Small Update

So work on the editor is still going strong. Kyle managed to add a bunch of features that make the process a lot easier to handle. There is now a selection tool (think of the marquee tool in Photoshop) that allows you to fill in a specific area.

On the non-programming side, I've managed to start thinking up equations for the game mechanics. I had a few questions on the subject and found a great StackExchange Q&A page dedicated to game development. Turns out I wasn't the first to ask similar questions and managed to find great answers.

That being said I decided to figure out what my main attributes will be. From there I will find derived attributes calculated by the main ones (for example, the strength attribute would modify the physical attack derived attribute). Having these is helping me understand the role for each character and will then help me map out the growth of these stats as they gain experience.

One of the major things I'd like to change from classic jRPGs is try and find a way to remove the randomness of misses. I've always hated the random miss during critical moments. I've always felt that if I avoided running from every battle leading up to a boss that I should be able to defeat it without having to go back and grind. If at any given time one of the characters misses arbitrarily and it causes me to lose the battle... well, let's just say that it's infuriating.

I do feel that critical hits and misses are part of the jRPG formula but I'd like to shrink their importance in battle and rather have a situation where a hit might — instead of missing — deal less damage.

Map Editor (Version 2)

We're almost back to where we were in the first iteration of the game. The editor is now solid enough to start drawing maps! This means that it was time to start making tiles to use it - I decided to go with house tiles that I will be able to reuse easily. The resulting houses aren't as pretty as they would be if I drew them pixel by pixel but it's a small price to pay for the ability to make a bunch of houses on the fly.

Having the week off has really helped me get back into the project. A few weeks ago I bought myself a sketch book and I drew the outlines of the maps that would be used for the first scenario of the game. So far it gives me a good TODO list for what needs to be done.

It's so much easier to work on the 16x16 scale.

The Party

I just thought I'd print the party walking around. Nothing special but still fun for me to see :)

The Silent Protagonist

While writing up the game design document for the game I often think of scenarios I want the party to find themselves in. Often these scenarios involve dialog and I always picture Rohe as being a silent protagonist.

The idea behind this project is to create a RPG I would have loved to play as a kid (definitely aiming for some nostalgia) but I'm wondering if the silence is really necessary. I mean yes, it would really bring me back if Rohe was silent (than again it's not like silent protagonists have gone anywhere) but is it really necessary to make the player feel more connected to the character?

If anything the silent protagonist might make the player feel less like he or she is in control of the situation because other characters are always speaking or making decision for them. If my goal is to make the player feel like he's Rohe (making him a generic boy hero) would they really feel more connected if they never made the decision to go to dungeon X but had Jill bully them into going?

That's why I decided to ask the question on Gamedev. Hopefully someone will come in and answer my question with a clever angle I never considered.

Whoa whoa whoa, let's go back a few spaces

So it's been months since I've posted anything on here. I wish I had some great news about how I've been too busy working on the game but really I just haven't had the motivation. This doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about the game, quite the contrary, I think about it almost on a daily basis.

I realized that to get the game started I needed a partner. The project in it's last life was a bit too big to handle. I wanted too much and I had no clear direction. Though Zedix was good at keeping things grounded and building the tools we needed, he soon found himself immersed in another project, one which took up most of his time. That meant I had lost my partner and with it the motivation and focus to pick up his code and go on. That's where I had the idea to downgrade the project to a smaller scale RPG, something with smaller graphics and a simpler scope.

First thing I needed was a partner and here enters Kyle. Long time friend and fellow programmer. He was always interested in making games but due to the geographical distance between us I always hesitated on building a game with him. This was kind of silly considering Zedix and I barely ever spoke outside of IM.

Second thing I needed is a game design document. This is where I am now. The biggest problem these small projects have is that scope creep gets to them. It would be awesome to do this, oh we should do that! BAM! Next thing you know you've scope-creeped yourself into a corner that you can't come out of. This is what I'm going to avoid this time around. I currently have a 10 pages document outlining some of the features that I want. This document is currently in its draft form which doesn't flesh out all the details to the letter but it does help me create a scope.

Badass Becomes Doctor Who

So I had posted some concept sketches for the "badass" of the party a while back. He was going to be a cheesy ninjaesk character with glowing neon-green goggles and super-rollerblades. I decided to scrap that idea after being hooked on the new season of Doctor Who. I think Matt Smith is a great Doctor and figured I'd tip my hat to the show (it is an inspiring source for this project) by making the last character a Doctor knockoff. Enjoy!

Rohe and Saucer retrofied...er...

So I messed around with my old sprites and redid Rohe on a 16x16 grid. I decided to also go ahead and make my saucer character as well. I think it's a lot more fun to work with this size constraints because if keeps me from worrying about the smaller details. I like the saucer's force-field effect.

Project is pretty much dead, or is it?

Well the current itiration of MB is pretty much canned. I wanted to keep going but I couldn't do it without my partner who's life has taken a turn for the busy. That being said, I had way too much time invested in the project to let it die. I decided to save some of my assets (mostly the story stuff) and create a much more modest game (think original Earthbound or Dragon Warrior).

The game will be seriously cut down in features but I think the scope is small enough that I can actually finish it. So basically we've downgraded from a SNES look to a NES look. Take a gander at NES-esk Jill:

(Click on bigger version to see unfinished walk cycle)

That's right, I remade her in 16x16 pixels. I think limiting the size of my sprites will help me a lot too. Now I won't fret over every single detail, I'll just do my best with what I have and keep pumping out my graphics.

I was inspired by the team over at the Games & Technology forum of Penny-Arcade who were working on a XNA game called Breath of Death VII. I saw that the 8-bit era games could look fantastic (okay so I'm cheating by using more than the NES's colour palette, sue me ;))

Eventful Summer Makes for Uneventful Game Development

So every school year is pretty much the same when it comes to game development. You pour all your spare time into the project dreaming of the long summer nights where you'll have tons of time to invest in the project. Next thing you know summer rolls on over and as soon as it showed up it's over. What the hell happens?

Summer is fun, that's what happens. I have been involved in multiple weekly activities which kept me away from the computer most nights. I've been rock climbing twice a week, playing volleyball in a recreational league, heck I went bungee jumping on Sunday! I know Zedix's summer has been just as busy as mine.

So that being said, summer is almost over which means all our weekly activities will be up! Hopefully then work on the game will resume and we'll have more than enough progress to brag about. The current project has progressed during the summer, it was just at a much slower pace... we're talking snail pace here.

Excuses out of the way, I'd like to point you guys in the direction of the Boolean Brothers' site (again) which is where we'll post most of the real news about the game. We even have a feed that lets you guys know what we commit to our SVN and a small section that shows off our earlier projects.

Long Time No Post... Pffft!

So I realize that I haven't posted something in ages. That's mostly due to the fact that any update on the game has been made on the Boolean Brothers blog instead of this one. I'm mostly posting here so my blog doesn't look so barren.

So that being said, here's a concept sketch of what could be the third hero in the group. Every game has a character who's a badass. Yuri, Vincent, Kain, Basch, or Zero are amongst this elite class of individuals. Well this character is our clichéd attempt at joining that roster!

Boolean Brothers

Crap! I knew I forgot something! Work on the game is still progressing, albeit it's a little slower than what I would like (my fault). I'm still spriting on and off but due to personal reasons I lost a huge chunk of motivation to do anything. Thankfully I'm recovering and work will pick up as soon as I can get all these school assignments done (more precisely, half-done).

Point of this post is mostly to point you guys in the direction of our game's actual development blog, not just mine: Boolean Brothers

Zedix already posted the first update on the game and it's already out-of-date! He's been working non stop on all sorts of features in the map editor which include a fill bucket (I'm excited about this one because mapping one tile at a time can be freakin' long) and a ton of tweaks. Just check it out.

Mockup Time!

The end of the holiday season was pretty busy for both of us but we finally managed to get back into it. I made myself a TODO list of tiles we could use in our first map and it's coming very close to being checked off completely. Once that's done I'll start thinking about different settings we'd like to explore and make more lists so I don't slow down too much.

The editor is coming along nicely. I won't go too much into detail since Zedix and I were kicking around the idea of making a blog for the game itself where he could post his own updates.

Here is another pictar! Not all the stuff in there is completely new but I'm particularly proud of the filler trees, we'll now be able to have a boarder around our maps that aren't just blackness.

Of Map Editors and Men...

The past 5 days have been really exciting. Zedix and I have been working ceaselessly. Our progress has been nothing but phenomenal which is kind of amusing since everytime we try to do something like this our attention wavers. This time is different because we both have something to show so we feed eachother's motivation and we end up working harder and harder.

As far as the map editor goes we're pretty much recreating an interface similar to RPG Maker's own. It won't be as feature rich but it will be more specific so that we can use the tools we build ourselves with 100% feature utilization. By building our own system we can add certain functionalities without having to google how to do it for hours with someone else's design and/or have to resolve it with a hack. That being said the editor is looking shhhweet especially since it's using our own map format.

As far as pixel art goes I figure pictures speak louder than words. Here are a few mockups:

Holy Crap, it's December!

I'm just going to post this and pretend like I haven't been absent for the past 5 months.

Zedix and I got back on the horse last night and decided to make a simple RPG. To make things easier on myself we decided to pick a modern setting. In fact the feel of the game is strongly influenced by the Mother series and Peanuts. The cartoony look allows me to use colours without always having to fill in the blank with details. The grundgy look can be pretty draining.

That being said Zedix brushed off the dust of his C# skills and managed to rebuild the map editor I had posted so long ago.

Anyways here are a few characters I drew together and a mockup. 

And the mockup.

Chrono Trigger Meet Bill Murray!

So Chrono Trigger is being released on the DS and aside from wetting my appetite it has me wondering what made the game so good great fantastic. Now aside from the fact that the game was designed by a dream team it also told a very compelling story that included time travel as an important theme.

I am also wondering how time travel could be incorporated into a game as an interesting gameplay mechanic. I'm sure a lot of games explore it but how many actually use it to make the game fun and how many have it as a central theme?

This also got me thinking of Groundhog Day (brilliant movie by the way). Obviously this spawned a game idea but I'm not sure how well I could execute it. Essentially the player would relive the same day over and over again like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day but every time he accomplishes a goal that has a significant impact on the time line it creates a "time scar" (if you will).

This time scar would make it so this event happens (or happened, semantics with time travel are so confusing) through every iteration of the day. The goal of the player would be to place enough time scars throughout the day to break free of the loop and live the rest of his life.

Though the premise of the game is vague enough it is also clearly an idea that would allow the player to explore various aspect of the world without ever being punished. Say he decides to get shot by a police officer; he would only wake up at the beginning of the day again with all his previous achievements still accomplished. It would be a game about exploration and experimentation.

I used a violent example, possibly to compliment Bill Murray's failed suicide attempt in Groundhog Day, but non violent experiments could take center stage like trying to hook up two strangers or helping a cat stuck in a tree. Heck this could be a lot like Quantum Leap, man what a sweet show.

Ramblings of a Bored Fool

A friend and I were discussing his data driven architecture he's coding for his game he is programming. He got to the point where he had a working system when he realized that he had no idea as to what to make with it.

The most obvious choice was pong. He kind of grunted at the idea but we started talking about different takes on the game. There are a millions flavours of pong including (but not limited to) plasma pong, pong RPG, all flavours of battle pongs, etc but how were we to make a new pong that is still interesting?

One of the good ideas we had spawned from a joke. I hate kid's TV shows about kids with cards who duel using said cards and take their game very seriously. I'm takling about winning or losing a match is the difference between life or death (it's a freakin' card game!). So hence card game pong was born!

Essentially the game starts as a regular pong match. Every time the ball hits a paddle the player draws a card. The player can hold five cards in his hand. These cards would have effects in the game whenever they are put into play. An example of this would be a ball split card or a temporary paddle extension card.

What's interesting about the ball split card is that it could be used strategically for the owner of the card by using it against himself. Since the player draws a card whenever the ball hits his paddle if he used the split card just before it hits he would have the right to draw three cards (assuming the ball splits into three balls).

I guess the controls would use the arrow keys or wasd to move the paddle and the mouse to choose cards. My only concern is whether the player will have trouble keeping track of the cards he has while the ball is in play. It would be an interesting experiment nonetheless.

So what are other cool ideas?

Summer Projects

So summer is here and I've broken another promise I made to myself. With an actual routine of getting up for work everyday I figured that I would get into the development mood but it hasn't happened. So what's going on with the adventure game that was in the conceptual phase? We scrapped it.

I'm too worried that an adventure game, ala classic Zelda games, will be too demanding on the content level. Instead we decided to use some of the lessons we learned in the Outpost project and make a new Top Down Shooter like Shadowgrounds or Moonpod's War Angels.

I won't go into detail about the project just yet because lately my projects don't seem to lift off the ground. I figured I'd post something after a month of silence.

Not Flat Lining...

Okay so exam season is lasting forever. I managed to get my java architecture working with some extreme volatility in the frame timing so I'll have to look into it some more. Sadly I haven't had the time to touch anything since then. Studying has taken up most of my time but to stay on topic I will show off the final result of our CG class; the vogager introduction:



We got an A+ for it. I have to say my partner deserves most of the credit since he's the C++ guru. I did a little bit of modeling (not enough to actually deserve a mention here) and the scripting for the scene. It's pretty neat how it works in the back, I can create objects from a script file defined by us and change the file without having to rebuild the whole project. It really streamlines the whole process.

Java and Game Development

It really bothered me that a lot of people couldn't run NSR. I knew XNA was exclusive to Windows which I thought was fair enough thinking most people would have access to a copy (or use an emulator). However even if we ignore the non-windows demographic so many didn't have a video card that supported shaders 1.1, what a bummer.

Well while I wait for the end of the exam period and for Zedix and I to have time to fully commit ourselves to our new project I decided to explore java game development. I decided to install Eclipse and use java's own java2d stuff. From what I read it's not the best for game programming, especially when there are APIs dedicated to graphics like JOGL or GTGE, but for what time I have to invest in this project I think it will be just fine.

As far as design goes I figured that I didn't want to divert too far from the way XNA works. Now I know I can't develop something as fancy as XNA (ooh-la-la) but I could design a simple architecture that would emulate the coding feel of it.

Seeing how the major architectural feature that I use in XNA is the drawable component I made an abstract GameComponent class with the basic update and drawing functions. From there I implemented the MainComponent which would hold a list of all updatable and drawable components and iterate through them in every iteration of the game loop.

I'm unexperienced in the whole field of game loops but for how simple my project will be I will simply define a default frame per second (60) and make sure that only one frame can be executed per 1/60 seconds. I'd post some code but nothing in my design is concrete just yet.

Here are a few links that I found useful:

• javagaming.org
• gamedev tutorial on active rendering in java
• pretty cool article on a component base architecture (thanks to Zedix)
  

End of Semester => Deadlines

Well things haven't been flowing too smoothly. Little to no progress has been done on our latest project but that's mostly due to school. However since my fan asked for an update I'll add an update.

Narcoleptic Soccer Rush

Well voting ended today and we finished 7th out of 48! Crazy! We were hoping for top ten and our hard work paid off. I think all the games did well and that the voting was fair (though with so many games some games didn't get as much credit as they deserved). Congratulations to all those who entered the competition. Keep an eye out on the TigSource front page for more details.

Avoid the Asteroids

We are presenting the demo and the XNA framework tomorrow morning at 10:00am. After seeing some of the other projects I'm a little nervous seeing how our demo can't possibly last more than thirty seconds (plus the presentation).

Star Trek Voyager Introduction

I haven't really mentioned this project but we are currently putting the finishing touches on it. The presentation is tomorrow morning at 8:00am. I'd list the project's details but instead I'll point you guys to the Assembla wiki where we took the time to add everything. Right here.

Adventure Game

Well not too much to add here but I'll post the sprite I made for it. I'm pretty proud of it considering that most walking animation I end up studying a current sprite extensively, this one was done looking at the walking cycle.