Grimoire Forever

What, the end of the world, or Grimoire?

Milestone

Hey, you want to hear something interesting?

As of this evening, I finished scripting the NPCs. I've been working for 1-2 hours a day on them exclusively since January.

Just to put that in perspective, that's 64 NPCS (to be fair, only 56 of them have scripting) some of them with up to 3000 lines of code in Angelscript. Very complex, intricate interaction with state-based behaviours and a lot of depth. All with different vocabularies, concerns, interactions and details to their behaviours when we are in encounter mode with an NPC.

That's a lot of work for one guy. Yes, I probably could have finished them five years ago, but still it is a lot of work for one person.

I plan to keep testing and editing them during this 3rd week of April (they require a lot of checking inside of game in relation to each other and game logic), be winding them up (in combination with all the logic they interact with inside of game) and be polishing them for the next round of beta testing by the 4th week.

That old bug with critical items going missing is no longer possible. That was the big show stopper in the beta testing for NPCs plus the fact that many of the most important ones had no scripting at all.

So, I know it's kind of ridiculous taking four years to finish them after beta testing in 2005, but instead of sitting there thinking how insane it is to be still working on a game I started development on back in 1995 for DOS with 16 color support and 640x480 resolution, I just worked on them every day for the past four months until they were done.

Now, I'd be flat out lying if I said there was anything left as difficult as that task. It's honestly downhill after making that milestone. I have written a lot of utilities and helper functions in the game since the 2005 beta test to specifically expedite things involved with game editing, for example populating treasure chests, urns, crates and sacks. I have that down to one-click editing now, pick a supertrove (or just use the default and a level for the treasure mixer in that category) and they're done. I even put a button in the game editor that leaps to every feature that is incomplete - for example, every single hieroglyphic with no text in the game or every gate with no opening mechanism. So it only gets easier from here on in. Those NPC scripts were nightmarish stuff. It was taking a minimum of 4 hours of scripting and two hours of testing for each NPC. I am glad I finally quit procrastinating and just did them.

Nice to see an update. The last beta showed me that the game was worth playing, so hopefully you'll wrestle it to a point where you'll finally feel comfy kicking it out the door.

No words of sarcasm from me or words of hope. I just want to play the dang thing whenever it is done, if it is ever done.

Well said !

dteowner said:

Nice to see an update.

Click to expand...

Ditto for me.

It's been ages since a game patterned along the lines of Wizardry was released. Hope to see it come out.

crpgnut said:

It's been ages since a game patterned along the lines of Wizardry was released. Hope to see it come out.

Click to expand...

It's been ages since a game patterned along the lines of Wizardry was released for the PC.

They're released all the time on other platforms: The Quest, The Dark Spire, the Etrian Odyssey series, etc.

Nice to hear from you Cleve. Give me a call sometime!!

@BadYeti, Yep, I wouldn't know about any of the console games. I'm not a TV watcher, so I don't have a big screen with one of the big toys attached to it. If I watched more TV, I think the investment would be worth it. I just don't feel right buying a console, a big TV, and a stereo sound system; when I already have a computer that serves all their functions. If I was a big fan of TV though, the situation would be different. Computers are only somewhat effective as a television. They're getting better but the gap is still pretty large. Some of the consoles are pretty attractive though...

Another piece of the problem for me is that I only play crpgs and the occasional hybrid game. If there was a console that focused on almost all European or American fantasy crpgs, then I'd be in heaven I really don't like Jrpgs.

Another year

Well, another year has gone by.

(pokes head in and looks around)

Grimoire?? Anyone seen it?

Nope?

I'll check back in another year.

FW

Give it until 2050. Come on... you know you want to.

grimoiresystems.com shows "Account suspended"
Anyone heard anything from Cleve?

By the way, how old is Cleve?

I have heard that Cleve was eaten by a Grue.

IT LIVES!

Who'd have thought that over a year and a half later, we'd still be waiting?

*sarcasm meter explodes*

Did cleve forget to re-register his website domain? www.grimoiresystems.com site is down.

Most likely, he seems to do that quite regularly!!

I'm sure he's just busy working on the game so hard he can't even update the website.

Cleve

There has been some recent posts elsewhere suggesting Cleve has passed away.

I did read some time ago the beta testers signed up to some sort of legal arrangement whereby they were not allowed to give the game to others. If Cleve is dead does this legal arrangement die with him?

"elsewhere",eh? I'll believe it when I hear it from someone with a personal link to him, like Dhruin. Otherwise its just spreading internet rumours.