wonder why. Well, simple really: They’re both so good that I couldn’t include one over the other, and since it’s a special occasion, I bundled them both into one feature so that you can decide for yourself which is your favourite.

Zolyx’s Game Music Monday #7: Halloween Ghouls ‘n Ghosts!

The original composer of this track was Tim Follin, a name that certainly ranks up there with the most respected 8-bit composers of all time. His work in games such as L.E.D. Storm, Black Lamp, and Bionic Commando – along with the two GnG games - is fondly remembered by many. Remixers Binster and Tim Forsyth have done well to preserve the classic feel with some modern flair.

Enjoy your Halloween and tune in next week!