darkmuesli/creationquest

CreationQuest

CreationQuest is the approach to develop a serious game designed to support creativity techniques through a top-down pixel art RPG experience, inspired by video games of the 90's.

The game is in a very early state of development and still needs a lot of work to be deployed to people really using it as a source of inspiration.

I am a student of the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany, and started learning and loving the art of programming in 2012. There is a entire room in our university being set up right now, dedicated only to creativity and innovation. It will be filed with a whole bunch of options to let your creativity flow and to create new ideas, talk about existing ones, combine them and do all kinds of things with your imagination to create the future.

There will be different approaches available to reach this goal: through the plain meet-and-greet with other people searching for good ideas as well as many ways of support for your creativity through tips and suggestions for creativity methods like and a set of hardware further supporting these methods, like digital whiteboards and tablets. Furthermore, there will be much of this wrapped up in games, be it cards, tabletops or role-plays.

One of these games shall be availible in a digital form, as a video game, presented in an old arcade machine. This repository contains the development for this game to serve me as a backup and versioning tool and to eventually be open for public. ;)

Some helpful advice

To open and edit the map data (.tmx files) the usage of the Tiled Map Editor is advised.

PLEASE NOTE IF WORKING WITH ECLIPSE: When cloning this project on Eclipse, the asset derectory has to be set manually. (At least I have to, so you will probably too.) Go to the run configurations of the project, select the DesktopLauncher class and under the "arguments" tab you will find the "working directory" section. Here you must select "other" and the "assets" directory in the core project. Other IDEs will likely have to be set up similar, but I don't know how.

creationquest's Issues

TODO: Tutorials

Little tutorial pop ups schould be shown when starting the game or encountering specific features for the first time.

TODO: Random world NPCs

There should be NPCs roaming the overworld (and maybe all / some rooms) to gift the player with precious advice and nonsense.

Possible texts: Random nonsense, creativity technique advice, Christians app-book lines, tips for the game world and a slight chance for free beer.

TODO: Implement Drawable interface

The libGDX interface Drawable could be useful, for example for the Reels in the SlotMachine.

TODO: Complete the farm minigame

The minigame on the little farm in the south has yet to be completed. As a minimum of funcionality, there should be random words popping out of the ground when picking up the fruits. And maybe some words from the farmer would be nice.

BUG: Horizontal lines between tiles

My notebook (QHD display) shows small (1 pixel?) lines between tiles, exposing the tile layer beneath, when set to HD resolution. Not present in native QHD resolution. Must be tested on other displays. Maybe bug in libGDX.

Split the TiledWorld Class into components

The TiledWorld Class has grown too big. It needs a refactoring into several components or the application of another decoupling pattern.
Can be combined with #2 for Room components.

TODO: Asset loading and management through a Singleton at Game's create() ?

A Singleton could be appropriate to load all assets at the game's create() method. Asset management would then be encapsulated within this Singleton and globally accessible.

To be thought about further.

BUG: Player does not scale when entering map with different tilesize

Behaviour popped up lately. Player Sprite is set to a specific size in constructor, that may be the cause to this. Constructors were changed lately.

Possible solutions:

• Alter draw()-method in game object to always refer to the actual map tilesize
• Add additional Method to get tile size when needed
• update draw region on map change

TODO: Room refactoring

Originally a class structure featuring rooms as dedicated classes was considered. This should be implemented in order to give rooms the ability to interact among each other.

(Something like a Room class, each having a reference to a TiledMap, a list of entitys(, a player?) etc...)

TODO: Screen Transitions

The transition between game screens (not only the actual Screens as in Screen Classes, but also the different maps) should be smoothened, for example by blending over a black Screen.

Possible simple solution could be a full-screen black rectangle, interpolating its alpha from 0 to 1 and to 0 again over the period of transition.

TODO: Feature-Alchemist

The idea of a "feature pharmacy" could be used as a "feature alchemist", selling / prescribing features/ideas/targets or similar to the player or his question.

TODO: Random walking or patrolling NPCs

Implementation could include a CommandGenerator, alternatingly outputting right/left movement orders on a random time basis in a given range.

TODO: SlotMachine aligning at stop seems unnatural

When the SlotMachine stops, the aligning of the Slots seems unnatural compared to real Slot Machines. The Slots should keep moving until they reach their ultimate position (in whitch they maybe bounce a little), then stop immediately. Maybe refer to a Youtube Video of real Slot Machines.

BUG: TextFields sometimes draw under objects/entitys

Text Fields from SimpleTextDrawer are drawn on the same "layer" as their associated object, causing the boxes to draw under some other objects, when horizontally aligned. A general GameObject for rendering purposes could help.