new dwarf fortress skin

dwarf-fortress-visualizer

small worlds

explore small worlds by David Shute which won the Jayisgames 6th casual gameplay design competition

EA 2D present Flash version of Dragonage

"EA 2D" plan to release a 2D version of Bioware's 3D RPG Dragonage. It really exciting to hear that major game developers are now hiring Flash developers to work their magic.

Gamespot
Gamasutra

In the Gamasutra article, it mentions this new team is lead by:

Daniel Stradwick, a Flash game developer responsible for the widely-played Flash RPG series Monster's Den.

John and I are both front-end developers working at Blast Radius, and we've heard how EA has been successfully integrating Flash into the interface of their sports titles. It's great to see them making games aimed at the web. For instance, the new online version of Tiger Woods which is built not with Flash but with Unity3D.

Since Flash is our weapon of choice, it would be amazing if we could help EA co-create future content and further blur the lines between the game and the web.

mission statement

concept 2 will soon have a mission statement...

I want it to be simple and quirky; kinda like Starguards'

"Guide the spaceman through the castle and defeat the wizard"

awesome!

Concept 2

It's just for fun (for now,) but take a look at this latest collaboration. Credit to Brandon for art. It's just a little character that you can run around, but we're looking at jumping off in a new direction.

Codename: Concept 2.

what is blogspot.digger-dwarves all about?

I've updated our description -- well updated it as in wrote it as I just discovered we had none.

This is basically what we're trying to do:

we are working on an indie game, and this is our sandbox where will be posting ideas, experiments, and any bits that might help us move the game forward. Even we don't finish the game (which is highly likely), we think the journey is potentially more interesting than the end product so we're going public with it pre instead of post game.

This blog is also tethered to wegetsignal.ca which another experimental base for us to try out new things other than game development.

somethings coming on the horizon

dreary diary,

I may actually have something exciting to tell you today. This will not be another one of my depressing entries but just for the record I'm still here; still alone; and still afraid I'm losing my mind. I think I might even be starting to see things.

As you know nothing ever happens here at this frozen hell, but this morning, I ventured up to my secret lookout spot and have spied something moving way out over the horizon. Something small, white and just a speck of red. And its getting bigger. No, this time its not another one of my mermaid sightings. I'm not about to try to swim out and meet her cold embrace again. No matter how sweet she sings or how her sea foam hair waves me in. We both know that turned out badly and my blue toes are enough of a daily reminder. This time, I'll wait it out and make sure its real before I dive in head first.

In the meantime, I'll prepare a note to send back to my commanding officer. I have a valid excuse too. I've finished the last of the reserves. I'll need both black and white gold very soon, and this will give me reason to write home. Of course I won't say anything until I'm certain.

Tomorrow, it will surely be closer to the outpost, and I'll be able to get a better look at whatever it is. For now, the site of it fills me with mixed emotions, and even more questions. What could this mean for our new colony? Do I finally have a purpose? Yeah, I know I didn't sign up for this post but it would be great to know that these last 6 months had meant something.

All this time away, and all that blood, sweat, and tears that went into my tunnels have probably gone to waste. They're probably caved in by now. I don't think I'll be able to last much longer out here but then again. Do I really have that much to return to? With only the old man to write me, I know better than count on his well wishes ever arriving.

For one thing, I've learned at least some patience and I'll continue to lean on you to keep me going. I'll go prepare that document now and return my vigil over the looking glass.

a giant named mike

simple box2D tutorial

After showing John my latest as-hive integration, he commented that it looked "pretty clunky" and I have to agree. For some reason, the game and physics tests are running very slowly which probably means HIVE is sapping resources somewhere; probably because I was using an old version.



Today, I did another quick tech demo and this time I picked the latest as-hive version 3 which uses the new swc to allow me to work completely in FlexBuilder 3. I should also look at in the Flex Profiler and possibly add some other opensource AS3 memory diagnostic views to make sure version 3 is tight.

This is the second time that I've been inspired by one of Emanuele's great demos, and this time I rewrote it to work more like lego blocks -- IMHO more digestable bites -- and also gave the variables clear English names like "groundBody" or "meteorBallBody".

as-hive and box2d demo

code sample:

public function PhysicsWorld():void
{
createWorld();

drawDebug();
drawGround();
drawBuilding();
drawMeteor();

addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterFrameHandler);
}

full source

I added some comments throughout the code. For instance, if you change the density of the meteor from 100 to 10 it will land peacefully on the roof like a zeppelin but that's another game.

For time to time, we'll try to post small samples like this. Now, onto to skinning the objects and playing with setPixel32 to rip into them.

team dev

So far the coding department of DD has been comprised of one John Stringham, and he's made some awesome solo progress. But now I'd like to join the fray a bit and work on some of the screens around the gameplay -- perhaps collaborate with John on an episode.

I've reached a small milestone today by integrating HIVE with DD so I can work around John's efforts.

The following are two tech demos mainly for John's benefit to show him what I've been working on:

build 1 <--- plugs in an old version of John's demo
build 2 <--- borrows Emanuele Feronato's nice box2D demo

One episode can now be easily be swapped out for a different one.

By using this type of framework, we can continue to work independently even take on different episodes while we create hooks between the screens and maintain the flow.