Studying first, then back to finishing the forgotten planet

One year left of studying, then back to finishing game.

Hi Guys!

Many have asked if the project is dead. The answer to that is: no, it's on hold.

Two years a go I started studying computer science (system architecture), a three year program at högskolan borås. During this time, I decided to put the project on hold, and focus on studying and getting my bachelors degree. I have one year and nine weeks left to study, then hopefully I will have my exam. So far I have passed all courses, and hope to do so the third year as well, and write my bachelor thesis.

Once my studies are complete, I'll port the game from SDL1.2 to SDL2.0, put in my 2D platform game world generation into the game, which will speed up the creation of the game world a lot. The game will use a research tree with different branches where the player researches different technologies which unlocks items to build. This removes the need for the game world generation to take into account how to place platforms early on in the game, making them reachable and such .

The player will have to gather resources to upgrade the research module in his crashed ship to speed up the research process, repair a part of the ship that was damaged in the crash, choose which part of his gear he wants to research upgrades for etc. This makes the game interesting, since some will choose firepower first, and thus not reach higher platforms, or upgrade the defense gear in order to stay alive longer. Some want to fix the crashed ship as fast as possible, but having a hard time getting around in the game world, due to not having upgraded the gear.

Even though I'm not blogging, I'm working on algorithms for the game in the background (when I have the time in between family and studying).

Until next post! (which might take a while :) )

New menu look!

Hi Guys!

I'm back after a few months of silence. We are working hard to complete "ForceLine" for Android, Linux and Windows. You can watch the trailer here:ForceLine Trailer on Youtube

New Menu

I've had the new menu graphics for about two months now, but due to working on ForceLine, The Forgotten Planet has been a bit in the shadows. Anyway.. a picture say more than a thousand words, but a video say more than a million.

Here's the Youtube Video:


Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings

Probe boss teaser

Hi Guys!

At the moment the project is moving forward at a  slow pace, due to working a lot on the game for Android (Which by the way will soon enter beta). The main menu is soon complete though, so a video showing off the new main menu should be up when I get time to finish it.

Meanwhile, here's a teaser image of the first boss: "The Probe", which will drop the technology you need in order to research & build your own probe.

Until next blogpost!
SolarStrings

Inner Tiles Added to Bitwise Method!

Hi Guys!

I could not leave the Inner corner tiles left out from the bitwise method, so I took an hour this morning and added them! Map building will go blazingly fast now!

Youtube Video:



Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings

Bitwise method for applying tilemaps

Hello Guys!

Nope! The development is not standing still! I'm still working on the game, and at the moment the new menu graphics is in the process of being made. Sometime next month I'll show it off to you!

Ok so, onward to the more technical and nice stuff!

Bitwise method for applying tilemaps

I came upon a nice little article showing an easy way of drawing tiles, and placing the right tiles around it.

http://www.saltgames.com/2010/a-bitwise-method-for-applying-tilemaps/

I figured: "This should not be to hard to implement", and it wasn't! Took me a few hours to get things rolling the way I wanted.

And the reason you really stopped by:



"Until next blogpost"

SolarStrings

Got empoyed to program a game for Android!

Hi Guys!

Yesterday I got employed to program a game for Android. This means that The Forgotten Planet will move forward at a slower pace during the upcoming months.

So if you don't see updates as frequent as before, you know why.

Until next blogpost

SolarStrings

Bug Fixing is going good!

Hi Guys and Ladies (if any lady happens to follow my blog that is ^^)

This month has been great code wise so far! There is no Youtube Video this time either, since all work has been "under the hood", fixing, rewriting and tweaking things.

Network Code Re-Design.... Again!

I decided to re-design the network code for......... the 3rd time! I really haven't coded much network stuff before starting with this game. I did some small simple upd & TCP/IP tests, but nothing near of how to handle enemies, player positions and all the other nice stuff in an efficient way & make sure it runs smoothly enough over the net without to much latency.

So why did I decide rewrite the network code again? Simply because I noticed that some of the bugs I had could only be solved by making a more efficient way to construct and handle the network packages.

To make a long story short, 2player co-op network is running smoothly now. I'm only about 50% done, since I'm converting the old network code to the new one. But the important thing is: It runs faster, much more stable & It's now a lot easier for me to add or change the package structure.

Immediately when the first pieces of the new network code was in place, a couple of bugs just solved themselves right away, as I had expected.

Converting the rest code will take a couple of more days (doing this in-between work, family, training & friends).

New Art

My graphics artist completed the first "crawler" enemy this week, which I have not had the time to put in-game yet, since fixing bugs is 1st priority this month.

To sum things up: Things are moving steady towards Tech Demo 2, so in a couple of months you'll be able to try it out yourself!

Until next blogpost

SolarStrings

Bug fixing month!

Hi Everyone!
Today, there's no nice youtube video for you, just informing you of what I'm up to.

This month is dedicated to fixing bugs and tweaking things to behave as I want to. There has been a couple of bugs lying around for to long, which needs fixing before the release of Tech Demo 2. I've managed to get rid of the most "nasty" ones I had, which is good, but there are still more in the "soup" which needs extermination.

The first boss AI is coming around nicely as well, there are only a few things to tweak then I'm satisfied. I'll be "hiding" him from you until you encounter him in Tech Demo 2 :).

My Graphics Artist is working on finishing the last enemies and the background for Tech Demo 2.

So to sum it up, here's what's left before release:

• Menu Redesign
• 15+ rooms to explore
• Sound effects for the main character & the enemies
• Eliminate the last bugs
• First Boss Graphics

Until Next Blogpost
SolarStrings

New Water Movement!

Hello Again!

I've just finished the new water movement for the game. The previous one was adapted to the old frame based code, and is now rewritten and working properly again.

I've played around a little with the network code as well, and changed a few things around and fixed so that the player and enemies can have up to 100 (0-99) different states instead of 10 (0-9). My Graphics Artist is creating great animations, and some of them had actions I had not thought of, which lead to adding more states for the enemies and the player.

And the real reason you stepped by, the YouTube video:



Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings

Favorite Tiles & Far View scrolling implemented!

Hello!

There has not been much progress in a couple of weeks, but now I'm back on track and have made some progress on different parts of the game.

First of all I added the "Far View" option to the parallax background scrolling, which means: Enable Far View, and all the backgrounds scroll slower. A friend of mine noticed that the backgrounds were scrolling to fast, compared to what they displayed, so I added this Feature to the Level Editor, and the Game.

Secondly, I added favorite tiles to the Level Editor as well. By right clicking on a tile in the "tile page" screen, the tile is added to the favorite list, which is accessible by clicking on the "favorite tiles" button in the main view. This speeds up level creation a bit.

You see the favorite tile box on the right side in the image below.

Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings

New Enemy Graphics!

Hello!

This weekend I hosted DreamCode Winter 2011, where 11 inde game developers got together and we had tons of fun coding and showing our games to each other.

During this weekend I finished the Sound FX section in the world builder and also put some new graphics into the game. I have not received all animations for the enemies, but that will come soon :).

If you wonder why there's no "flashy" damage showing off on the main character, it's because there is no "take-damage" animation for the main player yet, so you'll see him aiming his gun in some direction instead

And the reason why you really stopped by, the youtube video:



Until next post!

SolarStrings

New Character + Multiplayer test

Hello!

I was thinking about waiting until I had all the main character animations in place until making a new blogpost, but thought... It can't hurt to show him off a bit earlier.
There is two animations coming in soon: spin jump & running animation without shooting.

I'm currently working on fixing the the main character & other stuff running as it should in multiplayer. I have a few things to add, and also a couple of things to add timers to. Since switching from frame-based rendering to time-based rendering, I still have not tied up all the loose ends. But, what matters is that the project is going forward, and more things are being added and fixed with time!

One example of a loose end for example is that the enemy death animation is not displayed when the other player killed it. This is old network code not sending the right state. However, these things are quickly fixed!


And the real reason why you came here: The YouTube Video:



Until Next Post!

SolarStrings

Memory Leak fixes & Tech Demo 2 info

Hi!

I've been coding on many different things for the game these last days, and while I'm testing different stuff I sometimes forget that things get "messy" and that memory leaks appear because of forgetting to free up allocated memory that no longer is in use. Anyway, to get to bottom of things I had to do some code cleanup, and then found the nasty little buggers that was crawling around the system every frame, allocating more memory.

I took me about an hour to get things sorted out and up and running without leaking memory.

I'm now working on adding "Unit/Entity Sound" for the world builder, so that my sound/musician, Josef Falkensköld, easily can add sounds to enemies/objects and other stuff in the game.

Adding sounds to units/entities will be very easy. First he selects which unit/entity to add sound to, then click the "SoundFX" button to bring up the interface for adding sounds. On the top there will be a row with buttons with sound descriptions on them: "Attack, die, jump, move" etc. He then clicks on one of them and a directory listing will come up where he can browse for the sound he wants to use, click on it, and  "wham", that sound is rigged. The sound effect he rigged, will play when that action triggers in the game.

When clicking on one of the sound buttons in the editor, for example attack, the assigned sound for attack will be played. The name of the selected sound will also be displayed on screen.

Tech Demo 2:

It takes time to write your own game editor / engine and get all things working as you want. The engine & editor has come a long way, and I'm now thinking about releasing "Tech Demo 2" in the near future. I'm not going to put up any date of when it will be released, but by following the blog, you can tell when it draws near.

The following will be included in Tech Demo 2:

• 2 Player CO-OP, using the new working networkcode
• Main character graphics
• New main menu look
• Enemy graphics (Crawler, Stomper, Floater, Creep)
• Beautiful parallax scrolling background of the surface area
• 15+ rooms to explore.
• The first boss
• The first "Surface Music" track by Falkensköld
• Sound effects for the main character, enemies and other elements in the tech demo - by Falkensköld

Here's a preview of what the main character will look like!









 Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings

Passage Blocker!

Hello again!

Today I decided to code the "passage blocker" that hinders the player from going back from a boss fight. It can also be used to block the player and push him to find a new way around in the game world.

The passage blocker can be triggered to self-destruct, once a boss on the same map is killed.

And the reason you really stopped by, the Youtube video:



Still lots of placeholder graphics, real graphics will come later.

See you next post!

SolarStrings

Prallax Scrolling Backgrounds!

Hello again!

My graphic artist asked me if we were going to have parallax scrolling backgrounds in the game. This was before I made the 3.5 times speed increase of the game. Back then I thought: Let's try. But after the speed increase of the game engine, this became mandatory for me.

So after some good work in early mornings, in-between family quality time, and work I managed to put together the Parallax scrolling in two days!

The backgrounds are of course placeholder stuff until my graphic artist sends me the finished stuff!

And the real reason you came by: The YouTube Video



Until next post!

SolarStrings

Huge Performance Increase!

Hi!

I noticed this morning that I had not set the "SDL_RLEACCEL" flag on the background surface. This stands for "run length encoding acceleration", and usually gives a good performance increase. However, in this case it was a HUGE difference.


Before the fix, the game was running in about 134-137 frames/second (on my computer). Now it runs with 475-520 frames / second, depending on how many tiles that has to be drawn on screen. More graphics on screen = less fps, naturally.

The game speed gained is about 3.5 - 3.7 faster!! Not bad at all :)

So remember to go over old code you've written sometimes and make sure things have been set up properly.

For the SDL interested ones, this is how you set it up:
SDL_SetAlpha(Your_SDL_Surface_Here,SDL_SRCALPHA|SDL_RLEACCEL,255);

Until next post!

SolarStrings

Frame Based Rendering -> Time Based Rendering

Hello!

I decided to take a break from the AI coding and focus on one of the things that has been on my TODO list for some time: Change the game from frame based rendering to time based rendering.

What is frame based rendering?

Frame based rendering works in the following way:

First you lock the game to how many frames / second it shall run in, say 60 FPS.
Then you let X number of frames pass before you do something.
This will limit to game to not run any faster than  60 frames / second, and some older computers might not be able to handle the game.


What is time based rendering?

You set timers for everything that needs updating. For example: Move enemy, Input from the user for moving the player, update gravity on objects etc.

The game is no longer needed to run at a locked speed (60 FPS). The game will run with as fast as you computer can handle. On todays computers the game will run in around 90-150 frames / sec.

Since everything is time based, things will run at the same speed even down to 30 frames / sec, and still look fluent on older PC's.

Progress:

I'm now 99% done with the conversion to Time Based Rendering, I only have some minor things to tweak (set the right millisecond delay on things) and I'm done.

See you next post!

SolarStrings

Stomper AI

Hello!

I've done some more AI coding, and finished the "Stomper AI" this morning.
This is the 7th AI I coded for the game. I'm thinking about having 10-15 AI, so only a couple of more to go :)

And, what you really came here for: the YouTube video:



As you clearly can see, the enemy is placeholder, the real graphics will come later. This is only to show you what the different AI patterns look like.

Until next post!

SolarStrings

New AI: Suicide Floater

Hi Guys, and Ladies!

OK!, I'm back with a new enemy AI, the "Suicide Floater".

If the player comes close to the floater, it homes in on the player and attacks.
In the video, I've slowed down the enemy so you better can see what happens. You also get a view of the "Spiked balls" that uses an old AI that i wrote called "jump n run".

Here's the youtube video:





Notice :Most of the enemies are placeholders drawn real quick by me to have something to test with. The graphics will be replaced later. This is only to show you the different AI patterns that will be used in game.
Until next blogpost

SolarStrings

Lurker AI

Hi again!

As you've probably noticed, I'm writing the different enemy AI for the game. I started with what I thought would the hardest one to implement: "the crawler", and now I'm creating the other "easier" ones.

This morning I finished the "Lurker" AI. The ememy lies in wait for its prey, and once it walks under it, it strikes, falling down upon its victim.

As you can see, the graphics is placeholder and non-animated. I simply drew a quick sprite in GIMP and threw it in. The real graphics will come later. This video is only showing how the enemy AI works.

Here's the youtube video:


And, now it's time to go to work!

Until next blogpost!

SolarStrings