Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Destroid]

Nice Destroid. I'm not exactly sure what's going on when I'm playing but I like the visual style. What did you use to create this and how are you hosting it out of dropbox?

It's written in Actionscript 3, using Flashdevelop and Flashpunk. The sprites I drew in Gimp. Hosting on dropbox is just a little trickery with getting the right link (just drop the ?dl=1 off the end of the download link).

It's difficult to play because humans really can't visualise 4d spaces, and I have presented the environment in an extremely constrained fashion. I find when I play it I mostly rely on my distances from the portal and the horror, but maybe that's why I'm not very good at it.

 

[shihonage]

I put experimental movement smoothing into Monsterland, which requires partial gutting of renderer to complete. So many stupid little things constantly appearing that need fixing... rockets should blow up with indirect monster hits, otherwise Rlauncher is not worth it... yada yada.

 

[tiagocc0]

I made this little prototype last night. It'd a 4D puzzleish game, and I think it's a bit of fun.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/cjkx4w3gwl07zk8/ndrl.swf

What font is this? I'm in love!

 

[shihonage]

Had a distressing exchange with boss yesterday. Apparently I'm dragging "the team" down and not being aggressive enough in spontaneously securing new opportunities for self-expansion. An audit may come and I may be booted out. He's been "protecting" me against some inquiries from up top.

My fault in this situation is doing only what I'm told, and not knowing how to react to vague assignments.

It's been 10 years in this cubicle. I am turning 35 years old in a week. Maybe this is it.

I am thinking of quitting and putting all energy into finishing Monsterland and resuming Shelter.

Before that, I need to squeeze as much out of my health insurance as possible. Get a physical and blood work-up.

This is all scary as shit to me. The moment I leave, my savings become a ticking timebomb.

The good part is that I would be able to actually work on games at much faster speed (like Styg). At some point the threshold of code is reached where you can no longer afford to "turn it off" and then "tune into work shit" and then "turn it back on" again. It takes hours to "warm up", and then it's bedtime, and another workday...

It has to be always-on, from day to day, until finish line. The only codebase in my head has to be the game I'm currently working on.
Monsterland, Shelter, and, in distant future, Crime City.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Sorry to hear about your job!

Crime City?

 

[Destroid]

I made this little prototype last night. It'd a 4D puzzleish game, and I think it's a bit of fun.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/cjkx4w3gwl07zk8/ndrl.swf

What font is this? I'm in love!

I've no idea what it's actually called, it's just the default Flashpunk font.

 

[shihonage]

Awor Szurkrarz: Thanks

Crime City is a game where you try to keep ... crime in the city under control. You're basically the leader of CTU from the show "24", only you handle a wider range of crime using a limited number of agents, technology and budget.

I'm very excited about Crime City, because it would need minimal visuals (mostly text and overhead 2D texturing), have semi-original gameplay mechanics, and an incremental design (like Minecraft). All-procedural, playable shortly, with more stuff (crime types, agent types) being added over time. Main vision doc has been written, but I'm not doing squat with it until Shelter is complete.

Also I would like to build it with space for cooperative play to be added later.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Oh, I thought it would be about committing crime in the city XD ,

 

[Davaris]

securing new opportunities for self-expansion.

That sounds like corporate gibberish to me.

Corporate Gibberish Generator™
http://www.andrewdavidson.com/gibberish/?companyname=AssCo

The good part is that I would be able to actually work on games at much faster speed (like Styg). At some point the threshold of code is reached where you can no longer afford to "turn it off" and then "tune into work shit" and then "turn it back on" again. It takes hours to "warm up", and then it's bedtime, and another workday...

If you are going to pursue games full time, move somewhere that is dirt cheap to live. Preferably a third world country. You never know how your games will do, until you put them out there.

Crime City is a game where you try to keep ... crime in the city under control. You're basically the leader of CTU from the show "24", only you handle a wider range of crime using a limited number of agents, technology and budget.

I think that is a pretty good concept and you could take it in almost any direction. It could be super detailed or more casual, if you have a short time to make it.

 

[shihonage]

securing new opportunities for self-expansion.

That sounds like corporate gibberish to me.

Corporate Gibberish Generator™
http://www.andrewdavidson.com/gibberish/?companyname=AssCo

Fucking uncanny

Sounds like a lot of our internal circlejerk posts on the "casual bulletin board" that looks like Web 3.0 threw up on it, and in which we were all mandated to participate.

After I made 1 innocuous post, my boss started "following" me.

If you are going to pursue games full time, move somewhere that is dirt cheap to live. Preferably a third world country. You never know how your games will do, until you put them out there.

I have family nearby so I won't end up living on the street. They have my back in "not being homeless" department.

I think that is a pretty good concept and you could take it in almost any direction. It could be super detailed or more casual, if you have a short time to make it.

Incremental design all the way. Gonna start off simple and see how it works, and keep adding on. I have a skeleton engine from pre-Shelter days, but it only had bomb-making terrorists in it before being frozen.

 

[tiagocc0]

If you are going to pursue games full time, move somewhere that is dirt cheap to live. Preferably a third world country. You never know how your games will do, until you put them out there.

I have family nearby so I won't end up living on the street. They have my back in "not being homeless" department.

Planning is everything, consider moving right now to live with them, tell them you're going to help with some bills, it's going to be cheaper for you, cheaper for them and will free you from the stress of running out of money too quickly.
Just a suggestion.

 

[shihonage]

Planning is everything, consider moving right now to live with them, tell them you're going to help with some bills, it's going to be cheaper for you, cheaper for them and will free you from the stress of running out of money too quickly.
Just a suggestion.

I already did that

This job has threatened to terminate me before, and in combination with several other factors (bad break-up, rodents), I abandoned my old apartment and moved into my parents' basement floor and started paying them rent, to feel even remotely dignified. As economy kept tanking, and my job kept destabilizing, I haven't moved out again thus far.

 

[eric__s]

Man, good luck with your job shihonage, but if things go south, this could be the opportunity you've been waiting for. I'm pretty sure if you lose your job, people here would be willing to rally and help you out with your game.

 

[Destroid]

Teach Aikido on the side?

 

[shihonage]

Teach Aikido on the side?

Sure, but only if I am competing for students with this guy:

Man, good luck with your job shihonage, but if things go south, this could be the opportunity you've been waiting for. I'm pretty sure if you lose your job, people here would be willing to rally and help you out with your game.

I know that by game we mean Shelter, and not Monsterland, and that's okay, because if I quit this job, Monsterland will be completed very fast. And then I would move on to the game that Codex actually has some interest in.

Anyway, I'm not gonna hog this thread with Livejournal stuff anymore. Thanks for your support

 

[eric__s]

I'm ripping out my hair, I've written so many goddamn songs for this project and I only need maybe two more and I just can't write anything good. I'm so, so pleased with this soundtrack as a whole and it's by far the best thing I've ever done (I've spent more than 2 years on it!) but I'm at the very last part trying to write stuff I'm getting nothing. All the music in this game is 16-bit FM, which is really hard to write and as soon as I'm done I'm going to take a long break from working with it. I'm digging through a bunch of reject songs I didn't like and wondering if maybe I could finish some of them. Some are super old and have terrible sound quality, others are just awful and none are even close to being completed. I would be really appreciative if some of you would go through these and tell me which I can just throw out completely.

1 - The sounds are terrible and the structure needs work and polish but the overall melody is good.
2 - Really bad + this is just a mockup and not even completely FM.
3 - This is the most polished of all the rejects but it's still crap and I don't know where to go with it.
4 - Very old, terrible sounds and needs a lot of polish but I like this one's melody the best.
5 - Also old. It needs work but I like this one more than most of the others.
6 - Killer bass sound but not very interesting.
7 - Great main melody but awful, awful sounds and it's more suited for a boss theme.
8 - No idea what this crap is.

Then I've got dozens of tunes that are only like 10 seconds that sketch out melodies I thought up.

Man, it's all crap.

Anyway, I'd be happy for any advice or suggestions or anything really. I'm going nuts.

Oh yeah, I did manage to finish two songs that I think are pretty good.

Intro
cave area

 

[Niektory]

I think 5 is the most promising.

 

[Excommunicator]

cboyardee you won't get much worthwhile advice getting cold opinions on old song samples for a future game

How about write up a blurb about what you want to achieve with the extra pieces you need (if you haven't thought about that yet, then do so). Things like the mood and imagery you want, and the area or event it is being attached to, and try to be very descriptive. The act of writing it out should help get your imagination going and if not then at least people will be able to give more relevant advice

 

[eric__s]

That's a good point, I appreciate it. This is a video of a 2 year old build of the game. It's very old footage and a lot has changed, but the atmosphere and base mechanics remain the same. It's actually a remake of an extremely bad NES game, the idea being that it uses the general mechanics and premise but improves on them. The music I'm making for the game is 16-bit frequency modulation and it uses the same sound chip that the X68000 computer and a lot of arcade machines used, and it's very similar to the chip in the Sega Genesis. It's not really conveyed in the video, but the game is about fighting hordes of enemies, sort of like a 2D Serious Sam and I'd like most of the music (but not necessarily all) to have a frenetic pace to make the gameplay feel more desperate.

The music I'm making for the game is influenced by a lot of X68000 and arcade music and my actual goal for the game was to make a song that's the same quality as First Step Towards Wars from the game Ys. A lot of the music in the game is in a pretty similar style (see the songs in my post on the previous page) - intense but goofy and cheesy 80s-sounding game music. There's no particular mood I'm looking for, I think a slower, more atmospheric song like example 5 would work as well as a power pop song like example 3. Mostly what I want is for each song to have a strong, memorable melody, the kind of thing you might pause the game to listen to for a minute. I feel like a lot of music in games now doesn't have the same catchy quality that games that utilized much more primitive sound hardware had, and I'm aiming to replicate this. I guess what I'd like is a late 80s, early 90s arcade feel.

Aside from the song I posted above, here are a few songs that have influenced the soundtrack.

Sion II - Legend (the first song that plays)
Blue Phoenix - Stage 1
Apidya - Meadow's Edge
Jim Power - Stage 4
Hinotori - Stage 1

So these are all energetic and catchy arcade songs and I feel like, for the most part, I've been able to replicate a lot of that energy and spirit. I don't know if I'm having writer's block - I don't think so because I'm able to write other stuff just fine - or if I'm just tired of working with FM and this style.

 

[Excommunicator]

I'm thinking new, weed2-2 and c64 (#4, #5, #6) all seem to have a similar mood to them, and if I was in your position I would be working with these three. They have a slight sinister, searching feel to them. These three (especially new.mp3) actually remind me of some oldschool first person shooters a bit, that moment where you are wandering around a dark empty corridor ready to bump into an enemy and start shooting the place up. Faster2 reminds me of some streetfighter music, maybe it could go as a credits piece. Following on this idea, chimphell could be developed to play during an after-mission kill/score tally, and sabup_2 could probably go with an intro sequence "this is how the monsters came along, now you need to kill them" etc. Just some random thoughts.

Going by the sounds of intro and cave area you are probably going for a more positive feel than I divined from it so maybe my compass is pointing in a slightly different direction to yours. Seeing that video makes me think the music is going to get lost behind the action and sfx if it is not energetic enough, so depending on how you feel you might want to make 4, 5, 6 a bit more powerful with extra percussion, bass etc to help them survive.

I like your approach of making the pieces individually interesting with strong melodies. I also think this is something greatly neglected in a lot of modern music, and there's no reason why we can't still have strong catchy melodies with sophisticated orchestration.

Also, next time you do something like this, find a better naming system for the songs. Numbers, titles and then filenames all different to each other and with some inexplicably similar in name to others. Very confusing

 

[GordonHalfman]

I'm playing around with implementing this 2.5D lighting/occlusion system that's come up a few times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLkg52CRW3YmT58ZoZwoBFmQ

Writing the shaders doesn't seem difficult, the problem is at the moment I'm only able to test the principle with hard coded values for the height/normal map.

In the info the guy says he creates the maps using 3ds max:

" then a normal map for it is rendered in a similar manner, using a special material which calculates the world-space normal vectors of every pixel and finally a proportionate height-map (again, world-space rather than screen-space) is rendered. "

I'm only just slowly learning max, does anyone know how he manages to do this, how this special material is created? I'm not sure what technique he is using, it doesn't seem possible to do this with the standard render elements options.

 

[crojipjip]

I'm playing around with implementing this 2.5D lighting/occlusion system that's come up a few times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLkg52CRW3YmT58ZoZwoBFmQ

Writing the shaders doesn't seem difficult, the problem is at the moment I'm only able to test the principle with hard coded values for the height/normal map.

In the info the guy says he creates the maps using 3ds max:

"then a normal map for it is rendered in a similar manner, using a special material which calculates the world-space normal vectors of every pixel and finally a proportionate height-map (again, world-space rather than screen-space) is rendered. "

I'm only just slowly learning max, does anyone know how he manages to do this, how this special material is created? I'm not sure what technique he is using, it doesn't seem possible to do this with the standard render elements options.

I don't know the psychology of the developer but by special he probably means an additional material with a unique purpose. just like special sauce or special ingredients rarely are unknown materials. its a spice, or pot or maybe napkin with the special purpose of flavour enhancement.

The other clue is his worldspace claim.

Look of all things it may be.

http://i.imgur.com/NQOR0.png

http://i.imgur.com/MZOxQ.png

http://i.imgur.com/rHU3r.png


If the material counts for something, think light properties. If there are actual calculations maybe raytrace bitching?

 

[Destroid]

Updated NDRL, it now has a victory condition, achieved if you pass 20 levels, some instructions and an illustration guide to the interface. It also is now capable of generating levels from 3 to 9 spatial dimensions in size, each dimension having a size of 6 to 8 cells. A difficulty spike occurs after 7 levels are passed.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/cjkx4w3gwl07zk8/ndrl.swf

 

[eric__s]

I'm thinking new, weed2-2 and c64 (#4, #5, #6) all seem to have a similar mood to them, and if I was in your position I would be working with these three. They have a slight sinister, searching feel to them. These three (especially new.mp3) actually remind me of some oldschool first person shooters a bit, that moment where you are wandering around a dark empty corridor ready to bump into an enemy and start shooting the place up. Faster2 reminds me of some streetfighter music, maybe it could go as a credits piece. Following on this idea, chimphell could be developed to play during an after-mission kill/score tally, and sabup_2 could probably go with an intro sequence "this is how the monsters came along, now you need to kill them" etc. Just some random thoughts.

Going by the sounds of intro and cave area you are probably going for a more positive feel than I divined from it so maybe my compass is pointing in a slightly different direction to yours. Seeing that video makes me think the music is going to get lost behind the action and sfx if it is not energetic enough, so depending on how you feel you might want to make 4, 5, 6 a bit more powerful with extra percussion, bass etc to help them survive.

I like your approach of making the pieces individually interesting with strong melodies. I also think this is something greatly neglected in a lot of modern music, and there's no reason why we can't still have strong catchy melodies with sophisticated orchestration.

Also, next time you do something like this, find a better naming system for the songs. Numbers, titles and then filenames all different to each other and with some inexplicably similar in name to others. Very confusing

Alright, this is great advice. I'm going to focus on the three songs you mentioned. I also feel like they're thematically pretty similar and I'm going to see if I can put them, or at least ideas from them, together in the same song. Regarding the songs getting lost behind the action, this isn't really the case in any of the demos I've played but it's definitely a valid concern and something I've had to keep in mind as I wrote music. That intro song is actually for the game's intro animation and I think I can make the slower songs dynamic and catchy enough that players will notice them.

My naming system is awful. Usually when I name songs, I just smash my keyboard. Here's a picture of an old folder of music : (

Just awful.

Anyway, thank you very much for the advice. I really appreciate it and I'm going to focus on the songs you suggested.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't know if this will be any help to you cboyardee, but I name all my compositions some unique phrase. Like when I get to the point where ibring up the save file as prompt, I look around my house, or perhaps someone calls on the phone and I talk to them. Or I look out the window. So then you get a bunch of song titles like Contaminated Milk, A Spiders Web, The Cat Puked A Hairball, The Dishwasher Is Full. Works for me.