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