Hello and welcome back,

Now if you have been following what has been going on this weekend, you will know that we have been trying to get a G.U.I complete and acceptable, after looking at the ideas presented and fixing the general "problems" as well as looking at how I can implement the G.U.I at larger screen resolutions I think we can continue. You can find the G.U.I's at the bottom of this post.

The video displaying our code upgrades, testing our new speed, as well as showing or well testing our new debug features will be coming in either tomorrow or next Monday, this has to do with background noise and such contributing to the decision. the video will show you a working mode select, and a working log-in system and we hope we can show you how we go about adding buttons using our new debug features I coded earlier this week.

Now we best get onto the bulk of this post, as of late I have been trying to plan out both in my head as well as on paper the more "framework" ideas of Dukandia, and by that I mean the Ideas that both set the limits as well as determine the flexibility the game will provide. This week, rather then tell you some of the games main idea's I will be going over the different User Interfaces, Interactions, and basic controls and how they can limit as well as make the game flexible and like last week I will be looking to hear an opinion on some of the ideas presented.

Movement

Well before we begin, let em first say that this section is split into a few parts, so please bare with me since movement will be no small coding task. The first type is simple click here and you go there, this movement type is pretty widely used by ISO games, involving you clicking and with each click you character moves in a straight line to the destination, stopping if you encounter any objects. Now we also want to add on to this with click movement type B, this is slightly different, when you click the middle mouse button you set a "checkpoint" for the character to travel to. This allows you to more easily move the character through forest without having to wait for the character to get to a certain point, all checkpoints however are final unless canceled by a regular left click. Now finally we have the arrow key method, this allowing you to simply control direction with arrow keys, the downside however being that as an ISO game it will require mostly diagonal movement so you would be pressing two keys for the majority of your travel.

Completing Actions
Completing actions for the most part will be, right clicking to bring up a menu with several options, however I am thinking that adding a "I'm feeling lucky" button will also help in scenarios such as, Right click pant > harvest. This allowing you to do an action much faster then having to right click and select a menu with only one option. I am also thinking that we could add a command such as ctrl + right click to stack events onto each other, so you can add events similar to middle mouse button movement. Now that's all nice and dandy, but well theres one more crazy idea I'm willing to code and thing it could add a bit of multitasking ability usually not seen in games like Dukandia. Area select, lets say you have a field with plants in it, we could add an option to area select the whole field, then what ever action you do such as harvest will apply to all plants possible within this area. Now the downside to this would be that any extra seeds and such that don't fit in your bag would end up on the floor, however it does mean less clicking.


Skill Levels
Now when I talk about skill levels I want to clarify here that I mean values that one would build up over time, strength, intelligence, patience, balance, and other interesting values. These are not skills such as lumber jacking and metal working, those have been renamed to talents to help clear any confusion. Skill levels will be controlled using two methods. One will be skill training, these are little "games" and such you can do in game to pass time as well as gain a few points towards your skills. This would be like, a game were your character lifts heavier and heavier items to build up strength. Another method will allow you to spend the experience that would normally go towards talents on skills, this method however will cost more and more as you progress.

Friends (with benefits?)

Friends will have an interesting interaction with you. You either start off with them if you join someone via their joining code, which will automatically add them and anyone who also used said code, or you meet and add them manually through player to player interaction. friends will serve many purposes many of which I can't wait to see and hear about via the community, but one of the extra ones includes, that's right "benefits" (of course not those benefits ;D a bad pun goes a long way in a wall of text) these benefits will include things such as "A helping hand" in which if you visit a friends property all decay will be reversed by one "tick" and all plants will gain a growth tick unless counter productive. Now things like this won't happen every time, in fact they have a small window of opportunity that will be managed via a random event starter and event time manager the server will be equipped with. These events however small can in fact make a difference as well as add a reason to make friends.

"New" G.U.I

This first menu has been changed a bit to accommodate changes to the Multi-player menu as well as incorporate an idea contributed by Servant of the Lord We would like to thank him for his idea of the signpost exit button for lower resolutions

This next menu has had changes involving allowing in game registration, removing an exit button as well as making the text more legible as advised by Black-Rook.

Questions for the "fans"

Just two questions this time nothing big:

1. Do you think that the idea of the middle mouse button (or mouse wheel as I should have referenced it) is a good move or bad?

2. Do you agree with and/or like the idea of allowing a selected area of action to apply to all those that it can, my select a field harvest all example being the biggest advantage it would provide.

Simple Message to the team, expressing my thanks

Thank you to all that are interested and watching our progress, I would also like to add how happy I am to see this project kicking off, Dukandia has been an idea for many years and I must say if it hadn't been for the people I have helping me develop it no matter how small their contribution was I doubt I would have as much confidence or devotion to getting my own project finished, what started as a personal goal, and project as developed into a "production" by a team of truly talented individuals and I feel that I should send them my thanks. This has mostly been brought on by the work I'm seeing being put in to it by all as well as me going over all my old notes and marveling at how much more this game has become. (no words can express how cheesy this thank you message sounds in my head, but none the less its the best way to express my gratitude)

New Team Member

I'm not entirely sure if this is a permanent team member, as I myself don't have all the details too, but we have recruited at least for now an artist to further help us develop a logo, if she will be doing other work I don't know I should have more information next weekend, or well this weekend, for now that's all I got.