Digger Dwarves

Digger Dwarves update.. finally

2010-01-28T10:58:00.000-08:00

Long story short - Digger Dwarves has been updated! A big change would be the controls..

Arrow keys move
Down key digs
Spacebar jumps
'Z' throws snowballs

More info available on the WGS blog.

Official We Get Signal Dev Blog

2010-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

We Get Signal has officially launched a developer blog. It's the place to find information not only about Digger Dwarves, but also other We Get Signal Projects such as Rock, Paper, Zombie.

Check out the We Get Signal Dev Blog, let us know what you think of upcoming projects and sound off what you're most/least excited about.

Inspiration Machinarium

2010-01-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

Over the holiday break I had a chance to sit down and do some hardcore coding on Mushroomer!, a circumstance for which I am particularly thankful. A lot of good stuff has gone into it, although I am far from happy with the product. Moral of the story being: good code does not necessarily conceive a good game. There is something more than that, a certain perfection to the art of a video game that makes it real.

As luck would have it, I got a few Christmas goodies that helped me to remember this very phenomenon. Perhaps the most infamous of them all would be Machinarium. Immersive, intriguing, infuriating, inspiring... alright, I'm done with that -- but I simply can't tell you how amazing this game is. If you haven't bought it yet, suck it up and take the $20 hit.

I'll just let you go play the Machinarium demo for yourself.

More on Mushroomer! later: For now, suffice to say I've created a proper level editor, as well as 'event triggers' and some other nonsense. The January 10th deadline looms, and I hope to have something finished by then.

Mushroomer! - Side project #3

2009-12-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

I haven't quite gotten around to implementing Brandon's level sketch yet, with good reason.. there is a really cool competition going on right now for all you 'indie' game devs, over at The Independent Gaming Source. If you're into game development (or even just think you'd be into it!) I recommend checking it out.

My entry for the contest is a wee platformer tentatively titled "Mushroomer!" You are an intrepid young feller trapped in a mystical cave. Escape before time runs out, or suffocate on the horrible cave fumes.

Well that's the idea, anyway. Of course I wouldn't leave you without something to tame your fiddling digits, so go ahead and try playing an early alpha of Mushroomer.

sketch results

2009-12-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

Updates:
- the companion is now a pet which can't throw snowballs but might be able to growl and stun enemies or make them run away

Introducing:
- vehicles
- slopes
- ladders
- secret room
- level goal point
- a dark elf enemy

Each level is comprised of 2000 x 2000 pixel tiles which will be skinned later. The tiles are black right now for color hit detection.

skin experiment for our current build

2009-12-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

I think I got little bit ahead of things with the last castle crashers inspired art test in Flash, and tonight I want to challenge myself and play with the current build art:

my goal is post whatever I come up with tomorrow. I'm using a 6 year old 6" wacom :-D -- maybe next year I'll upgrade to the cintiq.

And hey you -- yes you budding game artist -- if you wish to create fan art, we'll post your skin too.

infinite ammo

2009-12-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

Infinite Ammo - New Media Manitoba Business Showcase from BlinkWorks -James Swirsky on Vimeo.

source: blog post from Atract Mode

infinite ammo

I've had a marian image that I think I cut out from a game developer magazine posted on the wall beside my desk for months now without knowing what it was...now I know and its even more inspiring.

lego hoth

2009-12-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

from this laughing squid post

Exciting 'discovery'

2009-12-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

So apparently I've been way out of the loop. I decided recently to fix the collision code because I couldn't find a good way to do it with pixel-perfect terrain. Well it turns out a fellow named Corey O'Neil has already done just that, with amazing results.

Check out Corey O'Neil's Collision Detection Kit. While it's far more than what I need (check out the real-time collisions with movies!) I can learn from it and that is exactly what I'm after.

diamonds are a girl's best friend

2009-12-11T14:04:00.002-08:00

new dwarf fortress skin

2009-11-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

dwarf-fortress-visualizer

small worlds

2009-11-17T07:44:00.001-08:00

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

EA 2D present Flash version of Dragonage

2009-10-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-10-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

simple box2D tutorial

2009-09-10T15:17:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-09T14:54:00.001-07:00

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.

Unavoidable

2009-08-31T05:45:00.000-07:00

My favourite games have tended to be story-driven adventure games where a player's decision will influence the outcome of the game.

One of my personal goals for this project is to accompany the game with a light story; easily digested by our modern reader who doesn't have time for giant tomes.

I'd like to try to interweave parts of it into the gameplay, and encourage others to cut it up too if we decide to make an editor similar to Bioware's Aurora toolkit. You'll notice the creative commons copyright at the bottom which was inspired by reading works by Cory Doctorow. There is an interesting trend to give a piece of your art away for free.

I've started to write fiction again, which for me is awesome because it only took me 10 years to come full circle and realize that I want to write fantasy again. Over the years, I haven't stopped writing just not finishing anything; mainly sketching stories and publishing non-fiction reviews. I think my last major completed fantastic work was my OAC English project where I created a board game complete with 20-sided dice rolls before I realized computers could look after this for you.

These days, I find it easier to write code than prose but more rewarding to have prose framed by code. One is an escape from the other yet they both can work together to create interactive fiction. I like being to being able to slide from code to prose and blurring those lines.

so here is one more false start:

----

The northern lights stirred as the passing meteor slipped through the night sky. It seemed to hang in the air like a bright emerald fleck trailed by fading stream as it arched over the isolated mining town. The sleeping dwarves beneath cared little about its sudden appearance, expect one who had been expecting it.

Alfric Seedstone, the town's eldest at well over 300 years old, didn't rush to do anything more anymore. He rolled over and out of bed onto the pick-axe scarred rock floor, and wrapped himself in thick hides that were sewn crudely together. Over the hides went a second layer of a heavy iron plates, polished to perfection over 100 years ago and now deeply pitted and dull, splattered with grease and dirt. They reflected no light crudely covered the crags of his skin that ringed his weary body and told the story of his life.

He murmured an a brief incantation and an faint wisp of an orb appeared and orbited between his hands, looping in and out of sculptured fingers several times before moving on to explore and warm the rest of his joints suffering for arthritis. Like the rest of his clan, Alfric was clinically blind from birth, and he didn't need the orb for light, but to ease his ancient body into motion.

Though blind, he knew his way around, and it paid to always put things back in their place. He located his ornate iron walking staff on its holder, which was too thick to allow his fingers to close around it. He favoured the top of this short staff, and rested the slabs of his fingers on its cool maned head, a forgotten beast, and clamped down to support his mass. Across his back, he slung a pack slash already full with some necessary equipment and then, feeling the orb ignite his limbs, he scuffled off to observe the strange wonder awaiting for him above.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License

drawing with flash

2009-08-18T11:47:00.001-07:00

I really like the Flash IDE for drawing. I find it easier than illustrator although the end line quality suffers if you're into that sort of thing; I hardly notice.

I worked a bit on my style this afternoon attempting to do a flash colour render of this dynamite engineer. I tried to time-box it to an hour. I took a bit longer than that and am somewhat happy with the results. I know I need to draw faster with less detail if I'm ever going to get to animation.

scribblenauts

2009-08-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

in this puzzle adventure game, you can type in any kid-safe nouns and they will appear in the game. For instance, type "bear" and one will appear and behave like a bear -- same with "bee", "fishing pole" and even "dracula".

neat first impression of scribblenauts

produced by 5th cell

snowman

2009-06-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

i like the look of this snowman found in the Nozomi Sasaki video below -- he needs to make it into the game somehow.

source: danny choo post

iPhone Fever

2009-05-23T09:15:00.001-07:00

This is an interesting article on the new iPhone Gold Rush.

Quick Update

2009-05-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Just tossed in a new update for Digger Dwarves. Not much in this one, but among the improvements:

- Scrolling terrain
- Much larger 'play area'
- Parallax scrolling for background
- Some bitmap blitting optimization, but it will still run slower than previous versions since there is more stuff to deal with now

As always check it out here or use the link on the side if you have moral issues with clicking links in blog posts...

unreal terrain in under 4K

2009-04-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

this movie is the result of the real-time visuals created by a program that is no larger than 4KB.

It was produced for a demoscene competition.

dwarf fortress

2009-03-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

today on the home page of word press, the feature post was about a guide to this game called Dwarf Fortress. I had never heard of it before so I did some digging and found these gold links:

lets start with the hot word press post

a youtube video play through

gamasutra feature

and finally the dwarf fortress wiki

edit by jotapeh: Of course, if you're actually interested in playing DF, you might want to look here

Dan Paladin

2009-03-13T13:24:00.001-07:00

Awesome Dan Paladin of (Castle Crashers fame) drawing sessions

dyson

2009-03-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

these guys have already built a game around mining asteroids called Dyson claims to be "an ambient real-time strategy game with abstract visuals" where one can "command semi-autonomous self-replicating mining machines to take over an entire asteroid"

Some great ideas here but no alien nor dwarven miners...hmmmm

link

Hand Eye Society

2009-02-12T11:00:00.000-08:00

handeyesociety.com

first meeting is tonight -- i'm going! I signed up too and committed 10 hrs ... not exactly sure when I'll have 10 free hours but its a great idea nonetheless and worth supporting.

canary in the coal mine

2009-01-31T09:22:00.000-08:00

deepsea mining & permaculture

2009-01-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

deep sea mountain ranges and mineral jets

this could turn into a neat game play idea -- digger mermaids?!

I listened to another cool ted talk about permaculture where a farmer moved his herd of cattle into a fresh paddock. The cows grazed for 3 days and ate up all the grass. He then moved them to another paddock and replaced them with 300 chickens who quickly headed to the cow patties and to gobble up their favourite prey juicy grubs.

If the farmer had waited 5 days, the maggots would have turned into flies. The chickens in turn made their nitrous rich waste which is perfect fuel for rebuilding the grasses.

wiki: permaculture

citrus engine

2009-01-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

"The Citrus Engine is a side scrolling platform game engine built for Flash in ActionScript 3, using the Box2D physics library. It is geared towards teams that want a quick and powerful way to make advergames, and casual games for game portals."

citrus engine

prisoner's dilemma

2009-01-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

I recommend:

TEDTalks : Way-new collaboration - Howard Rheingold (2005)

He discusses the game theory of a prisoner’s dilemma

ted.com <-- subscribe there to get his talk - its great to load up your ipod with them

Pebble to Meteorite

2009-01-15T07:56:00.000-08:00

this is a nice article which illustrates what your C02 contribution weighs and how it can quickly amass into something huge.

see the weight of your C02

What the connection to the game? I had mentioned a meteor in an earlier post plus this article mentions a hot spring which could another cool game element.

cat rabbit

2009-01-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this image and looked up the artist after googling "catrabbit".

her flickr feed

her site

experimental game play sessions

2008-12-31T08:55:00.000-08:00

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.

Patapon

2008-12-18T09:31:00.001-08:00

I love the superflat art and animation style as well as the rhythmic gameplay.

Patapon Official Website

Rolando

2008-12-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

Rolando - iPhone and iPod touch gameplay trailer from ngmoco:) on Vimeo.

check out: handcircus.com

forget Dingo, I vote for Dig Dug

2008-12-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

doodlin dwarves

2008-11-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

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.

wrapped in HIVE

2008-11-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

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

EA & Borne Games team up for 2D Mirror's Edge

2008-11-20T11:01:00.000-08:00

check out the post

Graphics??

2008-11-20T08:47:00.001-08:00

I just threw in a little placeholder sprite for the sake of it. It could almost be a game!

Stability

2008-11-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

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!

New Version For The Weekend

2008-11-14T12:43:00.000-08:00

Not much different, but stuff should exhibit better physics (snowballs will ricochet and roll back down surfaces if thrown with enough force.)

Digging

2008-11-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

It took long enough but you can now dig and throw snowballs.

Press the down key to dig.

Distribution

2008-11-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Snowballs!

2008-11-13T08:39:00.001-08:00

You can chuck stuff now (press spacebar!) Realistic snowball physics! Wow!

Okay well.. semi-realistic. As always, click the link on the right --->

New Physics

2008-11-12T14:01:00.001-08:00

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 --->

Why QA should never see anything that is still in it's Dev cycle..

2008-11-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

We tend to try and jump off the edge of the world... all while crashing the browser.

Sometimes Half The Problem

2008-11-12T13:20:00.000-08:00

...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.

Version Tracking... Sort Of

2008-11-10T14:11:00.001-08:00

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.)

Fractal Terrain Generation

2008-11-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

Coming soon to a snow digging dwarf near you.

http://www.gameprogrammer.com/fractal.html

Next Build

2008-11-10T10:07:00.001-08:00

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!

Dwarf Inspiration

2008-11-06T11:34:00.000-08:00

I like the look of this artist's creations... very dwarven to me

Lesley-anne Green

bezier curves

2008-11-05T19:30:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

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