Ch..ch..changes

Greetings all,

Seems I am on-par with my monthly updates.

First off, I'd like to say; sorry the changes to Revel are taking so long; but I can say a large part of this delay has been through prototyping and having the resolve to say:

"Nah.. that doesn't look/play/feel/sound/smell good."

Instead of simply saying "meh. its good enough" as I've admittedly done in some aspects of my previous games.

I take comfort in the fact, that as changes are made; fewer changes are made after the fact; meaning that we are gaining ground.


That being said, where are we?

Recently there have been some changes to planned control mechanisms, and UI.

A plan for the v21 to v22 shift was to bring a mouse/pointer/tap 'centric control system to Revel.

In practice this has proven to be a really horrible ideal; for all the reasons it was a problem in Morning's Wrath, and then some.



The main issue that plagued v21 was no so much a WASD/On Screen Gamepad control system; but that rooms were screen-sized only.

So I jumped the gun and threw the baby out with the bathwater; the bottom line is I should have prototyped it first.

Implementation of the mouse driven system opened the need for a lot of additional systems and resource data (map collision shapes, structure collision shapes, hit test shapes, etc.)

...frankly it ate a lot of time, and turned out not to play well.


This also coupled with the fact currently combat in revel has been a sort of slash-fest; it has felt as if there is a disconnect between the

player, and the absurd amount of control they're meant to have over the game; and the blunt controls offered.



I could go on and on; but the point is, 'we tried some stuff, some of it worked, some of it did not; we should have prototypes via simpler means'.


So now the new plans/systems have been prototyped and are in process of being implemented.


Here is a sneak peek of how things are likely to look for our next release; WiP of course: