Dev Blog #2: Learning MXML

I've read up on Adobe Flex and started prototyping a few screens so DarthCestual can start working on character portraits for the game. Now that I've hammered out some dimensions for him to start building up some artwork and sent him a list of the creatures that he can build into the game (still need to get him the characters you can be).

The game will consist of 8-stages of battle in four unique areas: Woods, Water, Hills and The Cave. I'll work on naming the areas later, for now, they mostly define the type of creature you'll battle at the specific stage. The creatures you'll battle against are:

• Kobold (easy/normal) or The Fire Kobold (extreme difficulty)
  
• Hobgoblin (easy/normal) or Bugbear (extreme difficulty)
• Murrough (easy/normal) or Murrough Mage (extreme difficulty)
• Water Wisp (easy/normal) or Ondine (extreme difficulty)
• Ogre (easy/normal) or Ogre Battle Mage (extreme difficulty)
• Hill Giant (easy/normal) or Hill Giant Missionary (extreme difficulty)
• Gargoyle (easy/normal) or Flying Gargoyle (extreme difficulty)
• Troll King (final boss)

Now it's up to Darth to build out the character portraits for all the frames we'll need.

MXML

I've learned a bit about Flash's MXML design concepts and their awesome. Using XML style markup you can design a full interface layout in under an hour (for a person that knows XML and HTML/JScript of course). You can easily hook in functionality using ActionScript 3.0 which looks to be a very well thought out language using C++ syntax. The Flex development environment makes it easy to crank out flash pages near instantaniously, just need some creativity.

So far I've mocked up the intro screen (fairly boring) and the battle UI as a draft of what I'm looking towards. The goal is to present the character portraits, a list of the users inventory, statistics and important buttons. I'm shooting for a casual natured experience for a 'lite' RPG where a gamer that's never played Final Fantasy or D&D can figure it out in under 10 minutes. That means a dumbed down system with only the data you'll need to make it through a battle.

The mockup (click for larger photo) - this is actually an interactive flash app that I'll show off on its URL when it's got real art and more interaction:


I was going to mockup the character creation screen, which should also be user friendly and quick to use as I don't want a 10 minute process to build out a character, I want advanced users to have just enough power to tweak and new users to click one or two buttons and go. However, I decided to hold off on that screen as it's not high priority until I've written the design document so I know more about what goes into creating a character and how they'll do battle.

Right now, getting out the document on the enemies and a bit about how they'll look to Darth was #1 priority, that way he can work on his stuff while I work on the next stage of design in parallel. Next stage is to open up MS Word and crank out a draft of how the game engine will work, what abilities a character can get, what the character attributes will be (and their names) so I can mock up the character selection screen and start designing the monsters and their attributes (hit points, skills, weapons, magic, etc.)

So on to the design document to flesh out all the game concepts and then I'll be able to move into the final mock up as Darth works on some artwork. Hopefully, if all syncs up right he'll have something to demo in the game as it comes time for me to actually implement a monster or two into the game engine.

My goal, a six-week development effort to first presentation to gamers to work the game balancing. Wish me luck.

More to come later.