The Forgotten Planet Game Music

The Forgotten Planet - Menu Music - By Josef Falkensköld ( www.falconshield.com )


Tuesday 31 August 2010

New Enemy: The ShellBiter!

I can't believe myself to day: Triple Posting!!

First some very nice news!

A very talented Pixel artist has joined the project: "Bobwax"

Please pay a visit to his homepage:http://www.bjornsilfverberg.se/

He gave me a very nice good looking animated sprite for the game, and I could not just sit back and relax. It took some time, blood sweat and tears, but now I have the critter in-game.

Process to get an enemy in-game:
1. Edit the sprite-sheet to fit my game engines format of reading in sprites fast.
2. Insert the sprite into my map editor
3. Insert the sprite into the game engine
4. Code the AI for it
5. Bugtest
6. Bugtest some more

And here I am somewhat finished with it. Will insert a delay on the attack for it tomorrow, but I wanted to get this out to you today.

Youtube video: New Enemy - ShellBiter

Until next post!

SolarStrings

TCP/IP non-blocking working now!

Today Is another "double-post" day!


After a few hours of researching and trying out different things I got SDL_Net TCP/IP to work non-blocking. This means I can now hurry onward to start coding the two-player co-op experience!


Here's the first working non-blocking TCP/IP video. Only console, but proves it's working!

Click to watch: The Forgotten Planet - TCP/IP non-blocking video

SolarStrings

Monday 30 August 2010

2-Player co-op on the way!

Hello Again!

Today I have some good news for you!

That "Multiplayer" word glowing in the main menu means that The Forgotten Planet will have 2-player co-op mode. You will be able play over Internet & LAN. And to make things even more fun the co-op mode will have a completely different game world!

Earlier I used UDP for a metroid clone I was working on, and it worked prety well. But UDP is a bit "overkill" for just 2-player, so this time I've decided to try with TCP/IP instead.

As you probably have guesses by now I've started working on the networking part for the game. At the moment I'm testing if I can get TCP/IP non-blocking with SDL_net and I think I have found a solution. If I somehow against all odds fail, I'll fall back on UDP which by default is Non-Blocking in SDL_net.

Anyways back to TCP/IP coding!

See you next post!

SolarStrings

Main Menu + Music

Hello!

Today I started working on the main menu of the game. Figured that glowing menu selection was cool, so I fired up my GIMP and did some Image manipulation.

Screenshot of the main menu (click image to view full-size):


And the Youtube video with the menu and its sound track:

Click for Youtube video of the Main Menu

Until next post!

SolarStrings

Friday 27 August 2010

GamePad Support!

A new day with headache and a clogged nose! - Yes I have a cold!

Today I started working on the Gamepad / Joystick support and so far I have the buttons "hard-coded". Next step will be to write the Customize Keyboard and GamePad options so the player can choose which keys / buttons he / she want to use to control our main character.

Here's a Youtube Video of me playing using my GamePad:
Click here -> Youtube video Gamepad Support

(Yes, Enemy - Player collision test is turned off atm, that's why I don't take any damage from enemies in this video.)

See you next post!

SolarStrings

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Let there be sound, and there was sound!

Hello!

Yesterday I added the SDL mixer library to the game project. It makes playing sounds and music very simple. In only a couple of minutes I had the first .wav file playing and another 10 minutes and music was playing from my speakers as well. Now I can start working on the various sound effects for the game.


After some googling I found out how to record the internal sound with gtkrecordmydesktop, so here's the youtube video with music and sound in-game.


Click to watch the Youtube Video:Music & Sound in-game


I must say that it feels good to get sound in-game early instead of late in the game creation process. Now I have to focus on designing sound effects for enemies, surroundings, explosions etc etc... when I throw them into the game.

Until next post!

SolarStrings

Monday 23 August 2010

Target OS for The Forgotten Planet?

2nd post for today!

Today I post twise which does not happen to often.
I'm starting to receive questions about what OS you can run The Forgotten Planet on, so I figured I would clarify a few things.


What OS can you run The Forgotten Planet on now?
 
At the moment The Forgotten Planet runs on both Linux & windows.
I'm thinking about porting the game to XNA (XBOX360) later, but we'll see what happens (nothing 100% decided yet).


What are you creating the game in?

I'm programming the game with C using SDL ( http://www.libsdl.org/ ) which makes it easy to compile and run the game on both windows and linux without changing one single line of code.

Next project (whenever that might be in the far distant future) will be made with OpenGL + SDL, written in C++.

SolarStrings

Rotozoomer!

Hello again!

A few days ago I started playing around with rotating images, and today I got it to work properly.

Here is a Link to the youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9-UdIA3yxk

This will be used for enemies, bosses and other fun stuff that we want to rotate.

Until next post!

SolarStrings

Friday 20 August 2010

Youtube Channel!

Today I created a youtube channel for The Forgotten Planet.

Link to youtube: The Forgotten Planet on Youtube


Rough Sketch

Also, here is a rough sketch of the different areas in the game:
(Click the image if you want to see it in full-size)



See you next post!

SolarStrings

Saturday 14 August 2010

Small Update

Hi Again!

I'm back with some small news, nothing fancy since I'm working "under the hood" on the game engine, fixing bugs and speeding up things. This means no nice screen-shots or videos this time.

Today I focused on fixing a bug with the collision code. Sometimes when an enemy jumped on a slope it fell through. This annoyed me so I decided to focus on the bug and after a few hours (yes a few hours, this one was hiding deep down between them lines), but I finally found the bugger and took him out with my bugxtinator.

Game documentation

I Also started documenting down the ideas I have for the different areas in game.
Here is a "sneak-peak" of a few areas in the game:


Surface

This is where the game starts. The aliens have just crash landed on the planet surface and try to use their long-space-communication equipment, and find out that it does not work due to being jammed by the planetary automated defense system.


Ancient Ruins

This is the area of the game where the player will find the remnants of the advanced civilization that once lived here and also built the planetary defense system.


Hovering Islands

Once the player has built a "mini-craft" he can use it to fly up and explore these Islands.


Crystal Caves

A dark place filled with crystals which grow out from the walls. The crystals are power sources which the player need to collect in order to repair the ship. The more crystals the player pick, the darker the area becomes since they are the only light source down there. However, with the right materials the player can build a ball of light which follows him where he goes, lighting up dark places.

This was only a small "preview" of what is to come.

See you next post

SolarStrings

Tuesday 10 August 2010

New enemy & water movement.

Hi!

Progress on the game is going smooth. I Talked with my pixel artist yesterday, and he showed me some progress on the alien game sprite, and I got a glimpse of the nice alien gun which will fire them nice "projectiles of death" (Skype video chat).


Art!

Here is a w.i.p sprite of one of the two aliens that crash lands which you will be able to play.








I have started to make friends with a nice guy that will move to the city where I live (Eksjö, sweden). He has great talent for painting miniature models for games like Warhammer 40k etc.

He has offered to paint backgrounds for the game, which I'm eagerly waiting to see!

Here's a link to his blog:

http://mytinythings.blogspot.com/


What's new since last post?

Earlier this week I added a water surface tile animation which I place upon the first water tile animation I crated, making the water look more real.

Today I added two things, water movement to the player and a new simple enemy AI.

Water movement:

As soon as the player steps down into the water, the movements become "sluggish".

Enemy AI:

The enemy is of the most simple kind, it bumps between two walls, going forth and back in en endless loop, until the player kills it.


Video of the new stuff:




Or download directly from here (higher quality, 4MB):

Download new enemy and water movement avi

See you next post!

SolarStrings

Friday 6 August 2010

The Forgotten Planet - Story.

Hello!

Today I decided to start blogging about the game I'm making: "The Forgotten Planet"

The best place to start would be the question: 

"What is the game about?"

Two aliens are on a mission from their home world to find a new planet to colonize. They are out exploring a new solar system when the ship scanner beeps: Possible new colonize able planet found. Immediately they pilot their ship towards the planet. However, once they enter the orbit of the planet, the automated planetary defense system shoots them down, and they crash land. Once down on the planet, they discover that their “long-space-communication” does not work from the planet.

The goal of the game:

The two aliens must now:

1. Find materials which they use to repair the ship with.

This will be a fun event in the game with a menu where you combine gathered materials to:

- Repair / build a part to the ship
- Upgrade / build a new weapon/item
- Upgrade armor

2. Close down the “planetary automated defense system in order to not get shot down, and to get out to space to deliver the good news to their home world: “We've found a new planet to colonize”.

I've been programming on the intro, and I'm about 30% done:

View Intro

What kind of game is The Forgotten Planet?

The forgotten planet is a 2D platform game where the game world will be free to explore: Go where you want, do what you want etc. Building new weapons/items will unlock new areas to explore, where enemies and bosses wait for your arrival, as you seek materials both rare and common which you need in order to repair your ship.

Here is a early in-game video (some borrowed sprites & tiles except from the alien & the fireball you see on screen):

View Early Gameplay

See you next post!

SolarStrings