In addition to the feat trees, the video shows a glimpse of a few additional feature's I've just added, namely:
- Character backgrounds. I've always really liked the idea behind the character background feats in Neverwinter Nights 2, but always felt they were way too weak; their bonuses too small to make any difference.
In D&D 3.5, you can take something called character "Templates", which work something like NWN2's backgrounds, but those were on the other side of the power spectrum - they tend to produce over-powered characters.
I've implemented what I think is a reasonable middle-of-the-road solution. If you don't know what I'm talking about, a background is basically a quick nod to what your character might have been like before the game started (which you get to decide), and this background provides him or her with a fixed bonus. You can only take one, and only at Level 1, during character creation.
Bonuses you'll get range from +2 to a particular stat, +2~4 to one or more skills or some other unique bonus like being able to move 10ft further each turn if your background is Athlete, or giving your allies +1 attack while lowering your own by the same amount if you're a Natural Leader. I think it adds a nice amount of flavor to character creation, especially when the bonuses you get will be large enough to actually be relevant in the game. - Description windows. Almost everything has a description window now, either normally displayed on the screen (as it is when you pick a class) or as a separate window you can bring up by pressing (A) or (X) (as it is when you're picking feats). I've also updated the main menu to use these when displaying feats or skills.
This gets around a problem I've been having of wanting to have fairly long descriptions of things but not having any screen-space to display it in most menus, due to RPG Maker's tiny, eye-strain-o-vision screen resolution.
- Racial feats. Now, in addition to changing your appearance, the race you select also modifies your starting stats, skills and feats. Each race gets some kind of stat bonus (usually +2 to two stats and -2 to a third) and starts with several feats (you can see Dwarves and Elves starting with Darkvision and Humans starting with Skilled in the above video).
Classes now also gain various feats, such as monks starting with various bare-handed fighting feats and fighters starting with several Weapon and Armor proficiencies.
- Feat Requirements are now displayed while you're picking feats from the tree, if you don't meet them. If you meet some of the requirements for a feat (say it has 5 requirements and you meet 3), it will only display the ones you're missing. This should make it much easier to see what's available, what you want to take and when you can take it.
And that completely wraps up character creation for now. As of today, you can create a full party of 5 characters, customize their appearance (race/gender/hair/eyes/portrait/etc.) and their stats (class/feats/skills/etc.) and jump into the game.
The game itself so far only has a working menu. I haven't gotten into any actual gameplay yet (maps, combat, etc.) because I want to make absolutely sure everything else is setup properly before I start with that. Pre-production and whatnot. Once that's all done, even having a little gameplay will make it feel like a proper, decent quality game.
I'm a fan of the Blizzard idea of polish-everything-as-you-go, rather than do-everything-sloppy-now-we-can-polish-later (I can't remember who it was that said this in an interview, but it was something along the lines of: "There is no later. Polish everything now. Do everything right the first time").
Anyways, next on my schedule:
- Add a world map to the menu. When I get to actually making the game maps, you'll be able to use it for fast-travel from any outdoors (non-dungeon) area.
- A simple Party HUD: something that displays everybody's portraits and HP bars as you're walking around the game. Once I get around to implementing combat, it will all happen on the actual game maps themselves instead of going to a separate battle scene, so knowing your party status at all times (without having to open menus) will be useful.
- Autosaves and Quicksaves
- Quests, and a quest menu
- Minimaps
- Unique items and equipment. I'll probably be using a modified version of Tsukihime's Inventory System for this.
- Crafting. This will be fairly simple. I liked the crafting in Temple of Elemental Evil, where you don't really need ingredients to craft anything; you only need the appropriate feat, meet a level requirement and pay some gold. It's pretty straightforward and shouldn't be too hard to implement once I have items working correctly.
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