My Summer Project

[NightrainSrt4]

I've made mention of a project I've been working on a few times lately. My brothers wanted a video showing what I've done, so I figured you guys could see it too.

In progress and no where near done, but some technologies have been implemented rather successfully. I've got a whole todo list pages long, and am making progress. Either way this is something I haven't done before, so should go well on my resume.

1psJHjkiFrY

Edit: Figured out the embed. Also, I've pulled the animation engine, among other things, so I wouldn't get distracted on working on other things while I worked on the map/world code. And sorry about the steam ping right in the middle of the video.

[SXRguyinMA]

looks cool :D when can I play?

[NightrainSrt4]

Lol, it still has a lot of work to do. Right now you can go around the world, spawn water, add/remove blocks of all different types. The map is persistent. You can save it, load it, etc. You can generate a new map that is completely random.

I've only gotten a half page done of my 3+ pages long to-do list.

The concept is minecraft / terraria styled world map with Zelda / Metroid / Castlevania styled dungeons and boss fights. We'll see how I do. My brother is supposed to be helping on the art, but we'll see where that goes.

[NightrainSrt4]

It is always nice when you realize you over thought something you were programming.

Wrote a few hundred lines of code, then realized I could chop that in half so I rewrote it.

Today looking through it I realized I could replace the entire thing with two lines of code. I had already implemented what I needed exactly for this situation, but entirely forgot that I had. Got rid of a whole ton of dynamic calculations with something I already had been keeping track of. Lmfao.

[SXRguyinMA]

lol nice

[NightrainSrt4]

Bug Fixes / Additions:

* Reworked the collision system
* Fixed the water fanning problem seen in the video
* Water now seeks its own level
* Removed flying
* Added the ability to double/triple/etc jump
* Partially implemented map <-> dungeon player transitions

Next To Do:

* Re-implement the animation system
* Menu System
* Inventory
* HUD

[NightrainSrt4]

I've fixed a whole bunch of bugs. Coded the animation system back in. Went in a slightly different direction than my last To Do List. The menu system is half way done to having a base implementation.

My focus today was getting the dynamic tile textures implemented. There are still a few cases I haven't made test textures for, notably single block columns and rows size greater than 2.

i.e.


===

and

||
||
||

The center tile renders as a different texture than it should, because I haven't drawn one up yet.

Another quick video for you. I forgot to set the quality before I started so it is low and doesn't show off the textures too well. These were just my attempts at a simple set of spritesheets. I like the crisp look of the first video better, so it is something I will take into consideration when I actually spend a decent chunk of time working on the sprites/textures.

DJPQb4dzi6M

The code works for all blocks. I just haven't made any textures for any of the other blocks besides the dirt and the grass. No water, no stone, etc. So they still run on the old textures.

[billygoat333]

this looks awesome so far.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. It's hard for me to visualize when the graphics are so crappy. But I keep telling myself to forget about those for now, to code for them, but don't worry about drawing it all up yet.

Get the code done, then make it pretty. But for things like the dynamic terrain textures, I need to have something for a test case to make sure it's working properly so I've had to draw a few things up.

A lot of people, including my family, don't see much past what it looks like so it can be frustrating. But I know what I've put into it; I know what it can become. Watching old videos of minecraft in development really gets me motivated though. To know that even successful games started off looking the same unpolished way.

So anyway, thanks guys. The support means a lot. Back to work, hehe.

[SXRguyinMA]

looking good! I want to pllllaaaayyyyy!!!!! :D

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. Ultimately it depends on what the final product is, but if it is good I might try and sell it. Submit it to steam, etc. That is a long way off though. If I can complete it by next years deadline, then submit it to Microsoft's DreamBuildPlay Contest. I would just have to convert the pointer to something a joystick could handle and it should be set for xbox.

If I don't sell it, you all can have copies / play it. If I do sell it I'm going to need playtesters! But that is all a long way off. Still have a lot of basic things left to do before it is any more than a dig / place block sandbox with random terrain / caves.

[NightrainSrt4]

Todays work, with better video quality. Youtube has a 720p version which looks better. The aspect ratio got screwed on the lower resolution videos for whatever reason.

cL99feSfWgs

Continued working on the dynamic terrain. Still some corner cases to be dealt with and several missing textures on inside corners and such.

The water now determines how high to draw itself depending on the amount of water in the tile. This works much better than before where any amount of water greater than the minimum value would trigger a full block draw. This acts more natural.

I do have to switch the rendering of the water to the layer behind the other tiles. That way I can draw draw the water a bit wider so it fills those corner gaps.

[billygoat333]

that is looking much much better... the water looks more like water! lol

[SXRguyinMA]

looking good!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I've added another layer behind the tile layer that places a block with the water texture based on the height of the water around it behind the solid blocks.

What that means is that now the water correctly renders in the alpha space of the solid blocks around it. No more straight alpha/white water edges on those parts.

I don't think I showed it on the video but when you cut into a bottom left/right corner filled with water it shows two corner tiles which give the appearance of a path for water to run, but because they are solid they block any water from passing. I've added code to handle that, so the water now pours through those "holes", and does so while maintaining the correct mass of the pool. This is important because my first implementation was creating infinite water. Now the mass is conserved.

I'll get a video up later today showing what I mean a bit better.

Edit: The player now renders behind the water with an alpha blend applied. This makes the player look as though they are in the body of water instead of standing in front of it.

[Collinstheclown]

Had to load it on my phone, since youtube is blocked at work.

It looks awesome so far! That water is natural looking! I like how gravity actually tries to level out the water.

Notch should hire you to do the water in Minecraft... It's horrible compared to this. Seriously, it's bad.:down:

If you ever get to the point, I'd love to be a play tester! :)

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I put right around three days of work into it to get it how it is now (the water). I wouldn't have spent that long, and it was between other things too, but I wanted to get it to work a little more naturally. I'm still limited by the sets of algorithms used, but I wanted it to at the very least display based on mass/volume of the cell, spread at as close to a natural rate as I could while bleeding mass when there wasn't enough water in the cell, and for it to level itself out when you dig out to the side and up.

In both Minecraft and Terraria if you go down to the bottom of the water then dig to the side, and then above your head, there is an air pocket there. While that is cool, I thought it would be nice if the water filled in that hole slowly until it reached its leveling point. You can still dig out and up and outrun the water a bit due to the speed of the algorithm filling the cell, but it will fill itself up soon after.

What I've Done Since Then:

*Added a basic menu system in

*Threaded the Save, so you can visually see progress and/or animation as its saving.

*I had backloaded some of the work into the save to speed up load times, but I had gone a bit too far. I put some things back into the load as doing so only increase load times a fraction of a second, but shaved the save time by more than 15 seconds. This was on a 2 million+ block world.

*Mined blocks now spawn the corresponding item.

*Items despawn when the player touches them.
----Going to add aggro range so the player doesn't have to physically touch the item.
----Working inventory system now, so before they despawn they get added to inventory if there is space. If not, they don't despawn and you don't pick them up.
----Need to add a decay timer, so blocks don't sit in the world forever.
----Actually, they don't do that currently either. They despawn forever once you quit the game, or load another map/zone. A decay timer would still be nice.

[NightrainSrt4]

Today I added:

*Base User Interface and player Inventory Screen draws
*Switching between maps, world map to dungeon, dungeon to world map, working
*Quite a bit of refactoring. More to be done once more base concepts get implemented.

[DynamoNED]

Looks good! If you need playtesters or just want to give it away if you don't sell, let me know!

[NightrainSrt4]

Haha. When that time comes I will keep all of you here at TBCS in mind. Thanks for the support.

Today I'm going to be fleshing out the inventory system.

[Collinstheclown]

Need update video! :)

[NightrainSrt4]

Things have moved slowly, compared to the last few weeks, as the fiancee was on vacation time this week so it isn't visually a whole lot different. I've got the basic inventory menu up and going though.

I'm always a bit hesitant posting these videos as the graphics are just plain bad. It's all just placeholders to make sure it works, and when I have hours to spend on each piece I'll go in and swap them out. The underlying system is what I'm focused on. You guys seem to understand that, but some other people do not, and it is frustrating. I can sit and make each feature work perfectly with perfect graphics before moving on to the next, but chances are when I implement the next thing something from before will have to change, so its a lot of wasted time. I'd rather get things in there, then polish it up, then make it pretty.

But you guys seem to get that, so after lunch I will go through and just post what I've got so far, crappy placeholders and no real measurements on the UI and all, lmfao.

[NightrainSrt4]

As promised:
qdsdCvpGOtQ

The jumps in the video are caused by the 30 second free limit on Fraps.

Placement is off of the item draw in the inventory because I just eyeballed the numbers. Working the system, not the polish. Don't want to waste time getting the placement of each perfect just to realize I want to change the entire UI around.

As usual the video looks better if you watch the 720P version on youtube.

EDIT: DigIt is just the inhouse code name. Made more sense than just calling it Game.
I've yet to apply gravity to the items, nor have I widened the aggro radius to make it so you don't have to physically touch them.
Stack quantity is set to 2 to show the stacking system quickly.

[NightrainSrt4]

I coded thinking of this ahead of time so it is simply a matter of switching out the textures and a single variable switch, but I'm pretty sure I'm switching to a 32x32 pixel block vs the 16x16 pixel current blocks.

As it is now, it looks too much like Terraria. I feel this change will bring the game back to its minecraft inspiration, while still keeping the 2D look and feel.

There are several pluses to this as well. I don't have to be so detailed in the art to still have it look nice, which is good as I am no pixel artist. Things like ladders and chests become much easier to implement.

I was already going my own way with warp-able Metroid/Castlevania/Demon's Souls style dungeons, but I think this change not only fits it better for me, but it makes it look different than just a Terraria clone/extension/mod. I want it to stand on its own without being too much like either while still drawing on the same/similar base concept of mining/building.

[NightrainSrt4]

Now that the weekend is over and some personal stuff handled I've got a few more updates.

*There are now wall tiles. So the dirt layer instead of being the back screen, now has dirt wall tiles behind all the blocks. The stone layer now has stone walls behind the blocks in its layer, etc.
*The game now keeps track of the current hotbar slot that is in focus.
*The game currently starts you with a pick.
*In order to mine blocks you must have a pick item in focus on the hotbar.
*In order to place blocks you must have the block you wish to place in focus on the hotbar.
*You can only lay blocks if you have sufficient quantity (1 or more). No more infinite blocks.
*Laying a block decreases the quantity of the stack by 1.
*You can't pick up any more items once your inventory is full.
*Player inventory is now persistent. It saves when you save, loads when you load.

*Currently, inventory, map, player files are all open. My focus for now, while the focus for the game is single player, is that the game should be modable. If a player wants to go through and change the map, hack the player inventory, it is all open. I could spend time locking it all down, but if a player wants to do that in their own game then why not. This is part of the reason for the slower save times as I'm not encoding anything, so it is all plain text. This may change, but for now I am trying to keep everything as open as possible.

[TheMainMan]

Sounds like you've been making good progress! Keep it up!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. Got a few more things done today.

*Added space for an underworld layer
*Tested with increased world size. Currently 4000 blocks wide x 1200 high.
*If I go with that size or larger I need to rework the save system, as it takes nearly a minute to save (It's saving more than 15 million points of data in plain text . . .).
*Water now spawns in pools on world generation
*Reworked the textures and shapes. A bit too bubbly now, but cleaner looking than before. I've a huge appreciation for pixel artists now.
*Initial spawn now chooses a piece of land in the middle of the map instead of dropping the player from the sky.

I'm sure there's more. That is just off the top of my head and my focus is still on programming right now. That and food. Promised the fiancee I would break for dinner; I often forget to stop and eat.

[NightrainSrt4]

*Added a world choosing system to the menu. So now you can choose between five separate saves/world/character. The character is tied to the save tied to the world, but you get five different saves. That should be enough for now. Kind of like Zelda/Mario where you have a set of save slots.
*You can delete your old save in the menu system to make room for a new one.

And I realized my cave/ore vein algorithm was flawed. I should have seen it earlier as its based on a binary system which worked great for adding caves to the base world, but smoothing when several different block types are adjacent to one another is going to cause problems. I've already started to see anomalies in my short playtests.

I've come up with a base solution to cut save times down. I can save the world in chunks, and only save the pieces the player has modified. The initial save will still be slow for huge worlds though. From there on out it would only need to change chunks you've changed during that play period. Modders could still combine the chunks, edit the map, then cut it back into pieces. I don't know. I'll worry about it later.

[Kayin]

I know I'm having to use scripts in FO to keep loading times down. Dunno if there's something like that you can implement.

[NightrainSrt4]

For now I cut the world size back down. It's larger than I originally had it, but smaller than what I had just had it. It still takes a few minutes to walk from one edge of the world to the other, and this is just the overworld so I don't want it so large that you can't find the dungeon entrances.

The load times are pretty quick, even with the large world, it was the save times that were the problem. If I used a binary stream I'm sure I could cut the times way down, but using a text stream and saving in lines is causing major slowdowns on huge worlds. At the size the world is now there isn't a problem, but the large size was too slow. There are several ways I can still do a large world and fix the problem, I just have to decide if it is worth it, and if the large size would jive with the game.

[NightrainSrt4]

Then today I realized I was relying on garbage collection far too much and realizing it wasn't collecting things as quickly/efficiently as I had liked, but most of that was my fault.

The way I was generating the world was creating far too many objects that weren't being used after the world was generated. I was seeing memory use easily climb towards 1.5GB on world creation. When you loaded a saved world the memory would be about 512MB, which is closer to what I wanted, but generation would climb far too high. I swapped my unnecessary cloned objects to references to the base objects and world generation sticks at the same ~512MB the game uses to run.

I only noticed this because I realized that I had put my save on a separate thread, so I thought, "Hey, seeing as how it is on it's own thread, and saving takes a while, why not make a copy of the world, and let the player keep playing while it's saving". While good in theory, making a copy of the world was doubling the memory use, and would freak out lower memory systems, especially on the larger world size (it would push something like 3GB of memory, not to mention this is a 32-bit app so it would freak on any system after 2GB of usage).

With the smaller map size, which is still quite large, and getting rid of unnecessary objects I've kept the memory usage down to appropriate levels. Now I can go back to focusing on gameplay elements.

[Kayin]

Sounds great.

I'm stuck with an eventing issue in a major point in the demo. Oh well, program mo4r tomorrow.

[SXRguyinMA]

wow man this things coming along nice :D

[NightrainSrt4]

Sounds great.
I'm stuck with an eventing issue in a major point in the demo. Oh well, program mo4r tomorrow.

I hear ya. I haven't decided how I am going to handle story/events/etc yet. There's always more to program, and I'll be right back at it tomorrow. Haven't decided what I'm going to focus on yet. I've fixed the anomalies in the map generation by reworking that set of algorithms, so it's on to something new this week.


wow man this things coming along nice :D

Thanks. I still have so many things on my list to do yet. I keep getting caught up refactoring things, or finding bugs to fix. I'm glad I found that memory issue sooner than later though.

Maybe tomorrow I will add player health and damage. I'll start with falling damage and breath/drowning damage. Then I'll have to deal with where to put the player when you die. I'll probably go back to the original spawn point for now, then build a spawn change system later. Once I get player damage in then I can add enemies. Get a basic enemy AI in. Start with bumping damage, then I can add attack animations for both the enemy and the player. Then attack hit-boxes. Melee, then projectiles. Attack damage. Then I'll have basic player enemy health and attacks/damage. Then you've got to deal with when to spawn the enemies, how many to spawn, make sure they spawn off the players screen so they don't just pop in, etc.

I find it fun how one thought or adding one basic feature involves or trickles towards so many other little things. Looks like I'll have a busy week.

[Kayin]

If it's any consolation, you don't have to show yours off this weekend.

[NightrainSrt4]

Ouch. Yeah, I'm still in the very early stages so I don't have any obligations to anyone, yet. Lol.

Sometimes I wish I had started with an existing engine. To have a base to build up from. I figured starting with nothing and coding everything would look better on my resume, but both are so bloody hard. Well the coding isn't hard for me, it's getting all these various systems working and jiving well together and figuring out where to go next.

I've still got to go back and add like a days worth of comments. When I'm on a roll, but know I'll probably scrap a lot of the code later, I don't like to waste time being really specific with my comments. If it was a group project I would. I've already gone over some old code I didn't think I would keep and looked at it like "wtf does that do?". But then again I've done that and been pleasantly surprised at some of the solutions I've come up with.

I can't wait to see your final product. You've been working on it and putting so much energy into it, especially with everything else going on. I can only hope I get it to a point where I have someone to show mine off to. You are an inspiration. My best wishes to you, your family, and your project.

[diluzio91]

Sounds cool! when does the pre alpha tbcs exclusive testing start?

[NightrainSrt4]

Sounds cool! when does the pre alpha tbcs exclusive testing start?

I'm not sure. It's still very early on. Sometime along when it is more than a random world generator with mining/block laying. You can lay blocks that you've gotten from your inventory that are in your hotbar, but there isn't a way yet to move blocks from the inner inventory to the hotbar, lol. That is pretty simple, but I haven't coded it in yet as I haven't decided on the UI positions yet.

When it is more developed then I'll think about releasing a alpha/beta. I lost a day of work on it today, and half a day tomorrow, so I'll have some major cramming coming this week.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've added the health, mana, breath (air), and experience base types.

Worked a bit on the UI. Just keeping things simple for now. I'll go back and do something fancier if I chose to do so later. Went with more traditional type bars instead of going the Minecraft/Terraria hearts/icons route.

The images show the 32x32 pixel blocks vs. the old 16 x 16 ones. I didn't want it to look the same as Terraria and the increased block size helps me not have to increase the details to look decent. Textures are still temporary, just made them look kinda graph paper-like for now.

I tried to smooth the curves but in doing so made it all look too bubbly. Will have to make things less round.
I haven't repositioned / chosen a contrasting color for the item quantity yet.

Just HotBar:
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7655/21505054.png
I've put a visual representation of the percent, but also an actual number there.

Inventory Open:
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3580/uiinv.png

I've come up with the different regions, or at least some of them.




Where the player starts is the traditional spawn: hills, grass, etc.
The two layers below are the traditional dirt and stone layers.

Then the surface has a huge mountain region to one side and a snow land are to the other.

In the dirt layer to one side is an underground plague/poison swamp, and the other side of the map is an underground/buried desert.

In the stone layer to one side is a petrified forest, with stone monsters, golems, etc. The other side in the stone layer hasn't been determined.

In the underworld layer in the center is the typical fire/hell realm. There is a stone fissure separating that from the underwater city to one side. I was thinking like Atlantis / the buried ancient cities they unearth underground.

The other side of the underworld hasn't been determined. Above the spawn to the 2/3 of map not taken by the huge mountain are floating islands / land masses that make up the air realm.

Dungeons with corresponding themes will be hidden within each region.

Something like: (==== is the base surface point)

| AIR----------- AIR -------- MOUNTAIN----------|
| SNOW---------SPAWN ---- MOUNTAIN----------|
=======================================
| SWAMP------- DIRT------- DESERT--------------|
| ?------------- STONE----- PETRIFIED FOREST---|
| WATER CITY---HELL ------- ?-------------------|

I haven't figured out the order of progression or how to lead the player in that direction yet.

[NightrainSrt4]

Spent some time playing around making a different character sprite. Was going for an adventurer look. Based off one of my old Legos.

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/2650/newcharacterr.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/newcharacterr.png/)

No matter how I draw it, it's going to look similar to Terraria based on having similar size and using 2x2 pixels. Nature of the beast I suppose.

Threw that together really fast, so it still needs lots of work. I just wanted to play around with some art for a bit today.

[NightrainSrt4]

This is so cool. I get so excited when I get to a point where something comes together and little bits start to feel like a game.


*You now take fall damage. What was a fixed value of damage is now a percent damage function based on your fall height.
*Sufficient pools of water break your fall. Shallow water doesn't stop taking damage from a fall, but a deeper pool will.

*You now have breath. The default character has 10 seconds of breath underwater. You only lose breath if your face is under the water.
*If you get out of the water your breath fills back up at 20% per second, fully recharged in five seconds.
*If you run out of breath entirely, you begin to take damage to your health. Regardless of how strong you may or may not be, once you are out of breath you WILL die in 5 seconds (20% per second). This gives enough time to possibly get out while still sufficiently punishing you for running out of air.

*Dying now sends you back to the spawn point.
*You get full health, mana, and breath when you respawn from death.

Values can be tweaked, but I set the defaults nice and low to give reason for other items to increase things like air quantity and such, but didn't want recharge times of higher characters to be penalized for having a higher quantity. Hence, the percent based functions on certain parameters.

[NightrainSrt4]

More stuff this morning:

*You can now use your mouse to select hotbar focus.
--So now you can scrollwheel, number keys, or mouse click for focus
*Full Left-Click mouse support in inventory
*You can now swap things around your inventory at will.
*Combine stacks, fill up a partially full stack then drop the rest or put it in another location
*You can drop items from your inventory onto the gameworld
*When inventory is open you can manipulate the inventory and hotbar item locations. When inventory is closed you can't manipulate the hotbar item locations. This is to act as a basic lock system so you can't spaz while fighting and accidentally move or toss items from your inventory.

I'm going to add right click partial stack pickup. I haven't decided if right clicking picks up half the stack quantity like Minecraft, or Terarria click / click-hold increment by one. We'll see.

EDIT: Sunday 2011-08-07

*Right click inventory manipulation has been added
*Just right clicking on an item takes one from the item stack and puts it into your pointer/holder.
*Holding the right click over the item continues to add one to the holder if the item is the same as the one you are holding
*So now you can fully manipulate the inventory in the ways you'd expect from a normal game.
*Thinking of adding a box / trash can you can drop the items you don't want, so they can be destroyed.

[NightrainSrt4]

Big fixes today. I had broken all the collision and movement code trying to go back and make jumping parabolic. Well, I kept throwing away code because nothing worked right. Not really anything anyone else would see, but things just weren't smooth when they had been before.

As always it was something little. All fixed now and my movement code is so much nicer.

*Jumping is parabolic, and is a force that works against the ever present gravity.
*Movement in water is entirely changed. It is now slower and a bit floaty.
*You can jump infinitely in water, which acts like a swimming upwards thrust.

This is easier to show than to explain so I will try and get a video up within the next few days.

I'm also seriously considering ditching the 2x2 pixel art design for a 1x1. Although I like the 2x2 pixel art and think it works well for the game and my limited art skills, I want to differentiate the art even further from Terraria / Minecraft. There is no way people aren't going to point out the similarities, I just don't want to give them too many to point out. ;)

[Collinstheclown]

Sounds good!

This would be a sweet mobile game. Especially with multi-player, that would be amazing!

[NightrainSrt4]

It's currently only in development for Windows, with the possibility of a later xbox port. But I could see the game working well on a large touchscreen phone or tablet. Hmmm... thoughts to consider for later.

I've made some big strides today again.

*I've got a basic enemy system into the game. I have to write the spawner code, and write the AI code but the underlying system is in. I just wrote some basic code for a dumb AI a couple minutes ago to test it out. Right now a little rock monster just follows you around and tries to jump up the rocks to get to you if he can. Attacks and player monster collision aren't in. The collision is easy, I already have most of it, but attacks and player/enemy damage isn't in yet.

*Items are now affected by gravity. It wasn't critical to give them an parabolic curve, so they fall at a set rate.
*Item spawn position when a block is mined now has a randomness to it so they will fall in slightly different spots. This gives the game a more polished feel.

I'm sure there are others. I'm going to run through now and make a video of all the new stuff since last time and get it up. Expect it within the hour if not sooner.

[NightrainSrt4]

As promised, I threw together a very quick video of me playing around, showing off the various new features. As always, watching directly on youtube in 720P is best.

Link to Video on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLljhVe-k0&hd=1)

Embed
tlLljhVe-k0

Thanks for the support guys!

[TheMainMan]

Looking good, it's come a long way since the first viedos!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I've poured a lot of time and energy into it. I'll work on getting it looking better once the underlying systems are in place.

[NightrainSrt4]

Working on getting a basic lighting system going by manipulating sprites, alpha values, and render targets. I'll change it around to be shader based or something more complex later, but I wanted to play around with getting a basic system started.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3088/shadowbasic.png

[NightrainSrt4]

And that method above wasn't going to work using default blendstates, so I defined my own.

Above, if two lights overlapped each other the entire sprite was being drawn so the light wouldn't even look close to being correct.

Now I draw my texture in reverse brightness and use subtractive blending and the lighting blends in a way you would expect from a simple system like this. I'll get images or videos up once I get more implemented and such.

EDIT: I'm tired, so I leave you with this.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/9373/lightalone.png

http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/9518/lighttogether.png

[NightrainSrt4]

I rewrote my code so I could have colored lights. The problem with the way I have done this here is that you pretty much need a DX10 card as I've had to use the Hi-Def profile vs. the Reach profile. The game runs in DX9, but the functions I'm using for manipulating the color channels differently than the alpha channels weren't exposed by many, if any, DX9 cards. DX10 cards expose these functions by default.

Anywho,

Some work from this morning.
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/3938/torches.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/torches.png/)

*Torches are an item that can be placed as a block.
*Torches give off orange-yellow light.
*Any block has the ability to give off light, and soon any item.
*Fixed a bug with the water where I was checking if a block was solid and not if it wasn't air or liquid. This was causing the torches to spawn water on spawn.

I'll quickly texture the torches and check adjacency to a solid block so they will stand/hang from the blocks nearest them instead of standing straight up when they aren't placed on the ground.

After that comes day/night cycles with basic overhanging shadows.

[NightrainSrt4]

Testing the addition of day/night cycle and lighting transitions.

Sped up for testing. The time periods also won't be the same length like what is shown here. Day and night will be longer, with the transition periods a shorter amount of time.

N7sH0s8HUJM

Pulled my back, so I've been laying in bed on my laptop. Not having multiple monitors and lots of workspace is a pain.

EDIT: And some images from earlier going through the process of getting the day time shadow / dark areas added.


Just starting. Anything under the first solid layer was shaded.
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/8928/dayshadows.png

Pulling the left and right sides in too, but leaving overhang shadows.
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/5083/dayshadowspulledin.png

Taking the overhanging shadows out.
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/3408/dayshadowsanyadjacent.png

Adding some depth dependent shadows, and realizing there were some bugs and anomalies.
http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/3616/dayshadows5spread.png


Attempting to shade the depth at the dirt wall level, with some horrible bugs.
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/5043/dayshadowsundergroundta.png


And getting closer with the depth shadows on blocks, and depth shadows going down a tunnel into the dirt layer. You'll need lights to see anything any deeper.
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7683/dayshadowsfixedtaper.png

[NightrainSrt4]

I've added ladders and bumpers/blowers this morning. The original concept was for the bumpers to be air blowers / fans, but my first implementation turned out to be more like a bumper from Sonic than an air blower. Really cool though.

b8C3BybNMSk

I thought the bumpers would be an interesting idea to implement, something that I don't believe Minecraft or Terraria have.

[NightrainSrt4]

I realized what the bumpers could be used for last night as I fell asleep. Tested my thoughts today, giggling while I did so.

yGV7vD4F90E

The ladder shouldn't be catching your fall. I thought I wanted it to when I thought about easily getting onto ladders when you are jumping onto an existing set, but they can be exploited like so.

Well, actually, what isn't shown in the video is that if you climbed down the ladder and touched the ground you would have died. You can stop that though by jumping again, which once you reach that conversion from negative velocity to positive velocity it resets the fall distance. I want you to be able to catch the ladder in a jump or fall, I just don't want you to be able to exploit them as tools to fall long distances. If I treat them like ground, so you can catch if you only fall a little, but die if you try and catch after a huge fall, that might fix the issue.

Super fun though making bumper elevators, hehe. And it alleviates part of the problem other games have of getting back up to the surface quickly.

[Kayin]

The artifacts look like PNG transparencies not set properly. Or at least, that's how it shows up in my game.

Still impressive.

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm not sure as to which part you are referring, but there are a lot of problems with the transparencies, mostly because they are all 30 second paint.net textures. I haven't taken the time to put polish on anything yet. I've also just set random transparency levels and not taken the time to do the math to calculate what I need based on what I want. In the end I will probably ditch this for a shader approach anyway.

I had a funny feeling earlier when I realized I only have but a few more base features to get in before it's time for content and polish. Most notably attack animations, crafting, etc. Once that process starts it goes from being a game engine / proof of concept to being an actual game.

[Kayin]

All right, I know what you're using now. We're using two vastly different ways to do the same thing.

Looks great, though! I KNOW how much work this is, you're doing a great job!

[NightrainSrt4]

Ya, the way I approached the dark/lighting is probably completely odd, but I wanted to do it based off what I knew how to do without looking at any guides or tutorials. I probably should have, but I wanted to see what kind of results I could get just by what I could do. Before this game project I had never handled anything involving graphics so I'm starting from the bottom, lol.

My approach for the lighting and darkness was to start with a clear render target.

Then I draw all the lights to the clear render target by using a max blend. Because of the way I'm handling it later I can't use additive or else when two lights overlap even just a little they make a pure light. So here when two lights overlap it chooses whichever pixel is the brightest. Because I am using (0, 0, 0, x) for the lights, I use another circular texture the same size, but with (255(x), 255(x), 255(x), 0) that I add the desired color value to, which gives the lights the appearance of casting a bit of color at the edges. I swapped to a bigger light to test the torches range, and instead of remaking the texture I up-scaled the one I had which made for odd blending compared to the older smaller lights.

Then I draw the darkness to a separate render target. I think I could recycle the original render target simply by saving it to a different texture then clearing it, but I haven't tested that yet. Each block gets assigned a darkness level based on the blocks around it. It runs through and reassigns a value to blocks when you mine something out or add a new block to calculate what the shadows should be. This value is based on high noon, and if the time of day needs a darker level it gets the darkness level and adds whatever modifier the time of day calls for.

Now with a texture of the darkness, and one of the lights, I use an odd blending to combine these. I add the color values of the light to the darkness texture, but subtract/reverse subtract the alpha values. What I end up with is the darkness where its needed and the colored circular lights where those are supposed to be, giving off the thinly veiled illusion of light. Then I just draw this over the scene.

The handling the color values differently than the alpha values is the reason as of right now the game needs a DX10 video card. Eventually this will be remedied, otherwise I'm knocking out some 48% of the market or something who only have DX9 cards.

Really I just looked at what I had available and tinkered till I got something that remotely worked. While cool I figured it out on my own, an existing proven approach would probably yield better results. I'm sure if I researched how the different blends worked I could find a way to do it without needing the odd blending.

[NightrainSrt4]

My cohorts and I are discussing a Diablo or Action RPG style drop / item / stat / exp system.

It's been in our thoughts for a while and I have some references to it already in my code, just haven't gone all in yet. I was trying to figure out how to do crafting, but I think I have an idea.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've got the design and pseudocode written for the random drop system. This turned out far more complicated than I thought it was going to be.

It's going to be very similar to Diablo style games. I think this will add a whole lot of variety the other games are lacking. Every time you play you get the same iron sword.

What if you could get the same iron sword with a chance to have random enchantments as well? Perhaps not every iron sword is made equally. Perhaps some have stats that fit you a bit better if you are a caster type player, or if you are a ranged type player. You won't know until you try to make one, or maybe a mob will drop it.

What if you could have a choice to move on to a new world where everything is scaled? Monsters get stronger, item drops have increased stats to slightly compensate. Maybe some monsters drop entirely new things that you couldn't get the first time around, like a unique weapon or piece of armor.

All things I will be working towards adding tomorrow. I had to get the design and pseudo done as trying to figure out these algorithms was starting to make my head hurt, lmfao.

[NightrainSrt4]

Pretty much this entire last week has gone to waste.

I was spending time working with the artist for the game (my brother). Long story short, he kept avoiding me all week. Wasn't showing up (telecommuting). All I got was excuse after excuse, none of which were of any importance. Doing pixel art was "hurting his eyes" and not the 8 hours of video games he was playing while ditching me. Essentially being an artist on paper doesn't translate into pixel art. I get that, just don't string me along and waste my time.

So I dumped money and parts to get his computer up and running and he pretty much used me for that without any intention of fulfilling his end of the deal and making art for the game. Finally enough was enough. So I'm out a week of my time, money and computer parts, and am no further along with the art than I was.

I've spent some time making the art myself. It isn't going to be the quality I wanted, but maybe if the game makes it big I can hire an artist to help me along. If not, I don't mind doing it myself. Just means my time is divided into every aspect that makes up a game: design, programming, art, sound, etc.

Onward.

[Kayin]

Ouch.

BTW, DO NOT MAKE IT SCALED! Oblivion and FFVII both come to mind, and both were everloving PITAs, as well as the fact you never really feel powerful, cause even little jerks can still punt your face to where your tail is.

Have you looked into the myriads of free pixel art out there?

[NightrainSrt4]

Scaling
My thoughts for scaling were different than what Oblivion and the others. I was thinking that everything would be scaled on the higher difficulties compared to their original in the normal difficulty.

This way the basic creatures at the beginning of the game are challenging the next play through with the same character even with the high level items from the first game. The weapons are then scaled X amount to compensate slightly for the increased difficulty.

Example:


Playthrough 1:

Angry Mudpie - 10hp / 2 attack
Wooden Sword - 3 attack


Playthrough 2:

Angry Mudpie - 100hp / 20 attack
Wooden Sword - 21 attack

This way you get to go through the progression again the second/third time around and still feel challenged each time through, and will have to get new armor / weapons each time through without me having to come up with an entire new set of items / enemies. I've coded my item spawner to allow for additional items that can only be found in the higher difficulties as well.

Art
I have looked into the free pixel art around, but in the end I wanted it to be original for the game. If that means the game takes a bit longer to release, so be it.

I was too frustrated today to program so I worked a bit on the art to calm me down a bit. I don't like to code angry because then things end up broken, or buggered up somehow, and I'll spend the next day trying to figure out what happened or where things went wrong.

Started on the item icons. Still need work, but they are a start and far better than the placeholders I was using, especially with me having zero experience with pixel art.

This should show up as the actual size of the icons in-game.
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/497/weapondisplay.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/593/weapondisplay.png/)

The picks need work on the shading, as they feel flat and there isn't enough contrast in some of them, like the gold one. Still, I'm happy with my progress. I'm going to have a hard time once I need to animate things, but I'll deal with it when I get there.

[Kayin]

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

I'm using it ingame to alter or create what I need. Works very well.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. That looks like it could be very helpful for animations and whatnot. I've been using Paint.NET which has worked well for the static pixel art, but felt weak for trying to deal with animation.

[NightrainSrt4]

Couldn't decide to have my potion vials angled or vertical, so I tried a set of both. I will probably tone down the color of the glass a little as the ones other than green look a little darker than I wanted.

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/8421/potionsu.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/853/potionsu.png/)

Still can't decide which I will use. I'll have to make the other potions and see which work well together.

[Kayin]

I like the angled, anything that seems to be dynamic will have a better chance of catching the eye.

[NightrainSrt4]

I was thinking the same. The angled should also work better with the quantity text.

I just wasn't sure if the other potion bottle designs were going to work as well tilted, but I suppose there isn't any reason they shouldn't. I've yet to design those.

[NightrainSrt4]

Worked on some morningstar icons last night / this morning. I can't decide between which version, but probably because I'm not totally content with either. It's harder to get the little spikes in on this one because of how few pixels there are.

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/9030/morningstars.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/828/morningstars.png/)

[NightrainSrt4]

And some axes from this morning. Because of the change in angles, there looks like there are a lot of spots that could use AA or something, but I'm happy so far.

I was going for a smaller TF2 Pyro / Fireman axe style.

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2545/axesq.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/axesq.png/)

I probably don't have to say this here but,

All works I have posted, linked, will post or will link, of my work are copyrighted by myself, Richard A. Maranhao III, and are not to be used, copied, or distributed without permission.

Again probably unnecessary but forgot to mention it.

[NightrainSrt4]

This isn't dead, nor will it die, things have just slowed a bit with classes starting up again.

I've had to spend a majority of my time coding, at the University, on my laptop. Going from three screens to a dinky 720p screen is lame. You can't see the big picture.

I've fixed a few bugs, probably introduced a few more. I've been working on getting a basic weapon/item swing animation in and working. It's in its infancy, but things are starting to come along.

[NightrainSrt4]

With slowed progress between classes and being in and out of the hospital/doctors while feeling like death, things are starting to look up.

I've been working on the art, but my wrist hates me. Thinking of getting a monoprice drawing tablet once money settles down a bit. Less than half the price of the cheapest Wacom at a retail store and far larger. Everyone who has used one seems to give it great reviews, so that is a plus.

Update:

*You now swing the pickaxe when you mine. I'm not sure I like the way I implemented it, but it is a start. Currently only animates when you hold the mouse button. Need to add a function to force a full animation sequence. So once you initiate the swing, you swing all the way through, and not stop just when you let go of the mouse button.

*Saving now keeps track of the time of day you saved at. Loading an existing save now loads the time of day you were last playing at instead of defaulting the beginning of morning every single time. No more saving and reloading to skip night.

*Torches can no longer be placed in water. Still need to despawn torches that get wet from water running over them.

*Holding a torch, i.e. a torch is the currently focused hotbar item, now lights the area around the player to the same radius and brightness of a placed torch. So instead of clicking madly for a place to put a torch in the dark, holding the torch gives off a light allowing you to see. It is also useful for exploring in the night or underground. I may allow the torch to be an accessory item, allowing you to forgo an accessory to have an always on light source. Maybe.

I really need to get some extra funds together so I can get a tablet. My wrist kills me when I'm trying to work on the art. For some of these features it is a chicken and the egg type of deal, where I can implement it in code but have no way to test it without the drawing, yet I can't always code it efficiently without seeing and visualizing what it is going to be.

[TheMainMan]

Glad to hear that you're still chipping away at it. I've gotta say I've really been happy with the stuff I've bought at monoprice lately. It's even cheaper than Chinese knock-offs and ships quicker too! Hope things work out for you.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've been spending some time working on the UI. This image is just where everything is laid out and is in progress. In the thumbnail below the image you can see the UI without the inventory or anything else open. It is similar to before, just larger health/mana/etc bars, the embellishment around the hotbar, and a reduction in hotbar slots.

The left is for the character sheet and equipment.
The lower "inventory" is for chests and vendors.
The box in the upper right is for hovered tooltips. Tentative.
The bottom right is getting set for the base of the crafting system.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/8637/uitest2.png

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7009/uitest.th.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/38/uitest.png/)

I'm working on a system so the two accent colors (the two shades of brown in the image) can be user defined in the options by RGB color codes.

As always, everything is in progress and tentative, but I thought I would share some more of my work.

[NightrainSrt4]

Working on my crafting menu. One of the tabs may also be used for a skill tree system if I decide to go that route.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc520/Nightrainsrt4/Crafting.gif

I've also solved the problem I was having with my implementation of the weapon attack / weapon collisions. Such a simple fix, I can't believe I hadn't come up with it before. It came to me while cleaning. Things either always come to me when cleaning, or when in the shower (running water . . . odd).

EDIT: There are some artifacts. Looks like the gif creator caused them. Everything is solid sets of colors normally.

[NightrainSrt4]

Working on some icons for the tabbed interface. Couldn't get an animated gif up right now, but the icons shift their position by a couple pixels when their tab is the highlighted tab. This helps to give some visual movement when switching tabs.

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7391/85528404.gif (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28/85528404.gif/)

I can't for the life of me figure out what to use for the miscellaneous tab. Things like torches, ladders, etc. I was thinking of doing a potion like bottle for consumables, but the miscellaneous has me stumped. I might just do a grayscale torch.

The final tab will most likely be for the abilities / skill tree. I might make six crafting categories though, and tab the character sheet on the left for that. Haven't quite decided.

[NightrainSrt4]

So I've decided to keep the crafting entirely separate from the skills. Doesn't make much sense to toss it in a tab with the crafting if I can just put it with the other character stuff.

5/6 Tabs in place. The last is for tools. I just have to make an icon for that. I might change the potion icon so a sideways vial or something. The other icons look beefy while that looks a bit dainty or fragile.

http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc520/Nightrainsrt4/UI.gif

I've got to finish these icons, then layout the crafting within the tabs along with the multiple pages. Then I've got to rework the character sheet for tabs, design the skill menu, create the empty equipment slot icons. I'm sure there is more. Then get it code for it running, which is the easy part for me. Getting everything drawn and designed is the tough part.

[TheMainMan]

What about using a double open-ended wrench for the misc tab? Seeing as it seems like most of the items there will be tools of sorts. Layouts are looking good, it's got a nice retro feel.

[NightrainSrt4]

I wish I had thought of a wrench before! I went with the torch for the miscellaneous, as it would contain torches, ladders, springs, etc. I made a pickaxe for the tools menu. I could change things, and very well may, but I'm charging forward now.

Had to study for an exam, so didn't get too much done. As you can see though, I was working on the equipment slots. I'm pretty happy with the chest piece. I kinda wanted to make it a silhouette as these are for the empty slots, and I like that piece too damn much to see it get covered up by the very first piece of equipment. Shrug, I may leave it as the slot icon, or swap it out for something more simple.

Ignore the sketched out head. Was trying to get a base shape to design a helmet around.

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6223/61089220.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/256/61089220.png/)

Thanks for the compliments. I'm not an artist so retro works for me, haha. Just trying to keep it clean.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've forced myself to get working on the art. Difficult to split time between everything, but I've made some substantial progress today.

The empty equipment slot icons are in. They should be enough to get the point across, plus when you hover over one of them, will tell you what goes there in the tool tip box just in case.

Now I just have to get the tabbed menu for the character information, and the slots for the crafting, and I can finally get this programmed into the game and move on to something else.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7009/uitest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/207/uitest.png/)
Necklace...............Helmet...........Familiar
Belt......................Chest............Gloves
Ring....................Greaves...........Ring
Accessory Stone.....Boots............Accessory Stone

[NightrainSrt4]

Worked on the character tab today. Got the UI for the 4 sets of perks/specialization put in. Colors will be edited later.

The thought process is to have perks for four different specialties: Melee, Magic, Ranged, and Mining.

This will allow the player to specialize a bit. For example, a perk in the mining section that gives you a chance to get two blocks from each mine. Put one point in, you get a 25% chance to get two blocks. Two points in, 50%, etc. Or, maybe you want to put all your points into things that help melee combat: Increased attack speed, increased health, etc.

http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7009/uitest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/847/uitest.png/)

Making twenty 16x16 icons will be fun. The tool tip box will tell you information about the perk when you hover over its icon. Once you've leveled up, I'll have a plus sign, or some other indicator over perks that can still have points put into them, to let the player know they have points they can spend. I'll have some sort of system set so you can respec, but putting points into anything won't make or break a game.

And to clarify, not all these will open when you hit the inventory button. I'll have a key set to open everything, but also a key for each so you can open only that which you want to see (character sheet, inventory, crafting menu, etc).

[SXRguyinMA]

looking good!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. Pushed onward again today. Got the tabbed interface for the crafting items in place.

You select the tab for the subtype you want to craft: Blocks, Miscellaneous, Consumables, Mining, Weapons, or Armor.

Then, within that is a set of tabs. These tabs will be unlocked by finding crafting books, probably locked away in each dungeon. I'll most likely use this as a method of keeping balance. That way the player, even if they have materials they shouldn't have, won't know how to make the high level items until they complete the high level content.

You click the numbered tab of the tier you want, and within that tab is a set of items belonging to that tier. Hover over the item, and it shows its description in the tooltip box. Click the item, and it places that item in the bottom left container, with the necessary ingredients in the four slots to the left. Any unused ingredient slots will be grayed out. If you have the necessary ingredients in your bag, then all you have to do to create the item is click the item in the lower left. The same method I used for picking up multiple items out of your inventory applies here, so you can craft multiple of one item easily.

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/7009/uitest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/uitest.png/)

I just realized I hard capped myself to 160 items per item group. If I run out of spots for items, I will drop the bottom right item slot, and add left / right arrow icons so move between pages within the tab, increasing the amount of available items for crafting.

Ignore the repeated placeholder icons. They won't be drawn into the picture like this, the game code will handle that.

[AmEv]

Lookin' good!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I've just got to finish up the character sheet (HP, Mana, Level, Exp to Level, etc), create the perk icons, and make the Left / Right arrows for the crafting page, and I can get this all programmed into the game.

Add that point I can add support for multiple resolutions. I'm not making unique art for each resolution, at least not now. What I'm going to do is center the UI horizontally in the center of the screen for each resolution.

Also, The two shades of brown you see will be converted to black in the actual files the game reads. Each image will be broken into three images. One for static colors e.g. the black borders, the gray, the offwhite, and anything else that needs to stay the same. One for the darker shade of brown, and one for the lighter shade of brown. The last two will be converted to black as mentioned.

What this will do is allow me to have a user defined option, so instead of the base UI color being brown, the user can define those two colors to anything they want. The game will then overwrite the black with the user defined color. If this works how I think it will, I can easily apply it to the player character as well.

[TheMainMan]

I am super pumped for the TBCS exclusive beta, lol! I know that might be some time off but it's been awesome watching this evolve. You've put a lot more thought and customization options into this that a lot of major titles from large game studios. For someone who has 16:10 19" monitors, hearing that you've put thought into resolutions makes me happy, as many games haven't. There's nothing worse than not being able to play a game because the menu is off the screen.

Thanks for sharing all your hard work on this with us, it's looking great!

[AmEv]

I am super pumped for the TBCS exclusive beta, lol!

:stupid:

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I want to get on with some other parts of the game, so I don't want to custom make the art / ui for each resolution, or even aspect ratio, at the moment.

The plan is to base everything off 800x600. The user defines their resolution in the options. The options save, the game applies the resolution. 800x600 is the smallest I am going to go. Now, for higher resolutions you get to see more of the world at once, it won't scale everything up (If you choose fullscreen while choosing a lower resolution than your native, it will scale. So if you want a bit more on the screen, but also want things a little bigger, you can do that too).

To get all the UI into the center of the screen, I am going to calculate an xoffset based on half the difference between the 800 wide and the chosen resolution. This will allow me to center the resolution in the middle of the screen, but keep it at the top. Applying the xoffset variable to my existing UI code should allow all the ui stuff to keep working, while giving an acceptable fix for larger resolutions.

Down the road I may redraw the UI for different aspect ratios. 16:10 would get a wider ui than the 4:3. But, that will be further down the road. I can't let feature creep start working its magic on something like options right now. Too much to get done and while everyone wants all the options in the world, there is far more important things to get in at the moment.

[AmEv]

We're waiting patiently.


You don't have any public deadlines.

[NightrainSrt4]

If I didn't have college classes to worry about finishing up for graduation, health problems, life, etc, then I could give a date.

Maybe in a couple months I can have an early alpha up. I still have so much art to do. Get this in. Then finish up the attack system. Then I have to write AI for the enemies. The basic follow AI I showed in an earlier video won't cut it.

[TheMainMan]

Thanks. I want to get on with some other parts of the game, so I don't want to custom make the art / ui for each resolution, or even aspect ratio, at the moment.

I hope I didn't sound like I was asking for more features. I honestly wasn't but rather, I understood the way you were coding it to center it. I think this is an awesome project and it's great that you have shared it with us. There is no expectation, from any of us I think, of a date (or even a release should you choose) to see things by. We merely have an excitement for cool things and desire for instant gratification, :whistler:. A lot of us can also relate to the school/life/health/work situation. Personally, I've been posting a lot in the last couple of days because I have a paper to write that I don't really want to. So I come check out the cool things the rest of you are doing:D

Anyways, you've been doing great work so far and I look forward to whatever you bring us next.

[NightrainSrt4]

Ya, I didn't read into it that way. I was just continuing the conversation.

I'm afraid to post about it on other forums though. Mostly because of how I might react to other peoples' comments. Judging by the reactions to others' works of art and labor, people will complain about anything. Even a single developer that has to do everything is expected to pump out a product better than AAA studios.

You guys are, and have always been, awesome. Nothing like some of the other forums I've read through. But, I know eventually, if the game gets to the point I'd like it to, I'm going to have to post on these other places to get the word out.

Thanks for all the support. Let me know of anything you guys might like to see make it into the game. Sometimes I'm too close, having to deal with every aspect of the game, to see something that would be sweet.

[TheMainMan]

Phew. Sometimes I re-read my posts and worry that I've come across wrong.

I know what you mean about other forums though. I used to be a member of more than this one and have gradually dropped off other boards because of the number of people who are unable to distinguish between constructive criticism and being an a**. Here, people seem to be pretty good at being helpful and friendly.

As far as features, you seem to have covered most of them that I can think of. I've been really impressed at how detailed the game is so far. If I think of anything I'll let you know though.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I appreciate it. It's been hard work, but even if I never complete it, it's one heck of a visual aid to my resume.

[NightrainSrt4]

Trying to finish up this character sheet so I can move on.

I still need a few more 8x8 icons: Energy (Int), Poison Damage, and Magic Resistance. Though I'll have to completely rearrange this as I wanted individual type resistances. Doesn't make too much sense to give the player specific magic damage types, but allow them to avoid specific resistances by bunching it all up as magical.

I also need to find a font that works at low resolutions, and is free for commercial use. The icons will explain what they are in the tooltip box when you hover over them. I was hoping they would be relatively self explanatory.


Red Plus: Hit Points
Blue Sphere: Mana
Bubbles: Air
Green Star: Experience / Experience to next level (Need to find a spot for the character level).

Heart: Vitality ( Affects total hit points )
Fist: Strength ( Increases melee attack damage )
Feather: Dexterity ( Increases ranged attack damage )
Shield: Defense ( Increases physical attack defense )

Fire / Electric / Ice (Water) damage.

It is difficult to convey information when you only have 8x8 pixels AND want to keep with the same art style of using a black border around everything.
Edit: I'm seeing now that I flipped the colors. This needs to be entirely reorganized anyway.
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7009/uitest.png

Getting some perk icons in. They aren't in their final positions, as I just drew wherever I felt like it at the moment.
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/8637/uitest2.png

[AmEv]

Progress.





Major progress.


That's the big thing right now.

I understand some of what you're going through right now.
Ohh, the joys of programming....

[NightrainSrt4]

I wish it was the joys of programming. I'm stuck doing this until I finish up these two pieces then I can get back into the lovely joys of programming. It will be worth it in the end. This, while not perfect, is a far nicer UI than what I had.

[NightrainSrt4]

I had made a post explaining everything, but somehow it disappeared. Oh well.

Changed the character tab layout. There will be four tabs. Main Stats, Weapon Stats, Perks, Story / Quest. Finished up the layout of the Main Stats page.
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7009/uitest.png

The Weapon Stats page will have all the damage, magical damage, magical resistances, etc of the currently equipped (focus on hotbar) weapon. It will also draw any bonuses necessary from the equipment that add to damage / resistances. This way, you can see your equipped weapons stats, but also hover over a different weapon and see its information in the tool tip box so you can make a comparison.

The Story tab will have quest items a la Zelda Triforce or Pendants.

[NightrainSrt4]

Weapon Stats Sheet. After making my eyes bleed from working on these 8x8 icons, I can't wait to get back to the 16x16's.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7009/uitest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/18/uitest.png/)
I might push the middle section up 4 pixels, giving me 8 extra for the tool tip box. Not sure yet.

[billygoat333]

I am not sure if you posted it before, but what program are you using to make your graphics?

[NightrainSrt4]

I've been drawing it all manually, pixel by pixel, in Paint.net.

GraphicsGale for the animations, which I haven't shown any yet. I really liked how easy Pencil was to get animation onto the screen, but it wasn't easy to work on such a small scale. GraphicsGale is more complicated, but I figured out how to get the same onion skin, so it should work great.

[NightrainSrt4]

Animation has been scaring me, so I played around a bit trying to get used to it. Made a UFO familiar hover down to beam something up.
http://i1215.photobucket.com/albums/cc520/Nightrainsrt4/SpaceShip0000.gif
Made using GraphicsGaleFree. Exported as multiple PNG files, then compiled into a GIF with GIMP.

[NightrainSrt4]

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6923/dirtgrasstest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/831/dirtgrasstest.png/)

I was playing around a bit with different ideas for dirt / grass blocks. I think I like it better when I don't try to hide the seams and let the player see that they are tiles.

[TheMainMan]

Hiding the seams would take away from the block by block changes like digging. I like the retro look that it adds too!

[NightrainSrt4]

The problem is that I'm not a good enough artist to pull off any sort of texture while losing the seams. Even with multiple versions, and a random element to which gets drawn, I still end up with a visual repeating pattern. It looks odd when you can tell by looking at it that the person was trying to hide it.

I'm still going to do some randomness to the blocks, and I will keep the dynamic texture system I had, where as you dig the shape of the blocks change a bit.

Once I redo the character it won't clash so much (1x1 pixels vs 2x2 pixels). Haven't gotten to that yet.

[TheMainMan]

What would it look like with a border that was closer to the colour of the dirt (a.k.a brown) instead of the black seams? That could give it a block look without the grid being so dominant.

[NightrainSrt4]

That's what I had before, although I don't know if I ever took a picture / video of it. It looked alright, but clashed with my style of black borders on everything.

The more I look at those tiles the more they grow on me. I've got a project for class I have to finish up this weekend, but after that I can get going banging out some progress. I'll test some ideas out for tiles then.

If you've seen any of my youtube videos, you can see how many different tile ideas I've gone through. This one in particular had the brown borders. But it was a flat brown tile.

b8C3BybNMSk

[TheMainMan]

Yep, that's pretty much what is was thinking, just with the new textures.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yay! I've got a drawing tablet incoming. Now I can get some concept art down; drawing with my mouse was killing my wrist. This should really help me get my thoughts out there. Then I can just convert them to pixel art.

Had my last class of the semester. Finals next week, but that means I can finally get these images broken up and start programming them into the game tomorrow.

Onward!

[TheMainMan]

Having watched my sister using her drawing tablet on her new Windows 7 machine, I can say that once you get used to it you can draw a lot faster too.

Good luck on exams!

[NightrainSrt4]

Monoprice drawing tablet is tracked to come in on Monday. I can't wait.

In the meantime, a few things. . .
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/2408/expandedui.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/expandedui.png/)

The dynamic UI centering is in. It will now center the UI at the top center of the screen, no matter the screen size. I got the base code working with the existing UI. Now I just have to get the new UI coded in.

I also fixed a few lighting bugs I noticed when I was scanning through my code. There are still a few things I have to change with it though, as it only checks for solids X blocks away either horizontal, or vertical (For each distance it checks, it only checks 9 blocks at most). You get dark spots when the cross around it is solid, but air blocks approach on an angle. Adding a few more checks won't increase the runtime by any noticeable amount, and should help stop these anomalies.

[NightrainSrt4]

Going to be filing a complaint. The UPS guy never pushes the buzzer. He walks up to the apartment complex, fills out the sheets, sticks them on the door, and walks away. He can't be bothered to knock, buzz in, anything. This is the 5th time it's happened.

The last time I waited for the truck to show up and went down and watched everything he did before confronting him politely about it. He apologized, and went on and on about being being sorry, but even then I could tell he wasn't sincere and should have filed the complaint then. I understand the pressures delivery men can go through, but this guy is just a twat. Bleh.

[NightrainSrt4]

Had some free time today so I got a few things implemented.

One of the big requests from people I had spoken with was to make the game entirely resolution independent, and to not hard code resolutions into the game. People seem to be frustrated with how games just give a set list of resolutions, and don't look to the future where resolutions not on the list could become common.

So, in light of that I've added full resolution support. I haven't created a list of resolutions for the game to draw upon. Instead I query the graphics device and get a list of resolutions the GPU / Monitor combo can support. I then toss out any with a vertical resolution less than 600 as that is the chosen base for the UI.

I don't have three screens to test anymore, but this should work perfectly for those who use Eyefinity or Surround. Combine this with the UI centering I've already done, and it should make for a decent experience no matter what resolution is chosen, even a six screen 30" setup.

Along with that, an option is in the menu to switch between fullscreen and windowed. A config file is generated, which can be user modified as well, which is drawn upon on at each load, and saved and applied after each applied change in the menu.

[NightrainSrt4]

Torches now correctly texture based on their location relative to surrounding solids. Mining or placing blocks cause the torch texture to change if necessary. A torch with no blocks to plant itself on will break and a torch item will spawn.

Little revamp to the menu system. I can assign each menu entry its own color. This is good for changes in contrast. Existing worlds now identify themselves on the world choice and world delete menu's by date and time last saved.

I wanted to take full screen screenshots, so I was building a simple screenshot system, but I broke the rendering. Luckily I had created a backup of everything to right before I started on that, so tomorrow I will revert to just after the changes above, but before the attempt at the screenshot system and will try again with fresh eyes.

[TheMainMan]

What an ingenious way to address resolution issues! That sounds like it should give a great deal of customization and take care of us with odd setups/MULTIPLE MONITORS!!!!! It's nice to see something solved in an elegant fashion. Sounds like things are coming along nicely, good luck with the screenshot functionality.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. I feel I've got a decent solution to the resolution problem. The only thing I'm concerned about is when in the main menu's. Everything will center properly, but I've got some sliding currently happening that slides some items off the viewport, which may not entirely slide them off the screen on super huge resolutions. I haven't done the math to check if this is actually happening yet, and don't have a set to test on. Will make note of this now for future reference.

The screenshot system isn't entirely necessary. I was just running the game in full screen and wanted to grab some shots to post here. Regular print screen will just return a blank white screen unless windowed, so I was trying to get a nice solution working in game. XNA treats renderstates as 2D textures, but I only used those for some of the lighting as the default works just fine for everything else. But, the default is the backbuffer, and you aren't given any direct way to grab from that. So then I tried to rewrite all my draw code to draw to renderstates instead of the backbuffer directly, and then at the end draw all the renderstates to one renderstate, and then draw that to the backbuffer, and in my haste broke something. So, today I'll revert to just before that and rethink the problem / solution.

[NightrainSrt4]

Taken from the in game screenshot @ 1680x1050 and uploaded as 800x600. I have to assign a different button than the printscreen button, as that doesn't always work, but when I use a different key it works perfect every time. The screen flashes for a frame after hitting the key for a screenshot. I think this is because I had to grab directly from the backbuffer.

When you hit the key and release it, I make note that you want a screenshot, and after the next draw call I grab everything from the backbuffer and write it as a jpg. This is slower than the approach I was using before, which is why I tried the other way first. I think that is why the screen flashes for that split second, as the backbuffer grab and write to file took too long, so the game skips a draw call to keep the logic / update code at 60fps. I might try doing the backbuffer grab one frame, and the file write another frame to see if this helps, but I think most of the time is being taken up by grabbing the backbuffer's data pixel by pixel, so splitting the work between frames might be moot.

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/1792/3screenshot.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/265/3screenshot.jpg/)

[NightrainSrt4]

Worked at getting the UI in today. Looks much better than before. I've currently bound all the UI items to open off one key, but I've programmed it so I can easily change each element to its own key, on top of forcing it to show at the necessary times.

All Screenshots taken in game with the games screenshot function.
Taken at the lowest possible resolution: 800x600
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/3202/0screenshot.jpg
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/1756/1screenshotj.jpg
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/6241/2screenshotw.jpg
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/1792/3screenshot.jpg

And the UI working at 1680x1050.
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/359/4screenshotr.jpg
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/2389/5screenshot.jpg

Everything works as expected. Click on a tab and it switches to that tab. The game remembers what item tab within a particular crafting tab you were last on, so if you go back to that crafting tab it brings up the last viewed page, at least for that play session.

The colors on the status bars are placeholder colors. I have to find a set that works with everything else, and has enough contrast to show the text. The quantity numbers aren't the final set or location either. Currently just a passover from what I had before. There will be an option in the menu to show the status' as text as shown, as percent, or not at all. I know some people hate seeing the numbers or percent and just want to see the bar, and just the bar.

[AmEv]

TBCS exclusive coupons/gift codes????


Keep up the AWESOME work!

[NightrainSrt4]

There is still a ton of work to be done.

Just a small list:


*Rewrite weapon animation
*Weapon collision detection (have it in pseudocode)
*Projectiles
*Rewrite lighting to work on non-DX10 graphics cards
*Add the other 9 regions
*Enemy AI routines
*Add and bugtest dungeons
*Simulate/Settle liquids for x frames before the game loads.
*Break world saving / loading into chunks. Only save modified chunks.
*Finish weapon / armor random stat.
*Figure out a way to have other liquid types without having to run an expensive simulation for each and every liquid. (Think I have this, just have to try it).
*Create and add region non-block set pieces.
*Add tree tops. Make trees fall without having to chop every block.
*Door blocks.
*More blocks. (Limited by what I've made for art, not code).
*Just more content in general. Easy to add to game once I get art made


I'm mostly limited by what I have for art right now. That is pretty much the limiting factor. My fiancee ran around exploring the world for nearly an hour last night. The state of the game as it sits would be similar to Minecraft's Indev mode if I had to compare.

If I could get some more blocks made and placed in each region, and some basic crafting in, then those who like to adventure and just look and see stuff could probably run around the world for hours searching for materials and building stuff. When I get it to this point, I will give you guys a very early alpha to play around in and bug hunt.

[NightrainSrt4]

Did some texture work. Going to remove the grooves on the edges of the textures and keep them flat. Will emphasize that it is an edge with the art within the tile.

*Ladders can now be placed above or below another ladder without the need to have a solid block adjacent to each piece of ladder. As long as one piece has a solid block adjacent, the entire vertical stack is free to build on. Ladders that used to have a solid adjacent block still keep their position. Haven't decided if a ladder without a block or wall to tie itself to will fall apart or not.

*Ladders no longer stop damage from large distance falls. Can no longer toss a piece of ladder at the base of a pit to prevent damage.

*Fixed a bug with torches being placed on an invalid block location.
*Fixed a bug tied to the above, where this invalid block location would not show a texture for the torch, but would still give off light.

[billygoat333]

I really enjoy this thread. We get to see the process of building a computer game! very cool thanks for sharing!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thank you. I enjoy sharing. When I started this I never thought I would have anything near what I have, nonetheless all the things I have plans for and know I can do now.

[NightrainSrt4]

I spent all day working on tiles and only ended up with a slightly better dirt block. I guess all the practice will pay off, even if I can't (won't) use most of it.

[NightrainSrt4]

Made a wood block I'm relatively happy with.

Wall blocks are already in the game, I just have to code a function to check if you have a wall block equipped and if so apply it at the correct index. Then define an item type that can break the walls down. Once that is done, you'll be able to place walls / backdrops manually.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/2703/6screenshot.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/14/6screenshot.jpg/)

[AmEv]

Looking better by the minute!


Got a level editor in the works?

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks.

Not currently. Everything is stored in text now, but will all be converted to binary when I'm done. Either way, I won't do any special encoding, so if you know all the ID's for the tiles it wouldn't be difficult to make. I was thinking about doing it, as it was on my original list, but I've got to worry about more important gameplay aspects first. Limited time plus feature creep is a developers enemy.

When everything is done I may come back to it and write a quick level editor. Thing is, very few people are going to want to populate a huge world by hand, so I'll probably have to expose some of my internal cave system algorithms / functions and include those with the editor. Click and drag a region, type in the base type, the number of cave systems, etc.

I don't know. I'm worrying about game stuff for now, don't want to get to distracted. I might just make a level design mode that you can select when the game runs. I could have it ditch all the usual UI stuff, and when you open inventory just display a huge selection of blocks. Turn on no-clip and let the player fly around and have at it.

Not really sure yet. I want to get an actual game before I worry about that. If I don't get around to it, and somehow the game magically becomes popular, I'm sure modders will make one at the very least. Not that I would rely on them and just brush it off and leave it to them, but a collective group of people could probably make a better app than me with splitting my time up.

[Kayin]

Do you want me to take a look at doing some graphic work for you? I did all my own sprites for FO as well as some of the tiles. If you're using GraphicsGale it'll be no problem at all.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thank you for the offer. This is probably going to be the biggest piece on my resume / portfolio, so until I land that first critical job I want to keep everything just me.

I've been flipping back and forth on putting out feelers for art donations, but I don't know. I'm also not sure about any of the legal stuff if the game ends up being something I can go commercial with when it is all done.

If you, or anyone, has any ideas or wants to draw up some concept art or tiles I suppose it can't hurt to post them up. I can't guarantee that I would use them, but if something really jives then maybe we can work something out with formal credits / thanks in the game or something. Many people here I can trust. Other places, and even with my own brother when he was doing some art, I would have to worry about scouring the internet to check and make sure each piece wasn't ripped from something else.

As you can see, I'm torn about it. I don't see how it can hurt if any of you guys want to post any art up though that may or may not be used or edited, etc. I'm not ready to make any formal commitment to anyone, but if there is something posted that really works then I suppose we could talk when that time comes.

[NightrainSrt4]

You can now place background walls. I still need to define which item breaks them down, but placing works correctly. Select the item in the inventory and place just like any other block.

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9373/7screenshot.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/171/7screenshot.jpg/)

Again, I thought to darn much when I was putting this in. It wasn't working , so I started scouring my code for an hour again. All the signs slapped me in the face and I still went with thinking that something critical with my engine code must have been wrong. Nope, when I made the call to place the wall I accidentally called it with the x and y indices in the wrong order. So it was working, just placing and drawing the blocks in the wrong locations, lmfao.

[NightrainSrt4]

You can now break walls down in addition to putting them up. I've tied the wall breaking attribute to the hammer status. I currently haven't made a hammer set of sprites, so I gave the morningstar the hammer attribute. This just means that its alternate click (right click) has the ability to break down walls. Seemed fitting, for now at least.

Trying to improve the animation engine. I original only thought of looping animations, and the ability to tell it to play and to stop playing. I know I had a way to make it only play the animation once, but I didn't make it an explicit function, so I have to remember how I wanted to go about doing that. I can do it by just making a function in the main game class, but I feel like it should be within the animation class, but I failed at getting that working. Shrug, maybe I'll just take the easy route and go back and get it within the animation class at a later point.

[NightrainSrt4]

Pretty large improvements today:

*I can now loop animations for those I want looped, and play individual animations when I need that.

*Clicking when using a weapon now plays the animation once. If you hold it, it will play the animation repeatedly until you release the button and it completes that final animation. After each time playing the animation, a trigger goes off, allowing me to do other things such as: fire a projectile, cause damage to a block, etc.

*Blocks now have hit-points, and weapons have tile type specific damages. A pickaxe will do more damage to a block than to a wall, while the hammer excels at breaking down walls. If a block takes more damage than it has hitpoints, the block gets destroyed and a block item is spawned.

*Damage over time is now dependent on not only how hard the weapon hits, but how fast it swings. A wooden pickaxe swings at 2 full swings per second, and can hit a tile for 50 damage. A dirt block with 100 hit points will break in two hits, which takes about one second. A stone block with 150 hitpoints would take three hits, and can be destroyed in 1.5 seconds. So the rate of destruction depends on how much damage the weapon can do, how many times it can swing each second, and how many hitpoints the block has.

*I also figured out a way to save A TON of memory. . . again. I'm storing a lot of data in each of the 5million+ blocks, much of which is specific to the block type and not the individual block itself. All blocks of that type are the same in that specific regard. I don't need each block to store that data, I can store it in the base blocks and look up the data when needed. 5 million blocks each storing a bunch of 32-bit integers adds up to a lot of memory I can save. Going back and changing the references to the individual blocks will take the most time.

[AmEv]

Are you able to use the "find and replace" to update names (of vars and functions)?

[NightrainSrt4]

Yes, I just have to figure out what the current calls are for each, and figure out what I need to replace it with.

Example:

Replace something like this:

if (map.tileMap[indexY, indexX].isSolid == true)
{
doThis(indexY, indexX);
}


With something like this:


int blockID = map.tileMap[indexY, indexX].ID;

if(Map.tiles[blockID].isSolid == true)
{
doThis(indexY, indexX);
}


I didn't mean it would necessarily take a long time, just that finding each and changing it to the right thing would take the longest of the entire implementation. It will be quick to remove the attributes that never change from the maps blocks and place it into its own data structure; it will take longer to change all the references.


Also, working on a new player character. The bubbly funky proportions should help ease the animation side of things.
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3963/9screenshot.jpg
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/581/8screenshot.jpg
@800x600 to enlarge the character a bit:
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/581/8screenshot.jpg

Still needs work, but I like where it is going. Also, his backpack either isn't necessary, or needs to have straps. It's just hanging on his back, lmfao. I'll make his helmet give off a bit of light, as its a pain falling into a pitch black hole and not knowing where your character is, where you can place torches, etc.

[NightrainSrt4]

Spent nearly 12 hours today working on the lighting. Why I started to work on it, I'm not sure.

Before:
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/581/8screenshot.jpg

After:
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/581/8screenshot.jpg

Still needs some work, but I now have a more intuitive system going. I can set the light easily to any color I want or need, and set colors individually for different objects. The banding you see in the first image is now gone.

The way the light looks depends on the gradient (or not in the case of flat colors. A better gradient and color choice will get me closer to the look I was going for. Easily changed via textures now.

This paves the way for a more natural dawn / dusk / sunset / sunrise. Instead of timed jerky lighting, with a few tweaks I should be able to have a smooth transition.

I could do a vector based blocky style lighting like Terraria, but this really helps differentiate things visually. I'm working on a way to hide parts that wouldn't be hit with the light, but keep the type of lighting I have. Lots of math.

[NightrainSrt4]

I almost forgot one of the most important things, and the big reason I spent so much time reworking the lighting:

The game should now run on non Nvidia / AMD DX10+ gpu's. Integrated Intel DX10 GPUs and most DX9 GPUs in general could not run the game. According to Steams hardware surveys, this is only ~5% of the market, but still something I wanted to get fixed.

This should now be solved. I am getting set to test this on the integrated Intel gpu in my laptop that could not run it due to the lighting system before. I will report back once I do.

[Kayin]

If you want me to put backpack straps on your bro there I can, just need the .PNG.

[NightrainSrt4]

Feel free to have at him. It was my first try at him. I still have to make all his different frames and animations, on top of cleaning him up, etc. But, have a go at him if you want to. The image size for each frame is 28 wide by 56 high. This way he easily fits in one block wide holes and 2 block high ceilings.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/5354/player2g.png

The game now works on integrated DX10, and should work fine, even better, on a dedicated DX9 card. Playing on a 1.6Ghz CPU with an intel 4500 played well at 800x600. Playing at 1366x768 chugged a bit. The water simulations are expensive and they are applied on more blocks the higher the resolution. There are still a lot of optimizations I can make, but I'm going to worry about that at the polish stage. I will start looking into what I can thread, as the game is running high usage on one of these cores.

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm going to have to start watching the performance and thinking about ways to speed things up.

This is on a rig with a 3Ghz CPU and a GTX470. I'm getting these figures in debug, so I know to not worry too much, but there are some definite considerations I need to think about. To hit a steady 60fps, which the game needs or it starts running update more frequently than the drawing to catch up, I need everything to complete in under 16ms. The lower the better as it means it will run well on much lower spec'd computers.

@1680x1050

Water Simulation: ~3-4ms
Draw Calls: 6-7ms.
Everything else: <<<< 1ms

@800x600

Water Simulation: ~1.7-2.2ms
Draw Calls: 2ms
Everything else: <<<<<1ms

The water simulation is expensive as its a nested loop running a cellular automata algorithm. Every block on the screen plus a buffer zone gets run through and checked with its neighbors every frame. The higher the resolution the more blocks it has to run through and compare.

The drawing is similar in that the tiles are run through on a nested loop (run through each tile in a row, move down a row and run through that row, etc), but it is doing this multiple times for each layer it has to draw. If you don't draw things in the correct order you end up with random funniness with blocks being drawn behind things, in front of things, the wrong order.

I think I can speed up the drawing quite a lot by only running the loop once, but grabbing everything I need for all the different types of drawing I need to do and putting them in a different data structure. The water simulation I'm going to have to think about. I might be able to save some time by converting it to integer based instead of calculating water masses with floats. *Shrug*. If it gets to be a problem I'll simplify the modeling. I tried putting it into its own thread, which helped cpu load across the board, but randomly something bugs and the water then starts multiplying.

[NightrainSrt4]

Trees now have tops / leaves. When the block below the top gets destroyed, the top will disappear. Trees will get destroyed at a whole tree, and the amount of damage needed will be based on the size of the tree. Currently you have to break each block of the tree trunk to get rid of it, like trees in Minecraft.

Blocks now display how much damage they have taken, giving a visual indicator to how many more hits you need to destroy it.

Textures, as always, need work, but the code is there and placeholders are better than putting off getting it in until I get a texture I'm relatively happy with. Will get pictures sometime along.

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm so dense! I know how to make the lights look blocky while still keeping the kind of lighting I have.

I can't believe it hadn't come to me before. It's so simple!

Blargh, I can't do it until I come back from classes, otherwise I'll get distracted and won't go. Expect a change later.

[NightrainSrt4]

And the new lighting in. I whacked at a few blocks to show the cracking. The texture sucks and will be improved at some point but I wanted to get a base functionality in, and worry about polish later.
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4518/1screenshot.jpg

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/3202/0screenshot.jpg

I went back to compiling for DX10+ gpu's only (according to Steam's Hardware survey that is 95% of the market) because the lower setting doesn't allow me to use the screenshot function I wrote, as the lower function doesn't allow you get get access directly to the backbuffer.

This is only a problem if when the game released I was magically accepted by Steam, as I don't think they allow two different executeables. If I just release the game as a standard release then I can just include two compiled versions, one with whatever extra bells and whistles and a version that would run on integrated graphics.

[NightrainSrt4]

The evolution is incredible. It's really starting to look like a game. I can't believe I've actually come this far.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1627/gamen.png

http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/3246/dirtstonebig.png

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7655/21505054.png

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/3616/dayshadows5spread.png

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4518/1screenshot.jpg

[AmEv]

Now I'm willing to go buy it.

Once you get the objective down, that is.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. As always, it means a lot to see you guys post. It is encouraging.

We are getting closer to the first Alpha that I will release to playtesters. I want to get more blocks drawn up for all the different regions so you at least have some more areas to explore even if they aren't fully developed. Get chests working, which should be simple based on the code I've already written. The main thing is getting the crafting in, which isn't that hard as I've got the basis already done. I just need to create a structure to hold the recipes, draw them to the right places, and handle the input when you are in the crafting menu.

When those things are in and working, along with a few other minor things, I will release an Alpha for people to playtest for me. It will be like Indev on Minecraft, where you can explore the world, gather blocks, create a few things, and build using any of the blocks you've found or crafted. So it won't be an action-packed hack-and-slash fest, but it will be great for adventuring.

I'm thinking at that point I will create a video and write up a well thought out post about the game and what the release gameplay will be, and post it on Minecraft and Terraria's forums. At that point I should get a good idea whether the game really has a chance, or if it was just a good addition to my resume. Either way, I will continue to push the game to where I imagined it as the initial reason for me making the game was to make the game I wanted to play.

[NightrainSrt4]

Cobblestone blocks and walls are in. Until I get the crafting system in you have to inventory edit to get the different walls and such, but they are in the game nonetheless.

800x600 in the basement of the house.
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2582/4screenshot.jpg

1680x1050 showing the entire house.
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/369/2screenshotd.jpg

[NightrainSrt4]

By popular request, different colored cobblestone:

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2389/5screenshot.jpg
I may have it so you craft these by using normal cobblestone and paint.

[AmEv]

Wait, what language are you programming this in?

If it's C/C++, I got a working Linux compiler.

[NightrainSrt4]

C# with XNAs libraries so Windows only. When I started this, all my experience was in console/command line applications, so this was a nice way for me to abstract a lot of the drawing aspects of game programming.

On another note, crafting is on its way to being integrated into the game. The recipe structure is all in. The UI knows what base tab you are on, and what tier tab you are on, and accesses the recipe list for that particular type/tier combo. These images are from the game naturally doing its thing.

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/9373/7screenshot.jpg

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/2703/6screenshot.jpg
I will add more recipes as I go. I'm worrying about the underlying code before content at the moment. It's simple to add recipes, just a little tedious.

What is left is to add the left-right page buttons and show them if there are more items than fit on one page. Then, check which crafting item you've clicked on and load the item into the bottom block along with what items make up the recipe. If you left click on the item, and you have all the necessary items, then draw the item at your pointer. Continue holding and it adds more of the same item to the stack if the item is stackable. Right click the desired item and it will decrement the number in the stack; hold to continue to decrease. When you left click on an open spot in your inventory, or a spot containing the same item that isn't a full stack, then add the item(s) to your inventory and remove the needed materials. If the item is a weapon or armor piece, only calculate the random stats once it has been added to the inventory. No cheating the system.

The hard part is done. Now its just recognizing input and responding to that. A few more draw calls. Then the tedium of creating all the different recipes.

[NightrainSrt4]

Getting there. It now tracks and handles which item within the tab you have clicked on, draws a highlight so you can tell which is selected, and loads the item you want to make down bottom with all the items that are necessary to make it.

Currently highlighting a slot that doesn't contain a recipe. Therefore nothing shows down bottom.
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3963/9screenshot.jpg

Highlighting Miscellaneous/Tier 1/Page 1/Item 1, which happens to be a torch. So it loads the torch down bottom, and loads the items that are needed to make the torch: wood and coal.
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/581/8screenshot.jpg

Just need to draw the quantities needed, handle clicking on the wanted item, and adding to the inventory when you drop that into your inventory.

[AmEv]

Need any help with music?

I'm sure I could throw a few chiptunes your way.

But WOW that is a GREAT idea!

[NightrainSrt4]

I haven't started anything audio yet. If you want to throw together a few things you think might work, then I'm all for it. I can't guaranty I will use any of it, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, if there is something that really works, then we can work something out with crediting and such.

What is a great idea? The way I did the crafting? Just wasn't sure what you are referring to. Either way, thanks!

[AmEv]

The crafting ;)

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. It's nice when a plan starts to come together. Haven't had any hiccups with the design yet *knock on wood*.

[NightrainSrt4]

Now, when you click on the lower box of the item to create, it searches your inventory and checks if you have all the required ingredients for the current count of how many you want to create.

EX: You want to create some torches. You click the torch icon in the crafting to load it into the crafting slot. You click the crafting slot the first time, the count goes up by one, and it searches your inventory for one wood and one coal. If you don't have those items, the count goes back down by one. Say you do have those two blocks and you click the crafting slot again. Now you are trying to make two sets of torches. It scans the inventory for the amount of material to make two sets of torches. If you have it then good, if not the count goes back to 1.

The count gets set back to zero if you click on any other tab, or any other item. I also noticed a bug where you would have been able to build up the count based on what you had in your inventory, grab the item from your inventory, close the inventory screen, drop the items, and the count would still be at the higher mark. This would have allowed you to create items without actually having to spend any of the materials. This has been addressed.

TL;DR - Crafting is almost complete. After classes I will work on finishing the basics up. Then onto fringe cases and bug hunting. I will try and get a video when that is done to show the crafting in action. Much easier than me trying to explain it.

[NightrainSrt4]

EDIT: You guys get a more in depth look here @ TBCS, but I also have a facebook page:
http://facebook.com/ram3software
Feel free to like it, or not, 8).

A video update:
aXEJI1PaBG4
*Showing off all the different resolutions supported by my monitor and graphics card. Your list may vary. I can't change the resolution while Fraps is running, it causes a freakout. I don't know if that is my code, xna in general, or just fraps. Not a huge deal.

On top of not feeling well yesterday, my cat had another seizure, so I was coding in a fog. The crafting is almost complete, but there are a few bugs. I'm pretty sure I'm just not updating a few pointers. If it loads a recipe that needs more ingredients, and you then go back to a recipe that needs fewer ingredients, it will allow you to increase the quantity to create, and does the proper check if you have all that is necessary in your inventory. When you go to drop it in the inventory, which is where the actual item creation occurs, it will not let you, as it is still reading needing a quantity for that necessary item from the last recipe. I just have to find where the pointer needs to be updated and that should be good to go.

I need to add a box around the quantities so I can get a background behind the font to increase the contrast, as the quantities are not very legible.

[Neodymium]

Awesome...my 7 year old who is also a huge Minecraft fan, loves it! When do we get to play? :D

[NightrainSrt4]

I'll release an exploration alpha once I finish the crafting, get some basic movement animations drawn, chests, and get the base world populated with blocks.

I have to make base blocks for 8 more regions:
Snow / Ice Region
Underground Plague Swamp
Underwater City
Hell / Fire Region
Granite Mountain
Underground Desert
Petrified Forest
Steampunk / Dwemer Styled Region

For this very early alpha release I don't care if it is just placeholder tiles, I would just like to get something in these regions. Currently, if you dig through the stone layer you fall to your death as there is nothing beneath. I could easily just extend the stone layer down, but I'd rather have at least a hint to what kind of zone it will be.

The character just slides around the screen. The animation system is all in, and the movement animations are triggered, they are simply blank. Swap in new textures and things will look much smoother.

[NightrainSrt4]

I was just playing around with the search on Youtube, and that video is the first result for both "tile miner" and "tile mining game". Keywords FTW.

[AmEv]

You NEVER cease to amaze me with this!

[Neodymium]

That's cool! How about something like a level from Mario Bros, that'd be amazing! :banana: You go, Nightrain!

[NightrainSrt4]

When I get through finishing all of the overworld, then I'll focus on the farmable dungeons, which ought to be more like a Super Mario or Castlevania level. More dungeon crawl, less digging.

EDIT: Was doing some work on some tiles. Came up with a brick tile I didn't dislike. Was testing out some color combinations to see how they looked. I'm not sure about the red-brown and red-white. I was just playing around. I may keep the red-brown, but lose the brown grout for black like the rest of them.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/9509/bricktest.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/191/bricktest.png/)

Each color is 3x3 tiles. The actual bricks will have the black borders. The wall tiles will run like that though, but with a darker set of colors.

[AmEv]

I kinda like the red-white.

[NightrainSrt4]

It looks a bit better there than how I first had it. I pushed the white towards red a bit. I'm just not sure about those two as everything else in the game has a black border. I can always add it in and see how it looks.

[NightrainSrt4]

Fixed the bug in the crafting; crafting now works as expected. I forgot to update a set of variables, so it was doing some odd math which would cause you to not be able to place the items into your inventory. All fixed.

Added a few more placeholder recipes. This way you can create the items even though I don't have all the items that will eventually be necessary in yet.

Progress might slow this weekend. College homework to do and I am working on the Mame cabinet, and will be making a worklog of that this weekend. :up:

[AmEv]

I got a hold of Magnus "SoulEye" Palsson, the music artist of VVVVVV, and he said "Maybe [I can help him out]. I've got a lot on my plate right now, and I have to turn down certain projects."

So, if he does accept, this should be nice.

[NightrainSrt4]

I can't believe you went and asked someone like him to help. I thank you very much for going the extra mile. I don't even know what to say. I'm just going to sit here and process this a bit. :eek:

I mean, I'm happy with my work and progress. I know some of you guys have enjoyed watching the progress even if it doesn't turn into anything big. I never thought anyone really believed in me / it enough to go out of their way to do something like that. Just, wow! Confidence booster for sure.

[AmEv]

Yeah, we're forum buddies.

He said no guarantees, but if it does happen, that'd be really awesome for sure.

He's on Skype, so if you want to look it up, go ahead.

[NightrainSrt4]

That would be very cool. Thank you very much. Even if nothing comes of it, just the act of doing that has given me a whole lot of confidence.

[NightrainSrt4]

That made me use my free time this weekend, that wasn't spent on my mod, replaying VVVVVV again. Such a fun game. And his music is once again stuck in my head.

[AmEv]

I love the guy. (not.... <_< >_> Not that kind of way.....)

Hey, did you know that the Predestined Fate is the first thing that plays when MT2 is installed? Not the complete song, that is; it originally was created to make sure your system was prepared for music making.

[AmEv]

I'd say your game looks very 16-bit era.

Still semi-pixelated, 2d, platformer.

[NightrainSrt4]

I was thinking of trying 4x4 pixels for the art. I really liked 2x2 but then some things looked exactly like Terraria simply because of the pixel count. 4x4 looks a lot more pixel-y. Almost like a 2d 3D Dot Game Heroes.

I'd only have to change the textures to make the change, and it wouldn't have to be permanent. Maybe I'll just try it. Can't hurt I suppose. I liked what I was seeing when I was just scribbling around, but it could look very different in game.

[NightrainSrt4]

Spent most of the day working on the walking animation. Better than before but still needs some work. The head needs to shift a pixel or two in the direction of the walk. Still need to make the animations for jumping, falling, climbing, etc. The speed the animation plays at might need to be changed a bit, but it looks far better than what was there before.

5w1jlWJCPN4

[NightrainSrt4]

Was bored and my back hurts so I was just playing around in Sketchbook Pro. Single size brush, no zooming or anything. Just sketching. I'm no artist so I figured the practice would be good. Proportions are way off the pixel art, but I didn't care too much. I'll go back and zoom in and clean up the lines and whatnot another time. Just wanted to distract myself a little bit.

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/1373/charactera.png

[AmEv]

Put that on a poster!

It may be worth a ton later on!

[AmEv]

Let's dev this a little more, then talk to him.

And let's not pester him.

Give him some time to think about it.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yes. I haven't spoken to him yet, figured I'd wait until I had more of an idea for the ambiance of each section, get bosses drawn up at least in concept, etc.

I've been sketching out some concept art for monsters and such in my free time. That way I have a concept to draw from when I start making the pixel art.

I also wrote out the design flow for chopping down trees as a unit instead of block by block. Now, when I get a chance, it will be easy to implement in code.

[NightrainSrt4]

Apparently I should really reconsider trying a post on kickstarter. There are "games" on there that are random people just explaining their concept of a game and already hitting 10k$+ donations.

I graduate at the end of this semester. The plan was to get a job and keep working on this on the side. Based on some other opinions, I might want to think about putting a post up when this is early alpha to cover me for 6 months - 1 year development time and work on this full time. If it were to be successful, who knows what job opportunities open up after that.

I suppose it couldn't hurt to try. If I didn't make the goal then just continue chugging along as I am. Shrug, I don't know. Something to ponder anyway.

[AmEv]

Hey, maybe when you do the KickStarter thing, you could put up "This is the required goal; we reach a certain higher bar, that money goes to SoulEye" :P

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm thinking if I do try for a kickstart, I won't do it until after I get to the point I make my post on Minecraft / Terraria's Other Games forum. If feedback is strong, I will go for it. Otherwise, I won't.

On another note:

BUGFIX: If you swung a weapon, say pickaxe, but swapped to a different item mid-swing that didn't have a swing animation, the next time you swapped back to the pickaxe it would pick up the swing where it left off. This often led to unintentional block damage. Fixed.

BUGFIX: This one is tied to the above. If you swung a weapon, say pickaxe, but swapped to a different item mid-swing that did have a swing animation, the animation would continue playing but would swap to the new weapon. So you would swing a pickaxe, swap to a sword, and it would be as if the pickaxe changed to the sword mid-swing. Fixed.

ADDITION: Tile damage has been in for a bit but any tile you hit would take damage if was able to do so. If you missed and hit the wrong tile it would take damage and stay damaged until you either destroyed it, quit/save+quit/reload. This was especially frustrating with the above bugs, as you could accidentally damage your home. Now, tile damage resets on the last tile hit if the new tile hit is a different mine-able tile. Essentially, only one tile stays damaged at a time. Whack a new tile, the old tile gets restored.

These fixes, and the last addition, surprisingly give way to chopping down trees as a single tree, and not individual blocks. The damage a tree needs to take before it is felled will be a function based on the hardiness of the wood (how many hitpoints each block has) in relation to the height of the tree. Surpass the damage needed, the tree de-spawns, and the game will spawn a number of wood relative to the tree's height.

[NightrainSrt4]

Went and renewed ram3-software.com and purchased dreamstateminer.com. Who knows if that will be the final name, but I figured it best to grab it now just in case.

Comcast keeps jacking up the price of television. I think I am going to go in and drop TV. We hardly use it. If I can swap to business class internet with similar / same speeds + netflix streaming for less than what I pay now, then I will do that. Then I can at least start getting a pair of basic websites going. All the free hosting I tried before was horrible. Then, if this gets big I will look into a webhost.

[NightrainSrt4]

I dropped the TV and switching to business class internet would be cheaper than what I had bundled before, but they are trying to bull me with all these mandatory added fees. Saying I have to rent a modem with them, and that I'd have to pay a $300 installation charge. I don't see why these are necessary and he couldn't give me an answer aside from "policy". It doesn't take a $300 setup and a mandatory modem rental to swap my external ip from dynamic to static.

EDIT: My IP hasn't changed once in five years.

EDIT2: The installation fee is cheaper if I go for a longer contract. I don't see myself moving to a location without Comcast any time soon so I just went for that. It ultimately ends up cheaper than what I was paying, and gets me what I need.

[NightrainSrt4]

Found a decent set of royalty free sounds (http://www.affordableaudio4everyone.com/Home.html). Paid what I could. If this gets big and I end up using a bunch of these sounds I'll probably go back and donate more.

Started programming some sound in. Going to dump all my sound handling to a new class I can simply call, but I've got the basics in for a few things. It now plays a sound when you swing your pickaxe and land that hit on a block.

Ideally, I want to make my own sounds, but this will give a good start, and I can get them programmed in now, and just swap them out later if need be.

[NightrainSrt4]

Had a blast today. After I finished my college project I started working on the game.

ADDED: Recipe to convert stone blocks into cobblestone.
ADDED: Recipe to convert wood into ladders.

ADDED: A whole bunch of sounds. They can be swapped out later with a file swap. Jump/Double Jump. Long fall damage. Death. Menu movement. Menu Select / Back. Tab click. Item Tab click. Hitting a tile. All the sounds get triggered at the proper time. A whole ton more to add, but it is definitely a start. I hadn't realized how silent the game was until I started adding these sounds.

I spent twenty minutes exploring my world, digging, laying torches, going through natural caverns. I really should keep chugging along with the code, but the world is calling me back. There isn't anything in it but dirt, coal, stone, caverns, water, and trees, but I keep finding caverns and it makes me want to keep searching. Can't wait until I make some more blocks and put them into the world. Drawing them up is the hard part.

[NightrainSrt4]

Enough with the text, moar with the pictures!

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/6111/10screenshot.jpg

Reworked the stone, coal. Added copper. Added the base for the ice zone section, as seen above. Still need to make the items for the blocks, and its just a palette shift of the dirt, but I wanted to start on getting the code for these things in.

[NightrainSrt4]

You now slide on the ice until you hit something, or turn yourself around. I've left conditionals here so I can have it so you slide on the ice unless you have special boots or an accessory on.

[NightrainSrt4]

What I affectionately call the four corners. I'll go back and give some randomness to the wall algorithm so it isn't just a set of straight lines.
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/4341/11screenshot.jpg

The purple is the base for plaguestone. Texture will change later, but I'm going to keep chugging to get the base for the zones in.
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/7307/12screenshot.jpg

[AmEv]

I'd hit break play that.

[NightrainSrt4]

Chests are almost finished.

The chest block and chest item are in. Placing a chest removes one from your inventory and creates a new inventory for the chest in memory. Destroying a chest spawns a chest item. Chests save and load with the rest of the map, the contents properly stored.

All that is left is to load the correct chest into memory when you right click on the chest, draw its contents to the correct locations, and modify the existing inventory mouse handler to allow for clicking and moving items in the chest.

Should be done with it and have it fully implemented sometime tomorrow.

[NightrainSrt4]

Chests are in, and complete.
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/9363/13screenshot.jpg

Contents of a chest. I was just clicking and moving things around, separating stacks and such.
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6578/14screenshot.jpg
I know this is just me lacking confidence in my abilities, but I feel nervous about these chests. I think it is because they came together so easily. I expected it to be difficult, but it was pretty simple. I guess when the playtesters get their hands on it we will know how well I did. Everything seems to work great though. Inventory stuff is just nerve-racking; as I've seen the wrath of gamers when something disappears from their inventory, lol.

ADDED: Grass now grows on the topmost surface of dirt above the base level every morning at the break of dawn.
ADDED: Grass will not grow in the icelands or below the surface. A special item will be added that will allow this.

[NightrainSrt4]

Not being able to read the quantity of items was driving me mad, so I went off to fix it.
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7415/15screenshot.jpg
Still have to do that for the chest items, and the crafting items, but that will only take a few minutes.

ADDED: The game tries to add a few trees every morning at the break of dawn.
BUGFIX: Trees should no longer spawn overlapping an existing tree.

[NightrainSrt4]

Trees no longer are destroyed block by block. They have a scaled pool of hitpoints based on the trees height and the hardiness of the wood. Whack anywhere on that tree enough times and it will explode into a shower of blocks.

Before I started chopping.
http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/85/16screenshot.jpg
Just after the tree exploded and blocks started to fall to earth.
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/5190/17screenshot.jpg
When I draw them up, trees will have different leaves based upon the height of the tree and the region the tree lives.

[AmEv]

Much like the TIMBER! mod, but built-in!

NNIICCEE!!!!

[NightrainSrt4]

Terraria does it a similar way as well. It is just so much more user friendly than having to break down each block individually. It also works anywhere on the tree, even if you move up or down to a different part of the tree and don't always hit the same block.

Added the cleaned up quantity text to the rest of the necessary sections. I'm windowed so the screenshot doesn't grab the mouse pointer, but it is at the floating set of 14 stones there. I'm debating on drawing something behind the held blocks to make them pop out from what they are hovering over a bit more. Some blocks blend in and it is a bit hard to see what you are holding.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8908/18screenshot.jpg

[AmEv]

Just put a little shadow around it.

[NightrainSrt4]

I was thinking something along those lines.

[NightrainSrt4]

Doors are now in the game and work as expected. If you place the door to the left of the player, the closed door is on the left side of its block. Click to the right and its outward face is right.

Closed. The door is solid, and you can not walk through it.
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/2702/19screenshot.jpg

Open. The door is no longer a solid, and you can pass through as usual.
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/803/20screenshot.jpg

You don't break the door down by hitting it directly, but by digging out the block above or below it. This way, hits don't cause the door damage. You can only place the door if there is a solid block above and below it, and if either of those blocks get removed, the door despawns into an item.

EDIT: On a less critical note, trees can now have various types of foliage based on the trees height and location, and even a random factor. Just have to make all the different textures.

Also, a whole bunch of item icons / spawned icons were reworked and improved. New recipes added.

EDIT2: I've been told the open door is confusing as it also looks like it is a closed door. What I might try is lowering the opacity so it becomes partially see through. I can't remove the texture completely as if the door is open there is no way to tell a door exists at that location. I think making it a bit see through when open will do the trick.

[NightrainSrt4]

We are getting close to the point I will feel comfortable releasing the early exploration alpha.

I need to populate six more zones, get the base ores in, the recipes for upgraded items in, and make the basic animation for the upgraded weapons / tools. I'm going to redo all the animations for those to get ready for adding player / monster combat, but that can come after.

So, basically, I need to create a bunch of tile textures and add them, and then you guys can have at exploration / bug testing. Don't expect much more than Minecraft Indev type stuff. The action part of action / adventure will come later, along with performance improvements, polish, etc.

[Fuganater]

If its not too big I can try to help with some testing.

[NightrainSrt4]

The download? That itself should only amount to a few megabytes currently. The world is procedurally created so the files themselves are small with the largest things being the textures and audio.

Each world save currently ends up being about 15MB, with five save slots. So in total, the game doesn't take up much space at all.

[Fuganater]

I mean size of the download. I only download at like 20kbps so it would take a long time if its like a gig.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yes, I'm pretty sure that is only a few megabytes. I haven't built to test it, but the debug/release folders are pretty small, but I figure some overhead for any framework stuff it needs to bundle.

Started work on some parallax backgrounds. Started with clouds (quick texture). I need to think on this and expand it so I can have different backgrounds for different regions that blend into one another. I only need to worry about it for the 3 surface zones, but how to blend two together nicely I'll have to think about some.

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/4557/21screenshot.jpg
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/1521/22screenshot.jpg

Right now it is a single layer of clouds, but all I have to do is toss another layer over the top and set a different speed and its good to go.

[NightrainSrt4]

Something I've been meaning to add. When the player's health drops below 20% he flashes between normal and red every 0.5 second. So for 0.5 seconds he is red, then for the next 0.5 seconds he appears normal, etc. It needed some sort of indicator that he was near death.

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6716/23screenshot.jpg

Also, future screenshots will be .png. I got tired of seeing artifacts in the images I uploaded, so I swapped to png. I'll go back and put an option in the menu so players can choose their preferred output format.

[NightrainSrt4]

Wow, watching Mojang's livestream for Humble Bundle makes me feel a whole lot more confident about my game and my programming abilities.

Notch, and his team, don't just bang out an awesome product right away. Some of their early work looks just like the work I started with. It simply gets better with iteration, effort, and practice.

Granted, they are going to make their game in only 60 hours, it does make me feel a whole lot better. It lets me know I shouldn't be so critical of my first attempts at something, because I can always keep chugging at it and improve it as I go along.

[AmEv]

I'm going to see how it fleshes out....

Right as the same time our local Google hackathon is going....

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm about ready to just start looking for an artist to make me the naked body frame for all the animations that I can overlay with clothing / armor / etc. I keep coming back and trying to make one, but I can never get it looking right. At these sizes, a single pixel can change everything. Bleh.
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/382/nakedn.png

[NightrainSrt4]

After trying all day, I just gave up and went to sketching some concept art for other stuff.

I wonder how much someone would charge to make the naked spritesheet of a similar body shape to my existing sprite. Walking / Running, jumping, climbing, etc.

If anyone here wants to have at it, we can talk credit / money if the naked body is better than the ones I've come up with. The last one I posted lost all the soul of the original sprite. Bleh. This is going to drive me mad, lmfao.

[NightrainSrt4]

Took a break from it and came back today. I think I have something useable now.

oeckBYAR2Mc

I kept his head stationary, so I only have to make two images for the helmet: facing left and facing right. The chest itself should also be only two images: left and right. The pants and boots will have to be done for each frame.

I think I will pull the arm. Then if not attacking, draw the arm in its location for each frame. If the arm is attacking, draw the arm in the correct spot for each frame. Then draw the armor of the arm portion of the chest, and the glove onto the arm swinging / slashing the weapon each frame.

He is also just going to have to be right-handed when going right, left-handed when going left.

[NightrainSrt4]

Screenshots as PNG aren't saving the opacity correctly so its back to JPEG.


This image is a glimpse of the groundwork that has been laid for equipable armor. The helmet is being drawn over the character and animates at the same time as the player. The helmet here is defined as an item, which it then loads its texture, grabs its animation, and plays it the same as the underlying character. I still have to figure out how I want to do the arm, but all the rest of the body parts are set to be equipable armors.
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/6977/24screenshot.jpg

Just a quick concept art sketch of a monster for the fire region.
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8690/fireac.png

[NightrainSrt4]

These pictures aren't going to show you what is really going on. There is so much more under the hood here than before. The characters entire body has been chopped into individual pieces and animates independently yet still in synch.

Parts are drawn when and where necessary. The armor system is now implemented. Now when you equip a piece of armor, assuming I've drawn the texture all up, you can see it. No longer is the player limited to always looking like the default character I've made. If you equip that iron chest piece, the character will now be shown wearing that chest piece, and that chest piece will animate with the character.

With the mining helmet equipped.
http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9416/25screenshot.jpg

With the mining helmet unequipped.
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6131/26screenshotf.jpg

Now I just have to program the equipment interface, draw up some armors, and it will be good to go. I know, feature creep right as I said the alpha exploration build would be soon. I wanted there to be more than just digging up blocks and building houses. At least when this is finished you will be able to craft some armor to change how your character looks. :up:

[Stonerboy779]

Is it just me or is anyone else reminded of terrania when they see this?

Btw this is great any plans for a beta test of the game using tbcs members?

[NightrainSrt4]

It is similar to Terraria: mining blocks, 2D side perspective, monsters, etc.

Where I hope to differ is the Diablo style loot generation, Castlevania / Metroid styled farmable dungeons, and Legend of Zelda styled story / progression. My initial focus is on single player, as I'll have to change a few core functions to accommodate multiplayer, but if the game gets popular it will become a feature I will push toward. I've got to get the main functions and features down before I focus on the dungeons, but from my tests before, they should work.

I've had the concept for this game brewing shortly after Minecraft released Alpha. I wasn't confident in my ability to program something of this level until sometime after Terraria came out and I learned that such a small team made that game. I figured if a team with one programmer could do it, then I could too. So I set off to make my take on the genre.

I've come a long way, and I plan on chugging right along. Once I finish up the equipable armor, improved weapon swinging, and get base type blocks made for the other regions, I will be releasing an exploration alpha to some testers. I'll try to not let feature creep push that release back to far. I just want people to enjoy my game, and if I release an alpha test too early, people might not see my vision just yet.

[NightrainSrt4]

I know, feature creep. Shoot me, lol. This will make life easier and faster though.

Dev Console. XNA doesn't have any text input handling, afaik, so I had to code it myself.
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/6355/27screenshot.jpg

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4000/28screenshot.jpg

You type as usual. Pressing the up or down key flips through the last four commands and inserts them into the current text field, so you don't have to type the same thing over and over again if you are need to do it more than once. The cursor blinks as you would expect.

Now I just have to parse the input string for game commands and execute them. Testing is about to get much easier.

[NightrainSrt4]

That is all finished, well at least as far as I needed at the moment.

These most likely won't be exposed to the player. They definitely won't be exposed in multiplayer, but I may choose to leave some commands in for single player a la Bethesda games.



additem (int)itemID
additem (int)itemID (int)quantity
goto (int)tileX (int)tileY
goto spawn
goto spawnpoint
setspawn

These should be pretty self explanatory. Mostly for me to get around testing easier.

additem adds one item of the input ID if a quantity is not explicitly stated. Additem with a quantity will add up to one stack of the item per call. If you type 2000 for quantity, it will put a stack worth in your inventory if there is space.

goto x y, warps the player to tile x, y if the tiles encompassing the player aren't solid (so the player won't get stuck and do funny things).

goto spawn / goto spawnpoint both warp the player to its defined spawnpoint.

setspawn defines the current location as the players spawnpoint.


Tomorrow I have a bunch of class work I have to get done, and study for a set of tests this week, so this week's updates may be slow.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've been busy with school this week, and likely next week, but I wanted to try to make an enemy today. Still needs tons of work, but it is a start.

It is a take on a medusa head, like Castlevania, but wearing a porcelain mask. These would be in the petrified forest, and I wanted to get an idea of what they would look like in game, so I made a quick and dirty mockup. If they hit you they will turn you to stone.

Full Size
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7042/petrifiedforestmockup.png

4x Magnification
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/7654/petrifiedforestmockup4x.png

Coming up with enemies for the overworld is difficult. I need enemies that can either fly, teleport, or hop in order to traverse the oddities in the terrain and still look alright doing it. For the dungeons I can use more flat spans so that opens up a whole lot more possibilities. Code for me is black and white, I can just bang it out, but the art comes in spurts. I wish I was an artist and could just bang out the art as quickly as code.

[NightrainSrt4]

Again with the short on time thing, so I leave you with another quick mockup.

Full Size:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2916/firemockup.png

4x Zoom:
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/9845/firemockup4x.png

[AmEv]

Might I suggest some sort of crazy bird (like a crow) as a surface enemy.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yup. It was part of the plan. The issue is drawing up all these enemies and then animating them. I should just be using my free time to work on more blocks so I can get this playtest out, but . . . just going with whatever motivates me at the moment.

[CrazyTeaPot]

This looks really cool! I haven't read through much of your posts, but I've skimmed through the pictures. It looks like a 2D side scrolling minecraft game! WHICH IS AWESOME! :o

What platform will it be on when finished? How close to being finished is it?

Very cool project, can't wait to see the finished product! You know... so I can play it. :p

[NightrainSrt4]

Windows PC only. I need to finish up a few more things then an alpha exploration test will be available for select testers who want to help me search for bugs and things to improve.

Then there is still a ton of stuff to get done. If I had 40 hours+ a week to put into it, I might have a better timeline, sorry.

[SXRguyinMA]

looking good!

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks. Programming for my classes has taken away most of my time these last couple weeks, so slow updates.

I was doodling and playing around in photoshop. Not anything I am proud of, but it seems a bit better than the flat colored screen I had before. The entire menu system will be revamped at some point anyway, but I thought it was kind of interesting.
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5199/mainpageee.png

[AmEv]

0_0

DUDE.

Just... WOW.


PS: Did you get my PM?

[NightrainSrt4]

Yes. I'm going to hold off on emailing him until I have something better to show. I'll keep the address handy though. ;)

[NightrainSrt4]

Had some free time today so I got a few things done.

Added 8 or so blocks and 8 or so walls. Currently they are just palette swaps, but they are in the game. The base regions for all nine underground regions are in place. They aren't unique in their randomness of cavern layouts or anything yet, but it is a start.

Also, the swing animation for the right arm is in. Still need to draw up the left arm. Now you can swing regardless of how your character is moving. This will allow me to draw up the weapon swings and get those going.

I'll post a video up when I get this finished up, which should hopefully be in the next few days.

[NightrainSrt4]

prkqI9QE_qQ
You can view it at a larger size on youtube.

As promised, a video. The animation code was rewritten for this. Now I can play an animation once instead of manipulating the frames from the outside. In doing so, I need to put a trigger back in for when tile damage occurs, but that shouldn't be a problem.

The draw order needs to change so the pickaxe draws behind the hand. Also, while my offset is correct, I must not have applied it correctly to the spritesheet itself, as the alignment is off by a few pixels in each frame.

While it looks a bit awkward, I chose to allow the player to keep swinging in the direction they were originally going by holding the mouse button down. This way the player can kite monsters more easily, instead of only being able to attack in the direction the player is facing. I might change this further and make the weapon swing direction based on the mouse pointer's location relative to the player.

Once a few things get settled then I can start adding more items. Then I can worry about adding basic monsters, AI, and player / monster damage. The enemy logic is already in, but the AI needs to be written, and the spawn logic. You can see a slime monster I was playing around with on the right side of the video at some point.

[NightrainSrt4]

After remeasuring and getting the same measurements, I slowed the animation down. The arm is a frame off of the pick, which is why the hand / pick alignment is all off. When the animation is played at speed, you would have to really look for it to notice it, but I know it is there, so it will be fixed.

[AmEv]

Updates?

Loving where this is heading!

[NightrainSrt4]

Slow at the moment. Between midterms and a possible big change in my life coming up Tuesday, I've been distracted. I've been designing gameplay elements though, and playing with ideas.

The biggest reason this has been slow recently, aside from school, is that I've been job hunted. Hopefully I will find out on Tuesday after what should be the final stage / interview, if I've landed my first 50-60k + full paid insurance + full paid benefits job.

Once these distractions are out of the way I can get some more updates going. I suppose we could find out Tuesday if one of those will take effect.

[AmEv]

I'd like to be a Wine (winehq.org) tester, if it's all right with you.

*Worth a shot: http://www.mono-project.com/CSharp_Compiler

[Aldersan]

I'll also volunteer for testing if needed :)

[NightrainSrt4]

Don't worry. This hasn't died. Things are just really slow for now between school and interviews.

The last interview for the job I'm hoping for happened today, and the owner of the company said they are confident they will be able to give me a competitive offer sometime this week!

So between the two I'm a bit distracted, but once things settle down I'll be all over this once again.

[NightrainSrt4]

I got the job! I've got a bunch of school work to get finished this week, but with any luck I'll be back headfirst into this again sometime next week. Can't wait!

[msmrx57]

Congrats on the job!!! :banana:

[AmEv]

*bump* :D

Excited for progress!

[NightrainSrt4]

I promise I will try and post something soon enough. Final semester of college, senior projects, etc. They are packing the work on these last couple weeks of class before graduation.

[NightrainSrt4]

I've been thinking about changing the art style of the game, and was interested in feedback. It might be difficult to picture without an image for reference, but here goes.

My art skills aren't to where I'd wish them to be for the game. I can convey shapes well enough, but I have a horrible eye for colors and such.

I was thinking of converting the game to be almost entirely grayscale, but with splashes of color. This way I can focus on shapes and forms and relative intensity instead of color. This just popped into my head, so I haven't worked out all the details, but it seems to go well with the concept of the game, being in a dreamstate. Perhaps add a way for the player to add or change the color of entities in the game.

I like the shades of gray with splashes of color idea, I just have to create some sprites and test it out.

[NightrainSrt4]

I had a spare moment so I (very) quickly bucketed shades of gray over an existing picture. I would use more shades of gray instead of just those few. Then add some more muted colors, like say gemstones and ore shine a bit of color. Then when some action occurs, like landing a hit, or striking an ore, bits of color could glint off.

Then have items that are crafted or created by the player, that aren't naturally occurring in the world, start to show a bit more color through. Maybe have enemies show a bit more color when it is a day where mobs are more aggressive or something.

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/3259/firemockup4xgrayscale.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/firemockup4xgrayscale.png/)

[SXRguyinMA]

lookin good :D

[NightrainSrt4]

I'm so excited. College ends in a couple days, and I have a week before I start my new job. I've been looking through the code and seeing where I need to start looking to make changes to get the weapon animation working and synced, and I will start there once school is complete.

Oh, how I have missed you little big project.

[AmEv]

*clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**c lap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**cla p**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap* *clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**clap**c lap**clap**clap**clap**clap*

[NightrainSrt4]

I've taken some time to really sit down and think about why progress has been so slow lately. I could just say that it is because I have maybe two hours a night in free time after working all day, but even that wouldn't be the true reason : which is the art. I went down a road and limited myself. I've spent a large amount of time figuring out what I wanted to change, why, and how to go about that change.

The project is being forked, with the current version on hold. I'm currently looking into switching to Unity to give me access to Windows, Browsers, Linux, iOS, and Android vs just Windows, and giving me more options graphically. If Unity isn't right for me, I will go back to XNA but the game is going to have a radical change either way.

The game itself will be less of a "Terraria clone", and something more unique and inline with my original vision. It will still have elements of Minecraft/Terraria meets Zelda:aLttP meets Diablo, but it won't feel like a clone of Terraria.

Think Zelda:aLttP type overworld littered with dungeons and caves that can be entered. These dungeons can have multiple floors, link to different areas of the overworld, and be mineable. But, instead of the mineable areas existing on a vertical plane, they will be on a horizontal plane more akin to old school dungeon crawlers where you explore one floor, find stairs, and can potentially continue down to the next level. The same kind of action-rpg combat and loot, but again, on a horizontal plane instead of vertical.

This may stifle a little bit of the creativity you see with creations in Minecraft and Terraria, but my goal has always been to give some sandbox elements but in a more structured and focused game. Starting fresh will take some time, but at the very least I am no longer completely frustrated and depressed by the art, and am motivated to finally get back into this.

[NightrainSrt4]

Maybe I'll just have to go back to XNA and just rework my code. I've spent all weekend thusfar going through Unity and trying to figure out how to approach what I want to do and can't for the life of me figure out how to use the damn thing. I've walked through tutorials and once I try and do something that hasn't been explicitly explained I'm completely lost.

I can program pretty much anything I need, it just takes time, but using these darn development kit environments I just get completely and entirely lost. Bleh.

[Kayin]

Don't feel too bad, Fatal Optimization is getting a clean slate redo, as VX Ace came out and gave me the power I really wanted. It took me only a night of coding to redo six months of work, and with much better results, to boot.

[NightrainSrt4]

Yeah, my brain just isn't wired for these visual styled applications. It just got frustrating because everyone told me how easy it was, but I just couldn't get it. It doesn't help that it didn't look like anyone had really tried what I was wanting to do.

I'm comfortable with XNA's libraries so I'll just continue using that. I've got to make a ton of art for this before I dive into code again, otherwise I'll just end up in the same spot, almost done with the code, but not nearly enough content and assets.

[Kayin]

See, it's the opposite for me. As an artist, I can work with what I can see. What I can't see is nigh on impossible.

However, I'm working apace, actually getting some really good effects in this time. We'll see how it goes.