July 26th Progress

Bug fixes!

     Today I was able to fix several bugs that I have come across. Including XP gain glitches, invisible NPCs in some situations, and the HUD in the loot screen. There were several other small glitches fixed but it's too many small things to list.

     Anyways, the midnight attack system is done as far as I know. I have been testing it and haven't come across any bugs yet that I haven't been able to fix easily. I will be talking to my brother Skye (Skyepilot2) and asking him if he is available to make a background for the midnight attack system in which case I will be able to move on with development.

     Next thing to work on: I will be spicing up the combat system a little bit, speeding up AI turns and fixing issues with weapon accuracy, etc.

July 25th Progress

Midnight attack system almost complete.
Most of the code regarding the midnight attack system has been implemented. The only code left for this system is fixing a few bugs and glitches caused when fighting from inside the town. After these are fixed I will be moving on to the graphical/design portion of this system as there is barely any of the graphical design done yet. I am not worried about this portion looking perfect as of yet however. I am more focused on completing some other important features that I want done, then afterwards coming back and improving graphics in several aspects of the game.

-Tgb

Beta Download Open

Windows OS:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/9220qtyw043/Renewal_Beta_V1.0_Win.zip
Mac OS:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/39kr6trnv3vh/n/Renewal_Beta_V1_0_Mac_zip
Contact me if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions for the next release, as ideas are always taken into consideration with my own concepts!
Keep in mind this game is not in it's full state and you may notice less content then a full fledged game. Beta V1.0 is focused on the game engine and gameflow of the game not the content amounts.  There is bound to be a lot of content added throughout upcoming releases, as well as new and improved features. This being said, there are some known bugs in V1.0, which have been fixed already. However the known bugs barely effect gameplay and so will be released when V1.1 comes out.
That's all to say about it, have fun, and don't forget to give feedback in the end, it is always highly appreciated!

Midnight Attack System

All of the bugs that have been discovered by Beta testers up to this point have been fixed. I plan to move on with adding a few new items as I come up with how I am going to finish developing the midnight attack system.

For those that do not know what the midnight attack system is: Every midnight in the game, a horde of zombies hits the towns defences. If overrun, the town will have zombies spawning inside it until cleared out. This increases the push for survival because players are expected to not only fight to collect food and weapons, but also to barricade the town. After so many days of the town being overrun without being cleared I possibly want to make it impossible to clear making the game very challenging to survive at that point, but still possible. Certain town features would also be unavailable when the town is overrun (Hospital maybe?).

Contact me with feedback or suggestions at RenewalTheGame_Support@hotmail.com

-Tgb

Support the Developent!

Hey everyone it would be greatly appreciated if I could get some support at Renewals newly set up Indiegogo page. If you are not satisfied with the information posted on the blog feel free to read through all of the information on the page as well a watching the video I made of myself talking about Renewal! All support is appreciated, and I thank you for any contributions ahead of time. Here is the link:
http://igg.me/at/RenewalTheGame/x/1810132

Pledge your heart out ;)
-Tgb

Opening the game!

The game can be opened with Internet browsers, however I noticed many issues with playing through a browser including extreme lag so I suggest playing by opening the game file with the given standalone flash player that is included in the download! If you do not know how to do this do it as follows: Right click on Renewal Beta V1.0 (.swf) and clic on open with... Then choose browse for program and navigate to the game folder. Then select the Flash player within the folder to open the game with and it should work great!

-Tgb

Beta V1.0 Release!

I have not been updating the blog for the last couple of days simply because I was just fixing up all of the little issues I have come across before beta was ready. However it is here, and if you would like to see what is new why not try it out for yourself!

Beta version 1.0 is now complete. Links to the download(s) will be emailed to everyone who has signed up for beta. I did some testing on compatibility for the game as well for when it comes to OS. The following OS's are guaranteed compatible with Renewal Beta V1.0:
Windows XP (1)
Windows Vista (1)
Windows 7 (1)
Windows 8 (1)
Mac (2)

These 2 versions are both uploaded online and beta testers will be receiving a link to both. I am not sure if the windows version or Mac version will work on any other OS's as I do not have access to any other OS's... however you may feel free to test it out if you would like to.

It is not too late to sign up for beta, if you would like to be directed to the beta downloads please contact me at RenewalTheGame_Support@hotmail.com and you will be added to the beta list! All feedback is welcome and encouraged as I will need a bit of insight as to what needs to be done for Beta V1.1. I have a small list of criteria but I will need any bugs reported to me through the contact information above. There may be some that I have not came across at this point in time.

-Tgb

P.S If it would be easier to contact me through a facebook page or twitter page please do say so as it would be a simple thing to create for the good it may do :)

July 11th

NPCs were finished being added to the game today. As stated in yesterdays update the NPC position tracker was set up for Tech Tile Town in all the ways I could think of. Besides NPCs I wasn't able to complete very much. I ran into several issue while trying to update the general store's interiors and luckily was able to pass them all by the time my work came to an end today. But this did put a dent in the development cycle, pushing back the estimated finish time by about a full day. Originally I had planned for beta to release around July 18th, after speeding through NPCs, dialog, and quests, I was able to cut off a day from the estimated release. Therefore the estimated release date is now right back at July 18th :)

-Tgb

July 10th NPCs

Today I implemented more NPC features including casual NPC conversations with different dialog. I also spent a bunch of time developing a movement system for the NPC survivors. They will casually walk around a bit and stop and look towards you when you go to talk to them. It is set up so that any NPC can have quests once they are added to the quest list. So far I have implemented 3 of the 6 new survivors that will be walking the town, and there are still a few small fixes I would like to do. One fix that is quite important is an NPC position tracker  so when you leave the town and come back, NPCs will be where they were when you left (rather then resetting to defaults). Tomorrow I will finish the NPC development and move onto décor within stores as well as adding the already drawn store clerks.

-Tgb
Don't forget to email me at RenewalTheGame_Support@hotmail.com to answer any questions about development, or to SIGN UP FOR BETA!  

July 9th Quest and Dialog

Today was spent on fixing glitches within the quest system and dialog system as well as making some pretty big improvements. Pre dialog when going to accept quests has been added completely. A lot of code for the quest system and dialog system has been minimized to improve performance as well as make new implementations much easier/quicker. Gaining two levels at once (gaining one when you are still assigning skill points) has been fixed to actually work now.

The most notable feature of todays progress is the quests however, six all new quests were added to the game as well as the capability to have different quest givers. You can accept quests from Robert (originally), as well as Jeff and potentially any other NPCs I want to have quests. There will be more quests added however I am not sure if that will be after beta testing or if it will be before hand.

Just a couple minor touches with the quest system that I would like to fix up tomorrow morning before I move on to fixing and improving the world beyond scenes. Which in fact has also already been started, today weeds and trash/papers have been added as randomly generated décor to the world beyond scenes with the goal in mind of making it look somewhat more apocalyptic.

-Tgb

July 8th Progress

Now that the weekend is over I have accumulated a new list of bugs/issues which were all fixed sunday night and today, I have also gotten started on the new list of features needing to be done before beta release. I am almost positive I will be able to release beta by Friday if I keep working at this rate. Not much to be said however I am beginning to work on NPC movement and basic dialog for them. Hopefully I will be able to finish that by tomorrow night and continue on with graphics additions as well as quests.

-Tgb

July 5th progress

Today I was able to completely finish fixing all of the bugs and glitches I could find as well as make more improvements. The crafting feature has been re-implemented, and can now be accessed directly from inside the players house. A few pieces of character customizable content was added (still not much). Several major features were also fixed today such as the day and night cycle, and most importantly I was able to pinpoint and remove an error within the world beyond scenes that would cause a game freeze.

All together a majority of todays progress was done on the world beyond enemy spawn system, lootable spawn system, and technical fixes within the world beyond as well.

For this weekend I will be visiting Greenguy and Skyepilot, whom are both going to test the game and look for glitches/bugs to fix, as well as make suggestions for small improvements before beta. The only other things I am sure need to be done before beta are as follows:
-Add more quests (currently only one quest with all of the new features)
-Add more décor to world beyond scenes (weeds, trash, etc.)
-Add more décor to store scenes
-More weapons for sale in gun store
     -Create sprites for arrows and crossbow bolts
-Implement general store
-Add a few non-interactive NPCs to town
-Add store clerks in stores
-Add new path generators for the world beyond scenes (as well as fixing existing ones)
-Lastly to fix any issues found by Greenguy and skyepilot

-Tgb

July 4th Progress

Today I was able to finish  quite a bit in a short amount of time. With only about 4 hours spent developing the game today I was able to finish fixing the list that I came up with before, make some more minor improvements, and actually come up with some more things. A majority of todays development time was put into improving dialog and quests.

The action key (default enter) used for entering buildings and such, has a new long awaited feature. Such a small thing makes a big impact on the dialog system however. Pressing this key when talking will now skip to the end of the sentence/dialog rather than just skipping to the next dialog.

I also came across a program called TED notepad, which is proving to be extremely useful when creating new dialog for the game that has certain requirements to be met. This should help cut down on some of the future time spent on modifying/adding game dialog.

-Tgb

P.S Make sure to visit us here at the blog every day to make sure you don't miss out when precious information on Beta is released.

July 3rd Progress

More fixes and improvements were done today. Do not underestimate the amount of progress being made because there is little information for me to post about. A lot of progress done today was technical, and there were a lot of small fixes/improvements that would take too long to list individually. That being said there were some challenges I was faced with today, however I was able to overcome every one so far. Sound effects and visual information was added to many different areas within the game, and quite a bit of code was reduced by amount (reducing game size a bit and improving performance).

Similar work will be continued tomorrow, and then I should be ready to move on again!

-Tgb

July 1st and 2nd Progress

For most of what I have been working on over the last couple days, it has been small things. No huge features to be implemented so I have begun to go over the game and fix it up. I tested the game as it is now and came across quite a few problems. A large portion of these problems were fixed already with a few still to go. In addition to fixing many bugs/glitches I was also able to adjust a couple things and make some minor improvements including:
-Sound FX created/enhanced
-Sound FX implemented into several clickable features/menus
-Skills information display has been improved
Lastly, a fairly embarrassing mistake that I actually hadn't noticed until just recently, the in game time went through 61 minutes in an hour (e.g.  7:60, then 8:00)

Greenguy and Skyepilot have also jumped in to help me with getting renewal ready for beta. Greenguy is working on making some indoor decore for the shops, while Skyepilot is fixing up some small errors made in the World Beyond Generator.


Tomorrow I will continue to fix up the rest of the glitches I have found as well as making small improvements still.

-Tgb

P.S Getting pumped to release beta version soon!
Don't forget to sign up for beta if you haven't already by sending an email to: RenewalTheGame_Support@hotmail.com