WIP: Americana Engine Beta

Project page styled with a (modified) legacy AD template

With a growing amount of software development jobs favoring a portfolio of prior work over just a resume, I have proceeded to showcase a few pieces of work of my own.

Summary

The Americana Engine is a ongoing game engine project started in 2013 running under Windows. It was originally developed for Americana Dawn to get past a lot of the limitations that RPGMaker had (which the game was originally developed in), adding a higher resolution, finer sprite control (not having to rely on parallax mapping), map portability, and adding native functionality for the large-scale battle system.

The Lead Programmer's version of the game engine (including the editor used to make maps) is now available to the general public, adding a number of enhancements and fixes complete with development notes and custom maps, and is being actively maintained. More information on this can be found on its project page.

Brief Notes: (at the time of writing)

• The engine is currently in active development, and may contain bugs or unfinished features. You are free to discuss it or report any problems, questions, feature requests, etc. at forums.bitbonton.com for now. If you want to directly contribute to the codebase, send a email to me directly.
• Scripting documentation and tutorials will be provided in the near future.
• No assets will be included except for those used for in-game GUIs.
• The engine can run maps from Americana Dawn with limited support, however you will need to provide those maps. Maps previously available to beta testers are included in this zip file (for demonstrating the engine as a portfolio piece), with a number of improvements.

Shop GUI v2

GTG's shop in AD: Foundations Tech Demo, design board. Jelly returns.

Almost a year after the menu pages were added, they were revamped in order to take advantage of the higher resolution of the game. The shop GUI was modified to look a bit more 'colorful', and to actually show an item description instead of requiring a keypress to switch between your inventory / compare screens. The former is used for selling items, and there's now a separate tab for that. Only things now on the right is item information, what characters can use that item, and how many is in their inventory, as well as their carrying capacity.

There has been debate between the team regarding item information; the one used in the base game only shows charge / recoil with three speed values, apparently damage is irrelevant on their end because I don't know. Might be informative enough for action RPGs when you're sending so many attacks their way you don't need to know exact values, but in a turn-based RPG, each of your moves count, and a couple of mistakes almost certainly ends with a party wipe, sending you back to your last save (although I've heard the game would be a bit more forgiving than this).

For the latter, the comparison feature was removed. In other RPG games a simple up/down was used since the only main feature of weapons and armor is increased attack / defense later in the game. But there's really no way to determine if certain effects are better or not, since average damage does not increase significantly over the course of the game. It's the player's job to determine those tradeoffs.

Inventory space is not really an issue anymore, since it is set to an arbitrarily high value (such as 1000), and item usage in battle is limited to what your party can hold, so you can only bring a handful of items with you into battle.

Item Description: Four lines should be enough to display stuff about the item. Maybe not enough for witty humor, however. (The description itself may change since it breaks the fourth wall and makes a reference to the fact that Jelly could be bought in only two colors when it was listed in the Etsy store seven months ago, despite screenshots showing them in other colors. I attempted to buy them via other means, without success.)

Americana Dawn: Status Page

Don't tease Foster because he's carrying around a stuffed animal.

The Status page was somewhat of a direct opposition to Seltaire's thoughts of a rather minimalistic Status screen, containing a combination of stats, weapon mastery, and skills. (Art: finbeard with edits by bchantech)

Stats: Contains an overview of your various core stats, which each should be self-explanatory.

• STR acts as a multiplier on a melee weapon's Base DMG.
• DEF determines how much damage is resisted. It has diminishing returns, so you can never get to 100% damage resist.
• ACC determines the chance to hit and crit, and critical damage for ranged weapons. It plays more of a factor for ranged weapons, where they rely on strong critical hits to deal most of the damage.
• EVA determines chance to evade an attack. Less effective against ranged attacks.

The Long Goodbye had no less than 11 stats on the status page, in which four seemed important for battle purposes, and the rest I had to consult a GameFAQs guide about what they do, only to find out that no guides were published on the game.

So as a Dragoon - which is better on the field, Agility, Dexterity, or Mettle? Or just go for a STR build?

Weapon Lv: The bonuses varied throughout development.

The first draft was that higher levels reduced the cooldown (time to act again) by 1% per level, up to mastery 15. But KY wanted to give incentives for characters to use a variety of weapons as well as having each weapon being distinct in some way, so their mastery bonuses for each weapon were changed accordingly, and a core stat is increased for every weapon level. Weapons still have a flat damage increase or a crit rate + dmg increase per level. Since it takes a long time to level up at higher masteries, I wanted it to make sure that doing so was worth it instead of mastering another weapon and taking a stat increase instead, so the damage bonus now scales up relative to Weapon XP.

There's now a mastery labeled Endurance, increased by eating food items. I decided to have this bonus simply because there needed to be some way to raise HP, and I didn't want armor to be the only way, other than character-dependent skills. It also makes eating (more costly) food a viable option than simply buying cheap potions to heal.

Weapon XP is independent for each weapon and gained from successful hits and damage done instead of winning battles, although there may be other ways to gain mastery levels instead of fighting.

Other Tabs: Two other tabs not in this image are skills, which tell you what skills were learned (maybe assign an SP cost later to prevent characters from spamming overpowered abilities), and Misc stats.

Gear Names: My rule with creating mockups: When it comes to items, never use them as placeholders. If there's an item showcased in a screenshot, it must appear in the game somewhere. There's like a hundred or so different shops in the game and anything is possible, so there's plenty of room to be creative (and possibly make references at the same time).

A good example above is Jelly Amigurumi, a unique item which is bought at Green Tea Grass for 2500 SH (which is a reference to the Etsy store of the same name). It's supposed to be a decorative item for Foster's house, but you get a minor boost in stats just by holding it.

Desert Oasis Division, Perler Bead Version (Rework)

The second of the CNH Division Logo series (9 total).

There's some ambiguity as to what the most recent logo actually looks like, so I'm using this version found in the CNH Sunburst in August 2012, with minor modifications (usually due to the limit of colors that I have on hand).

I know that the Las Vegas temperatures during the trip weeks ago was hot, but didn't know Central California (and Capital Division) was also equally so with the temperatures hitting the three-digit range, almost at 110 degrees, at least in June anyways.

The bottom actually looks a bit plain compared to the reference image, so there will be a few more details added to the mountains and cactus before it is released on FB.

Note: I don't have active contact with anyone in other divisions other than Capital, so I don't expect the popularity for the CNH Logo Perler Bead series to be high. I'm simply just a completionist, that's all. And I really don't want to deconstruct the Capital Division logo completely if I had other projects I wanted to do involving CKI since at least 50% of that logo can be reused. It will get a soft (non newsfeed) release on FB but that's about it.

Bead Sprite: Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle

Sprites are quite hard to do especially when they require conversion. The Zuma Blitz Spirit Turtle is no exception to this rule.

The turtle's more than capable of spitting out more fireballs than any other. That means more curve clears on shorter boards. It might be expensive but it's also responsible for almost 30M scores because players were exploiting the combo system by racking up combos while remaining in hot frog mode (which only works since the game only resets the combo if one a normal ball that you fire touches another ball on the curve, which never happens).

Of course to get these it's highly dependent on luck; you have to rely on fruit appearing faster than usual and balls appearing in a favorable position. Attempting these scores alone has zeroed my coin balance many times over, and put high coin costs on other players (I think it took someone many attempts and around 30 million coins to achieve the first 29m score).

I didn't record any replays after the Shamrock board since high scores were determined by abusing this system, and the score difference between this and any other combination was so high that it defeated the entire purpose of figuring out optimal strategies for each week's board.

(A direct color conversion of the Spirit Turtle makes it look janky in some areas and will be redesigned. Expect an updated image in the next few days... or not.)

Bead Sprite: T.O.P (Crab Hat)

This is what results when attempting to beadsprite an image from a (friend of a friend's) tumblr and not doing the research beforehand. Yes, TOP as in the entertainer, not an actual top (which would be trivial to sprite). Originally I saw it as complete OC but later found out this was more in the fanart category - I decided to commit anyways since it was half done by the time I found out. I did not know who BigBang / T.O.P were prior to spriting this, and this will have a limited release on FB because it could cause an unintended bias.*

A second section, which would otherwise make this sprite project called 'TopBom (Tv Version)' was not implemented at this time due to limited resources (both in beads and grids). The skin here was colored with a Tan color because I didn't have a supply of Sand colored beads available - color replacement will be done as soon as I get a few bags.

Link to original image for the interested. I didn't receive the best of approvals when using a mention on FB to show it to the original artist, so future bead sprites will not explicitly bring it to the original artist's attention if they are known personally.

Drafts: Chibi Style

#zpg pre-concept art, Attempts 1-3 at Chibi drawing.

I have tons of ideas and concepts in my head. Unfortunately I lack the ability to actually draw them, much less draw them well enough in a short period of time... which is why this blog typically consists of photos (some edited). Therefore ideas are placed on a text file, with as much descriptive information about the image as possible to draw it later.

There's around 90 ideas for drawings currently in my queue. Relative to CKI, 30 images are proposed covering 24 people. These are photos, right? No, these are proposed hand drawings, particularly if it's difficult or impossible to recreate that scene in real life.

I'm hoping this summer I actually improve my art skills - after all, I don't want my works to be of this quality. Also, I've always had the idea of having a unique style to my original content. In the scope of CKI, very few (obligatory reference to Amanda Tran here) have ever attempted hand drawings of CKI people, so I've decided to give it a shot. As a side hobby, of course.

Capital Division, Perler Bead Version (Final Version)

I've been in CKI for three years, and was planning to attend events for a bit of the summer, but my physical presence was cut short when rides to events were not available in my area. I had other things in mind, and the logo is one of them. This... is Capital Division.

Brief History: The original post regarding creating the CKI Logo can be found in this post.

After reaching week two with twelve plates (29x29 pegboards), I realized that when trying to create the top part of the circle, the circle itself wasn't entirely symmetrical, so the entire logo had to be redesigned with the circle being the first thing made into a 4x4 grid size, and the flag/C made last.

I also noticed that I can't build the entire logo on my desk - I ran out of space. That means moving it to another table for better lighting. But wait! There was a 3000 piece puzzle in the way (as well as ten others underneath it) so the most logical thing to do was to finish it up, and complete a goal at the same time. The project was moved and continued from there (albeit destroying most of it to compensate for downsizing the design.) Many of the materials were bought 'as needed' as it was hard to obtain all the perler bead materials at the same time (there were at most two 4 grid packs available per week, and three 1000 bead packs for a single color).

The final logo designed was completed by the third week in June. It was well received and jaw dropping at the same time.

Build Order: On the new build, the original capital division logo was resized, and edited to make the circle symmetrical. The red 'K' was built first, as well as outlines for both the capital building and the blue stripe. It is not an exact replica of the printout - some of the shades and lettering were improvised as there were no colors available for half shades, and some areas were redesigned altogether if I didn't think it looked right from a distance.

Next Steps: Several more (large scale) Perler bead projects exist in my queue:

• Zuma Blitz Gratuitous (golden) beetle.
• MCHS modern Dragon logo
• Sac State Squirrel (2011-2012, colored)
• UOP Logo
• 'Important' CKI people.

Additionally, there will be posts regarding Zombie Playground concept art (with my interpretation of how the game might look) - my cousin Jason Chan designed most of the art design for the game, and I would like to play a role in shaping it.

Stats:

• Bead Consumption: Approximately 12,000 beads.
• Cost: $72 over six weeks, with the majority of the materials bought at Joann's Fabrics. Tip: Each Sunday there's usually a coupon that discounts one item by 40%, and in some weeks, coupons are available that discount your entire order by a small amount. Take advantage of these.
• Likes: 22 (new record for non-group images)

Capital Division (Perler Bead Version) - Week 2

Week 2 of construction of the Captal Division Logo. A large supply of beads allowed me to continue progress, but apparently I need more than this in order to finish up the top half of the logo. This is around 6,000 beads into it. Time to wait for another sale before buying more of them.

Note: Although there was positive feedback on last week's image, the majority of the people in Capital Division are not aware of this development yet.

Capital Division (Perler Bead Version)

Or at least part of it, as it's still under construction.

This is my attempt to build the Capital Division logo from Perler beads. Shortly after getting a 11,000 bead pack (for $10), I started planning this in Perler and building this after acquiring some pegboards.

I did run into a problem though. Either I need a lot more beads than this (maybe a few thousand, which would cost me around $20) or I need to size it down from a 150x150 grid. I've heard suggestions saying to shrink it down to a more manageable size, but I would be losing too many details. What will it be?

I've also been asked where I would place this when it's done... let's worry about this later.

UPDATE: This perler bead project was finished on June 18 and can be found here.

Interest History: I first heard about these beads through Sac State Circle K (more specifically from Alex Ung as he was showcasing models that were completed and used for fundraising). I found potential interest in them after looking at bead sprites and the possibility of creating the Capital Division logo from them, although he claimed that it would be hard to build one as there were too many details that couldn't be included in a small model.

[Image on FB / Comments]

Key2College Audience of One, DCM

"Probably one of the funniest, most educational DCM I’ve ever been to." -Nam Hoang*

In a week prior to the event, prepared a slideshow (the theme for this year was super mario), learned that my partner had many interest similarities with me, and did a lot of practicing in order to prepare speaking up to the high school audience on Sunday...

... which comprised of one person, Amy Chin, from MCHS.

At least we can say it's successful but there was 100% positive feedback about the workshops, if you factor her post on tumblr.

Fun Fact: Music playing at the title slide (before the presentation starts) - Avicii - Super Mario World Levels (SNES Version)

Evolution of Leaderboards: Product Development

Many weeks ago (as early as last year), several players decided to step it up and create their own leaderboards based off their high score tables, and eventually groups had players designed to gather scores of players who wished to participate in the group leaderboard, since the board was for friends only. Fast forward to December - my definition of 'leaderboard' was taken a step further when the friend requirement was dismissed with the introduction of a true 'top 200' leaderboard as proof of concept as first, then a regular recurring series after many positive reactions.

I do it mainly to satisfy the needs of the players who want to know how they rank up. But honestly, it seems more like product development.

Prior to the creation of the board, I was looking through posts on forums and this group and discovered that several people were interested in a group-wide or national leaderboard. I went out to develop something that would solve this problem, as well as bypass the 'top 50' on a local leaderboard.

Above, we have the comparison of the first leaderboard that was hosted on this blog with the discovery of the score parser (basically, this is what it actually does - take raw bits of information and parses them into readable data players can interpret easily). More tweaks were made and released on Facebook to my ZB friends for feedback.

A week later the leaderboard went live on the official add me group, with mostly positive feedback, but several had concerns about how this data was retrieved, which was answered. I later went on to add a few more features that I determined might be helpful such as person's level (in order to show true skill as mastery levels weren't factored into score) and general score statistics. One additional feature, ranking arrows, were planned for release next week, but I'll let the viewers decide that change.

A side note on stats: there is a field not listed here called "Percent of Scores Over" - I like stats like this, but it can also be used to determine approximate board difficulty (how easy it is to get points) - a peak on lower level scores (like over 500K or 1M) may indicate the board is easy, peaks on scores lower than this might indicate the board is harder, and low minimum score percents can indicate that difficult multiple-gap techniques might be in play on this board. This can be used as a baseline to determine if a unique (possibly user-created) board has the potential be used again.

The snowpocalypse board had for minimum scores 74-54-45-25 for position 10, 30, 50, and 100th place for the group respectively in terms of percentage of the top score on the board. This indicates that speed and luck (time balls) was more prevalent than skill. Major Mouthful, on the other hand, has 53-38-28-14. This represents that a high scoring technique was more likely used than just speed (in this case a double gap strat was used here).

What can I summarize about making this board? If this was a product in development, it's going through its incremental cycle right now.

Fall 2011 in Pictures Promo: Badass Style

Fall 2011 in Pictures promotional image, prior to the hard drive crash. It later became the title image for the project and the overall theme for this imageset will be based off of this pic.

After some thought, I've decided to do another 'Fall in Pictures' series. However I hope to up the quality of my pictures a bit. The last year around, it seems like documentation doesn't seem to attract a lot of people, so badass style pictures might be more in tune to modern audiences.

The above picture ranks 2nd in views for non-game posts* and 4th overall during the Fall 2011 in Pictures project.

Image Source: Original image by Erika Albinto - I did some photoshop work on it though.

Triple Rollout?

Board with triple rollout? Don't mind if I do! :D

Note: Version 2. Top left curve needs optimizing as well as starting points.

VR and Modular Stuff

Image of the prototype version of the VR map that our group (of four) was doing for a class project (under construction), where users are required to find various objects in an office building.

A much simpler version of this map was used due to a lack of time (and knowledge converting from Sketchup to an OpenGL Format) to implement the entire building.

Currently researching ways to optimize memory usage for large buildings (with > 50,000 polygons).

Fun Fact: I like modular stuff. Easy to put together, very adaptable to different situations, and for computer related stuff, easy to reinstall just about anything with little need for pre-req programs.