Not too much to report

I'm still not 100% on where I want to go with my next game. In the interest of getting something done I have started coding the generic stuff anyway. So far I've got a neat game state manager in and ready to go. I'm also going to start writing the base class for my animated sprites. Regardless of what game I am going to pick, I will have animated sprites.

I will definitely have a direction picked and a meatier update next week. Soz mates.

New Game!

The time has come to pick a new game to start developing. The question is, what game?

As I see it I have three choices based on a combination of factors, mostly what I want to make and what I think that I actually can make. I can go with:

1. A humorous Point 'N Click Adventure ala Monkey Island.


2. An RPG cutesy Dating Sim (Don't laugh).


3. A simple but fun remake of arcade classic Gladiator.

The Point 'N Click Adventure is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. If I did it, it would star Jack from Our Boy Jack and have a supporting cast of naive Victorian Londoners that I think would lend themselves easily to humorous situations. The pros would be that the game logic seems pretty straight forward and easy. The big con is that these types of games are asset heavy, and I could be in a bind if I went that route.

As for the Date Sim, well... What can I say? I've always been a fan of the simple, yet addictive puzzle gameplay that they offer. The best part of doing this would be that at its heart it would be an RPG, which I've done before with Verily. The negatives would be a whole lot of new game dynamics that I don't have a lot of experience in. Stuff like finite state machines for somewhat complex schedule and task oriented AI. Sounds scary.

For the Gladiator remake, my biggest draw to it is that it seems to be a nice middle ground between going all out and making a unique fun game, and making another prototype. If I choose to go this route I will have the benefit of learning quite a bit more about developing, as well as being able to be fairly confident of a release within the semester. I'd still have to learn a bit about AI, sounds, game state managers, and so on. But none of seems too far out of my depth at the moment.



Can you tell what I am leaning towards? Yes, although it isn't official I do believe that the Gladiator remake is going to win the day. My apologies if you were rooting for something else. On top of all the other things going for the Gladiator remake, I've also been on an Errol Flynn kick lately so I've been watching a lot of rapier sword fighting, which kind of lends itself well to a Gladiator type game. Plus, who doesn't want to be a musketeer? I haven't decided on a proper motif yet. My dream art design would be something cartoony like Captain Claw (super great platformer that went under the radar, by the way), but that might be too hard for me to pull off.



We'll see shortly.

For those of you who have never played Gladiator and don't know what I am talking about: Basically it is a melee fighting game in which you and your opponents can strike in High, Middle, or Low. In order to not be killed you have to make sure your shield is blocking the area that your opponent is striking. It is simple, but it feels believable and satisfying.

Verily At Last

http://www.filefront.com/15446983/Verily.zip

There it is. I didn't bother making a readme, so the instructions for running and playing are as follows:

• Download Verily.zip from the FileFront link above.
• Unzip it somewhere.
• Run the Verily.exe to start the game.
• Use the arrow keys to move around.
• The Health symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the screen represents your hitpoints.
• The Shield symbol, also in the lower right corner, is how much damage you do.
• The Gold Coin symbol in the lower left corner is your money.
• On the first map there is a Health and Shield symbol on the left wall of the level. These are shops. To use them just walk into it. If you have enough money your gold will automatically be deducted and whatever you are purchasing will be added.
• Walk through levels by walking to the top or bottom of the screens.

There. I think that about covers it. The game is anything but complicated, but just in case something is puzzling you, there you have it.

Verily Tomorrow

I have finished adding a HUD to the game, which incidentally turned out to be significantly more of a hard time than I had planned on.


Behold:

The HUD is composed of those icons in the corners that represent health, power, and gold. All that remains is for me to upload the beast to FileFront, which I will do tomorrow along with a simple explanation as to how to play.

Stay classy.

New Game Update: Verily

No really, the game is called Verily. Verily is a totally bare bones Ultima IV-ish rpg I made as a term project last semester. To make it I used SDL (to hell with Allegro), and it turned out okay.

Verily features:

• Easy map editing.
  
• Shops for buying upgrades.
  
• Monsters to fight.
  
• A boss monster.
  
• A goal to grab.
  
• Player animations.

... And that is about it. Verily doesn't feature:

• Inventory.


• Text of any kind - No story.


• Any sort of HUD.


• Sounds.


• AI.

Now, most of these I don't care about. The project wasn't for a game dev class, and what I did finish was more than enough to get me my grade. That said, before I release this beast to the eager grubby mits of the general public (all none of you), I want to add a little something to make this a might-bit more playable. Namely, I want to get a functioning HUD in there. I estimate this will take me a week or so, so stay tuned.

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.