The 2BeeGames.com voting continues. Last week we got 17% of all votes which means we reached first place out of 120 games! Thank you everyone! This was only about 170 votes, so don't think your vote doesn't matter!
There are two votings left, so please vote for us this week and the next, and get all of your friends to help (we are following the instructions of the contest organizers, and advertising a bit ourselves 
)! You can vote at 2BeeGames.com.
In other news, I've been hard at work replacing our sound engine with a brand new custom made engine. We used to use Audiere, which turned out to crash at random due to threading bugs. So now I'm implementing a new sound engine from scratch. This is good old low level coding with threads and getting my hands greasy with bytes and char arrays.
My first choise was to use Microsoft's new XAct interface, but turns out it has horrible bugs if you don't use their own sound bank generation tools. Since I want to encourage open formats such as OGG, I'm going to use a lower level API called XAudio2. Unfortunately this means I have to write my own streaming routines and a lot of low level code. But it also means I have complete control over it, and it means our modders won't have to use any proprietary tools to create their audio. It's a bit more work for me, but hopefully rewarding in the end!
Driftmoon got into the finals! But we'll get eliminated if we don't get enough votes, so please help us!
There are two places I need you to vote. The poll on the right side of the 2BeeGames site is the most important, so cast your vote there. The other is the star rating on the 2BeeGames Driftmoon page.
Let's do it people! I know we can win this!
Here's something for anyone interested in making maps for Driftmoon. It's the editor interface for AI paths. Some of you may remember that Driftmoon's predecessor Notrium didn't have any path finding abilities, and as such the AI was really idiotic in closed areas. In Driftmoon the map maker can define paths that the AI can take if it wants to get from one room to another. The reason we need to have a good pathfinding system is not just enemies, but also your companions. They need to be able to follow you intelligently, and not get stuck somewhere.
My original pathfinding system was based on a very thick grid, and the game would check which points were accessible from which. Unfortunately that wasn't good for open areas, as there could be up to hundreds of points within a very short path, and it wasn't good for dungeons, as the automatic points tended to be too sparse for thin corridors - the game thought they were solid rock. So now we have to place the points manually, and the paths between the points are made automatically. It only takes a few minutes time, and the AI behaves much better, so I think it's worth the time spent.
We've already hidden about a dozen feathers in the game in hard to spot places, and the plan is to include a hundred of them. Each one gives you more XP, and if you've found enough by the end of the game, you can unlock something. But what? Unlock a weapon? Unlock a party member?
Thanks to your replies in the previous combat post! I've read them carefully over and over again in the dark of the night, and tweaked and tweaked. And here's the short of how combat in Driftmoon works right now. Bear in mind that Driftmoon is an RPG, and not a very action oriented at that. This is not Diablo, and you will not be blindly fighting enemies for hours at an end: you'll be doing much more questing (eg. exploring, finding interesting places/items, solving mysteries, having deep and/or entertaining discussions - perhaps even meeting Bobby).
Combat will be real time, but can be paused to use items and give orders. I switched ranged combat from Diablo style constantly clicking into a more strategic style. Now we click once on an enemy to attack it, and from there on we select from various attacks we want to use. In the screenshot we are wielding a bow and a shield, so we can select from two bow attacks (Double shot is cool!) and one shield attack (ram enemy).
Another change is that we have damage types. The basic damage types are slashing, piercing, crushing, and slapping(!), and we're going to have more for magical weapons and creatures. The skeleton is pretty resistant to piercing damage, as arrows go straight through it. Flying insects are resistant to all other damage types than slapping. So you can kill them simply by slapping them real hard.
The new system also allows you to wield all kinds of weapons simultaneously. Wielding a shield and a bow in the same hand is not prohibited. If you happen to find a spiked helmet, you can use that to headbutt your enemies. All weapons can have multiple different attacks. And I'm actually thinking of making the torch a weapon as well!
Personally I like the new combat system. It allows a fair bit of strategy and differentiation, and it is fairly simple in the beginning while it can get more complex later in the game. Plus we've got slapping!
Your comments?
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