Hempuli's blog

I’ll be away for a bit over a week due to holiday-ish reasons. Sorry about that!

Alright, so ESA has been very close to being completed for a while now. However, these last things have taken quite a bit more time than I assumed, mostly due to not feeling inspired to go that extra mile. Since I’m have a bit more patience than I did some years ago, this lack of inspiration doesn’t mean that I’d abandon the game now, but it means things might take a bit longer still. Another reason the game wont be finished as soon as I’d like is that the soundwork isn’t finished; the composer has had an extremely busy Spring and thus has been able to get cracking on the audio only fairly recently. This is totally understandable and I don’t mind it, but it means that the game will probably be finished content-wise before the audio is ready.

So, what’s left to be done? Let’s list:

• Two phases for the final boss. The second phase has been giving me a lot of trouble because the concept I originally had wasn’t really very fun to play against. I’m still not quite sure where to go with the second phase, but fortunately the rest of the fight I have pretty much designed already.
• A mini-miniboss in the final area. I had a really cool idea for a small miniboss-ish battle right before the final one, to increase the difficulty of the final area but also to give the ending more weight, as it were. I have the fight planned but figuring out an interesting design for the boss took some time.
• The station bestiary. I’m regretting adding this somewhat, because implementing it will be really boring, but then again the concept is way too great not to use! I always loved that enemy list thing in the end of Super Mario World and want to make something slightly similar here. This’ll be the very last thing I’ll work on.
• As mentioned, the audio. I’ve implemented the sound system in terms of game code already, so I’ll just have to add in sound effects and music as they’re finished.
• A larger secret thing. The secret game area is done for good, but there’s a part of it that requires some hardcoded cutscenery and such. This shouldn’t be too hard, I’m just lazy.

I’m going to announce a release date as soon as I feel confident enough to decide on one! Sorry about making empty promises in the past (the official trailer still says I might finish the game in 2012, sigh). I’m not really used to hyping up a game-in-development so stuff like deadlines are my bane!

The voting ended last sunday, but I’ve forgotten to post the results! I think the game might’ve fared better had I had more time to test other people’s games, but still, I’m pretty happy! The results are:

89th overall

27th in Innovation
29th in Humor
86th in Fun
172th in Graphics
(Placing in the rest of the categories is over 200, so I wont paste them here!)

Considering that there were 2497 entries overall, being in the top 100 in three categories isn’t too bad, I’d say! :) I’m really amazed that so many rated every single game, that must have taken a lot of time even if they gave every entry just the barest of a glance before rating…

Link to the game

As mentioned below, I updated Masjin to add a link to the server hosting tool to the game. Also there were some incompatible pieces of code so I fixed those (hopefully all of them). I’ve tested the server hoster and it should work alright!
1. Host a server on port 6121 (or whichever port you want, that’s the default)
2. Players set the string ‘server’ in server.txt to your IP, and ‘port’ to 6121 (or whichever you chose)
3. Port forwarding might be required but I literally don’t know how that works
4. Start up a game!

GET THE NEW VERSION

GET THE SERVER TOOL

This has taken way too long (and I’m unsure if it even works), but I quickly created a tool for hosting Masjin servers. My computer can’t host things so I’ve been unable to properly test it but please report me any experiences! :)

GET IT HERE!

 
 
Edit: I also updated the Masjin client so that the server hosting tool can be downloaded directly from the client. I really hope this works!

Also a GIF of ESA: