At the suggestion of a tester I've setup some discussions forums for HQO - bug reporting, ideas, development updates. I suspect like most forums it'll end up with about 5 users and 10 posts - but heh :)

I will continue to post progress here, at Old Scratch's Heroquest Forums and on JGO should I ever get back into posting there again.

Forums are here

I've just uploaded a new version. This time I've rearranged the jars a bit (its needed doing for a while) - so this'll probably mean big downloads (since they've beeen renamed). I hoping this means I wouldn't need to upload massive amounts for a while.

In this version:

- Trap Support
- Disarm Support
- Secret Door Support
- Lots of bugs fixed
- Can now use numbers to select characters
- Pop-up menus for artefacts on levels
- Lighting

Remember that only the first quest (The Trial) is actually meant to work at the moment. I've added a pit trap and chest in the first room for testing purposes.

More trap related excitement this evening. I've just added disarming (if you're the dwarf its free, otherwise you need a toolkit). I've also added a bunch of scripting elements into the XML map dialect.

So, my current test runs likes this:

1) Walk to chest
2) Search chest - get hit by trap (3 damage - defined in XML)
3) Search chest - find toolit and 100 gold (woot! - scripted also)
4) Search room for traps => discover pit trap in the corner
5) Attempt to disarm the pit-trap with the newly found toolkit.

Is that right? Is there something wrong with this flow? Let me know! :)

A productive evening. I've just added the trap framework and implemented the 3 traps from the base HQ game. Spear Traps - which fire when you walk on them but can be dodge if you get luck, Pit Traps - that you fall in and get hurt but can get back out and Falling Block traps - crushing you and blocking off areas of the map. They all work, and they all kill! You can even jump spear and pit traps after they've been detected.

Of course - you can't actually search for traps yet so the only way to find them is to spring them :).

Trap arn't in the download yet so its not worth trying to grab it yet. Once the full trap implementation is in (detecting and furniture traps) I'll upload.

Finally, tonight I also change the activation of artefact/furniture in the game to a little pop-up menu. This is in preperation for the ability to both open and disarm chests (i.e. multiple selection required). It looks pretty neat!

[Screenshots of everything coming soon]

Well, I've just added lighting only to find that all the models have had their normals stripped during the conversion from .mdx to .md3.

Luckily a developer friend pointed out NPhernos MD3 Compiler which allowed me to build a nice new set of normals for each model.

The downside for anyone trying this game out is they now need to re-download all the models. Thats ~8meg.

LWJGL - Lightweight Java Game Library

HeroScribe - the Heroquest Mapping tool

 
HQO Manual
 
Starting a Game
In single player mode the player can use up to four heros by selecting the buttons at the bottom of the single player setup. In multiplayer the player can only one play one hero.
 
Basic Rules
The heroquest board game revolves around turns. In each turn each hero can either move then act, or act then move. Movement is rolled on dice. Actions include attacking, casting spells and searching for treasure.
 
Controls
Right mouse button - control hero. If an empty square is selected the hero will walk to it. If an enemy or object is selected the hero will act upon it.
Left mouse button - drag to pan the view
Mouse wheel - rotate the view
Left mouse button + mouse wheel - zoom in and out
Space - Reset view to currently selected hero
Numbers 1-4 - Select heros
 
What the Icons Mean

The number of square that the hero can move this turn (rolled fresh each turn)

You can get the current version via Java Webstart here. You'll need to get Java to be able to play it.

The game webstart download is approximate 8meg at the moment. Due to the smartness of webstart however, once you've got it the game the firsts time you'll only have to download the updated bits as development goes on.

On the to-do list..
Spells
Traps
Ranged Combat
Long Weapon Combat
Armory
Player persistence? - how the hell?
Quest Designer
Lighting - needs model updates?
More scripting elements
Improve Startup Time
Sound Effects
Only highlight elements that have an activity associated with then
Popup lists for multiple activited (search for treasure, search for trap)

On the maybe one day list..
Door selection causes the hero to walk to the door then open it
Long path selection - hero walks it over several turns
Far path selection - select a square a bit further away, the path just leads as far as possible
Spinning Dice
Smooth recentre of view
Nice Webpage
Add web links to the rules document etc

About HeroQuest Online (HQO)

HeroQuest online is a conversion of the classic MB board game from the late 80's. The game casts the player as up to 4 heros in a world of high fantasy. Complete the quests, get the reward, move to the next part of the story!

HQO takes the adventure and makes it available on the PC and allows players to take part across the internet.

HeroQuest Online is being developed in Java, using LWJGL. Models so far are grabbed from the Warcraft 3 community or are modelled developer-art.