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