Archive for the ‘ESA 2’ Category.

Progress post #126: Turn

Streamed some Baba development and a *little* bit of ESA2. Baba work included a small step forward with the official editor, implementing the Turn-word seen above, investigating a mystery cornercase bug and redesigning a level I didn’t like (not sure if it’s better now, though.) I intended to do more ESA2 stuff, but work there ended up being mostly small editor features and replaying the old version a bunch.

Progress post #124: Languages (again)

Today’s stream saw me finally draw the cyrillic alphabet for Baba Is You! The game won’t be fully localized but we’re doing translations of the UI for a bunch of languages and it’s neat to get forward with that. I’m quite happy with how the symbols look in the game’s doodly font.

I also had time to work a bit on ESA 2; I fixed some bugs and started adding some needed features for the game’s level editor. It’d be neat to finally get to the point where I can start building some rooms, though!

Progress post #123: Miscellaneous

More streaming! Today’s streaming was mostly just fixing a couple bugs in Baba, then implementing some final bits of translation code and starting some complicated level editor code. Slow-going but pretty neat.

I also demonstrated ESA 2’s original version on-stream and started feeling really bad about restarting the project; there were lots of neat things in the original! Bummer about all the clunky stuff, hmph.

Progress post #121: Stuff

Another stream! Some Baba bugfixing and re-implementing things such as enemy behviour and editor tools in ESA 2. I’m starting to see some familiar patterns of aesthetical unpleasantness in ESA 2, and would very much like to deal with those right now so that I don’t have to keep developing the game with an increasing sense of not being a fan of the look of it. Hopefully something more concrete presents itself.

Progress post #120: Bump

Another stream where I worked on three different games! ESA got a much-needed little fix, ESA 2 went forward some and Baba saw a couple bugfixes as well. I also implemented a system that makes it easier to understand what’s happening when an object tries to move but is immediately returned to its origin, as seen above.

There’s so much stuff to do! I had a vacation of sorts last week but had to spend it preparing for an exam – another week would’ve been very much welcome. As it is, progress on these various projects is ponderous but at least I haven’t burned out.

I’ve been playing Cultist Simulator again, and combined with Sunless Skies I’m feeling a foolish urge to try to make something story-driven. I don’t think I’d actually be able to make anything sensible story-wise, though.

Progress post #119: INFINITY

Streamed again! I’ve been adding/fixing various things in Baba for consistency and to prepare for the eventual level editor. Today I polished a system that displays the above visual effect if the player would create a loop the game can’t resolve.

I also started working on the dialogue system of ESA2. That went surprisingly smoothly, I’m glad. I’ll try to go for a less rigid speech bubble -type design this time.

Weekly progress post #118: Rise from the ashes

It’s real! I promise!! Now that Baba is out, keeping a weekly schedule could technically be easier(…?)

I’ve streamed ESA 2 development a couple times again and progress has actually been fairly good! Still in the early stages of the… remake? Let’s call it a remake. But the features I’ve added have mostly felt pretty nice.

Last night I worked on the triple shot!

Weekly progress post #102: Basics

I streamed some yesterday (a week late), and while I didn’t get to check that many boxes from the to-do-list, good progress was done anyway. Loading, placing and saving objects works again in the level editor, I added some water effects (still barebones) and implemented the basics of enemy interaction. I also made some endgame stuff for Baba.

News! And stuff! Part 1

UGhghg, even when disregarding the sloppy weekly progress updates, I’ve been extremely bad at keeping this blog up to date with things I’ve been doing! Let’s try to fix that! Here’re some things I’ve made during the past several months:

I made a game for Ludum Dare 41! It’s called Super Metabolism Bros, and it’s a kind of a mix of Dwarf Fortress -like real-time strategy with autonomous agents and platforming. The idea ended up being very rough and buggy, but it was a fun little thing and part of my long-enduring fascination with autonomous agents in games and pathfinding. FrankieSmileShow played the game on-stream and it was a fun time. I had a lot more plans (bacteria, at least) but didn’t have time for those.

– I had my 2-week Summer holiday a week ago, and during it I toyed around with shaders to create this fake 3D effect. It’s very satisfying to create this kind of stuff, although whether it’ll become anything or not will have to be seen. It’d be neat to make a cardgame or a boardgame with this style! (Alexis Kennedy’s Cultist Simulator definitely inspired me a lot)

Stumblehill is done! It was featured as a part of Humble Bundle’s Monthly Bundle for July. There were some bugs at launch but they should be gone now, although I do plan to update the game a bit more before I call it fully finished. All in all, the project was fun and while I left things very much too late, the result turned out to be fairly neat. This also helped me a lot to get a feel for digital painting, although digital animation is something that feels way beyond me. Massive thanks to Anna Magdalino for the audio and Lucy Green for the writing!

– After a lengthy break, I’ve returned to work on ESA 2! However, because of various reasons I’ve decided to re-do the game from nearly scratch. I’m going to reuse assets where I can, but it’s still a bunch of work. Sorry about that! But I think the game will benefit from rethought. I’m currently setting up the editor and basics of the engine, but it shouldn’t be too long until I’ll be able to get to work on the actual map again.

– Also, I’ve finally updated ESA 1! Some bugs have been fixed, you can now skip the end credits if you’ve seen them already, and there have been some optimizations to the level loading times that should help especially older computers to handle the game. Many of these little changes have been made with speedrunners in mind.

Baba Is You progresses onwards, somewhat slower now but nevertheless. I think I’ll do a separate post of interesting Baba gifs and whatnot in the future, but not mentioning it in this general update would be odd. On the video you can heard some tracks I’ve composed for the game.

I’ll also be participating in the No More Sweden game jam again this year. It’ll be held in the beginning of August in Malmö, Sweden. It’ll be good to meet some friends and maybe make some jam games. :)

Weekly progress post #101: Good progress

Today more work was done on ESA 2’s new editor; layers are now back in along with copying multiple tiles. A new feature is being able to select multiple tiles in the tileset and placing them simultaneously; this’ll make it easier to create multi-tile structures. I also added support for animated tiles and a couple other things. Nothing massively flashy but still, good progress. Hopefully next time I’ll get to work on the gameplay side of things.

As for Baba, I tidied the intro screen up some, adding a neat little background effect and moving some text around to make things nicer and more consistent. Again, pretty small things in themselves, but the effect of having the game look nicer is very noticeable (to me!)

In other news, I talked about Baba Is You at the Jam Jam in Sappee, Finland yesterday. Good fun. My IGF prize things also arrived, I’ll try to post a picture if I remember. Also also, my Summer holidays started! This is very much welcome.