Something to keep our eye on and motivate us through the winter -- we could potentially participate this year ( or next if we're lazy and get snowed with work)
experimental-gameplay.org
It's hosted by Jonathan Blow creator of Braid, a big indie success story this year.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Patapon
I love the superflat art and animation style as well as the rhythmic gameplay.
Patapon Official Website
Monday, December 15, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
doodlin dwarves
I did some character concept sketches on the weekend. I'm trying to arrive a nice blueprint for a dwarf race:
I'll give a shout out to the most excellent 123 Klan since I started out doodling their monkey to warm up my hands; biting it from their wicked grahic design book; a must get!
I was drawing and listening to Ted Talks. I heard "10 ways the world could end - Stephen Petranek (2002)" which listed death by asteroid as a potential end to it all if we don't find a way to
land on them and plant ion boosters to steer them out of the way. This talk reminded me of a recent science ficiton book that I read,
The Mote In God's Eye, about making contact with an alien race that mines asteroids and move them around their solar system.
Originally, I had wanted to base the game on Earth and allows players to dig through the planet to the other side, but now I'm thinking asteroids might be fun way to contain that gameplay and increase believability.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
wrapped in HIVE
we've been building this prototype in FlexBuilder (its not Flex -- its all raw AS3) and will be using the open source AS3 framework, AS-HIVE, to manage loading external assets and sequencing screens.
Although we probably won't opensource this prototype, we may be able to make some advancements to as-hive and which we'll give back to the community (the three of us who use HIVE ;-D).
Personally, I'll try to post some code samples at times; and I'll work on John to do likewise :-D.
actionscript framework: HIVE
Although we probably won't opensource this prototype, we may be able to make some advancements to as-hive and which we'll give back to the community (the three of us who use HIVE ;-D).
Personally, I'll try to post some code samples at times; and I'll work on John to do likewise :-D.
actionscript framework: HIVE
Graphics??
I just threw in a little placeholder sprite for the sake of it. It could almost be a game!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Stability
New version is up. There's a few new features but mostly this build is for stability. You can't fall off the right hand side of the world and you can't dig to your doom either. Enjoy!
Friday, November 14, 2008
New Version For The Weekend
Not much different, but stuff should exhibit better physics (snowballs will ricochet and roll back down surfaces if thrown with enough force.)
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Distribution
Our demo is currently full screen in the browser window. We hope to keep a full screen mode, but for the most part, we would like to distribute this game through portals. I worked on some very rough UI concepts today. I did a bunch of thumbnail sketches and trolled google images for inspiration.
I looked at some gorgeous winter shots of Norway including this dwarvish gem:
source: adverblog Norway Ad
Google images also has an immense catalog of screen shots, and I grabbed several for reference and added them to a folder in my photoshop file. Like websites, games share the concept of learned behavior; that players expect keys to do certain things and the HUD (heads up display) to have a consistent lay out across games. This isn't stealing.
source: Maple Story
Currently, we're not teaching you how to play the game but one jumps by pressing the up cursor [the left/right cursors move the character] but I expected to be to jump pressing the space bar when John first showed me his prototype.
In order to resolve this, we will be adding an options panel so that you can easily map your own keyboard controls. We could also allow you to move around HUD elements but this will probably have undesired consequences and might clash with gameplay.
Since we wish to distribute our game to various portals, I decided to mock up what Digger Dwarves would look like in New Grounds. I also used one of my favourite indie game success stories, Alien Hominid, to help with scale which made it obvious that our current character - the black square - is far too small for the planned art work which is heavily influenced by the Korean super deformed art style.
With the New Grounds shell in place, its clear that we need to use these screen limitations to create a view port for our game. This defines the drawing area, and anything outside this space could be dormant (or removed from the stage entirely) to improve performance.
You may be wondering why we're coding before we even know what we're doing?! We're following a light Agile methodology. We have a private wiki with a backlog of player stories, and we've decided on a feature set for a two-week sprint. So we do have some idea of what we're doing. Some.
I looked at some gorgeous winter shots of Norway including this dwarvish gem:
source: adverblog Norway Ad
Google images also has an immense catalog of screen shots, and I grabbed several for reference and added them to a folder in my photoshop file. Like websites, games share the concept of learned behavior; that players expect keys to do certain things and the HUD (heads up display) to have a consistent lay out across games. This isn't stealing.
source: Maple Story
Currently, we're not teaching you how to play the game but one jumps by pressing the up cursor [the left/right cursors move the character] but I expected to be to jump pressing the space bar when John first showed me his prototype.
In order to resolve this, we will be adding an options panel so that you can easily map your own keyboard controls. We could also allow you to move around HUD elements but this will probably have undesired consequences and might clash with gameplay.
Since we wish to distribute our game to various portals, I decided to mock up what Digger Dwarves would look like in New Grounds. I also used one of my favourite indie game success stories, Alien Hominid, to help with scale which made it obvious that our current character - the black square - is far too small for the planned art work which is heavily influenced by the Korean super deformed art style.
With the New Grounds shell in place, its clear that we need to use these screen limitations to create a view port for our game. This defines the drawing area, and anything outside this space could be dormant (or removed from the stage entirely) to improve performance.
You may be wondering why we're coding before we even know what we're doing?! We're following a light Agile methodology. We have a private wiki with a backlog of player stories, and we've decided on a feature set for a two-week sprint. So we do have some idea of what we're doing. Some.
Snowballs!
You can chuck stuff now (press spacebar!) Realistic snowball physics! Wow!
Okay well.. semi-realistic. As always, click the link on the right --->
Okay well.. semi-realistic. As always, click the link on the right --->
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
New Physics
A new physics engine is in. There's not much difference in terms of what the user sees, but the upside is that your browser won't freeze anymore.
Click the link to the right --->
Click the link to the right --->
Why QA should never see anything that is still in it's Dev cycle..
We tend to try and jump off the edge of the world... all while crashing the browser.
Sometimes Half The Problem
...is finding the right Google search terms. After horribly breaking the physics by turning it into a self-sufficient engine, independent from the graphics, Dwarves have had little hope of digging, let alone staying afoot of the terrain.
http://games.fourtwo.se/xna/2d_collision_response_xna/
The link above is the style of solution I was performing but perhaps more sensible.
http://games.fourtwo.se/xna/2d_collision_response_xna/
The link above is the style of solution I was performing but perhaps more sensible.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Version Tracking... Sort Of
Older versions are now being archived for the sake of nostalgia and historical comparison. The latest version is always available via the link on the right; at times we may link back to previous versions so you can see how things have progressed.
In the meantime, today's latest additions include the fractal mountains mentioned below, some sprite rotation when you jump based on momentum, and slightly better collision detection (again.)
Next Build
With vastly improved collision detection (still not perfect,) better snow weather/terrain and a feel good atmosphere that you normally only get at home when you're playing a Flash game that someone else made for you.
http://www.wegetsignal.ca/diggerdwarves/SnowTest.html
Also, you can jump twice as high. Twice! That's over one and half times!
http://www.wegetsignal.ca/diggerdwarves/SnowTest.html
Also, you can jump twice as high. Twice! That's over one and half times!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
bezier curves
my google reader spit out this nice post tonight on creating bezier curves in AS3 referencing defraga which we might be able to leverage.
Digger Dwarves alpha 0.000001
A basic particle weather system, terrain generator and a tiny black box that may or may not represent a player is in.
You can check out the current build here:
http://www.wegetsignal.ca/diggerdwarves/SnowTest.html
You can check out the current build here:
http://www.wegetsignal.ca/diggerdwarves/SnowTest.html
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