Neon Knights

It's like Elona+ but cyberpunk?

[bokchoydev-blog]

Quick test of some new camera code!

[bokchoydev-blog]

Update Time! I’ve made some decent progress since my last post so here go:

Abilities: I’ve put the foundation for a progressive ability system. Basically, the more you use an ability, the more experience you get in that ability’s school. As you level up a particular school, the more abilities you unlock from that school. Starting schools are based on your race and class. That’s pretty much where we are at this point. In the future I would like many different methods for unlocking new schools such as items, performing certain actions for the first time (selling an item unlocks a mercantile school, for example), from reaching certain levels in other schools, etc.

UI: The design and layout of all the UI stuff is all placeholder. Since the last update, I’ve implemented re-bindable keys, a menu that lists all your known abilities and a customizable hotbar with hot keys. Hot keys are re- bindable of course, but the icon doesn’t update with the current key yet. (Always more to do T.T)

Overall, feeling pretty good about this project. The scope is way too massive for a first game but oh well.  I should have something playable by the next demo day now that the semester is over and I have some time before my next summer class starts. Hopefully I can be more consistent with updates in the future.

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Update! Finished the transition from static to procedurally generated maps and NPCs. I also finished the Save/Load system so progress is actually saved. I think I’m going to continue to clean up the procedural generation next before anymore features. 

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Post finals week update: Now that I actually have some time to dev, I’ve been able to make some solid progress. We know have a Save/Load system, a Trading System, and we’re moving away from static, premade tile maps in favor of some of that hot procedural goodness. A super basic rule-set for map generation is in place and I’ll be filling that out more over the next couple of days as well as doing some heavy, heavy refactoring because my code base is a nightmare.

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Update: I’m Still Alive Edition. I’ve had very little time to dev during the last few weeks but here’s were we’re at now.

Quest System: Started work on the Quest System. Currently we have basic, kill x amount of monster y implemented. These will mostly be filler/repeatable randomly generated quests that players can do for minor rewards while exploring or completing bigger quests. This implementation also makes it easy to add quests to kill specific a npc/boss. Next, we’ll implement quests to gather specific items (craft an item, find an item for an npc, find a unique item that triggers another quest, etc). We’ll also have quests that are completed when triggers like going to a specific area or talking to a specific npc are fired.

AI/NPC Interaction: Currently npcs are hostile towards the player by default. They have a patrol state where the move between randomly generated or static patrol points and a combat state where they just attack the player instead of move. Npcs also have fov implemented, though it has not thoroughly tested at the moment. This where the most work will done in the near future. I’ve started work on a faction system with “disposition” tags (hostile, neutral, friendly, etc). After this, we’ll work on interaction with neutral and friendly npcs such as trading, flavor dialogue, dispensing quests, etc. I’ll also want a “move to last known position of the target hostile” type of thing.

Misc: I’m not super happy with the UI but it works for testing purposes. I’ll probably start thinking about how I want every to look soon. You can also pick up items off the ground. Eventually, npcs will drop items and you’ll also be able to pick up their corpse. I don’t know what you’ll do with a bunch of corpses but I’m sure we can think of something. 

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We got some nice recursive shadow casting implemented! When I first started dev’ing, LoS and FoV seemed like problems that were completely outside my abilities so it feels pretty good to get that stuff working. I’m going to take some time to clean up the code, then I want to flesh out the dialogue system(very bare-bones right now, it just prints to the combat log), then work on non-combat Player/AI interaction. I’ll probably work on shops first (I really want a excuse to make more items tbh) and then decide what I want quests to look like and go from there.

I’m also debating just building out a couple a more levels, make some new abilities and throwing a rough demo together but I’m not sure. There’s definitely value in getting something playable out but I don’t feel like the game is really “fun” yet.

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Progress and roadblocks! Field of View stuff is getting there put there’s some issues. I think I just need to step away from the code for a little bit, not sure where the math is fucking up on this one. Still, it feels pretty good to get this much, I thought for sure implementing line of sight would be the death of my motivation. I won’t have a demo ready for DD13, unfortunately.

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Some Friday progress! We got an ugly start menu and character creation system. Everything is very bare bones and placeholder-y at the moment but it’s functional so it should be easy to add new races and classes going forward. The game also goes back to the start when the player dies so I know longer soft lock the build by dying :|

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Quick Progress Update! Got the inspect menu fully functional and am pretty happy with the result. UI is getting easier to handle the more I use it so that’s nice. 

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Progress! Fixed some issues with updating the stats, added the UI for inventory and the hooks for equipping items, This my first real dive into programming the guts for the UI. Things went slow but I’m relativity happy with how it turned out.

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Art update! Taking things in a more traditional direction I guess. I also did a bunch of work behind the scenes with random enemy types, placement, level, and patrol paths and some UI to handle pop-up context menus. Life is going to be busy for the next two weeks so hopefully I’ll have time to cobble together something for demo days.

[bokchoydev-blog]

Productive Weekend! AI can now have patrol paths that are pretty easy to change at run-time based on different conditions and we also have some UI placeholder stuff. Mainly just trying things out, got tired of just looking at a bunch of grey panels D:

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Day 16 of my “How does art work” adventure. I had literally zero expectations with my first attempt at a portrait type thing so I’m happy with this so far. Also squashed a super dumb bug in the inventory system. 

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I feel like we made some nice progress this week. We have a range indicator for our abilities, the guts of character info screen (not pictured), a functional hotbar, and some new “art.” Biggest thing going forward will be implementing a line of sight/fog of war system. I’ll be extremely happy if I get that together by next week and maybe clean up the character info screen.

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The targeting system pretty much works now. Really haven’t had much time to dev with class and work but slow and steady progress is still progress, right? Also, really need to figure out how to make less blurry webms.

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Here’s a Goblin Shaman Punk Dude ft. a robotic arm. Still figuring out this pixel art thing. Feeling much more confident than when I started but always looking to improve. Does anyone know any good places to get constructive criticism? 

[bokchoydev-blog]

Hey! Cool game! IMO, Neon Knights makes more sense thematically. (Cyberpunk Future + Magic)

Thanks for checking me out and thanks for the input! Originally, I was going to use the whole phrase as my title but I’ve started to think I should just go with “Neon Knights”. It’s much cleaner and, like you said, just fits better for what I’m aiming for.