My attempt at remastering Pool of Radiance

[saldek]

I put a first janky alpha video online of my Goldbox engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onb8PPrMbRs

After a quick look at some of the editor screens, I assemble a party which rather quickly gets slaughtered in the slums.

Pool of Radiance is largely feature-complete. Mechanics are in, spells, combat, all maps are ported from the original data and the game should be completeable.

There's still quite a few bugs in and the game needs a lot more polish, but overall I'm happy with the way the engine plays so far. Most of the special events in the game have accompanying background images. Audio is a mess, and the 3D maps could use with a bit of love. But hey, Goldbox in 3D in the browser!

Using OSRIC rather than AD&D 1st Edition has a few unexpected side-effects: rangers start with 2 hit dice and combat is quite unforgiving to new characters. I'm playing around with new features such as party members commenting on events happening in the world (visible in the demo) and will add an achievement/memory system.

Once PoR works as it should, I'll start converting the other modules. Any feedback on the UX is most definitely welcome.

[Milos Gulan]

Cool       

[Manofhart]

Do you have a public build for it to try out yet? I'd be interested to try it out!

[saldek]

I'm a few weeks away from an official release. Before getting there, I need to sort out:

- Licensing: Most assets should be okay for inclusion, but I need to regenerate monster counters and include attributions.
- QA & Testing: I need to do a full play-through to verify the game can be completed. There's a few rough edges left, but those are less critical to solve in a v1.
- Distributable size: My repo folder is some 2GB, a lot of it unused textures, images and audio. That needs to get cleaned first.

But if you like to check what's there now, send me a PM and I can make a private version available.

[saldek]

Hey, I made another progress video: https://youtu.be/lXkYLw8tcRw

We're getting a bit closer to feature-complete:
- Druid spells and Paladin abilities are included
- Classes can advance the length of the ladder (technically level 28 for clerics for instance) with some spells up to level 6 included
- It's possible to hire NPCs in the training area
- The 3D map looks nicer and combat follows the OSRIC rules more closely, including rough terrain and cover
- Creature & player combat scripts are more intelligent
- I've added stores, taverns, inns and a vault where you can safely leave coins
- Licensing problems have largely been resolved. I recreated all monster counters and switched to credited CC0-attributable audio
- The 3D map features a compass
- It's possible to drop items on the map & pick them up again later
- The combat counters and portraits show condition modifiers (poisoned, held, stoned, hasted...)
- The game supports tiny monsters (up to 4 to a square) and other non-standard counter sizes up to gargantuan (4x4 squares), although that's not really going to come up in pool of radiance

I added a few features not in the originals:
- Besides the journal, the game now also tracks deeds (e.g. "cleared out the slums") and ties these to bonus content
- I added a secret Harper hide-out in the slums. The Harpers are closely following a Zhentarim plot to take over the remaining settled areas of Phlan. Worthy players can be recruited, giving access to bounty hunting & special quests for rewards, and a merchant selling a wide range of magical gear scaled to player level. I will eventually add an evil party equivalent on the Zhentarim-side
- The game tracks enemies destroyed by the party. Players can consult which creatures they encountered, and see their statistics provided they killed enough of them

What's left:
- I'll prune unused assets for the release, but will not bother overly much with getting the release size down to the minimum
- I'd like to add more bonus content. Right now, special events and some optional missions are sprinkled across the game. Ideally the world becomes more alive with more interactions
- Playtesting will be the big one. Technically everything should run, but I haven't gotten beyond Podal Plaza yet
- Most OSRIC higher-level abilities are missing (e.g. heroic charge). These weren't in the originals either, but it would be good to add relevant abilities

[saldek]

Why does this feel strangely familiar? The more features I complete, the more features end up on the backlog.

Still, decent progress over the past few days. Apart from smaller fixes and enhancements, these are the main changes:

- All monster art has now been converted and I included the full OSRIC bestiary into the game
- Arena mode provides a sandbox for testing combat against the OSRIC monsters to test tactics, spells and monster abilities like gaze & dragon breath
- The game is playable on Android, at least on tablets. I made an APK using Capacitator
- House races are now in. An optional setting gates kobold, lizardfolk, tabaxi and minotaur players
- Achievements have been reworked. Using OSRIC rules, combat awards quite limited XP. I'm not a fan of giving XP for treasure, so instead there are now milestones everywhere in the game which grant less or more experience. Named encounters are one thing, there's also a bunch of hidden exotic achievements (map the slums completely, get in a bar fight...)
- Characters have selectable soundboards
- I added a dozen named companions you can stumble upon in the earlier maps of the game. If you hire them, they come with their own soundboard, banter, backstory and quests

Two more small update videos:
- Gameplay: https://youtu.be/ZyfaiqNcaT0
- The arena: https://youtu.be/QFUOyqgPPUI