Phases
POC: Game is functional--Functional "live" site, working game loop and base AI. Done (2021)Steps to Alpha Done (September 2022)- Alpha: Game is playable--Current status!
- Steps to Beta
- Site/UI development "complete" (minor tweaks or debugging may be required, but no major tools needed).
- Additional account tools as needed--"report bug" button would be a nice feature!
- Additional compliance emails, as needed
- Revisit/redesign Eloquent usage
Use repositories! Done for now (October 2024), revist as needed
- Primary game features are fleshed out (additional features can be added over time).
- Quest processing
- Wounded Adventurers
- Adventurer HP/condition track
- Monsters? (100% offscreen, so... No, we'll just abstract this part)
- Skills
- Adventuring Skills (NPCs only)
- Social Skills (Player and NPCs)
- Shop Improvements
- Other stores in town
- Town Improvements
- Magic Shop
- Retiring Adventurers?
- Inns need to shuffle around Adventurers in Parties
- Inflation
- (Including infogathering)
- Actual relationships with townsfolk
- Time Management
- Set Events
- ?Random Events?
No major AI bugs. Clear as of October 2024, reopen if needed!- "Good Ending"
- Beta: Game is fun
- Is there such a thing as "out of beta"?
- Thievery and Security
- Info Skills (Player and NPCs)
- Alignments/Personalities
- Item Rework
- Tracking individual Items
- Item Enhancements
- Elemental-aligned Items and Quests
- More magical Items
- Limited-use (wands, scrolls, potions)
- More slots? (rings, hats, boots, etc)
Additional notes:
- I'm trying to avoid JScript--really, anything beyond HTML5/CSS/PHP. I originally chose HTML/PHP as the language for this game because I wanted to minimize dealing with UI code. :p
6+ years after the initial demo, I didn't want to redo that analysis and re-implement the demo's code... so I'm learning the UserFrosting framework instead!
If we discover something that would work better with JScript, the Roadmap has plenty of room to add things.- UF5 has been a little pushier towards using JScript. I'm still putting it off as much as I can; plenty of other bits to learn first.
- Q4 2024: Starting the dive into adding AJAX. UF has some helpful tools, so I'm not doing much actual JS coding. Still had to investigate things to get the tools to work right, and alter the initial site design when they don't do what I want. (UF6 is focused on UI improvements, so again--putting this off as much as I can.)
Current focus:
Prettifying (CSS/gfx, intro->overwrite Userfrosting templates) Done at POC level (5/20/21). Pushing additional prettiness off of main focus.Storefront DLC Launched (5/19/24)
- Warehouse/display room interactions
- Disable/junk current ShopItems--postponed till later DLC.
Time Management DLC Launched (9/6/2024)
Add "Watch the shop" action, in case the player has nothing better to do and needs to move the clock forward. Done (9/2/24)
- TODO: Can we force sales-to-Parties to only happen during this action, unless a salesperson has been hired?
Names DLC Launched (3/22/2025)
Party/Adventurer names Done 10/15/24
Convert Ledger page to use AJAX Done 10/29/24Separate Ledger from other Diary events Done 3/13/25
DB refactoring Done 3/1/25Party activities/recon Done 3/13/25ShopItem management Done 3/13/25
Maybe first stab at converting party recon to an "encyclopedia" format? TODO: Still in conceptual phases, but needs done Soon!
"Quicky" to-do list for the Shopkeeper project:
- UI (alpha points Done (4/25/22); promoted to Beta!)
- Quick-and-dirty "Newspost" sprinkle on the front page to show what has been updated last (and when), to improve visibility over edits on this page
- CSS and basic graphics (??)
Include town/party "daily events" Alpha Done (4/18/22)
Start moving events out of ledger and into town services / some other form of diary! Done 3/13/25
- Infrastructure to increase game depth
- HOWTO make this actually fun? lol
- Fix account-generation shop startup: too many buttonpresses to get there, and the path is not clear.
Random party/adventurer names, rather than just the current numbers :p Done (October 2024), can easily add new Templates and Words!Balance item generation from quests first pass Done (April '22), revist as needed- Player needs meaningful choices (general design point, not so much a single actionable item)
- Charts and graphs :p
Further daily processing Alpha points Done (Sept 2022)
Party "retirement" first pass Done (7/6/22)
- Better yet, shuffling Adventurers between Parties
- Also, better/smarter party/adventurer arrivals
- Shopper skills and archetypes, eventually
- Weapon/magic skills might be a quick way to determine what items an Adventurer can use and wants to buy/sell/keep.
- Randomizing skills on Adventurer generation (based on gear) should be quick-and-easy, and give useful differentiation to Adventurers and Parties
- Skill improvement can come later.
- Shop improvements
- Assistants
- Space limitations--both display and warehousing
- Move to new/bigger/more "frontier" town?
- Relationships with other service providers
Inn (to scout Parties and get an idea what they're selling/buying) Done (7/12/22) Well, the Inn "exists" now, but does not yet change over time--no relationship between Inn and Shopkeeper.- Rumour mill (separate info source)
- Blacksmith
- Magic shop
- Temple
- Food/farmer's market?
- Undertaker/graveyard (to track dead adventurers)
- What other sorts of things would an adventuring party (or even a generic fantasy village) have/need/want?
- Progression for the service providers, as parties spend gold with them
- Flesh out party starting gear (if we don't add other shops first)
- Backend work -- alpha steps Done (8/10/22)
- Also, debug tools to better examine problem accounts without affecting said account [should this be post-alpha or post-beta?]
Tool to massmail users (for TOS/policy changes, account wipe alerts, etc) first pass Done (8/9/22)--needs more work for additional emailsMore userside account tools Done for now (Jan '22), pending anything else that needs added.
Patch UF up to permit/process hard deletes rather than just soft Revisit this later? It seems to be on the UF roadmap somewhere.
Or can we just remove personal info (email address) on soft removal? Done (1/10/22)
Also adjust UF's first/last name to just a "What should we call you?" and deprecate the "LastName" field Done (10/5/21), see below
Signup email templates use last names. Fix will either be super-easy override, or a pain to track down all the details. Done?(10/1/2022) Alpha launch signups didn't show me any last names, so this is fixed now?
Known Issues:
EventResultsID not incrementing correctly (low priority as nothing USES this column yet; may just remove that field if we don't use it by Beta)Removed "by accident" during the Great Database Refactoring (March 2025)- Event calendar needs reworked
- Verify no other writes still outside the EOD Transaction (NOT done!)
- Rework Eloquent model usage to reduce query count (see Repository note above, but need to verify those work the way we expect)
- Gathering info more than once per day stacks strangely in the UI
"Out of Gold" errors show a server error, but should show something nice to the user instead!HOTFIXed (4/2/25)--still looking for a prettier clientside fixLedger maxday doesn't tick over at midnightWONTFIX because events are generated for the final timeframe of previous day, not for the morning of current day.