Our Boy Jack postponed

It finally happened. My computer got murderized by a virus. I had to format the machine and lost everything. Luckily, my most important files were good and backed up. Unluckily, Our Boy Jack was not included in that list of important files. This actually happened a few weeks back, but I've been so busy with school projects in the mean time that I just don't have the time or the will left over to start Jack back up again.

I had Jack up to the point where I just had to plug in art content... But what a wall that is to hit! I am no artist, I need to remember that before I start projects.

I do, however, have another project coming down the pipe that I will announce soon. You better believe that I am going to pilfer all the sprite art I can for this one.

Stick around.

Major breakthrough

Sorry about the lack of progress. This is a big exam and paper month at school, so extra time has been scarce. When I do have extra time these days it is quite tough to want to do anything beyond sleeping. Hair greying game developing is hard to get motivated for at times like these.

That said, my map editor is nearly complete. It works by displaying a graphical image of the level (which is just a bitmap), and you use the mouse to paint 30x30 blocks wherever you want. The x and y position of these blocks is stored in a vector array, and from there is spit out into a text file. The text file is read into the game when the level loads and from there the game determines where collideable walls are and stuff like that. The only part of this procedure I haven't finished up yet is the spitting of the vector array into a text file, and then reading it back into the game.

Fun stuff. Screens soon.

Still working...

I'm at school so I can't post a substantial update until later in the week. However, I can still tell you what I've been working on.

Care to guess?

Yup! More map editor. I've had a substantial breakthrough, through, and I should have a near complete map editor to show off shortly.

But working on the map editor so long got to be a bit tedious for me. With that in mind, as a break I decided to make some music for the game. Using Musagi I came up with something that I am kind of proud of. I'll put up a link to it in a couple of days.

Later days.

More Map Editing Woes

I have heard it said before from another indie game designer that he always makes his tools first. Now I know why. This map editor is becoming much more of a challenge than I had initially figured it to be. I have had to change the way I was going to implement the level editor, and because of that I now have to change the way I will import the levels into the game, which effects some fundamental design choices I made early on.

But at least I am making progress. On the down side, I still can't show you it. Maybe, just maybe, you will see something by the end of the week.

Our Boy Jack Update

Okay, so I had originally planned on having the level editor finished by now...

Yeah, that didn't happen. The level editor turned out to be a lot more involved than I had originally thought, and now, after having scrapped the thing and started again from the ground up, I am in position to be finished with it by the week's end. Over the weekend my bro took a look at the project and gave me a load of good input, so I am finally on the right track towards victory. Unfortunately, this means no in-game screenshots, but that doesn't mean no screenshots at all.

During all of my time spent not doing the level editor last week I managed to get in some spriting. Behold the protagonist, Jack:

He will run, he will jump, he will slice and dice... But at the moment all he can actually do is idle. Jack is a bmp, but his source is a fully layered png image for ease of editing. I'm rather pleased with myself.

More tomorrow.

Spriting!

Is a PAIN!

But I am making headway, little by little. Because of my lack of art talent I'm going for a fairly simple style. I've settled on a half stick figure, sort of Don Hertzfeldt-y thing. All I can say is huzzah for tablet PCs and Paint.Net.

Screens VERY soon, I promise.