Global aspirations
I realise it's been a while since my last post so I'd better have something good for ya. Well, I hope the following pics will prove that I've been working very hard lately. It feels a bit like a battle against the clock at the moment because in 4 weeks time I'll be leaving the small English market town of Bicester and moving to Australia. My girlfriend Lucy and I will be living in Sydney for 3 months, where she'll be working as a nurse and I'll be working on NSS4, then we'll be on the road trying to see as much of Oz, New Zealand and Tasmania as possible. Quite how that will work if NSS4 isn't finished by Christmas I don't know, but hey, it'll be fun finding out.
So then, what have I been working on lately. I'll start with the Search screen, which will be useful when you become a manager in the game. You can search for players by specifying their position, age or value and even add attribute filters to bring up only those players you are interested in.
I've also added a few more player creation screens that allow you to set the specifics of your player such as hair colour, preferred foot and so on. One nice feature is that you will be able to see your alter-ego as you set him up. He will even grow or shrink in size as you edit your height and weight.
Two sections that will of course be making a comeback from NSS3 are the horse racing and the casino. There's still some work to be done on showing the horse race so I'll save screenshots of that for another day, but the stables and betting side of the game are in place. This time around there will be much more interaction with your stable. You'll be able to buy and sell horses and you'll decide when they take part in a race, but you'll have to keep an eye their energy and health as they may fall ill if you overwork them.
Moving on to the casino, I started with the BlackJack game due to a chap called Ragnar Brynjulfsson who allowed me to use some BlitzMax code for free. I had to hack it a bit to fit it to my own needs, but it saved me an awful lot of time re-writing the structure and rules of the game and I particularly liked the way the cards move into position when they are dealt so that stayed in too.
BlackJack was implemented within a day thanks to Ragnar, and so flushed was I with excitement that I decided to tackle the roulette wheel. Unlike NSS3 I didn't want to settle for a simple random number being displayed so I set about simulating a ball being launched into the wheel and coming to rest after a bit of chaotic bouncing. It took a bit longer than BlackJack but I'm pretty chuffed with the results. Not only does the wheel look and behave great but I've also included more betting options as you can see in the screenshot.
With two out of three casino games done nothing was gonna stop me from completing the casino section by adding the fruit machine. This was fairly simple to do, once I'd sourced some fruit images from iStock.com. I still need to improve the background image (budding artists, drop me a line) but the reels spin nicely and as with all the gambling games your bank account is updated, win, lose or draw. A new feature for the fruit machine is the nudges. Basically if you get 2 matching fruits you will be awarded a nudge that you can use or save in later spins. Nudges simply allow you to move a reel on one fruit which allows you to force a win if you can nudge 3 matching fruits.
Had enough screenshots? Well, there's one more to come which shows off the start screen in Spanish. Yes, under the supervision of forum moderator and all round nice guy Fabrizio Gatti, NSS has a large recruitment of translators. If you are interested in translating the game please head over to Fab's thread on the forum. I estimate that the current English file they are working on contains about 90% of the text that will be needed for the interface screens, but the real challenge comes when I start working on the relationship incidents. I plan to create an incident editor soon so that forum members can all add some weird, wonderful and of course mundane incidents that might occur during your career, and all of those incidents will need translating. As it stands we have 13 good guys that will hopefully stick with us through to the end and make NSS4 a truly global game.
Oh, and if you didn't know already, the globe you see there will pinpoint the stadium of your next fixture. Well, so long as the co-ordinates are correct which is not quite the case with Villa Park which appears to reside somewhere out in the Mediterranean!
So then, what have I been working on lately. I'll start with the Search screen, which will be useful when you become a manager in the game. You can search for players by specifying their position, age or value and even add attribute filters to bring up only those players you are interested in.
I've also added a few more player creation screens that allow you to set the specifics of your player such as hair colour, preferred foot and so on. One nice feature is that you will be able to see your alter-ego as you set him up. He will even grow or shrink in size as you edit your height and weight.
Two sections that will of course be making a comeback from NSS3 are the horse racing and the casino. There's still some work to be done on showing the horse race so I'll save screenshots of that for another day, but the stables and betting side of the game are in place. This time around there will be much more interaction with your stable. You'll be able to buy and sell horses and you'll decide when they take part in a race, but you'll have to keep an eye their energy and health as they may fall ill if you overwork them.
Moving on to the casino, I started with the BlackJack game due to a chap called Ragnar Brynjulfsson who allowed me to use some BlitzMax code for free. I had to hack it a bit to fit it to my own needs, but it saved me an awful lot of time re-writing the structure and rules of the game and I particularly liked the way the cards move into position when they are dealt so that stayed in too.
BlackJack was implemented within a day thanks to Ragnar, and so flushed was I with excitement that I decided to tackle the roulette wheel. Unlike NSS3 I didn't want to settle for a simple random number being displayed so I set about simulating a ball being launched into the wheel and coming to rest after a bit of chaotic bouncing. It took a bit longer than BlackJack but I'm pretty chuffed with the results. Not only does the wheel look and behave great but I've also included more betting options as you can see in the screenshot.
With two out of three casino games done nothing was gonna stop me from completing the casino section by adding the fruit machine. This was fairly simple to do, once I'd sourced some fruit images from iStock.com. I still need to improve the background image (budding artists, drop me a line) but the reels spin nicely and as with all the gambling games your bank account is updated, win, lose or draw. A new feature for the fruit machine is the nudges. Basically if you get 2 matching fruits you will be awarded a nudge that you can use or save in later spins. Nudges simply allow you to move a reel on one fruit which allows you to force a win if you can nudge 3 matching fruits.Had enough screenshots? Well, there's one more to come which shows off the start screen in Spanish. Yes, under the supervision of forum moderator and all round nice guy Fabrizio Gatti, NSS has a large recruitment of translators. If you are interested in translating the game please head over to Fab's thread on the forum. I estimate that the current English file they are working on contains about 90% of the text that will be needed for the interface screens, but the real challenge comes when I start working on the relationship incidents. I plan to create an incident editor soon so that forum members can all add some weird, wonderful and of course mundane incidents that might occur during your career, and all of those incidents will need translating. As it stands we have 13 good guys that will hopefully stick with us through to the end and make NSS4 a truly global game.
Oh, and if you didn't know already, the globe you see there will pinpoint the stadium of your next fixture. Well, so long as the co-ordinates are correct which is not quite the case with Villa Park which appears to reside somewhere out in the Mediterranean!
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