Project update #3

Here is the update for today that I promised. First here is the sticky note where I have the stuff till alpha listed:

(for bigger image click on it)

Today I worked almost 4.5 hours on the game. I implemented FMOD but because of a bad tutorial I lost like 40 minutes figuring something out until I went to check out the documentation of FMOD. It is really good written. Players sound effects are in and 1 song. Today I also did the game states. Till now everything was in main(). Today with the power of inheritance and polymorphism I created the game state thingie. I haven't done this in the last project :D. All the fixes till now were done, level exits are in (still need some graphics), level changing works... Don't know what took me that long I think FMOD took more that 2 hours. I also started on some levels. Some beginning ones where you only need to jump and move with some practice for that.

I hope I won't start making too hard levels too soon. :D

Tomorrow will be more graphical things. I have to make a menu, some level selection screen, some gfx for blocks, get some kind of a background and I will add particle effect (woot). 

I found out that when you die and the level is reloaded that the process takes up 0.050 Kbyts (or KB.. dunno) more memory. I will look into it but I don't think it is such a big problem because the game later releases that memory. Dunno. 

Alpha is near and when it is in a good state more features will be started to being added. 

It is late now, so good night people.

Delay #1

Hello there. I haven't posted for some days now. I was sick and still am. I have some infection of throat (I don't know how you say that in English). I am sick since Tuesday. I also had some other problems and my head also didn't want to kinda work on the project. I wanted to get over the alpha stage this week but sickness got into my plans. I will start working on the project tomorrow. Some of the things that I think need to be done to reach the alpha stage: some pile of polishes that I have written down, lame-o menu and level selection, some 10+ levels, basic sounds effects maybe some music added. After that is done the game will hit the beta development phase. 

Now for some more gaming news. In these days I took myself the time and played some indie games that I tried but didn't put enough time into them.

RunMan: Race Around the World

I completed it. I have to say it is really fun and fast. A lot of love has been put into it. I wish todays Sonic games would be as good as this. I recommend this one.

Dungeons of Fayte

A game that came out of the Assemblee compo at TIGsource. It is great because and a 4 players coop is hell fun. I completed it with my brother. If you have someone around to play with, try this.

Picture on the link. (The links are in the titles)

Spectre

A game from this years IGF student category. It is not much of a gameplay but the storytelling is amazing and gives me that Fahrenheit feeling. 

An Untitled Story

One word, epic. The game is humongous and I lost many hours in it and probably didn't even get over the half of the game. Really a gem that I played in the past and played it again this days. Give it a go. I also suggest a gamepad with a long cable and some comfortable chair. Really one of the best games.

There are a lot Indie games I played but you probably know them and I won't list them here.

I hope I will give you more updates on the project tomorrow.

Night

Some update #2

Yea I think it is #2 of the name "Some update". I am currently listening to the 1UP broadcast or whatever. It is 2 hours long and I like it. I don't have a link but google for it. The maker of Braid is in it. 

I survived yesterdays skiing. It was really nice. My friend took a picture of me trying to do some stuff and when I will get it I will post it. I couldn't get it today. :D

I did some work today on the project. Mainly some small but seeable tweaks to the graphics. I kinda like the look now I only need to get some backgrounds. I won't post a picture of it now. Tomorrow when I add a player spawning block in the level editor and a end of the level the game will be in an.... hmm... 0.5 version.. is that alpha or beta.. dunno. And some level editors will be good :D. I will make the main levels but the levels that other people will create will be put in the bonus stuff even in the main levels. Ok some user friendliness in the level editor has to be done :D. I will also make a "trailer" for the game to test my video editing skills again. I also need to make some tutorial levels with text to get the player into it.

That is all for now. Tomorrow is school ( hellish monday ) and here is a picture of me writing a blog post with the sticky notes included.

We go skiing

Hello there. Another week passed. It is friday night and I will go sleep soon because we go skiing tomorrow. The whole day. So I won't post any updates and logicaly won't work on the project. Maybe if some interesting pictures come out tomorrow I will post it :D I am not really good at skiing so I hope I won't kill myself. Oh well. 

I made progress on the game. The level editor is really nice to work with and core gameplay is smooth and as I want it to be. I made a little challenging level for me and like played it over 15 minutes. It is hard but addicting... you just want to make that jump right :D. I really like when I get this feeling. More types of blocks were added and still more will be. You cannot see them on the picture thou because they are the same color. 

I hope you like it. Kinda. IDK about the gfx. More updates on sunday.

Bye.

Moving blocks scratched

Hello. Bad news today. I scratched moving blocks in the game. Yea that is right. I had to make a decision. To waste like 5-10 more hours on them or delete them. I deleted all the code for them. So that means I threw away all todays work including like 5 hours of work from other days. That much because most of the fixing and all was related to the moving blocks. I also don't think that they are that important.

As this big problem is out of the way I can start working on much more content. Different types of blocks, more gameplay mechanics and stuff. I will really make this game the best till now. Secrets included :P

I work a lot on the game but I am kinda angry I had to delete much of hard work. But that is life. And moving platforms are a pain in the ass. Well they worked most of the time but you couldn't use them close to other blocks because of some conflicts.

I hope that great updates are coming tomorrow. 

Evil Visual Studio and stupid me

A really quick post because I am totally nerved now. Today I was just simply working on the project suddenly a error got up. And I couldn't get my game to running again. It was an error I didn't see before (in the debugging output) but the game ran but it was a blank screen. So I was 100% sure that it really is a loading libraries error. After 1 hour of nerves breaking and puzzling searching the net for solution I found out that there is an programming error. The game gut stuck in a never ending loop on the level loading that I totaly didn't expect. I am just so angry......

Oh well. I did do some things at least.

Stupid VS for showing me an not important error just in the same time I (really don't know how) made a programming error, and all made me think it is a VS problem. Well the coding error was, that it reads a level file till the end. But somehow it gets stuck if the level file is empty. WTF..

Good night. More updates tomorrow.

Monday bloody monday :D

Little quick post today. First I didn't do anything on the project. Maybe I will play a little and make some pixelated graphics. I think I will go with that style. I hope I won't make it worse. Today I came home at 4.30 PM, it was 5.30 PM when I got myself together :P. I had volleyball at 7 PM till 8 PM so I just wasn't in the mood today. But tomorrow is a long programming day. I made a big list of stuff I will add and how the level editor will work. I also made sketches on the paper. I would post it here now but I don't have a scanner in my arms reach now. I will post that tomorrow.

So todays point of interest.

Microsofts Kodu game lab. I downloaded it and player a little with it and it seams you can make simple but kinda good games with this new "programming" language. It is a visual type but still. It is for those that are starting with game dev. It is very simple to use and main usage is for younger people but maybe some talent can make space invaders out of it.

Presentation video:

I recommend it to any game dev to play a little with it. It is fun but I find it a little limitating. But I will play with it tomorrow a bit more.

LINK

Bye for today.

Project update #1

So here is the big project update. I sadly didn't post it yesterday but I took myself a lot of time to change the template (it isn't as easy as it sounds) and I counted that as an daily post :D I hope you like the it. It has only the simplest things needed not as the previous which had too many not needed stuff. I like this one 100x more.

( I like it so much I will post a picture of it :D)

Now about the project.

As I didn't post a picture of the game yet this is the first thing to do.

First thing to say is the graphics. The blocks are different colors so it was simpler for me to recognize them. The player need his arms also. Also a nice background must be made. I still don't know if I will stay with something like this or remake all the graphics. So I need some kind of feedback. I am not really got at gfx but if people won't like it I have a problem.

Not what is done on the gameplay. I took a lot of time to make the platforming as smooth as possible. Todays I was working with tweaks and bug fixes with it for about 2 hours. Because I constantly discover thing that could be better. But mainly bugs like going through a block at an angle. But that is all fixed now. The game controls mainly as I want to. Maybe I will make the movement a little slower because it is really hard to do dome movements at this speed. But the main thing is that the game is hard because the player can't make it and not because it is made badly.

Then we have the block. Normal blue blocks. The red ones are spiked one and the green ones are moving (you cannot see that on the image). But they work perfectly. As you can see there are glows out of the blocks. That is where you ran (touched them). I will probably use this, so you will gain slow motion power when moving where you still haven't. The level editor also works, as does the saving and loading of different levels. I also made an algorithm that checks if the block has a neighbour, so it doesn't put spikes or bounding line there. There are still a few easy types of block to be made: destroying, switching and some more. I will make it so that when you connect a moving block with other, all of them get the moving attribute. That way you can make different moving structures.

A lot is done till now and a lot more has to be done. But the progress is kinda good. I mainly want a feedback what you thing about all this.

Hmm these post take a long time to write. This was now like 40 minutes :D.

Good bye for now. Also check the new images on my flickr (link on the left) that I didn't post here.

Images #1

Click on them to see them big time in the all sizes tab :D

I won't break my promise [Update]

Here is the update of my yesterdays post. For the recap I posted it because I will keep up the at least 1 post a day.

So today I did some progress. It isn't really late now but I am going out with friends. Because of that I didn't finish 2 things on my checklist for today (hey it is friday night). But instead of that I fixed some really weird bugs I discovered.

Today I made a Flickr account. That means high quality images. Yessss. All the pictures go on the blog will be there. I also opened a category called programming, where I already posted 3 pictures about working on the project. I think I will do that daily because it is so simple. I hope you will like the pictures but warning they are about programming soooo. But I think that many of you will be interested. I will be posting the images with the flickr blog posting thingie.

I will now post the images from flickr. A more detailed project update coming tomorrow.

Bye

Happy new year?

Hello there. First of all happy new year to everyone. I know I am late. I also know that I didn't post anything on the blog since the 23th. That is kinda sad, considering back in the days I made posts more frequently. I will try to change that now (kinda new year promise), I also have to start working more on game developing. I need to put a notifier on my desktop so I will post every day.

About the new project. Well I started on it all the platforming works. I will scratch the shooting part of the game because it kinda does not go together with this style of plaformer. I also hope it won't be to Meat boy-ish. But many developers said: if you remake something, then add something in it so it will be totally different. But I think that the game isn't like Meat boy it only has similar platforming gameplay. 

Little what works.

-platforming ( yay wall slide and jump )

- sloooow motion, I like it

- and some eye candy

I start further work on it tomorrow. The last 3 days (and I really mean it) I have been working on something for school but now I done everything and have like 2 weeks of chilling. Enough time to finish this. I start working on advanced platforms tomorrow: spiked, moving, eee oscilating and a level editor. I won't post a screen because the graphics look strange, I have to change them a little but don't expect more from me than lost of cubes and simple stuff.

Here is a little vector art I did for the game (main character)... not named yet :D

(that is not slime at the bottom.. it is a badly drawn light)

I will post some screens of the game tomorrow. 

Bye