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Andor's Trail Project Meeting #39

Official news about Andor's Trail.
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sdevaney
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Andor's Trail Project Meeting #39

Post by sdevaney »

Andor’s Trail Project Meeting #39
2013-11-03
Present: Oskar Wiksten(oskar.wiksten), Ian Haase(Ian)

1. Follow-up from last meeting:
Go over previous meetings TODO’s.

2. Completed since the last meeting:
Oskar: Scripts & conversation can now:
- Spawn and remove monsters, even on other maps (yay!)
- Deactivate spawn areas (disables future spawning, but keeps already spawned monsters)
- Activate and deactivate mapchange areas, even on other maps
Thanks to Zukero for laying the foundation for that.

Zukero: Requirements for conversation replies and key areas can now be negated. For example, require that the player is NOT wearing [some item] to be able to select a reply.

New type of requirement for scripts and conversations: "hasActorCondition"

3. Things that are being worked on:
v0.7.1a0 APK is now packaged will be released “pretty soon now”

4. Discussion of some forum threads/posts that people have found interesting, or want clarification on, or maybe a question answered:
Ian:

sort of crafting quest (e.g. Xul’viir)
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... ment+quest
Interesting quest idea! Only thing left to do is to write it up as a quest then. Anyone in the community want to do that? *hint* *hint* Maybe Link himself?

rare items for more monsters? Wasp’s Sting?
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... +available
Could be a nice idea if done correctly. The dropped items shouldn’t be that good though. We probably don’t want to add more of the legendary-overpowered items, since it encourages grinding - and we don’t want to do that. But the regular mobs could drop something by a chance of 1/100 that is a rare (but not that good) item. Anyone want to do some suggestions for that in the content editor & do a pull request?

Legendary items for different level ranges
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f= ... +different
We probably don’t want to level-restrict, but restricting based on whether the player has done some quest or not is a good idea. We could tie that into some story (player has found a key so that he can enter, player has found some secret phrase to be able to enter, etc). More items is always welcome, if we can find nice graphics for them. Someone from the community might want to add the idea in the content editor with a map?

Quest idea: removing Blackwater Misery from Blackwater items
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4350
Nice idea! Some of those items are really strong, so we would probably need to nerf them if we remove the condition from them by a quest. “Blackwater iron sword” and “Blackwater leather cap” for example, they’re way overpowered.
Anyone from the community want to do this in the content editor?

(Bug?)Npcs disappeared:
http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4345
Sounds really strange (and unfortunate). The regular savegame slots should not be affected by a partial (or corrupted) savegame in the quickslot. “Stray photon from mars” comes to mind. Is it possible to reproduce on an emulator? :)

Teleport from/to Lodar?
Options:
1) Some teleport that you need to pay for (in some way).
2) Shortcuts through the green maze in selected places, with the new “replace” areas that can open up paths.
3) Shortcut from the main road directly to Lodar’s hideaway.
4) Hidden tunnel below Lodar’s hideaway that in turn leads to somewhere around the FOaming Flask tavern.
Oskar likes option 2 & 4 :)
TODO: Ian: will make some suggestions as to how the maps for that can look.

Quest reward xp for different level ranges?
We won’t do that. We want to give low & high level players the same chance and rewards. If you find an area that you can’t beat, it gives a sense of accomplishment to return to that area later once you’ve levelled up. Same goes for quest & monster rewards.
If it’s a long quest or if the quest requires you to kill higher level monsters, then you’d naturally get a better reward, but the reward should be the same regardless of your level, if you managed to beat it.

Classes: rogue/ wizard/ warrior/ ranger?
We won’t do classes, or at least not call it classes. Instead, we will allow the player to get better at the things the player chooses. Some of those choices will of course restrict what *other* choices you can make, but allowing the player to get better at, for example, “sword-fighting” or “reading scrolls” is something that we’ll do. All starting players should be the same stats, but deviate once the player makes choices.

5. Open Discussion:
Track time spent in game?
Could be a neat feature. It could track the time you’ve spent in game in total, and not only in the current savegame that you’re working on.

Stephen: https://github.com/thecodepath/android_guides
Stephen: (The above link is more of a resource for streamlining the execution, flow, and output of your code project, which is nice. I didn't stumble upon the references for designing options for monitoring how long a player has been, in our case, playing Andor's Trail. My opinion concerning having knowledge of the total amount of time spent playing is; that it may be a benefit to a developer (in the scenario where you may wish to reach out to someone who has logged some considerable number of days playing, in order to receive experienced feedback), but for the general player, may serve as a point of discouragement from playing, as they discover how much of their time is actually spent playing Andor's Trail, as opposed to living life. ~ SCS)

Stephen: Player initiated screenshots?
Most of the more recent variants of the Android OS generate a screenshot of what was in use at the time of a crash, to be included in the crash report. How does everyone feel about adding the ability for the player to take a screenshot on demand while playing? This would allow users who don't have general screenshot capability to save images for either personal reasons, or to post on the forum and/or submit along with general questions, comments, tips, and bug reports.

Most (all?) devices already have some way of doing screenshots? For example, on Samsung Galaxy you swipe your whole hand across the screen, on Nexus 4 you press power & volume-down. There are different ways for each device on how to do that already, and thus probably not something that we should re-build as a feature inside the game?

[In my proposed question, I referenced a software utilization for consideration, not something that is either a device specific implementation (which most newer or current ones have, but also may be available due to the more recent operating system they use). Many app and game titles allow screenshot capture. I was merely suggesting a topic for discussion that I believed worthy of mention, which also would have allowed me to see if any further decision had developed regarding our previous conversations about what versions of the Android OS Andor's Trail would be written to continue to support. As I previously wrote, this implementation would benefit "users who don't have general screenshot capability", especially if they were using an older device that relies on an older version of Android. However, your point is acknowledged. ~ SCS]

6. What should we have ready for the next meeting?
Oskar: Will go through Issue Tracker on Googlecode & TaskFreak. Release v0.7.1a0 to forums once we’re sure it doesn’t crash your device or eat your savegames.

Ian: Shortcut from Lodar’s hideaway. Working on Mt. Galmore.
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Re: Andor's Trail Project Meeting #39

Post by Sarumar »

@Link,

I hope that you already write this quest?

"...... Sortt of crafting quest (e.g. Xul’viir)viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4344&hilit=continuing+item+development+questInteresting quest idea! Only thing left to do is to write it up as a quest then. Anyone in the community want to do that? *hint* *hint* Maybe Link himself? ..."
Sarumar
..dansing left foot polka with Hirathil

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