Potential Games

It has been nearly 2 entire weeks with no updates for the BetaAlpha playtesters, giving you plenty of time to ramp up your characters… before I dash them to the aether once again.

To let you know where I stand, I’m currently knee deep in (what is scheduled to be) the last major wave of gameplay integration. (This is a promising position, as I was neck deep about a week ago.)

More specifically, the items and inventory are [redacted] … on second thought, just wait and see. A BetaAlpha update is planned for later this week.

“Now… bring me that horizon.” — Jack Sparrow

Although my overarching guideline during this phase of development is to focus on gameplay and features, I decided it was necessary to revamp the network layer of the client-server platform. This was primarily a consolidation and cleanup effort, motivated by nagging session management issues, resulting from overly-complex code.

I have not yet seen the SLOC drop, but I’m expecting it to be significant.

The end result is a cleaner, simpler, more robust network layer. As a happy side effect, the streamlined threading model and byte management should theoretically improve overall efficiency. Alas, having not yet performed any detailed measurements on the previous network code, I will not know how much better the new routines are.

Although technically significant, Playtesters shouldn’t notice a thing (except for not being locked out of the server due to broken session logic). Then again, I could have introduced a whole host of new issues… Have at it!

Update: The SLOC drop is in. Roughly a couple thousand lines of code less, and all the better for it.

“Fortune favors the bold.” -Terence

Development has been steady (furious, actually). The latest updates have focused on graphical improvements. Avatars, creatures, terrain, and scenery elements have all been visually improved. Most of the terrain elements have been replaced with improved tiles. All creatures have been replaced and are now fully animated.

In addition, new capabilities have been added to the world rendering and avatar animation drivers. A new edge masking technique allows terrain tile interfaces to be dynamically rendered. Creatures now support a full death animation sequence.

A few significant bugs have also been fixed, and Playtesters will find it faster to progress (bigger rewards).

By they way, FaceBook fans of Potential Games have already seen a recent screenshot (albeit rather tiny). Also consider following Potential Games on Twitter for quick progress and status updates.

Potential RPG BetaAlpha edition (now at v0.8.2.3 and climbing) brings several improvements, including:

• Avatar animation overhaul
• Creature behavior enhancements
• Fog of War improvements
• Viewport drag control
• Avatar keyboard navigation
• Desktop system tray integration
• Several bug fixes and gameplay tweaks

Playtesters are encouraged to use the Playtesting forum to discuss the latest changes.

A peek at my commit log reveals a flurry of development regarding character avatar animations. I am in the process of improving the system to support fully animated sequences, which have only been partially handled in prior Alpha releases.

Read on for more details… Read the rest of this entry »

The cleanest way to close a Java GUI application is to dispose of all top-level resources (JFrame instances, for example) and allow the AWT/Swing thread to close itself. Calling System.exit(0) or Runtime.getRuntime().halt(0) is often prescribed, but not recommended, as it could preempt proper shutdown procedures in your application.

If your Java GUI application uses DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE mode, check that your process is exiting cleanly. If it is not, the most likely culprit is that the AWT Event Dispatch Thread is still active. This is well-known AWT/Swing behavior, but there is a scenario in which Java will refuse to shut down this thread, even with all resources closed and disposed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Potential Games is excited to announce the (not yet public) next major milestone release of our (name yet to be announced) Potential RPG. Development of the Potential Platform, our MMORPG client-server, database, and user interface engine, dominated the Alpha phase.

Potential RPG BetaAlpha, destined to become Beta, is the first (alpha) gameplay release directly targeting the final game design. BetaAlpha shall focus on gameplay enhancements, as well as any necessary improvements to the Potential Platform.

At this stage, Potential RPG remains a closed alpha game, for approved Alpha Playtesters only. The prospective roadmap:

1. Alpha (closed playtesting)
2. BetaAlpha (closed playtesting)
3. BetaBeta (controlled invitation playtesting)
4. Beta (invitation/open playtesting)
5. Public Release!

Today’s SLOC count is 96,060 (4,237 less than my 100k analysis and 3,501 less than yesterday). While adding several new gameplay features, I was able to streamline the implementation in several places. This SLOC drop results from isolating (and removing) a good chunk of legacy logic, rules, and display code, which was impeding the integration of new features. Most importantly, playtesters should notice more direction in the gameplay, just as soon as I can deploy the next incremental Alpha release.

This morning, I noticed that my SLOC (Source Lines of Code) chart (in the sidebar of this blog) has breached the 100k mark (100,297sloc to be exact). That count is due to drop with the pending removal of some unused tools, defunct data structures, and legacy logic. Still, I thought it might be interesting to do a quick breakdown of the basic components:

The categories are:

• core: Networking, storage, and application framework libraries
• gui: Graphical User Interface implementation libraries
• client: RPG Client application (67% of which is client-specific GUI code)
• tools: Development helper applications
• server: RPG Server application
• other: Data structures, rules logic, and other game-supporting code

Potential RPG v0.7.3 (Alpha Edition) introduces instance island gameplay. Go solo or form an expedition party from the Mainland’s Dock. Explore remote islands and defeat a variety of inexplicably malevolent foes. Find rare resources with which to craft weapons and cast spells.

Many balance, rules, and gameplay features are yet to be introduced, but this version includes several significant updates. Island exploration now includes fog-of-war-style reveal. Creatures are more varied. Both combat and exploration are directly related to the rewards you receive from island adventures.

Intrepid explorers (Alpha Playtesters) be warned: there are some known issues (see the Playtester Forum for details).