The new character creation screen.
Since it has been awhile since I posted about the fantastic joys of Fief development, I thought I’d update everyone. If you aren’t already aware, I have been using Twitter to report the day-to-day work, but now I’d like to talk about the “big picture”.
The past few weeks has been focused on streamlining the new game process. This included the integration of the world map and generating local maps from this world data. Unfortunately, manor maps themselves may not be as exciting, since they are to be dominated by a single biome. However, I am looking to implement a little bit of travel (primarily for hunting), in which the player’s character can explore other world map tiles. Not sure exactly how I’ll implement this feature, but do not expect to be able to build anything outside the manor map.
Creating a new character is now much more enjoyable. Players get to select many appearance options and finally allocate points into their attributes. Granted, the attributes don’t have a major role yet, but that will change as we add more activities in general. In particular, things like Charisma are awaiting the conversation engine to be completed, and attributes like Willpower and Faith will see their debut when the diplomacy system is in place. But all in due time.
The character background system is now in place and any such backgrounds can be added to the XML. So modders are free to choose the starting skill levels and starting equipment in any such scenario that can be conceived.
When the features listed above are finished (and the bugs squashed), I’ll release the new version. Afterwards, I intend to return to coding survival gameplay and work on making the game actually fun before working on any later-game content.