Surface Dev Blog

Music Preview

2010-10-13T04:08:00.003-04:00

This song is pretty chilly~

Surasshu's been creating some pretty amazing NSF masterpieces for this game!
Without further adieu, here's the preview for Icelandic; a tune for one of the game's levels.

Area Planning, Bosses, and Music

2010-10-09T06:44:00.002-04:00

Surasshu has been intermittedly hard at work perfecting his NSF tunes for Surface! He reports that "area 3"'s music is nearing completion. This is an awesome thing ;3 New retro chiptunes = more inspiration which = more development!

Which brings me to my next point! I've been working on sprites almost exclusively for the past few weeks. New styles, new techniques, etc. Working with NES limitations is really fascinating stuff. That being said, I've finished Area 3's boss art. It should seem somewhat familiar, as it's a parody of another game's 3rd level boss.

I'll have more to show soon, and maybe even a preview of both the new tune (providing Surasshu gives me the OK :P) and the new boss.

Small Palette System Demo

2010-09-28T15:35:00.004-04:00

Over the course of this month, I've been conceptualizing different ways I want this map system to work. I've been building a framework for it on and off. I've managed to work out a pretty robust structure and format for maps, and I'm getting ready to start piecing it all together.

I'm not posting about the map system now however; this post is about palettes! The palette system is currently the single most important system in the game. I need it to take the map system out of concept and into reality. As it stands right now, the palette system is pretty much complete.

You can check it out here.

What's significant about this is that it's quick. A lot quicker than a previous palette system test I was working on; which had a reasonably large lag when you'd switch weapons (play around with the num pad).

Anyway; just showing some progress.

Level Editor Stuff

2010-09-04T05:38:00.003-04:00

Working on the new level editor.

I have some special requirements for it that I'll be taking into consideration while devving it D:...

I'm going to try to package it into the software though, and possibly make it available to everyone. We'll see though!

Long Time No Talk

2010-08-26T03:15:00.002-04:00

So remember that big new engine with that little teaser hand drawn rock?

Yeaaaah we're going a different direction ;3

CUE LOSSY IMAGE NAO:

New Engine in Development!

2010-06-26T01:42:00.003-04:00

I've finally updated my IDE and I finished up my Z3 project late last month, so I'm ready to start working on the new engine.

A lot of stuff will be ported over from the original Surface to save time, however not everything is entirely compatible with the update and that means some things need to be remade. For the most part it's for the best, because it means I can refine what I had :P

I started this new engine by developing something that I normally wouldn't start with- the audio system. I have a bunch of awesome tunes by Surasshu that I want to be able to play in the game in their raw, unaltered format, and until this rebuild, I was unable to. As you can see in the build I posted of the previous Surface, there's no music. The reason being that before in order to play the music, I had to convert the songs to .ogg or .wav, and I was unable to use the modules required to play .it files. I figure tackling this right away in the new engine would definitely be a big relief on my end, since the music Surasshu has made is absolutely amazing, and I want it presented to you folks in the same format they're presented to me :P

Another thing I've decided to add (but not overuse) is a rigid body physics system. I'm not using it to have realistic physics for the player or anything along those lines. Instead, I'm using it to simplify the collision system, prevent the issues I had before, and add more depth to the world for the player. It will be used reasonably minimalistically, however I have some puzzles planned that will require the physics system.

Other than that, development is beginning smoothly. It shouldn't take nearly as long to get to where I was before with this. About the only thing that's going to give any trouble is the hand drawn art. That will probably be the most tedious part of the entire development, although temporary art is always fine :)

Original Surface Build

2010-06-14T18:23:00.004-04:00

I'm going to pop this on here for the sake of the original Surface not going to waste :P

Surface 0.02 Alpha

1 = Standard Pistol
2 = Machine Gun
3 = Heat Gun
Esc = Menu
S = Fire
A = Jump

-------

Now that this is here, I'd like to show a simple tile test for the new Surface:

New Enemy Ideas

2010-06-13T16:03:00.003-04:00

This is going to be a somewhat brief post for my own reference mainly :P... Think of them as notes for myself :P

Manhole Cover Head-
Dog-like animal with plucked chicken limbs. Head is impaled with a giant manhole. Enemy charges at the player and eventually hits a wall. If it hits the wall, it will face upward and act as a ledge for the player to jump on. If the manhole falls off, the head appears similar to the Eva mass production model heads from Evangelion- elongated, large mouth, no eyes.

Shadow-
Humanoid shadow that appears only in reflections, but not in regular space. If the player is running down a path with a reflective surface where these enemies are, the player will not see them where they're running, but rather in the reflection.

So Anyway...

2010-06-10T03:42:00.002-04:00

I'm working on some animations and stuff for this. Ultimately I've come to the conclusion that in order to do the hand-drawn version of Surface, I'm going to need to upgrade my hardware. Right now I use a Wacom G4 tablet, and it's not exactly working the greatest. I get some artifacts in my drawings due to it not recognizing the pen position at all times. I found some new hardware that would be absolutely perfect for this project-- the Cintiq.

The thing is amazing, and probably a little bit of overkill for what I need, but it would be awesome :P

I've opened up a little bit of a shameless talent whorage' to raise enough money for the tablet (given this is a no budget project, I can't justify spending $2000 out of my every-day-life earnings; gotta do something different for it).

Basically here's the deal; you join this facebook group, and follow the instructions there. Basically, you donate a dollar or more, and I'll use my (somewhat choppy) skills and draw a characture of one of your facebook photos. Not a bad deal, since it takes me a fair amount of time to draw the pictures :P

The benefit? It increases my drawing skills. Gives me the ability to draw detailed images quickly prepping me for drawing animations. On top of that, it builds me up to reaching my goal of getting the new tablet. The idea is that by the time I raise the money for the tablet, I'll have drawn well over 2000 pictures and be ready to work like mad on it on the new Surface design.

Feel free to check it out :P

Graphical Redesign

2010-04-27T01:40:00.002-04:00

With this being in the early stages of development, there's one level of freedom that I absolutely love to have--- The ability to radically change how things look.

My intentions with this project from the start was to have something challenging to design graphically. Something that really stands out. This is where the initial plan of going with low resolution pixelated graphics came into play. Needless to say, when you mix "low resolution" with "indie video game", people immediately jump to the retro feeling of the game. Honestly I think I want to go with something more modern than that. Retro's fine, but for Surface I think it's only fine for style of gameplay, and not graphics. This is where; after a long chat with Surasshu, I've decided to go with HD, hand drawn graphics. Everything will be presented in a unique and stylized manor, and it's more than satisfying for my graphical design/visual presentation itch.

We'll see what happens.

D:

2010-04-16T18:17:00.002-04:00

I can't believe I didn't post an update on here. I'm still working on this, but I'm taking a small break for a fan-game dev expo at a forum using the Surface engine. Basically, I'm working on Surface without actually working on Surface :P It's helping me refine a lot of the internal stuff that was giving me grief by taking the existing engine, making something new out of it and modifying/fixing some broken mechanics, and then when it's all over it goes right back to Surface. That expo begins around June, and I hope to have the small side game done well before that so I can get right back into this :P

Blah Blah

2010-03-31T23:37:00.000-04:00

Laziness has ensued. Working on more conceptual things in my head, but mostly mapping and what not. Having difficulties planning out my next moves :P

I'll get there.

Random Teaser of Things Not Developed Yet!

2010-03-28T05:47:00.002-04:00

That's right!

Actually I've been fleshing out some story elements and I made a small teaser mockup.

Very small, oddly cropped image. <_<

ENJOY!

Moving on from 16x16 Heroes!

2010-03-25T03:16:00.004-04:00

After a few nights of thinking, and me getting tired of early comparisons to Cave Story (which seriously; this game is not supposed to be another "Cave Story". Yeah, it'll resemble it due to it being a platformer that's built with exploration in mind, but it's not going to play the same at all.), and wanting to crawl more to the SNES era style graphics, I've decided on changing the hero size from 16x16 to 16x24.

Why you ask? More flexibility :P

I couldn't do much with the original sprite. It didn't have much expression, and there wasn't room for expansion. Increasing the size of the hero allows me to add some dynamic features that I was unable to add before. I've decided to post the new base sprite for the hero on here to show what I'm imagining as of right now-

May still change quite a bit (it's still a big WIP), however this is what I'm essentially shooting for.

Enjoy :D

Concept Art

2010-03-22T10:29:00.003-04:00

I've created some concept art for the new player design, plus some other various fun things that I plan on adding to the game! Check em' out!

Say Goodbye to Jumping Through the Ceiling! :D

2010-03-21T05:53:00.002-04:00

That's right! I have the new collision system fully coded and working! Now I'm just doing some tweaks on individual object's collision checks to make sure everythings up to snuff. So far I've fixed about 3 major errors with the player's individual collisions, and I'm working through all of that :p

In summary- "yay"

Collision Box System

2010-03-20T05:08:00.000-04:00

I've coded in the Collision Box system and made it somewhat operational. I still have a bit of work ahead of me though. Just chiming in about some of the progress. A lot of internal stuff right now.

GameState Manager Overhaul

2010-03-17T17:59:00.002-04:00

Hey folks!

Still working on the thing before, but I wanted to chime in and mention that immediately after I'm done doing that, I'm going to be overhauling the game state manager to make it much more efficient. Nothing much else to say in that regard :P It'll just make things more efficent.

Just a Heads Up

2010-03-14T05:15:00.003-04:00

I'm in the process of changing the collision detection systems now to support the new Collision Box type I created. In the event that I don't post for a few days, it's because it's taking a LOT of time to add and tweak. I'm not sure what kind of results I'll have after I start converting the object's collision code, so it could be quite a bit of work.

Anyway, just a heads up.

More Cleanup Work

2010-03-13T06:20:00.002-05:00

Yeah yeah yeah. I'm procrastinating again. I'm pretty much taking care of a lot of crap that I should have taken care of earlier on in the designing process of this game :P...

First thing! Collision box object type. I never set one up. The reason? Well, initially when I started Surface, everything was going to be tile based. Pretty stupid reasoning that I had there :P... Anyway; I've set up a Collision box object type, and I'm going through and adding it to every object. Needed to be done, so why not now?

Second thing! Added some more fun little graphics. Enemies now shoot out little blobs of red when hit. It looks nice.

Third thing! I really... REALLY need to put a lot of thought into the rest of the map designer. It's pretty much the whole reason for the procrastination. I've made a lot of important changes over the past few weeks (layer manager, new menu, etc), and this particular thing is probably the most important. Essentially I think I need to make a new data type for certain commonly used map elements, and load them with the resource manager. Doing this means I'll need to have a seperate tool for creating each resource. It's kind of a pain, and I need to graph it out.

Anyway, that's my update for this morning.

Head Gun Modification

2010-03-12T02:53:00.002-05:00

I've changed the Heat Gun a little bit. Before the fire bounced off the ground (as sort of a homage to Mario), however I've changed it to instead of bounce to simply break into 2 smaller fireballs. It does a bit more damage now thanks to that change, and it looks cooler.

On top of that, it also builds up for the level 2 modification of the weapon.

Graphics Graphics Graphics

2010-03-10T02:34:00.003-05:00

I've spent the past couple of days doing the same ol' "off day" routine. You know; "coming up with graphics and ideas". Ultimately I've created a couple of semi-important aesthetic sprites, such as the "enemy hit" sprite, and the "smoke cloud" sprite that will appear when you kill enemies, or when things are about to explode. They'll add a lot to the visual presentation, and I can't wait to program the rest in.

TO TOP ALL OF THAT OFF! I've created a new enemy. It's actually what the smoke cloud was initially designed for :P I may code him in the next couple of days and upload a vid as usual. This particular enemy will probably not be used in the first area of the game (the area I intend to make a demo for), but it will be featured somewhere :p

Disregard Sadface >;o

2010-03-06T05:57:00.004-05:00

So yeah, I was worried I'd have to go through all of my code again and modify the layers and what have you. Nah. Not the case.

Turns out, I was simply missing a few parameters in my new queue'd image type that I needed to draw certain images.

All of that's fixed, and I just need to fix some other draw types (shapes mainly) to work with the layer system.

Layers work fine now.

This screenshot's a good example; or rather the best example I could provide at this particular moment. One thing to note is that certain things aren't in quite yet; namely the shadows that were behind the HUD, and the backdrop for the menu.

Why you ask!?

Well that's simple- I just simply haven't coded in layer support for color variation and shapes yet. In due time... In due time.

UPDATE!

Everything works now.

Major Sadface

2010-03-06T04:57:00.002-05:00

So I started porting over a lot of the existing draw routines to the layer manager draw code... Major :('s on this one, since somewhere along the line I messed up the layering, and have to go back through this shit yet again to get it correct. Seriously; this has got to be the most tedious thing I've ever had to do.

Sadface screenshot included :(

Weapons Menu Design and Z3

2010-03-05T16:58:00.004-05:00

Haven't had much time to develop much of anything this week outside of the things mentioned in the previous posts, however I have had a lot of time to think of different things.

I've decided on a design for the players menu; which will allow the player to choose their weapons and such. If the player presses the menu button (aka "whatever that key is mapped to"), a circular menu will appear around the player showing the weapon icons. While the menu button is held, the player will be able to choose which weapon they want, and view various other information via icons from this circular menu. I figure this is a good way to avoid full box menus that games like Mega Man, Blaster Master, Metroid, Cave Story, etc have that obscure the screen. I'm trying to avoid that sort of break from gameplay.

I'll have some mockups ready sooner than later; we'll see what happens.

Beyond that, I'm thinking about joining in on Z3 over at zfgc. This project's first developments were shown there, and it just kind of makes sense. I'll try to get a demo out for that. Looking forward to the months to come :P

Layer Manager Finished

2010-03-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

I've been working on a layer manager, since I (stupidly) haven't coded one in yet. It's actually completely finished now, and gives me a bit of flexibility when it comes to drawing things in an organized fashion. This is pretty much my progress for the day.

New ideas, concepts, etc

2010-03-02T20:01:00.004-05:00

On my off days (Sunday/Monday), I tend to work on things that aren't so "code" dependent. Things like artwork, ideas, maps, and pretty much anything I don't feel like working on during the other days. On Sunday, I came up with a new main character design that I'm reasonably pleased with, as well as a name for him. A name that certainly tops "SurfaceGuy" anyway. I'm not going to show the designs or the name quite yet until I'm 100% pleased with them.

I've also been working on new gameplay elements I'd like to throw into the game. One of which involves a rail car that will take the player through a couple of rooms on a fixed path. The player will not be able to jump out until it reaches its destination, however he can fire in any direction except down. I've always liked those sorts of breaks from the normal gameplay, and it also allows me to throw in some puzzle elements as well. We'll see what happens anyway.

Achievements are another feature I want to add to the game. Nothing too amazing with it, but there are certain things I'd like for players to be able to brag about further down in the game.

Sprites and such have been in the works on my off days as well, so maybe I can code them in this week or so.

I'm still working on a lot of the fun stuff mentioned before. Kind of being lazy about it, but again; I get a lot of side stuff done in the meantime :P

Menu Update

2010-02-28T00:42:00.003-05:00

I've been trying out my new menu system for a few "practical use" tests, and it's going quite well. The amount of flexibility I have with this one vs the old one is pretty astonishing.

The last menu system I had set up didn't allow me to create different forms of options; things like toggle switches or check boxes. This one however allows all of that, and pretty much anything I can think of.

At this particular moment, I'm beginning to port all of my previous map design functions over to this new menu system. It's a bit tedious, but it's a TON easier than I had initially feared. Even a lot of things I was doing in my old menu work better with far less code in this new system.

Anyway; just wanted to chime in regarding the menu development. I'm rather pleased with how smoothly this is all coming together.

New Menu System

2010-02-27T06:12:00.003-05:00

So after weeks of procrastination (and millions of new features as a result, including my new font system), I've decided finally to begin tackling the new menu system.

Why the procrastination? Well quite frankly- I don't want to have to recode all of those menus I made before. Working with menus is time consuming, boring, and annoying if you ask me, but honestly it needed to be done. After about 15 seconds of talking to Stephen Gazzard of Broken Kings about crap I needed to do in Surface, realized I can't get much further without it, and got crackin'. The attached picture is a good preview of what I've come up with so far. Don't be fooled however- it's still not finished. What's important is that in it's current state, I am able to start recreating the map designer menus I need to continue actual game progress.

Blog created

2010-02-26T23:48:00.001-05:00

I've finally decided to make a dev blog for this. Not really sure why I didn't start off with one, but whatever. I'll have a few blog entries in to chronicle the already existing progress in sometime tonight, and hopefully soon I'll have some new content to present. Here's some rough info!

Surface is an indie game project that I started roughly around November 23rd of 2009, and it's already become my largest Blitzmax game to date. Not too much is going to be revealed about the game in terms of story and such, however I will be showing little blurbs of progress of the game here and there.

The game is an action/exploration/platformer, with heavy emphasis on learning your routes, memorizing enemy patterns, and mastering your weapons. Throughout this blog, you'll find progress screenshots, and some fun videos demonstrating exactly how this game will play through.

A good thing to note- Any posts made prior to this date are basically copies from a forum I was posting updates at. Nothing really new if you've already seen those. I've decided to post them all here for the sake of logging progress chronologically. They are slightly abridged to suit a blog and not a forum.

A Fun Video

2010-02-20T17:47:00.000-05:00

Pardon the lag in the beginning; the recorder takes a small toll on the speed-

The music featured in the video is Surasshu's Area 1 composition, and I must say ;3 it is quite excellent.

Heat Gun

2010-02-19T18:07:00.000-05:00

New gun. Note that I don't have ammo in yet, so I'm just firing away. The player will not be able to fire as many times in a row as I am Look at me, I'm invisible!

Anyway; this is the Heat Gun. Damage ratio is the same as the standard weapon, however, this has the potential of doing 3 hits of damage on a single target, and will have upgrades increasing the firepower.

New Enemy- The Lava Egg

2010-02-19T02:52:00.000-05:00

Added a new enemy to the mix that will be featured in Area 1. It's passive, and will not attack.

Enemies, and openGL

2010-02-17T17:53:00.001-05:00

I've been working on Area 1 specific enemies; lots and lots of them :p So far I have a roster of about 7 or 8 now are currently designed and waiting to be coded. I've also been working on some of the puzzle elements as well, which will be making their way into most if not all of the areas in the game.

The 2nd weapon's graphics are now in, and are also waiting to be coded as well.

I'm still working on that new menu system, but I've found a bit of a muse in the graphics and enemies :P I'm really enjoying that aspect of things. I've set up a certain atmosphere for area 1 that I'd like to convey and I think it'll go nicely.

I'm also going to have to start porting things over to openGL. I wasn't really looking forward to having to do that, but for specific things I kind of need to. Most importantly is portability of the software--- I want people on Mac and Linux machines to be able to play this. Secondly is the ability to manipulate images with little to no slowdown.

Anyway this is where I'm at right now :p Chuggin away

New Surfaceguy Head

2010-02-09T03:39:00.000-05:00

Menu Rewrite, and GameState Manager

2010-02-05T23:36:00.002-05:00

Adding something to my TODO list>>

I'm going to be rewriting my menu system. It needs to be streamlined for me to progress any further, and as it stands right now it's waaay too overcomplicated for what it does. It shouldn't take too long, but damn it's annoying to have to back track to that :P

The main reason for this is map development. I'm to the point now to where I can start making rooms for the game. As it stands right now, the menu is too overcomplicated to work with (hard to add new menu items that do things like keyboard input, etc). A streamlined menu system will allow me to work on maps quickly and efficiently. There are certain aspects of the current menu system that just aren't practical for use beyond what I have it doing now. At the time, I didn't realize that it would be a stumbling block later on.

Off the topic of things that need to be done, and on to things that are done; the GameState manager is now finished. A lot of code was migrated to it. Better support for the game loop, and now it allows me to do things like room transitions painlessly :p...

With the GameState manager finished, I will be able to perform some changes to the game's behavior depending on what goes on in the game loop. Doing so meant rewriting the game's main loop into something very manageable. Also allows me to distinguish draw layers, etc.

I've also rewritten the menu system. It's not entirely finished, but it's functionality is a LOT better, and a lot less confusing to work with. Supports multiple types of menus, so I can easily generate an image menu (item menu, tile selection menu for development, etc) if I need to.

Weapon system has been rewritten for the most part as well. The player now has the ability to shoot upwards. I still need to work on some more graphics for this, so bear with me on that one Look at me, I'm invisible!...

I'm also planning on redesigning the player's artwork. Bomberman-head just isn't doing it for me anymore :p

ZFGC Project of the Month!

2010-02-04T16:18:00.000-05:00

Thank you ZFGC for Project of the Month!

I'd also like to thank Surasshu for joining the project! His music is the perfect compliment to everything I hope to achieve with Surface, and it's definitely a great honor to have him on-board!

4th Enemy, and a Variant

2010-02-04T12:21:00.000-05:00

Another enemy has been added. This one's a bit of a throwback to early NES titles like Blaster Master and Mega Man.

Another Flote Video

2010-01-30T21:21:00.000-05:00

Yet another video; this one pretty much just shows a small change in animations.

I've also fixed a performance issue with the collision checking. The one I mentioned in an earlier post where the game would slow down if you were standing at the lowest right room at the lowest right tile. It actually runs 60fps in the IDE on this machine now, whereas before it'd run at 58/59 fps from the IDE, and down to 45fps at the lowest right place in the room.

New Flote Variant

2010-01-29T03:24:00.000-05:00

Some Stuff

2010-01-27T23:10:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the lack of regular image/whatever updates; I've been doing internal work mainly so there's nothing to show off yet. I've also come up with a first boss design, but like I said before I'm not going to reveal that sort of stuff right yet. A few people have seen it, and it's not gotten any negative feedback on it yet :P I've also got his entire pattern down in my head, so it should be a fun fight.

I should also note that I've fully implemented the impulse system into all of the players states, and I'm just moving over the collision stuff over to a single location.

Anyway; works great so far. Once I get some graphics in for some of the other stuff I've added in I'll make another video for y'all.

On a side note, here's something not too terribly revealing!

New Hud

2010-01-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

Finished up some work on the HUD. It's not 100% done, however the artwork is done (and is probably going to be final with that), and new functionality is in (E-tanks).

The background system was completely rewritten, since the one in the previous videos was just "for display only", and wasn't modular enough for practical use.

A few other things have been done internally (which is where 90% of the work has been), so there's not really much to show right now. A lot of cleanup work and misc functions that I need have been written.

As of right now, I need to rethink the way the game reads collision data for the player, since currently the further to the bottom right you move, the slower the game runs. This is due to the game having to cycle through all of the collisions in a room to find the exact collision point. I'll fix this by splitting up collision data into smaller groups.

Working on some more internal functions I need. I've also removed the player's old jump routine and I'm working on getting the impulse system implemented into that (it wasn't before; the walk state utilized it, jump however did not.)

I've also been working on some gameplay details; weapons, bosses, concept art, tiles, etc. Things that I'll need soon enough. I'm probably going to code a few enemies in after I get the new impulse based jump state finished.

More stuff coming soon, and some potential good news.

Hud and Particles

2010-01-15T17:02:00.000-05:00

This one just showing the hud, and some more of the particle system. Hud's temporary. Nothing else much to say.

Movement System Switched!

2010-01-11T17:53:00.000-05:00

Okay! Good news everyone :D!

I've switched over a lot of the movement systems over to impulse systems. Only thing that's left is adding the y axis movement to impulse, which is a tad more involved.

Some collisions are still awkward since the new movement system switch, but I'm hitting them one at a time.

Physics, and Weapons

2010-01-10T04:13:00.001-05:00

Well; I made quite a bit of progress last night with physics and some other stuff, so I'm pretty stoked about that. Unfortunately, I'm unable to upload a video at this particular moment, so a screenshot is all you crackers get.

Step Away from the Weapon System

2010-01-02T02:14:00.000-05:00

The item system's taken a bit longer than I had initially expected (planning), but I think I've got it down now. My base Gun type is just about finished, I just have to add images to it. So far the general structure is simple and expandable, so I can probably pump out quite a few. At the moment I'm figuring out how I want to handle the players assignment of guns. Once I get all of that worked out I'll have a screenshot.

I've also fixed up the camera a little bit. No more odd delay when the player walks.

A fade system has been added to the game, allowing me to cascade a bunch of tiles across the screen. It works out nicely. One of the nice things about this project is that I'm able to sit and develop anything I can think of while I'm trying to avoid working on something else :P It's odd, but it helps a lot get done.

Items and Weapons

2009-12-29T17:26:00.000-05:00

Working on the player item system now. I'll hopefully have at least a couple of weapons coded in within the next couple of days. Probably only 2 though. The weapons require planning on a deeper level than the rest of the stuff have for the sake of flow-of-play.

Unlike games like Cave Story or Metroid, you don't just *obtain* weapons by finding them, but instead you obtain them in the same way you would in Megaman, so I need to plan the weapons around the bosses.

This is also going to be developed in tandem with the other collision types.

From there, I'll start working on my game controller, which will track player information. Once that's done I can start adding damage and such to the player.

Some Character Tweaks, and a Video

2009-12-28T22:48:00.000-05:00

I've went ahead and cleaned up some collision issues, and added some more depth to the characters animation. Not much else to say about it :P Just watch.

Player, Jumping, Etc

2009-12-28T10:19:00.000-05:00

Added the player to the game. Here's a small video of him in action:

Rewriting some of the jump stuff though. Mainly adding impulse motion as apposed to iterating X/Y in each state. As it stands right now I'm hard modifying the X/Y coordinates of the player, however that feels too stiff. Impulse systems will definitely be preferred.

Same ol' Same ol'

2009-12-20T09:06:00.000-05:00

I'm preparing to start work on the actor system now, which means soon to follow will be a proper demo. In preperation for the actor system, I've officially completed the ability to jump in and out of edit mode during the game.

I've assembled a simple test level for me to work on while I'm creating the player. A screen is attached (yeah yeah same ol same ol).

A small list of things I still need to do for the map system, that I've shelved until I need to work on them (since it wont really change anything)-

-Room backgrounds
-The ability to change your tileset. (I only have one and a half right now )
-Adding music. (havent decided if I want to make an event object for this or not)
-Adding new rooms.

More Map System Stuff

2009-12-19T07:47:00.000-05:00

Got my tile selector finished, so now when creating a new unique tile, you can select the image from the tileset.

This means here shortly I can start doing some hardcore work on the game itself :p

I should also note that this is essentially a small amount of work to do exactly what I was going for over the past few days that I had to scrap <_<;; I was taking a different approach to it and decided to can that.

Camera System, and Map System Updates

2009-12-13T03:26:00.000-05:00

Camera system is finished. Game objects follow the camera accordingly.

Dialog system is still WIP. System parses through the text and splits it into dialog. Able to show menu options in the dialog.

Map construction is still WIP. Game is able to scroll through the map, and select tiles accordingly for modification.

I've also had a breakthrough with the level designer, and I can now start doing some hard work on it.

Menu System Added

2009-12-08T12:34:00.000-05:00

Update;

Menu system is finished, blah blah blah. Pretty dynamic the way it is now. I was initially going to use linked lists for the values, but they were messy, so I decided to use arrays (again). Since there's no junk data in the array at all, it seemed suitable. I'll never end up with a null value, so blah.

Update screenshot attached.

Initial Success!

2009-12-08T04:48:00.000-05:00

May not look like much, but! This image shows that the system is writing rooms, reading rooms, and displaying rooms as well!

The "0"'s are the IDs of the unique tiles, and it's displaying them beautifully at 60fps.

Next up! Loading the tiles from the MapTile array using the ID as an index, loading their image positions.