Merry Prankster Games

Not much to report this week; just working on filling in random quests for chapter 2. Here’s a screenshot of my test party battling an ogre:

For more information about The Accursed Crown of the Giant King: https://prankster.com/acotgk

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

For this video, the party comes upon a haunted well. The first attempt to purify the well leads to a group of spectres emanating forth, a challenging battle for the party! After the party is victorious, the purification of the well then succeeds. You may not appreciate it, but I am proud of the scripting involved in this scene; summoning monsters, turning the tainted, smoking, evil well into a normal well, and the associated quest and journal entries.

More videos in the weeks to come.

Ran into an interesting bug in Accursed Crown of the Giant King today. The spell Scare was unexpectedly lasting 0 seconds.

The Scare spell inflicts fear on the target, and should last for 30 seconds. In the case where the target makes his saving throw, the spell duration should be minimized, which in this case means 10 seconds.

So, digging in, the first issue I found was that the saving throw message was not getting displayed properly. As part of some changes that I made a while back, the message was getting created, but never displayed. That had the additional result that the fact that the target was successfully saving, and thus the spell should have a short duration, was not obvious at all.

But that wasn’t the whole issue. Once I started to display the message, it became obvious that the bug occurred when the save succeeded. However, the short duration was much shorter than expected. Digging in further, I quickly found that the duration was getting reduced several times; specifically divided by 2. So the duration was ending up at 30/16, or about 1 second. The fix ended up being one line, to simple make the duration 10 seconds in this case. Another bug bites the dust!

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

This week I’ve been cranking through some areas. Thanks to procedural generation this goes a lot faster than it used to, though a lot of work went into getting the generation going in the first place. The video is from the Orvasin Lands, where the party explores some orc caves located below.

More videos in the weeks to come.

I ran into a fun bug in Accursed Crown of the Giant King today, and thought I’d share. See the door in this screenshot:

When you come upon this door, if you have the Fire key and the Ice key, you should be able to open the door. That works OK. Also, to avoid inventory clutter, the game removes the keys. A little unrealistic, but probably best for the player.

However, when you come back to the door, oops! You can’t open it any more. I forgot to save the state of the opened door. Easy enough to fix, my engine supports arbitrary tags, just set a tag when the player opens the door. Then when the player tries to open the door the second time, check the tag, and the door opens.

Another day, another bug fixed.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

I’ve switched to doing a video every other week. As I develop the game further, I should have something new to show from the game every couple of weeks. This week, I’ve completed the town of Baddo Camp, a temporary settlement of dwarves fleeing chaos in the Giant Kingdom. The party explores the town, talks to some folks, and peeks into a location.

More videos in the weeks to come.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

In this week’s video, the party completes a quest. The person who assigned the quest then offers to join the party, and is welcomed as the new spellcaster.

More videos in the weeks to come. I’m thinking about switching to a video every other week, though it is good to put one out every week because I stay in practice. TBD.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

This week’s progress: Chapter 2 is now winnable! I still have a fair amount of work to do filling in the details of Chapter 2, but this is a good accomplishment.

More videos in the weeks to come.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2020 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

This video demonstrates the party unsealing a magic mirror, magically guarded in the pinnacle of a tower. In the process, the party completes a quest and gains valuable experience.

More videos in the weeks to come.