(Week 1 - Day 7) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-7-towering/)

Well, way to finish the first week on a disappointing note...

Except for a couple of tech stuff (like getting the Blender to Panda3D exporter set collision geometry as such automatically instead of having to open the model file and do it manually) which will save me a lot of time down the road, I did nothing yesterday (not even post :\).

I still have 3 weeks, but as I don't have so much time to invest during the week, I would have loved to keep the pace I had set for the whole week. Anyway, not to sound too down, I managed to repopulate my to-do list, and I think I'm narrowing down the opening sequence of the game in my head. I also have a couple of ideas I want to try with the interior scenes.

So I have not been completely idle, but I have no new screenshot :( At least, it should mean that next time, it will not be random geometry, but a first draft of an actual location in the game. A good way to start off week 2, I guess ?

(Week 1 - Day 6) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-6-towering/)

Good news ! I managed to get quite a lot done today, as I think I have nailed most of the platforming stuff.

Isn't he looking nice, standing on his block like that ?

I managed to get a much cleaner behaviour than what I had during the LD, so I am very very happy about that. I crossed all the items I had on my to-do list so far, which is awesome, but my planning still has some things I want to address before moving on to week 2 and the beginning of the level design.

That said, I did stumble upon a little problem that I will have to solve : the character cannot pass through point (0,0) anymore. I need to adapt what I am doing to make that possible again, I'm sure I'll figure something out. Apart from that nagging problem, I am super excited at the idea on making some more graphical experiments (do settle on a art style) and delving into the design of the game proper!

(Week 1 - Day 5) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-5-towering/)

The post is a bit late, but I didn't have the time to post yesterday, so here it is.

I have worked on one of the key gameplay features of the game : the perspective switching (thanks, Fez). As the game takes place around (and in) a tower, the player can move around its center, but I wanted to provide the ability to move from and towards said center, to enable more intricate level designs, as well as a better exploration inside the tower.

It now works in my test level, and by a key press you can switch between the two perspectives.

Moving around the center, as per usual.

Coming towards the center.

Now that I have this thing out of the way, day 6 will be for collisions and platforming. I keep shuffling the order of my to-do list, but at least I am getting things done :)

(Week 1 - Day 4) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-4-towering/)

Well, so I have a character running in circle around a scene, and my first tests seem to indicate that using sprites for the character won't interfere with the shaders I plan to use. I found a (very good) placeholder on OpenGameArt.org, and will keep using it throughout most of the development, until I can come up with something of the same level.

It runs !

The plan for tomorrow is to turn off the fancy shaders, and get down to the core mechanics of the game. So the next screenshot will probably much less dramatic, and only show our character standing on a plane. Exciting !

(Week 1 - Day 3) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-3-towering/)

Well, a little less progress than I would have liked, but I did manage to get many "technical" things working. For example, volumetric lighting.

Nice "god rays"

I will start with some actual gameplay, maybe tonight still, or else tomorrow. I am still thinking about the structure for the code, even though I cannot afford to dwell on this to much : I have to make progress.

So, yes, running and jumping for tomorrow, starring a placeholder character. See you then !

(Week 1 - Day 2) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-1-towering/)

Today, I made some initial tests with the baking of ambient occlusion (as I want to have something that is mostly devoid of textures). But apparently somewhere between Blender and Panda3D, texture coordinates get mixed up...

I was on my laptop today, so I will use my more powerful desktop to experiment with other shading techniques. I will also try to include a controllable character.

Something went wrong there...

(Week 1 - Day 1) - ToweRing

(Cross-posted from http://www.1monthgame.com/blog/week-1-day-1-towering/)

Hi there !

Today is the first day of June, and June is for the first time this year the "NaGaDeMo", or "National Game Development Month". That makes it perfect for starting on a 1 month game project. So without further ado, I present to you :

ToweRing

The game itself is going to be what I couldn't get to work during last April's Ludum Dare competition, with a lot of changes and additions. Which means a platformer taking place on the outer surface (and inside) of a huge tower.

For this first day, I have spent a lot of time brainstorming about what I should include or change in the first design of the game. Then, as the cool kids seem to do these days, I have put everything in a Workflowy list. This will hopefully help me stay on target during the month, and I have made it available here if some of you would want to see it evolve during the month. Please note that it will of course include many spoilers as I will probably put there every bit of story. So don't open that part if you want to keep surprises intact.

Tomorrow, I plan on getting started with the programmation, and will try to get some basic platforming going on. So hopefully, screenshots !

Ludum Dare - Once again :)

As was the case 4 months ago, I took part last weekend in a game-making competition called Ludum Dare.

As a reminder, the goal is to create a game from scratch in 48 hours, which is quite the challenge. This time, the theme was "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!". I managed to make a 3D game (a first for me) during that time, in what was a frantic but fulfilling week-end.

That's the game in question. With unfortunate screen tearing when doing the screenshot :(

If you'd like to see what I was able to come up with, you can go on my entry's page, or use one of the following links :

Windows (zip)
Windows (installer)
Linux (32bits deb)
Linux (64bits deb)
Mac OSX (zipped .app)
Source code (dependency : Panda3D)
ArchLinux (32bits)
ArchLinux (64bits)
There should be something for everyone there :D I'd be of course very grateful for any feedback you may have.
If you want, you can also read up the couple of posts I made during the competition (and after) on the Ludum Dare blog. I had a blast, and I urge anyone with an interest in making games to try and participate once. Not only is it loads of fun, it's also extremely enlightening. Not to mention you'll go from not having a game to having one over a single weekend !

A gameplay screenshot :)

[Lumen] Initial progress status.

Hi there ! Welcome to the first status update about Lumen, a project I have with a friend. I figured that a good way to keep the motivation intact would be to periodically report here about our progress with the game.

Oh yeah, Lumen is a game :)

We're using Panda3D, a free 3D engine, and  Python as a programming language. Yesterday, I spent the evening working on some initial tests, and got to the point depicted in the video below.

It's not so impressive, but it was done in a couple of hours...

 So, what do we have right now ?

• A terrain generated from a black and white picture, called a heightmap;
• Automatic simplification of the terrain based on the distance to the camera (Level of Detail, or LOD for short);
• A sphere that you can control with the keyboard;
• A mouse-controlled third person camera;
• Some simple effects like fog;

It's really not that much from a code standpoint, but it helped me get acquainted with Panda3D.

We're not quite ready to discuss the concept behind Lumen right now, but as a first step we decided to concentrate on the control of the character first. That and the basic rendering stuff, of course. I've been following the progress made by the Overgrowth team (Just go and watch some of their progress videos. The game is gorgeous, those videos are awesome and really informative.), and they made a video about character animation which serves as a model for how to go from what I have now to something more elaborate.

So next in line : investigating the use of proper physics (and make that ball jump), and probably improve the terrain rendering a bit.

See you next time !

We made a game !

...Okay, okay, technically we only have reached beta status, but still, that's something !

And before you ask, I'm not starting to speak about myself as "we", no. With another coding friend (Thomas, a.k.a. Sempaï) and an infographist (Medea), we formed a small team called "GSM Productions" to start making a game for a common friend's birthday present.

For two months, working on our spare time, and that isn't a lot, let me tell you, we developed a tower defense game based on our friend's fantasy book about demons and angels. And, on friday, we finally gave her the present, in the form of a beta version of the game !

What is with that look ?

Oh, you don't think it was nice to give her a beta version instead of a full, finished product ? Well, you see, the gift is meant to be twofolds. The software itself is only part of the whole thing. Now, as we'll be progressing towards the final game, we want to let her write the story that'll go along the game. Also, she'll help us integrate the game into her universe a little better.

We're very commited to finish this game up, and while we're implementing the remaining features and balancing the difficulty, we'll release some beta versions for you to see. But right now, the computer hosting our Git repository is dead, and we still to sort the licensing before we put up a download link. We use Creative Common music, and probably are going to go with the GPL for the source code (even if not, rest assured that the code will be opensource !), but we want to make sure that we do everything correctly.

So you're still going to have to wait a little bit to enjoy Alun Hevel :) But hopefully you'll like it when we do release it !

Into the unknown - Post-mortem

Well, had some time to think over what I did right and wrong for my first participation in LD, or any game making sprint for that matter.
The good :

• I ended up with something playable. Sure, it lacks a lot of stuff, but considering I had to pretty much give up on more than half of the 48 hours thanks to "life", it's still a good thing.
  
• I managed to learn pyGame. I had sort of glanced over the docs before, but getting down to programming with it really is the best way to truly learn how to use it.
  
• I didn't spend a single second fixing 'code' problems. That's thanks to Python, but anyway the only bugs I had were logical ones, and not some weird case of the code behaving in strange ways. That was refreshing.
  
• I had loads of fun, which I see as an important point, that means I'd do it again.
  

The bad :

• I tackled problems in the wrong order. I spent a huge amount of time trying to fix my lighting system, and still didn't get it right on time for the submission deadline. As I was making a platformer, I should have concentrated on getting a platformer first, and then add the light stuff.
• In relation to the previous point, I spent way too much time on a single problem. And by not changing and working on something else, I kept trying to push in the wrong direction. Case in point : on monday, I fixed my lighting problems in about 20 minutes, because my mind was clear and I could see the solution I'd missed (hint : I was trying to determine what areas were lit, I ended up computing the shaded parts instead...).
• I didn't allocate time for packaging. I figured that Python and pyGame being cross-platform, it would work out, but I should have spent some time to properly package for MacOSX users and Windows users. I'm going to fix that as soon as I have some time, though.

So there you go, all in all I'm proud of myself, and I'll be sure to continue working on the game. I think it has some potential, even if it's very crude and barebones at the moment.

Thanks to those who provided feedback, it's really helpful! And stay tuned for proper exe and app executables in the next few days (busy packing as I'm going to Canada on friday, but I'll find some time...).

Version 0.2 already

Don't want to read ? Here's a link : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17113774/intotheunknown-0.2.zip

Of course, after having slept a bit, the solution to all my light-related problems appeared to me, clear and simple...

So I couldn't resist and implemented it, look how beautiful it is ! (Ahem, getting a bit ahead of myself...)

Anyway, enjoy "Into the unknown v.0.2". Next update will probably be about some kind of new feature. Like a start screen, or maybe some kind of story-related stuff. But it'll happen when it happens.
And it'll surely improve the controls, which are a bit hard to grasp at the moment...

And that's a wrap !

Thought I was never going to finish in time, but here I am, my 'game' uploaded before the deadline... It looks somehow like this :

But honestly, when it moves it's much nicer :)

So if you're feeling brave, install python and pygame, and enjoy ! Many things I planned to put in there were left out, and I'll probably do a proper post-mortem of my experience at a later time.

It was both very fun and a very good challenge, anyway. I'll probably come back to that project to properly finish it, I think it has some kind of potential.

Anyway, links !

Ludum Dare entry page
Actual file (source code, you need python and pygame to play...)

Of course, I'm very interested in any kind of feedback you could have... Comment away !

Hum, not much time left...

...and my lights still aren't properly working... *sigh*

That being said, I'm now designing levels, got 17 down, still need around 23, but describing them all by hand is quite time consuming. And with all that, there's still no music, no sound, no story, ...

I hope to have at least a basic "explore the labyrinth to find the exit" type of thing for the deadline, but a complete version will probably have to wait for after the end of the competition. Ah well, at least I'm having fun :p

And, ladies and gentlemen, let there be light !

Well, ok, it's not impressive as of yet, but my proof-of-concept jusing a bitmask works like a charm (just tested it in five minutes...). So I'm confident I'll have the kind of lights I want tomorrow...

This is looking very good this far...

And here's a screenshot (also, some kind of background :D)

Now, I need to compute the boundary of a weird polygon... Then maybe, soft shadows ?

Yay ! Levels can now be loaded !

I now have a pretty good grasp on the game I want to make (obviously, it'll be some kind of platformer...), and the code is coming along nicely.

This is what I've got right now :

This starts looking like a game, right ?

I will now start thinking about the biggest challenge : a dynamic lighting system. Got some ideas, but it won't be easy. Wish me luck !

Ludum Dare #19

So, this weekend will be pretty busy. Between the Japanese class, the family reunion on saturday night, and some last-minute present shopping, I'm going to try and take part in Ludum Dare #19.

I mentionned Ludum Dare previously, but to recap, it's a competition where the goal is to make a game based on a yet-to-be-revealed theme in 48 hours, starting from scratch.

It's going to be tough, but I really want to try and get together something playable during the weekend. In my timezone, the contest will start at 3am on saturday, and end at the same time monday, so I'll still have a reasonable amount of time.

I'll (try to) blog and tweet regularly during the process, so expect things here during the weekend. For the curious, you can check what I'll be using there.