To Be King Upgrades

I've begun working closely with Tim "Sudden Death" McCarron on making vast improvements to the game. Tim is far more knowledgeable on how to get the Vassal engine to do things that I didn't even know were possible. In the short time we've worked together, I've already found his assistance to be invaluable and I believe we can all look forward to some amazing improvements in future versions of TBK.

This page will be used as sort of a public journal on our progress through these changes so you'll be able to see what lies ahead. Here's a few things we're currently working on.

Improved Graphics

We're getting rid of the black and white labels on terrain tiles. Here's a sample of one of the new tiles:

Army and officer units are also being redone. The new units feature adjustment buttons for adjusting the number of units on a counter (which has been increased to 10) and for changing rank on officer counters. They've been increased in size from 75 x 75 to 100 x 100, also. Here's a sample of each:



Also, these, and many other counters, will be making use of transparent overlays rather than full graphics for piece changes. This should reduce the graphic size - and the TBK package size - considerably.

Vastly Improved Automation

I'm quickly learning how to get things to trigger other things ...which in turn, trigger more things, etc. This will greatly improve the player's interaction with the game interface. The area that we're concentrating on the most is the world creation process. I've already figured out how to randomly place all the terrain in the Mariah Midlands with the click of a button. I'm now working on having the process run checks to insure the tiles that need to be there are present and that Impassible tiles are not placed in invalid locations.

I'm pretty confident that future versions will reduce the time spent on world building (now roughly 30 to 40 minutes, not to mention the engine lag it produces) to just a few minutes and will involve little more than a few button clicks. Since this new process will send tiles directly to a location, rather than dragging them across the map, the engine performance will improve dramatically ...it doesn't like a multitude of things being dragged around.

There's several other areas we'll be addressing for automation. Future versions should be much easier to use and should speed up game play dramatically.

Entry 08/04/08

Automated World Creation Update

Tim sent me a mod change that now completely builds the Mariah Lowlands area with a few mouse clicks and a bit of player interaction ...mostly just to make some minor changes if certain conditions apply. Overall, it is very cool! I'm importing those changes into the official mod now.

Chart Windows

We're also working on having chart window displays for terrain tiles with descriptions rather than the simple looking text box that you see now. The new window for the bank has clickable shields that will show the player status as far as whether they've hired a broker or not.

Graphics Labels

We're also getting rid of those funky black & white terrain statistic labels. They are now graphically displayed and very nice. Also, we now have icon graphics for Stop and Safety Zone areas.

Entry 08/06/08

Automated World Creation Update

The Mariah Lowlands building process is now imported and works great! It's a 7 step process that takes about 30 seconds to complete and builds the entire Lowlands area with a minimum of interaction from the user ...mostly just checks to make sure there's no Impassible terrain blocking the path of travel and making sure forested locations are available where they should be.

Here's a sample shot showing the World Creator tool on the right. This tool appears in a new game and disappears automatically when the build of the Kingdom is complete. This shot also shows the step in which all the terrain has been randomly and automatically placed and the creator tool is telling the player to check and see if any Impassible locations are blocking the line of travel. The system highlights these locations in red to make them easy to spot.

You'll note there's an Impassible location on the far left that's blocking the bridge into town and another sitting right in front of the stone bridge that connects the two halves of the Lowlands. These obviously have to be replaced. Here's a shot showing the one in front of the stone bridge being replaced. Just right-click it and select Replace Tile and it places a new one.

Once you've made the changes, click the button on the creator tool and that will take you to the next step. You'll also note the improved terrain statistic labels we've incorporated into the mod. Moving onwards to automating the Midlands now.

Entry 08/14/08

Automated World Creation Update

Tim has sent me a complete version of the world creation process for the Kingdom map. I'm busy importing into the official mod. I've just finished the Midlands area and am moving on to importing the Wastelands build process.

While I'm doing that, Tim is going to tackle automating the character creation system and how the character's inventory and other things are handled. Things are looking good!

Entry 08/29/08

Automated World Creation Update

It's been a while since I've made an entry in this journal. But, that's not to say things are slacking off. The world creation for the Kingdom map is complete. It now takes just a couple minutes to build a completely random world on the Kingdom map. Tim has also completed the Catacombs map build but it hasn't been imported into the official version yet.

Restructuring the Player Characters

Tim has also shown me a preview of what's to come for the player tokens. Really exciting stuff! A character's race will now be tied internally directly to the contender and the player's inventory sheet will now handle all the player's statistics so we won't need to use those ugly little text boxes anymore. Things will also be much more automated, which will greatly reduce the need to update and keep track of things. We're quickly moving towards our goal of automating the game to the point to where people can just play and all the mundane stuff is taken care of by itself.

A New Game for Trivia Buffs

While Tim is implementing all this cool stuff - I'm leaving it to him as I tend to get lost trying to figure out how to make things work - I've been developing a new game. It's a semi-strategic trivia game that can be played with a built in deck of trivia cards or can be played using external cards from any trivia source. Here's a quick peek of the game board:

The most time consuming part of this will be creating the trivia cards. If there's any trivia fans out there who would like to build card decks for this game, let me know. I'll provide all the tools and instructions you need. It's not too complicated ...it just involves making PNG graphics for each question (template provided) and simple instruction on how to create a deck.

Stay tuned for details on this one. I'll probably set up a new web page and forum for this game as things develop.

Entry 09/17/08

Automated World Creation Update

World creation system now includes the Catacombs map and Tim is working on the Palace map. I'm also going to be implementing the pre-game Merchant setup into the build process soon.

Game Events

I've restructured the Events buttons so that when you click the Event button to generate an event, it is now generated automatically as opposed to sending a message telling you to draw a card or roll D4 gold pieces, etc. In other words, cards will automatically appear, windows will automatically open, items and gold will appear spontaneously, etc. Works quite well and reduces a lot of the steps involved in the Events process. Event buttons have been updated on all maps. This will continue to be improved as things move along ...for example, if a Roamer is generated, it will automatically move to a random location based on its "Start" attribute, battle statistics (hit points, run factor, etc.) will be generated automatically when a creature appears, gems will appear with a randomly generated base value, etc.

My next challenge will be to update the "Round Update" button so that all updates are done automatically. This will be a big improvement over the existing system as a specific player won't be needed to make sure everything is updated between rounds.

Next Beta Version Release

I originally set the next beta version release date for 11/01/08. But with all the changes and automation that's being incorporated into the game, we've decided to hold it until the rebuild is complete. This may take a few months. In the meantime, we encourage people to drop by the forum and tell us what you think or express any ideas and suggestions. The current version has been downloaded a lot but the forum is still very, very slow. We can't fix things if we don't know they're broken or improve other systems beyond what we're working on if we don't know there's a need. So ...speak up!

Entry 11/16/08

Hiatus

To Be King has been put on hold for the time being. The amount of work that needs to be done to fully automate the game is rather overwhelming and - after spending 2 to 6 hours a day on it for a year and a half - I am totally burned out. So, I'm going to put TBK on the back burner for a while until I get my interest back.

In the meantime, I've developed and finished the trivia game I mentioned above. It's called Trivial Wars and a beta version will be released very soon. Unlike TBK, this game is fully automated and quite easy to use. It will not use a built-in deck of trivia questions (as mentioned above) but can be used with any 6-category type trivia cards (like Trivial Pursuit) and is best played with several different card sets. Check out the Trivial Wars web page.

Click the pic below to see a shot of the game board in action.

Entry 12/04/08

To Be King is back in production. The journal is being continued on the forum here.

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