| RuneSword 2.6.0 Release! | Tue 2009.12.22 21:30 |
Redesigned. Improved. Given a good de-lousing. RSII 2.6.0. New pieces have been added on, other pieces have increased functionality. Stronger, bigger, and more powerful than ever, RSII has been given new life with the release of 2.6.0!!!
CREATOR REBORN!
The Creator software has been greatly improved and stabilized again. Creator now supports Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V shortcuts. The Creature Explorer has been given an ‘Insert’ button, so you can look at a beastie and then stick it straight into an encounter in the active tome. An Item Explorer has also been added in with the same functionality. Lots of minor and major improvements to the search function, map use and tile use. Encounters are now sorted alphabetically in the treeview, making it a little easier to find things. A ‘Browse’ button has been added to certain windows, making it simpler to insert items, creatures and triggers from the library. Combat wallpapers now show their picture in the Creator, so you can see what they look like without having to leave Creator. The treeview is now updated after the "replace" function is used (and several other bugs with search have been fixed as well) and when an item is selected in the center of the screen, it is also automatically selected in the treeview. Trigger code windows are now horizontally resizable. This makes it easier to see all of the code that you are working on.
Maps and map-making have been greatly enhanced. The Move Map right-click command was fixed. It used to leave out areas that were not previously loaded. A major improvement was the move to drop down lists for the CopyTile and TargetEncounter statements. No more typing in the names of tiles or encounters and maybe getting them wrong! A new statement was added also: "TargetEncounterInArea". This is an improved "TargetEncounter", valid for the whole tome and not the current map only. You can also now place your mouse over the right or left edges of the map to move the map in that direction. New tile graphics (Right-click on the tile area of the treeview to create new tiles) are now updated when they are created, instead of waiting until the active map was opened again or another new tile was created. The Find Tile function was improved as well.
Conversations have been enhanced, allowing Creators to use CreatureTarget.Name and CreatureNow.Name to personalize dialogues between players and NPCs. A new statement: RemoveTopic, has been added to the trigger functions, making conversations much more meaningful and easier to build. So now if a player makes a merchant uunhappy, Creators can set it up so that the merchant topic is removed from him and he will no longer sell goods.
Also, the picture to display when a creature dies can now be world or even creature dependent. So, your blobs won’t show bones when they die if you take the time and specify a new graphic!
Tome Creator Several new capabilities have been added to the tome creator. Right-clicking on a map will create an entrypoint (or an encounter if Shift is pressed) if no encounter/entrypoint already exists at the clicked location. Getting easier and easier to Create! On the individual maps, creators can now select a set of wandering monsters for each map straight from the map properties. These wandering monsters only attack in encounters that are classified as "None" or "Dangerous Area" on the encounter properties. So you can have your map, dangerous as you want it to be with a selection of monsters to encounter at random, and mark safe havens in there as well. You can also tag an entire map as a Camping area, with a chance for monsters intruding as well as setting the time needed between rests. Talking about monsters, Creators now have more options when it comes to body parts for opponents. Besides the standard arm, leg and other basic body parts, there are new parts including hull, cabin, deck, mast and turret for boats and spaceships! Creators can also specify (for a world or individual creature) a different picture than the standard bones bitmap for when a creature dies.
Tome Packager The tome packager, one of the best additions to the core software, has been improved again! It now checks creatures, items, and triggers attached at the tome level and packages them correctly. It also generates an .rsp file instead of an executable, making emailing tomes a breeze!
World Creator
Creating a personalized world has never been easier. Each world can now be assigned an appropriate interface that will change the screen display to more accurately reflect your world. So when a player changes worlds, their interface will portray the new world automatically. The way Creator handles race pictures has also been improved. Creators can now select a separate set of female pictures for their races! World Creators can also change, remove or add race pictures in a kingdom by right-clicking on the picture. Brand new to Frankenstein is a World Packager! It works the same as the Tome Packager, creating a file that can be shared with others via email. Each world now has its own random tome as well! This is a big addition. Creators can put random tome(s) created specifically for their world under Library\
PLAYER REBORN!
A lot of new things are in the Player as well, both to provide a smoother, less buggy playing experience as well as improving overall play. The most obvious change is the new interface. There are now submenus for tomes and characters. The character submenu allows you access to your characters outside of picking them for tomes. You can scan through your roster, checking to see who you have ready to play. Another one of the bigger additions is support for mouse wheels, improved drag & drop capabilities, and more double-clicking! Want to change weapons in combat? Double-click on the weapon you want to use and voila! The weapons swap places (as long as both have been previously examined). Tired of having to drag treasure over to your characters one by one when you don’t want to “Take All”? Double-click on the desired booty and it will go as quick as Uncle Darryl with diarrhea to the active character’s inventory! Want to open a container? Double-click on the chest and it will display its contents (except of course if it’s locked or unexamined). Want to go down the list of goods for sale at the merchant shop? Use your mousewheel to stroll down the list.
By the way, merchants no longer crash if you buy their last item and then try to buy more. We also fixed an error with tomes that contained journal entries, and stopped characters from being able to search in areas that they had already left (when you were transported somewhere else, you could search the previous area). The health bar has undergone a facelift. Instead of the green and red colors, yellow has been added in. Now green shows you are in the top third of your health total, yellow the middle third, and red only shows when you have dropped down to 33% or less of your hit point total. If the world uses a magic bar, then this color scheme works for that as well.
Rune names alongside of the screen have been fixed so that they can be read in all screen resolutions. Last update introduced several new features, including a Home Tome for characters. This update fixes a few of the problems found. For example, when characters visited their home tome, Player used to save the tome as many times as there were characters in the party living in it. Not any more, now it saves only once. Monsters got smarter too in Player too. They will switch weapons if needed, and they no longer check the size or level of their items. If the Creator was dumb enough to give them the wrong sized armor, then the monster will still be able to use it! But don’t worry, characters got smarter as well: now, when they search an area, they also look for traps (and when found, they try to remove them!). The RT 91 error that used to happen when closing the Player is a thing of the past as well.
TOMES
Almost every single tome available since RSI has undergone a facelift. Rewritten to take advantage of all the changes in the new version, tomes now have wandering monsters, camp areas, and increased playing areas. For example, the original Dragon Merchant tome was a quick sample tome to catch and trap a dragon. Now the tome has a redesigned town map, more encounters, and a realistic set of NPC’s instead of the generic library critters.
Combat
Several things were done to improve combat... Players now get to play with stats for their characters. On the Status page, there is a new section that lists all sorts of goodies like hit percentages, kills, tomes played, etc. There is also a new Combat log in the Log display that lists the hits and misses of melees. The infamous Combat Freeze bug is now a thing of the past. We have been hunting this bad boy for many versions now, finding causes here and there and this time we put the final nail in its coffin! Players now have access (through Shift +right-click on a monster) to view the capabilities of opponents. Not everything is in there, but you get a good idea of what you are facing. There is also a new Guard option which allows characters with some Action Points left to attack enemies that come within range. Speaking of Action Points: when the active creature has more than 20 left, the exact figure is displayed just after the AP globes. Also, at the end of combat, there used to be some confusion as to who was the active player. Well, no longer. Now whenever combat is finished, the active player’s name and the highlighted box agree on who is in the lead and doing the talking, searching, etc.... We also added in an ‘End conversation’ topic for "Can't ignore" creatures when they have no such topic, to prevent games from locking up.
Players, did you have trouble looking through a long list of skills for the one skill that you wanted? Now you can filter your skills list! See only spells, etc... And just for the ladies (and those guys who like to play female characters –you know who you are!), making a female character improved as well. Now, when you click on the female button during character creation, you switch to a screen of female graphics to choose! We updated the graphics library as well, adding in some sci-fi graphics, creature graphics, and character graphics.
Camp (Yes, CAMP!)
The biggest thing is -wait for it- the NEW CAMP BUTTON! The first topic new players ask about on the boards is HOW DO I @!#% CAMP! The "Camp" button makes its debut in this release, hopefully forever ending questions about how to camp. New statements Encounter.CanCamp and Map.CanCamp properties can be used by Creators to make it active or not. Creators can set whole maps for camping (such as an indoor residence, a small druid grove, etc...) or encounters (a safe rest area, room at the inn, etc...) as safe to camp within hostile areas. Creators can also set wandering monster encounters in supposedly safe maps by setting an encounter as ‘Danger’.
| GENCON 2009 | Mon 2009.08.09 14:30 |
The banners are hung high and game geeks from all over are on the way to Indy for the absolute best four days in gaming! I'm there too as always - ready to play and purchase.
I'm extra excited this year! We're running Galactic Emperor (2 events on Thursday night) and trying to get folks to play test our new game Ninjato. Maybe you'd like to get a sneak peek at our new game? Maybe you'd just like to play GE? We'll be in the open gaming room off and on. I hope to have buckets of free doo-dads too for give-aways. If you're around, drop me an e-mail here or find Dan and I in the dashing CrossCut Games 2009 t-shirts sporting the thrilling CrossCut logo.
| RuneSword 2.6.0 | Sun 2009.05.10 15:15 |
To keep up on the latest, drop in on the forums!
| Another Quick Update | Thr 2009.03.17 21:30 |
But anyhow, Dan and I are also working on Dungeon Delvers. We've got the inventory clicky stuff mapped out - but I haven't coded it up just yet. I do have a nifty chest picture opening and closing. The goal of inventory was to make a single click all you needed to do to activate an item - or use it in solving a plot card. Dan had the grand idea of including masterwork items that are permanent fixtures to a Delver. I like that too - gives you some gold plating on the character for long term appeal (and it's easy too).
The other part to it is when you smash a monster, it spills out the items right away. Sure, that's arcady and all, but I really like the thought and it should work well in the game. After all the items are spilled, you click on them to shuttle them off to the chest. If you don't click 'em, the items fade off screen. After combat is over (and you're victorious), you can divide the items up amongst your delvers. So that's all pretty clean.
I just need to get coding!
| Developing Dungeon Delvers | Thr 2009.02.12 23:15 |
One thing it definitely does: you now really do care about how much you get hit during combat - how far down your Delvers really go. Every hit is important. That's a great thing for the feel in the game.
| Dungeon Delvers Update | Tue 2009.02.10 21:45 |
Inventory is servicable now - at least you can move things around and trade them. What I just got working was the weapon and smart bomb placement so you can see them. And weapons now work as they should. Magic items (like scrolls and spells or what have you) can now be seen. I also just got multiple special effects explosions working too and that's quite a relief (although there's a problem with one of them - it's not dying right). I'm running out of time tonight, but I hope to get the main health guage in place next along with the refresh bars for the weapon and smart bomb.
| Galactic Emperor Upgrade Kits SOLD OUT! | Tue 2009.01.27 21:45 |
| Merry Christmas! | Wed 2008.12.24 11:15 |
| Order Galactic Emperor! | Thr 2008.12.10 21:15 |
| Click to Order! |
We now have the second print run available - and it's much improved with extra thick cardboard stock, a new reference card and several graphic improvements!
| We're Number 1! | Mon 2008.02.04 22:20 |
Hey! Check it out. RuneSword 2 showed up on the 1up Top 101 Free Games. That's right - after countless years (well, 4-5 years anyhow) and zillions of man hours (no really - it's zillions), RS2 has gotten some proper hype! Congrats especially to the great folks who continue toiling away on the code base and thinking of new nifty things to do (and bugs to fix).
If you happen to have questions, comments, concerns or other conundrums, just post 'em here on the friendly forums. These folks can answer your common questions and offer up some helpful hints.
| Well, THAT's Something! | Thr 2008.01.31 21:45 |
Hey! I opened up the Dungeon Delver's code and added a few lines! Isn't that something? And I played it a bit. It still needs alot of work.
I think I'll list out the tasks again. That generally gets me depressed and motivated at the same time. And I'll open up those data files. And maybe change the intro screen a bit - that always cheers me up! And then.... maybe I'll add a few more lines of code. Who knows? This may begin a whole new trend!
| Top 10 | Sun 2008.01.27 21:15 |
I'm very pleased Galactic Emperor was named as one of the Top 10 Upcoming Games for 2008 by the Dice Tower. Thanks Tom and Sam! It's an honor to be considered and great to know we're above the radar a little bit.
I've also requested a special event at Origins Game Fair this year in Columnbus, Ohio for Galactic Emperor. We'll see if they accept it.
Another news note: I turned Forum Registration back on. It has been turned over for many months, but I think I've figured out a way to stop the pesky spam-bots from requesting access which was flooding my e-mail box in the past. Human spamers - I'll deal with them on a case by case.
In the mean time, if you have any trouble with the forum, you can always post a question or comment - I'm checking pretty much every single day (sometimes multiple times during a day).
| A Small Update | Tue 2008.01.22 23:20 |
If you have any other questions or comments, please send me an e-mail or post on the forums right here. And thanks for visiting the site!
| Merry Chirstmas! | Mon 2007.12.22 00:50 |
| Ah Well | Mon 2007.10.11 22:23 |
| Love and Delvers | Mon 2007.08.31 22:13 |
| GENCON! | Mon 2007.08.13 21:30 |
It's beginning to look alot like GENCON - everywhere you go! Indy is feeling different this week - completely different. There's dancing geeks and zombies. There's special Ram brew and card-driven war games. There's Stormtroopers eatting at Steak-n-Shake. And I'm there too - right in the middle of it all. These are my people....
This year we're running Galactic Emperor and milling about. I hope to see many folks - friends and foes alike. Bring 'em all on! And if you're there, look for us in the Open Gaming Room (116) on Thursday and find us via the BG HQ on Friday. Else, I'll be doing what everyone else is doing: getting my game on!
| Galactic Emperor Rules | Sun 2007.08.03 21:10 |
This isn't the final copy, but we hope it's close. If you have any questions or comments about the rules, please let us know! We'd really appreciate your opinion on how well it reads, how easy (or difficult) the game seems and any point that needs clarification.
| Back from Origins! | Sun 2007.07.22 14:40 |
Dungeon Delvers? It's sitting there for now at about 80% done. It will not be forgotten! But I'm sinking alot of time in Galactic Emperor now. Once I get that squared away and moving toward production, I can divert back to Delvers 100%. Just a question of bandwidth right now - only so many hours are available to me. So don't fret. Delvers will be finished!
| Off to Origins! | Tue 2007.07.05 22:15 |
I'll post a session report (or whatever notes seem right) when I get back on Sunday (or maybe Monday). Wish me good fortune and good play testing!
| Origins | Tue 2007.06.28 23:10 |
So as for a subject, I've been most focused on and ramping up for the Origins show. I'm going to be there only on Saturday (that's all I could manage in my schedule this time), but I'll be there all day and into the early evening. The good news is if you find me, I'll have t-shirts to give away if you win a demo of GE (or if you convince me you need one). Anyone who is a regular here knows you have my attention and gratitude.
And if you're among the throngs who are grumbling, "So what! What's up with Delvers??" I can only say - we're on it! Dan and I talk about it almost every day (so that's something) and I even put some work in on it. Just today I was once again estimating the work remaining - a wearisome, wretched task. Suffice to say, we will get it done, but it won't be done until then.
Other tid bits. Let's see. I am of course working on other games - shouldn't be too much of a surprise - and figuring out a bigger business plan for CrossCut Games. I still have to maintain my work work (the full time job I have during the day), so can only devote so much to the task. But it is still quite fun and rewarding. I'm also playing games regular - the other night, I played Caylus with my wife and eldest daughter and truly enjoyed it - really, the most fun I've had with that game yet. And I'm reading a book on John Adams (David McCullough) - great book.
| Delving! | Tue 2007.06.02 12:20 |
I've been playing Etrian Odyssey on the DS over the last few weeks. It brings back all the wonderful memories of old - you even have to map the dungeon as you play (made very easy with the DS stylus). It's definitely fun and I really appreciate the passion put into it. So I was having fun until I got the first major boss monster on level 5 from which you cannot escape. So if you get into that battle, and you're not ready for it, you're sunk. Couple this with being unable to save your game in that spot (or anywhere near by), you have to replot the entire journey - smashing your way down to the 5th level and hope you can this time swat the baddie. I'm tired of it. Three times in, three times dead. I may try again, but man, it's not fun. And therein is the rub. I'm all for a throw back to days of yore, but let's be decent about it. Let's not suffer for it.
This of course all plays back into Devlers of course. All games are in some way research for Dungeon Delvers. We certainly do allow saving your game. And we have to stay completely focused on fun all the way through. That's a reason (excuse?) why we're still working on the game. Yes, I'm too close to it and overly critical - but I want to do the very best we can packing fun in every moment of play.
| Galactic Emperor! | Tue 2007.05.15 22:30 |
We're going to Gencon! The CrossCut Games limo will be pulling up to the curb and strutting out with glittering games. Galactic Emperor, our first board game, is in full final testing now and we're on the prowl for distribution angles. If you want to play, just stop on by the board room at Gencon and shout for a seat at the table. We'll be happy to take you through the rules and play right along with you.
As for Delvers, it couldn't be better! The game is also in early testing (just us right now) and we're tuning up the adventures and turning on the excitement. Hopefully, we'll get this puppy out the door very soon! It's looking fine with actually *more* adventures that we originally planned. I love it!
And on the other front, we have yet another game almost ready for testing! Yes, this one is a Euro-style card game. More on that baby a bit later.
| Runesword II 2.5.0 Released | Sat 2007.04.21 21:20 |
https://sourceforge.net/projects/runesword/
RSII is composed of two elements: a 'Creator' for creating games (known as tomes), and a 'Player' to play the tomes. The Creator is an easy-to-use, completely flexible game construction set and world builder. The Player features turn-based, strategic combat, 50+ skills, races, a dozen small and full-length adventures, an instant random adventure generator, and different worlds to play in (fantasy and sci-fi).
Fixes in the Creator include updates to the tome wizard and tome packager, several fixes and improvements in searching, map-making and trigger-editing, and increased capabilities when designing worlds. Overall, the Creator has become more user-friendly with easier adventure sharing, additional stability and more options, especially in world construction and character archetypes. Creators can now assign additional stats to new characters, and design new magic systems based on those stats. Entire areas of maps may now be saved to the library as well, speeding up game creation and improving options for Creators.
Changes to the Player include improvements to game saves, items, creature graphics, the character screen, and the combat screen, and additions to the content library. A tray icon is included for the first time, useful for switching away from the game to another program. Players are now given more information about their characters and can see abilities change as armor and weapons are exchanged. The 'Greedy Merchant' Bug was fixed. Weight and bulk limitations have been added in for more realism. The ability to quickly change worlds was also added in, to take full advantage of the worlds now part of the standard download. Medium and long weapon ranges were also changed to extend further. Items in general have received a huge upgrade. Items in the game now have a size, and it must match the character's size to be used. Items also have a new experience level that can be checked against. Additions to the food family of items have enabled easier creation of useful and harmful food items. New items and spells that take advantage of these changes have been included in the library. Along with these changes to items, containers such as bags and backpacks must be at least as large as the items stored within. Problems with animations and creatures switching graphics during combat have been solved as well.
Several new adventures are also included in the standard DL, bringing the total number of ready-to-play adventures to almost three dozen spread across five different worlds. When you add in the random adventure generator, there are literally hundreds of hours of play in RSII without ever using the Creator to create your own adventures.
RSII is open source and completely free to use.
For more information: https://sourceforge.net/projects/runesword/ and https://www.crosscutgames.com/
| Questing | Wed 2007.04.15 15:45 |
I'm plowing through the quests still. Basically building up content and testing each of the quests. There are 32 (or maybe 33) quests to complete in Delvers. Each lasts quite some time; so it's just time consuming to test each one out in turn. And with the added complexity of random encounter placement, I'm still finding some basic problems - like having a thug require gold, preventing you from progressing in the quest, but not having any gold to give him. Or having a hydra confront your first level characters - a slaughter ensues. Not good.
But this is why we push forward. You can't find the trouble unless you put the time in. And it also indicates where more work is needed - around the edges, finishing touches, polish. Anyhow, back to work!
| Encounters! | Wed 2007.03.07 18:50 |
What else? Not much. I'm now working on a floaty-text routine so one can see some special effect stuff going off. That's pretty easy. Just need to type a bit more in and we're good to go there. And then... hmm. Maybe I'll work on ramping up monsters or finish up those trophy pictures OR put together some completed quest maps. Lots of fun things to work on!
| Toadie! | Sat 2007.02.25 00:40 |
| Working Through Encounters | Sat 2007.02.10 23:51 |
| DUNGEON DELVERS! | Mon 2007.02.05 21:45 |
It's back baby! Yes, I have taken a bit of time off from working on Delvers, but I booted it up yesterday and the game just looks like butter - very cool indeed. I just played for awhile and had fun! That's the way it should be when working on a game.
So. What to do? Why, just dive back in and get to it. It's all about content now. I have the levels plotted out, maps completed (I've gone over the original design of 30 different adventures), I have 165 encounter cards and I think Dan has several levels of monsters done (if not, I have several levels myself). Zoodles of items and spells done. Really much of it is about just finishing this stuff off and play testing. Lots of play testing.
There you go! We're back on it and I'm excited!
| New Year - New Game? | Tue 2007.01.09 21:33 |
Another bit of new news - Talisman is going to be republished! Yes, the publisher is Black Industries. Not much more news than that, but still, I find this very exciting - especially since they are stating they have some new rules in place - and a new "speedy play rules written by the legendary Rick Priestley". We'll see if they can pull off a great re-release of a grand old game.
| More News.... | |