Archive for June 2010
That'd take quite a few tribes!
I’m attempting to assign the areas on the world map for different ‘tribes’ (currently identified just by ID). I guess the assigner shouldn’t be as sensitive… (Each coloured area is supposed to be a region).
EDIT: Ok, got it to work better (even though it may not look like that). Next I have to get some rules onto what races can appear and where. When I tried random assigning, about 60% of the world belonged to the undead!
Better now!
The name generator sucks. SUCKS.
Creating identifying stuff for the cities has proved to be harder than I thought; there a couple weird things here and there that affect annoyingly the results. Also the world generation seems to take about 14-16 seconds now, and that’s not good enough. I have to look into this code carefully…
…However, everything is going quite much fine with this project. After the cities are in place, I think I’ll start working on the races that inhabit the world. I wonder if I should use the stupid old fantasy clichés or create my own creatures?
More stuff!
The deciduous forest is a bit hard to see in the first island, but it's there!
I’m having some real fun working on this! Now that i’ve added rainfall, the islands generation takes about 14 seconds, so I have to work on some performance next. After that, we’ll get cities with themes!
I seem to have a tendency to say ‘islands’ instead of ‘island’.
Hoo boy, doing this was fun. Next I shall delve deeper to the cities, and give them names and ‘types’!
There's a nice highway in the middle. And counting this took a minute!
I added support for different temperatures, which are counted using another ‘heightmap’. It’ll need some serious tweaking, but I quite like the looks already!
A bit confusing!
A bit colder areas!
I’ve been goofing around with procedural generation. I thought it’d be cool to create a generator that’d generate a full world map, finished with biotopes, cities and roads/rivers. After banging my head a bit, I finally managed to make the heightmapping create at least somewhat interesting landscapes. Next I shall get to the different environments. These shall be decided by moisture and temperature, along with the height.
Behold, it's a heightmap!
First attempt with ugly colours.
Getting there! I quite like those lagoon-like structures.
Looks a bit more natural, I guess.
Testing roads a bit. Works great!
This is a fun thing to play with!
AAWWW YEAH! It’s out. And it’s my birthday!
Anyway, here’s my birthday present to anyone who reads this blog! I’ll just copy the description from other places, too lazy to write everything again! So here it comes:
Ok, so this is the demo of Beyond the Black Hole, a puzzle-platformer I’ve been working on for about half a year now with Multimedia Fusion 2. It’s by far my biggest project, and it’ll sure take a year or so still to finish it. This thing is a sequel to FIG, my earlier ‘big’ game, though there are certain big differences, the controlling system being the biggest.
This demo features 6 of the game’s 35 levels, all chosen from the finished 12 and stuffed to one planet. There’s also the tutorial level on top of that. I’ll stop here and let the readme speak a bit:
“In each level, your objective is to collect all the yellow stars (there’s usually only one, and none should be hidden from view) and reach the exit. Reaching the stars and overall solving the levels requires using the main character to carry things around, and the mouse to interact with other things. Most levels require both methods of interaction. In every level, there’s also a hidden blue star, which requires either extra skill or just common curiousness to be found. Collecting all the blue stars also results in a bonus, though not in this demo!
NOTE! You can adjust volume from the settings.txt!
** CONTROLS **
A & D = move left & right
W = jump
Space = pick up / put down
Left mouse button = throw when aiming, interact, confirm
Right mouse button = aim when carrying an item, return to planet menu
ESC = quit level/game
Enter = restart level
** CREDITS **
Full credits shall be in the finished game!
Idea, design, graphics & programming: Arvi Teikari
Musics: Johan Hargne
Main tester: Looki
Support and sound editing: Nicklas Nygren”
There were other people that should be mentioned there, I’ll list them here later.
I’ve had a very cool day, finishing up level 12 (it’s now finished!) and working on the other parts of the game, such as the menu, the splash screen (or whatever the screen where I say stuff like “Arvi Teikari Presents” is called) and the credits screen. My idea for the credits screen is rather strange: I’m going to contact as many of the testers and other participants as possible, and then portray them as their creature of choice on the credits island, which’ll play like your average level. Hovering your mouse over the creatures would reveal the name and purpose of the ‘creature’. I also think that I am perhaps able to finish level 13 too before the release of the demo, but we’ll see how long I’ll keep this creative mood.
Tutorial pic:
Work on BtBH continues steadily. In fact, it’s coming together very nicely! Level 12 will be soon finished, and I’ve also created the tutorial and a credit page. I’ve also fleshed out the main menu, to make it more understandable. The demo shall be out 18th of june, which happens to be my birthday. I’ll have plenty of time to finish things up before that!