Merry Prankster Games

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

In this episode, I continue playing through the tutorial, part 5. This time, the party gains its third member: Beldegon Gloleaf, an elven spellcaster.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

The video series, playing through the tutorial, continues in this episode. In this part 4, the party gets some basic gear for the battle ahead.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

For the next video series, I’ll be playing through the tutorial. In this part 3, the party begins to form. Autha Drothdottr, a dwarven warrior, joins the main character, ready for action.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

For the next video series, I’ll be playing through the tutorial. In this part 2, the main character meets the first tutorial encounter, Escan Drudius. Drudius sets the stage, and sends the PC on to talk to the next tutorial encounter.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

For the next video series, I’ll be playing through the tutorial. In this part 1, I go through character creation. More tutorial next time.

I finished my run-through of Accursed Crown of the Giant King: Chapter 2 “The Duchy of Despair”. Things went pretty smoothly; found a couple of minor bugs, and more than a couple of typos, but nothing major. I’ve got to say, chapter 2 is pretty fun!

In parallel I’m working on chapter 3, making steady progress.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. It will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

For the past few months I’ve been working on a frustrating bug with In-App Purchases in Accursed Crown of the Giant King. It hasn’t been urgent to track down since no one is purchasing anything until the game is released (or at least beta), but still something eating up attention.

So, for testing IAP, you work in something that Apple calls the “sandbox”. You make up fake user accounts, and they can make purchases and downloads of unreleased IAPs, without having to pay real money. Very convenient!

In the sandbox, iOS IAP works great! However, with the same exact code, and same exact IAP, the download fails on MacOS. Here’s a screenshot of the download hung at 80%:

I got in touch with Apple Developer support, but they were not able to track down the issue. I wonder that no one else is running is running into the issue, and thus not a priority for Apple. So I don’t really know whether I have done something wrong, or this is a sandbox-only artifact, or a real issue with IAP downloads on MacOS.

In any case, I’ve wasted enough time on this. I’m just going to change the way IAP works in ACotGK, such that the download is unnecessary. I’ll just download all of the chapter files with the main app download, but only unlock them upon a successful IAP (with no download at all). Not the most secure solution, but I’m not really putting much effort into defeating piracy in any case.

The Accursed Crown of the Giant King is an old school role-playing game, single player, party based. I must sadly announce that it will be released in 2021 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. I was hoping for 2020 but with just 3 months to go, I’m not quite there. ACotGK is by Merry Prankster Games, and you can get more information at https://prankster.com/acotgk.

Here is a video of my playtesting through chapter 2. In this play, the party explores the Annuncius Inn, resting, picking up new quests, and meeting a new potential companion.

In the meantime I’m working on chapters 3 and 4. Look for another video soon!

Found a “neat” bug today, replaying Chapter 1 for testing purposes. Here’s what happens. The party enters the final fortress for Chapter 1, and is presented with a locked door in front of them:

On clicking on the locked door, “You need the Bagduul key to unlock this door.” Not remembering the exact details, I figured I had missed the key somewhere, so I went through the previous few areas looking for the key. Nowhere to be found!

So, I went back to the source code. You are supposed to get the Bagduul key from the big boss of Chapter 1. Then, you can open the treasure room (using the key), where you get your well deserved reward. But, in this case, the treasure room was spawned as the very first room in the fortress, so you couldn’t get to the boss to get the key in the first place. Oops!

My first fix was to make sure the treasure room wouldn’t get spawned as the first room in the dungeon. But then I had a thought, borne out by some testing. The treasure room could still get spawned as the room right _before_ the boss room, again blocking access to the key need to access the treasure room. Oops again!

At least I thought of this before it caused more problems. The fix I settled on was to move the treasure room to an attic, a mini-level upstairs from the main level. The locked door is then on a completely separate level, and can’t possibly block access to the boss.

This does show one of the drawbacks to procedurally generated levels. Just because the level generation code makes a good level once, doesn’t mean it always does. As a coder, I need to make sure to test things in as thorough a manner as possible, and also keep the levels (and quest logic) relatively simple so there aren’t so many ways to screw it up.