Posted February 01, 2020 by Jeroen P. Broks
Hello;
If you are reading this, then hey welcome to this project.
Years ago, I did create a game called "The Secrets of Dyrt". When I went into the "Star Story" project after that, and came up with a completely new style of RPG creation, the way Dyrt was created already made me regret it. So I was already planning for a long time to redo that game in my new UI style. Another thing that came up is BlitzMax which I used to create the LAURA engine in which Dyrt was created. BlitzMax does not appear to be functional anymore. Whatever I do, BlitzMax programs refuse to compile properly and even Brucey's NG didn't help anymore. Since my BlitzMax programs are focussed on OpenGL and my computer for some reason hating that, I have lagging issues... No that could not be caused by bad programming from my side, as I simply used some existing libraries for the graphics rendering, plus it was tested on a Mac that was already outdated when I began the original project and it always worked fluently on there. All in all I was condemned to a new programming language. For this game I created NALA in C#. The current version relies on XNA and MonoGame, but if I can get a hold of better engines (as XNA has some issues I don't like), NALA has been set up to be as flexible as possible so using different frameworks/engines as background should be easier now. Even recreating it entirely in C or C++ is an option now. I've also created NIL as an extension to the Lua scripting language, and the entire game has been scripted in NIL (with SASKIA as a support script language, but SASKIA in turn was created in NIL).
Away from the technobabble and getting more into the stuff the non-nerds among us may also understand, I made a complete new UI which is based on how things were done in Star Story and The Fairy Tale REVAMPED. The rules for combat are roughly the same is in the original version, but a few things have been balanced out more properly, particularly the speed with which the playable characters and enemies move over the time gauge. The entire game is now also playable with the mouse, and the new UI is even setup that way that the base to port the game to mobile devices can be an option for the future, although some very important hurdles have to be tackled for that. Walking around is not the issue, as the game uses a Dijkstra-based pathfinder, it's just that a few options still use the right mouse button and I need to find a proper replacement for that.
The game is only halfway it's production now, so partially playable. That means that you can already get quite far in the game, but you cannot yet reach the final boss. Hey, if you wanna test what I have already and point out bugs (and maybe some spelling/grammar errors the story has), by all means let me know. I only give out a few alpha testing spots, and be sure you have a bit of the insights I may require to properly describe issues. I mean "It doesn't work" is not really informative, and if you understand what I mean, then you may be the guy/girl who can help me.
What you should have:
This is a "no budget" project, so every form of contribution of any kind is a volunteer job, however "honor to whom honor is due" is my motto when it comes to these things, so everybody, including alpha testers, will be credited in the game's end credits and in the documentation files. When you are an alpha tester you may get access to my 'daily build', which will be updated every day on both Game Jolt and itch (thanks to butler that is easy to do and on Game Jolt, I'm one of the alpha testers of gjpush, so that also makes things easy on me there). It goes without saying, but don't throw away access keys, if I find out you do, I may have to take down the test upload/page and kick you out as an alpha tester and I do not want that. You can just leave a comment when interested, and please note if you prefer itch or Game Jolt for keeping the daily build up to date.
If the NIL scripting language interests you, well all game scripts are publicly viewable in my GitHub repository (Or if you prefer bitbucket for viewing code (which could be nice as bitbucket does at least TRY to syntax highlight NIL, eventhough it's far from perfect, you can go here, but I must note that the repository on bitbucket is merely a close of my GitHub repository, and may even be a bit behind, as I push things over there less often... All commits are the same though😎) or visit my repository for the NIL language itself.
And that's all for now....