tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15303326800384517962024-03-21T18:54:54.687-07:00MageLore Development BlogPodestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-14214425777060542402011-12-03T05:27:00.000-08:002011-12-03T05:28:50.970-08:00Madpuppet.net is upJust a quick blog to mention that MaDPuPPeT.net is up and running.<br />
Future Magelore posts will be moved to that site and this blogspot will be retired..<br />
Big changed coming up for magelore - I'm switching to what I think will be a more interesting magic system.<br />
That's all for here.<br />
See you at <a href="http://www.madpuppet.net/">www.madpuppet.net</a>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-12743720076424135562011-06-22T21:25:00.000-07:002011-06-22T21:25:36.113-07:00Job crunch on again...Very ironic that my last post was Job Crunch Ended, since I've now inflicted another crunch on myself. The codebase I was thrust into at my current job was somewhat horrendous so I'm writing a new opengl engine for it from scratch (actually bootstrapping off my Magelore engine though pretty much all will be replaced by the end of it).<br />
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This means, alas, Magelore progress has slowed to a crawl again. I hope this doesn't become my Duke Nukem Forever - though amazing that has been released before Magelore. My nephew is in the game, but he'll be all grown up by the time the game is released - I may have to take a second photo of him and he can appear again as an older sibling :)<br />
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At the moment I'm deep inside writing a new asset pipeline. I'm really happy with it - all auto-refreshing, super simple, clean and tight code. Maybe I'll bring some of it back to Magelore but there's really no point since Magelore will always be 2d sprites, whereas the engine I am writing is very much targetting 3d models and shader pipelines.<br />
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I've taken the adds off this site also. I think I can afford the 3c per year they are raking in, and it gives people better access to the archives now.<br />
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Till later.. catch me on Twitter @podesta1971Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-23023275931261048142011-06-09T19:20:00.000-07:002011-06-09T19:20:16.516-07:00Day Job crunch is overI think my main<b> </b>day job (read paid job) crunch is mostly over, so hopefully I'll get some more Magelore done. I've still managed to squeeze in a few polish bits and pieces and bug fixes over the last couple of weeks.<br />
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I've restructured the starting area so you get access to the shop earlier and before the "please buy the full version" blocker is reached. I've also added 3 secret areas now to the first dungeon. I think the secret areas work quite well (one requires a key found in a crate in the dungeon), so I'll definitely be putting in lost of secret areas around the place. One mechanic I really want to use is passworded areas, where you need to gather clues from people and collectables in order to get through to the secret area. At the moment the reward is generally gold, but I'll probably add some cool enchants that can only be learnt from items hidden in secret areas.<br />
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Story wise, I'm stuck again - which means I spend a lot of time polishing instead of getting the content going again. While its great that the game will be so polished, I really need to force myself to continue the story and get the game released. There's plenty of extra (non-critical) polish I can do after release.<br />
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Bugs - had to add more infrustructure in for tracking down some annoying load/save game bugs. Looks pretty stable in game now but may map editor is still generating bad IDs occasionally and I haven't tracked down what the repro is for that.. Should be easy to fix if I can work out "when" it is happening.<br />
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UI - did some more polish to the UI, especially the keyboard entering. The numbers have particle effects behind them now and rise/fall in a more interesting way. Much happier with it.<br />
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Grues - finally, after some Twitter talks with my friend MadGarden - author of the latest Sword of Fargoal - I've added some Grues. These are the mystical creatures from Zork which appear and kill you if you try moving in the dark. I think it works quite well in Magelore - you always have a light spell so no reason to go walking about in pitch darkness. I'll close with some Grue screenshot goodness.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivybrBWm-HHUYirfqsUXC_nCgvrVA_0qOdFCGak7jlaoj88U3Pp_nLjX86S59vhgrgRAklmSew6uggbMdZw15oJ0sRU5Wf6qWp3pYGuvDCj8ztn9H4vlXMXSQaDzPftuJIzCe_Cr4v4zc/s1600/MageLore+2011-06-10+12-19-25-91.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivybrBWm-HHUYirfqsUXC_nCgvrVA_0qOdFCGak7jlaoj88U3Pp_nLjX86S59vhgrgRAklmSew6uggbMdZw15oJ0sRU5Wf6qWp3pYGuvDCj8ztn9H4vlXMXSQaDzPftuJIzCe_Cr4v4zc/s320/MageLore+2011-06-10+12-19-25-91.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't go walking in the dark or the grues will eat you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-90150154732621350192011-05-28T06:00:00.000-07:002011-05-28T06:00:01.902-07:00Weekly UpdateI'm going to try and do a quick update at least once a week to help keep momentum going on the project.<br />
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Again I'm in some crunch time on my day job - which currently involves working on a distributed F15/F18 simulator. Still, I'm managing to sneak in a few hours a few nights a week.<br />
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Right now I'm trying to remove a couple of rare bugs... I recently restructured all the Spawners so I could set spawner parameters per map, where previously you could just reference a spawner type by name and had to have it setup in a global definition file. This has created some issues with invisible spawners blocking your path.<br />
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The load/save of levels is the biggest thorn in my side. It's quite volatile to changes to any systems, and with the game content getting longer, I really don't want to have to start from scratch each time to test things. Generally its pretty stable at the moment, but I do have at least one rare bug to track down. So I'm adding some new debug logs to track it what caused it next time it happens.<br />
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Content wise, I've finished all the tutorial and starter missions and have my first quest set in the second city. I've been stuck at this point for a few weeks now, and found myself concentrating on polish and features which is always easier than adding quest content.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-44671506695283117212011-05-23T09:04:00.000-07:002011-05-23T09:04:19.733-07:00Updating again...Its been a while since I've update the blog. Work on MageLore really slowed down at the start of the year but I've gotten back into it in the last couple of months and made some real progress. So I thought it was about time to update the blog and start showing off some of the improvements.<br />
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Firstly, you can now be a male or a female. I thought this simple choice would open up the demographics a bit. The female character is the first composite human picture in the game, made from two attractive female celebrities, though I'd be impressed if anyone can guess who they are.<br />
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I've been reworking the upgrading system to try and make it more palatable to a broader audience, but without losing the ability to customise your characters. Instead of upgrading 5 stat points per level, you now get to choose a single stat to upgrade from a drop-down screen that will appear. To compensate for this simplicity, there are now 5 mage classes that you pick on creating a character. Each class has some specific benefits that are intended to influence the play style. While it is no World Of Warcraft, it seems to be working pretty well in my playtests so far.<br />
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The virtual joypad has been replaced by a swipe interface. Based off the feel of Sword of Fargoal, you can now swipe in 8 directions to move around. A swipe direction is maintained by not removing your finger after the swipe. In the video I've enabled a debug mode that shows how the virtual joystick tracking works.<br />
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The HUD has moved to the top left of the screen and shows your level, gold and mana/hitpoints/xp. Pressing the player level square takes you to the inventory screen where you can view stats, learn spells, or inspect your inventory and missions.<br />
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There is now a quest helper which will track a single quest on screen showing where to go next to complete the current task. For kill tasks, this will take you to the area where the enemies spawn. Having this prevents you from ever wondering around aimlessly and lost, especially if you find yourself on the main map but forget what you should be doing next. It also removes some of the "find the objective" gameplay, so I've had to compensate in other areas, like having hidden rooms and treasure to discover.<br />
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The Time of Day counter is now a circular motion. This makes it much larger and seems to work marginally better though I'm not 100% happy with it yet.<br />
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I've removed the night/day/war/peace complexity from the enchantment slots. All slots are simple active slots now. The old system was a little to abstract and detached from the gameplay to work. So again, its been simplified to reach a broader audience. To compensate for the loss of depth, each slot can now be collecting magical essence from enemies and placing it on the slot. Upgrading a slot increases the strength of the enchantment for that slot, so the player still has to choose which enchantments to put in the stronger slots.<br />
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There are some other changes but its late so I'll end up here and continue again in a week or two.<br />
The video today goes from character creation to near the end of the tutorial mission.<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jgrL1eX-spU?hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jgrL1eX-spU?hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-34012263476133194232011-01-30T15:52:00.000-08:002011-01-30T15:52:36.450-08:00New blog on up on AltDevBlogADayJust a quick mention that I've posted my first blog on AltDevBlogADay. It looks like the blogs on that site will be focussed more on the technical aspects of Magelore such as how the engine is formed, and how I solve particular coding problems in Magelore or in general.<br />
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So I will continue to blog about the month to month progress of Magelore to this site.<br />
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I'm flat out with work at the moment - both my day job and Magelore, so I won't post a full blog now. I have made a few graphical improvements to Magelore's front end. I've added a data driven particle system so I can hopefully add nicer effects for magic and much quicker than before. I've also tweaked the load/save system so all levels will now be persistent, but I can still and and remove objects during title updates, so that was fairly important to me.<br />
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I'll definitely try and get a new blog out over the next week with pictures and video.<br />
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Till then, cao cao cao.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-81307274905240995242011-01-10T23:37:00.000-08:002011-01-10T23:37:00.022-08:00AltDevBlogADayJust a very quick update to mention that I have signed onto altDevBlogADay.com<br />
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so future magelore blogs can hopefully be seen here to and more frequently.<br />
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I'm not really sure what I'll blog about, but I expect Magelore will get a fair mention and any progress I make on Magelore will appear in a blog there for sure, hopefully with lots of lovely videos of progress.<br />
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I'm undecided if I should continue to post here also. We'll see how things work out.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-88871938137833734312010-12-31T06:51:00.000-08:002010-12-31T06:51:59.160-08:00New Year UpdateAnd so 2010 slips away. The original plan to have magelore as a Xmas 2010 game has been buried for many months now. Trying to keep enough cash flow to keep afloat has been slowing down progress to a crawl. Seems I can't stay up to 2am every night of the week - not sure why I'm so tired lately. Gotta sort that out - I need those hours.<div><br />
</div><div>Happy New Year</div><div><br />
</div><div>To celebrate new year, I've been watching predator while making notes on magelore quests. Yes, I am a part animal - don't try to keep up with me, I'd just wear you out. Anyway, it appears that I will really need some dynamically generated dungeons to provide enough monsters to grind on. This is quite a deviation from plan - I'm not sure how much extra content I need to keep the dungeons interesting. A few side quests like - go rescue little jimmy from the deep dark cave will add a lot of gameplay and grinding for not a lot of work. Ive never written a dynamic dungeon generator but the algorithms look pretty straight forward. I should be able to just give a list of monsters and herbs that I want in the dungeon and some prize for reaching the bottom and how many levels there are. I'll need to jot down some more design notes - how to the players go up and down. What happens if you die in a dungeon. What happens if you exit and immediately re-enter - will it just be an exploit of infinite monsters to grind on?</div><div><br />
</div><div>The original plan was to just populate the world with monster areas and you can fight them on the mainland. I'll keep looking into making that work. Currently you go up to a monster spawner and just wait and kill them as they come out - not really good. Could randomise the spawns - so they never spawn in front of you. Just hang around an area for a while and you will find them, but never know where they are coming from. I guess I'll try this first. I think some dungeons would add a lot anyway, if I can chuck them in without too much effort.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Am I the most indecisive person in the world? I think I"ve changed my mind twice during the length of this blog. Oh well. Keep writing stuff down and implementing and testing. It's pretty obvious when something is working and when its not working. At the moment all I know for sure is that the spawning needs more work. Perhaps I've made the map layout too dense in an attempt to keep it from looking too sparse. Will need to experiment with that too.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I've got about 7 NPCs now. That's most of my family now and good friend from work and his wife. Need a few old wise men, and a couple more miscellaneous and that should be enough for the first release. </div><div><br />
</div><div>I did some art revamping to the gui. Added some texturing to the inventory screen and the magic sidebar. Looks a truckload better. I think the health/mana status bar is a bit small, and there needs to be a bit more fanfare when you get XP from monsters to give you a good feeling of achievement. I really wanna get some more content in first though - I got the tutorial mission in a couple of months ago and have made no progress on adding other missions. I'm fairly optimistic that once I get the next mission in place, it will build a lot of momentum.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Till later... party on dudes.</div><div><br />
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</div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-15086560130704752632010-11-11T04:43:00.000-08:002010-11-11T04:51:36.203-08:00Much ado about nothingIt's been hectic hear but not in a good way. The company I have been with for 10+ years just folded, and I've been frantically looking for new work. I don't have the confidence to go full time on iPhone work since the last 3 wretched games apps only made a few grand each. I envy all the college aged developers - if there was something like the app-store around when I was living at home, doing university, it would have been glorious. Now we old farts with families need to do this as a very part-time hobby.<br />
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But I digress... so the company went down due to lots of staff with no paid projects sapping all the cash. I stayed with them with my team for another week hoping the current paying project could be salvaged but unfortunately the publishers didn't want to play ball with starting up a new company to finish the project so it was resume time for me. I quickly got a new job with another company in Brisbane but they got their funding cut and revoked a bunch of job offers a few days later so it was back to square one again.<br />
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Nearly a month later and I've now got a contract working on a war simulation project which should be a lot of fun and with an added bonus of being able to work from home. A substantial pay cut, but now that I'm contracting and working from home I should make back some of the money in savings from travel and taxation. I'm just registering my new business name now - Mad Muppet - which I hope to release Magelore under sometime early next year.<br />
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As for Magelore, while I've been mostly demotivated by the whole company-going-down affair, I have managed to get a small amount down. I've added a shop interface which uses the same universal inventory screen that everything else uses. Not the prettiest thing in the world but functional, flexible, consistent and done.<br />
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I've also done a small revamp to the hitpoints and play hud as seen in this shot.. In the top left you can see the player hud. Not sure if it is too small yet - will take some playtesting on the device. Should be trivial to enlarge if it necessary. The enemies now just show their hitpoints and level. The level is important since I use a WoW style adjustment feature to make sure it is very hard to kill enemies above your level, regardless of how you have specced and equipped. It will still be important for me to try and balance the game so an equal level monster is comparable in power, but the level adjustment trick just covers my ass to make sure no-one can just breeze few the game after finding some exploit with the enchantments.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2oCrmpI-DJOO7W_MIVBhJh7ZQ2vTt6PO_D1BiNARcQLQ7oFVTczYTzqqfTZlaxn4xMq_9if2EWuyhQcPLn4833xavDGzkn8tutl0zu_VcJrl3atOAXD0lMY4f-k5X2eMOQYAmcGa4jQM/s1600/MageLore+2010-11-11+22-34-26-45.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2oCrmpI-DJOO7W_MIVBhJh7ZQ2vTt6PO_D1BiNARcQLQ7oFVTczYTzqqfTZlaxn4xMq_9if2EWuyhQcPLn4833xavDGzkn8tutl0zu_VcJrl3atOAXD0lMY4f-k5X2eMOQYAmcGa4jQM/s320/MageLore+2010-11-11+22-34-26-45.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Now I've hit a point in the project that has bogged me down a bit - filling out the storyline and quests. I've decided to start setting myself numeric goals - like number of spells needed to release the game, number of quests needed per level, etc. Having defined numeric targets will give me a definitely marker to aim at, as well as a feeling of developmental pace. Firstly, there will be just 20 character levels in the game. I think that should be sufficient for a $1 iPhone game - I don't want the game to be too long that people don't complete it. I'd rather make a smaller $1 game and then release episodes or sequels. This is not because I am stingy - I actually think people would prefer to be able to finish the content and then going onto the next part at their leisure rather than get some 15hr epic that 90% of the public get tired of after a few hours. The trick should be to have nicely finished off storylines, but with some untied plotlines that can be expanded into sequels.<br />
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So next on my list is to come up with 20 unique spells and up to 3 levels of each spell. I think that should be more than enough variety for a game of this scope. I know the top level spell will be some sort of vulnerability spell that will require quest-based ingredients to learn and will be needed to kill the final boss. Now I just need to fill in the content to cover from the end of the tutorial to the end boss :)<br />
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Ok, enough for now. Back to filling out my ABN forms.<br />
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p.s. Just saw this brilliant line from John Carmac on iphone games.<br />
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<h3 class="UIIntentionalStory_Message" data-ft="{"type":"msg"}" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="UIStory_Message">"The Escalation programmers...codebase is all STL this, boost that, fill-up-the-property list, dispatch the event, and delegate that.<br />
I had been harboring some suspicions that our big codebases might benefit from the application of some more of the various “modern” C++ design patterns, despite seeing o<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">ther large game codebases suffer under them. I have since recanted that suspicion."</span></span></h3><div><span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="UIStory_Message"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">I've been harboring the same suspicions since I've been something of a dinosaur and completely avoided boost, and only recently embraced STL though the assembly bloat it generates still irks me. Nice to see someone like John Carmac back up my exact internal dialogue. Now I don't need to feel so guilty at not liking the overly complex template meta-programming that seems to be the norm now... Would love to see what his current large-project codebases look like.. Apparently he's still been using C till quite recently.</span></span></div><div><br />
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</span></span></div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-77108904229927085032010-10-11T06:21:00.000-07:002010-10-11T06:21:57.198-07:00Back in the HelmI've been really demotivated to work on Magelore lately, but I think the worst of it is past now. I had a bad cold and cough for about 3 weeks - painful. I still have remnants of the cough but the cold is gone. Work has been very taxing - I'm working on an xbox/ps3 downloadable arcade title and the timeframe and code team is quite small. However, the workload is very creative and the game looks like it will be a really good title so I've been happy to put in lots of hours. Whenever I'm being creative at work, its takes from my drive to be creative in my home projects - I think I have a fixed per-day creativity budget.<br />
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I jumped onto Twitter today and have been tweeting with the creators of Rogue Touch and Sword of Fargoal on iPhone and its been a great motivator for me. They're both doing very well - Rogue Touch is on sale and jumped into the top 25 list for RPGs which is awesome. So I'm back into MageLore again. I've reworked the main menu now to be a simple 3 slot profile creation screen. You can delete a profile by dragging the delete icon from across the profile - I'm hoping this is enough to stop any accidental deletion. However, my 3 yr old has been happily deleting saved games from all my ipad apps and this technique wouldn't really stop him. I think its nicer than a "Do you want to delete Y/N" requester though.<br />
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I also pop up my own keyboard layer now. I spent a few hours playing with the UIKit keyboard overlay but it seems to be heavily biased towards automatically coming up when you use the appropriate UIKit control - which is not much use for me since all my UI is custom OpenGL code.<br />
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Anyway, feels like a proper game flow now - create a character, rename him, watch the intro video, and play, or select an existing profile and jump straight into the game.<br />
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I think things will move fast once I start adding some quests again. I've not nutted out my overall story yet. Maybe I should take some notes on the train to/from work - though I'm usually trying to catch up on sleep on my train rides...<br />
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Anyway, stuff is happening - so I just need to keep up motivation and stay in the saddle.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-28377838725325215822010-09-23T05:44:00.000-07:002010-09-23T05:44:24.089-07:00Tutorial mission doneThe distance between blogs seems to be slowly creeping up. Be assured I'm still working hard on the game, but not a lot of visual candy to show off. I've finished the tutorial mission in Magenta. It teaches the player how to fight, learn spells, gather herbs and do enchantments. It shows off some conversation choices and starts the main quest thread. I've decided going for a monkey-island comic style, partially because its a very popular game that I've enjoyed myself, and partially because my attempts at serious fantasy literature sucked badly.<div><br />
</div><div>On the technical front, I've implemented the player load/save system now. I'm going to go with an auto-save whenever possible but avoid saving during conversations and specific points that might make it difficult to provide updates without breaking someones profile, like during spell casting or conversations.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Next on my list is to add Jesters (what would Ultima have been without all the pointless Jesters in the towns) and general mobile NPCs in the main cities, and then I need the shops in finally so you've got something to spend your random drops on if they aren't needed for spell/enchantment recipes.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I just updated my iPhone4 to have GameCenter now and I'm very keen to start supporting it. At the very least, a health list of achievements would be easy to add. I'd still like to add minigames to all the cities but I think this will have to come after initial release or I'll never get this thing on the shop. Christmas is already looking pretty doubtful unless I cut a lot of corners with the quest content and I don't want to risk bad reviews from releasing the game when its not ready...</div><div><br />
</div><div>I'm still working hard at my day job but we seem to have gotten the schedule under control now - at least as far as code goes, so hopefully I'll have more time for Magelore work now. I haven't added any new art in, but here's a shot of me fighting some caged rats in the tutorial mission. A star now appears on the inventory icon whenever there are stat points to spend, or mission details have changed, so the player should never get lost as to what to do next</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDnrDyQPEmYTsNwO9jSgL2A_ISs0sqWqA4ZQU1BakS9FpCXksCoTJu8IwRAF0ShGnskR6Twzu3ZTZtBpi15wTIh0LIDTmVpFueMkHzfH9WKhloMPQ9LPBkNYz1gwGyuFSEmLSJMheAwCk/s1600/MageLore+2010-09-23+22-41-03-95.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDnrDyQPEmYTsNwO9jSgL2A_ISs0sqWqA4ZQU1BakS9FpCXksCoTJu8IwRAF0ShGnskR6Twzu3ZTZtBpi15wTIh0LIDTmVpFueMkHzfH9WKhloMPQ9LPBkNYz1gwGyuFSEmLSJMheAwCk/s320/MageLore+2010-09-23+22-41-03-95.png" /></a></div><div><br />
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</div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-36066106423537262062010-09-13T09:08:00.000-07:002010-09-13T09:08:41.470-07:00First town map doneMy first town map is finally done. Magenta. This is where you will start out in the world and where a short tutorial mission will take place. I had to add a few new tiles to populate it but I think its got sufficient variety now. I'm slowly working through the tutorial mission now. The first missions take longer to write as I have to add new script support as I need it. I've added an OnCreate script so I can conditionally lock doors and unlock them later through conversations. It should be easy enough to conditionally unlock them also, say if you need a specific key or item. The tutorial missions locks you in a small room with the main female protagonist of the game - mina. She starts as your tutor but will turn up throughout the game at points in the storyline. As you complete her tutorial quests, she unlocks doors for you and eventually you'll be free to roam the world looking for quests.<br />
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That's all for now. My day job is still eating into magelore hours. The chances of releasing this thing by christmas are looking pretty slim unless content starts speeding up really quickly, and I still don't have any shops which will take a little while to get right.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-14494748737396418752010-09-08T06:24:00.000-07:002010-09-08T06:24:37.636-07:00Spring UpdateStart of spring and everyone is sick. Terrible stomach cramps and flew is sweeping my home and workplace. I got it a few days ago but not too severely and am just recovering now. On top of that, I've been crunching a few days a week on my daytime work, which has been eating away my Magelore development time.<br />
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So I thought I better update that things are still moving but very slowly. I keep thinking I've finally done with tech and can concentrate on content and then something comes up. Most recently, I've been filling out the world map. Its 256x256 which didn't seem like a lot, but hand painting 65000 tiles is taking longer than expected. I originally was using a "clever" trick to save on alpha overdraw, but it meant that I was restricted as to what trees I could put on what terrain. I've had to drop the trick so that I am now have a more conventional overlay/underlay terrain system. I've also added a mountain edging pass to my existing edging system. This means I can just paint any terrain and put any mountains or trees over the top and it will clean it up for me later.<br />
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Since there has been no new art released for a while I thought I'd drop out a couple of screen shots. Nothing too exciting, just shows some of the new muddy areas and the street lightings at night. I'll need to pull in some large landmarks that will help people identify exactly where in the world they are as the roads and trees can look a bit similar.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFt3AQ6d7ldJiAd0T0sZW6uweg6Ek2OYvLXFRLNij7hde-75knLSTLccBF5PTB1vAz1FKfOLFl5IXrT7SaE_CaKJJy4zCKmPg_gXrlPrIQ3jCtMX-NIUYZ-sqW8OgvQ4bOIcgNs9vmepY/s1600/MageLore+2010-09-08+23-15-01-54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFt3AQ6d7ldJiAd0T0sZW6uweg6Ek2OYvLXFRLNij7hde-75knLSTLccBF5PTB1vAz1FKfOLFl5IXrT7SaE_CaKJJy4zCKmPg_gXrlPrIQ3jCtMX-NIUYZ-sqW8OgvQ4bOIcgNs9vmepY/s320/MageLore+2010-09-08+23-15-01-54.png" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBVcHKM7gmClgs25nHe41sokwMtBBRnQMWrZy6RM3iWrmNK1ZzgOBpU09xb-xGruhqloPtWSap84Gsx86IAwclX96K0G12QBr7ep2XnNtPhwM7S2TlJmk2CLHxxp005YZr1vvfuIm9OCo/s1600/MageLore+2010-09-08+23-17-24-48.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBVcHKM7gmClgs25nHe41sokwMtBBRnQMWrZy6RM3iWrmNK1ZzgOBpU09xb-xGruhqloPtWSap84Gsx86IAwclX96K0G12QBr7ep2XnNtPhwM7S2TlJmk2CLHxxp005YZr1vvfuIm9OCo/s320/MageLore+2010-09-08+23-17-24-48.png" /></a></div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-37700656643647314212010-08-26T08:07:00.000-07:002010-08-26T08:07:47.337-07:00Lots of optimisation work - no content progressJust a quick blog tonight..<br />
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I've had to crunch hard at work on a new project. Can't mention what it is because of the usual NDA's announced project bla bla bla.... Unfortunately means I haven't made much progress on Magelore content. I have managed to spend a couple of nights optimising it and fixing some memory issues... Reduced the memory usage on iphone 3g frame 17meg down to 7meg by changing the packing algorithm of my sprites. Also found my texture pipeline was not freeing up intermediate memory it used to build the open gl textures.<br />
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Also rebuilt the project from scratch because something in it was causing issues with the 3g version. In the process, I now have access to open gl 2.0 for ipad or iphone 4 if want to take advantage of shaders, though not sure what I'd do with them - the focus is really on getting maps and quests in now.<br />
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Looks like I'm going to have to cut some of the side features if I want to make a christmas release - things like the town minigames might have to come after the initial release.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-52660382221826078702010-08-17T05:21:00.000-07:002010-08-17T05:21:32.182-07:00Starcraft II completed - back to workJust a quick blog to say I've been temporarily delayed by StarCraft II but I've completed the campaign missions now and can start getting back into MageLore development.<br />
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I've been developing on iPad for a while now and went back to my old 3g phone and noticed the framerate has degraded a lot. Not sure when this happened :( I think it was running ok after upgrading to OS4 but its pretty unacceptable now... I'll have to trim the code back and see if I can spot what is taking all the time. I don't have that many poly's or overdraw so there's really no reason for it to run less than 30fps on an old ipod touch or 3g phone.<br />
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On a brighter night, I got and iPhone4 and Venger runs like a dream, even in 3d stereoscopic mode. Need to try and track down my 3d glasses again and have a go. If you haven't played it, there's links to all our games at <a href="http://www.wretchedgames.com/">http://www.wretchedgames.com/</a> They all have free demos you can try.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-22164547788793740402010-08-11T04:17:00.000-07:002010-08-11T05:23:00.017-07:00Tile edging technologyI spent a night working on the world map and soon realized it was far to slow to manually placing down the edging tiles for the paths and oceans. Also, having to draw all the edge pieces takes ages and precious tile slots. So I went to ground for a couple of days and developed an automatically edging layer. I can now just have a single tile for each terrain type and the sys will add the appropriate edge tiles around the edge. The result is pretty good, though its a simple overlay system and has the limitation that everything must edge with the default grasss terrain. I'm pretty confident this won't be a major limitation.<br />
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</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZlasjxshVaoWYmPRQAixU_DKshcdtduHEpAPRCyj_f75ksBvjszDHYod26IhtYqnjYZFHIa-fvDWqmlxOnmtHzT7_k5GWprsKDEEOI27FjCg9y3vPYsUwcNQXFbSebnZZ5XTuPDm3lA/s1600/NoEdging01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhZlasjxshVaoWYmPRQAixU_DKshcdtduHEpAPRCyj_f75ksBvjszDHYod26IhtYqnjYZFHIa-fvDWqmlxOnmtHzT7_k5GWprsKDEEOI27FjCg9y3vPYsUwcNQXFbSebnZZ5XTuPDm3lA/s320/NoEdging01.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raw Map Data</td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyO5m_-LHHTYV8IXNU09hE8SDYqED6C5ECuS5JqjXCGKw-v7cM-ESBwP2nnpZojPKOosBQzVN9cWT0qJbcM_Pjkq1eNWF_zwnb7YS2S0BurJl_cze4L29CQdM1eeFkI4AYtVfLMs5Q6VQ/s1600/Edging01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyO5m_-LHHTYV8IXNU09hE8SDYqED6C5ECuS5JqjXCGKw-v7cM-ESBwP2nnpZojPKOosBQzVN9cWT0qJbcM_Pjkq1eNWF_zwnb7YS2S0BurJl_cze4L29CQdM1eeFkI4AYtVfLMs5Q6VQ/s320/Edging01.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Edging Tech</td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIeEOtAMIi_aZafTx-8P3rijfFZq57XP_sEc-lS_UL2EBzbbhi4tFglR_Cf60ak__j7HYbWIGRc98DVTyOKLK5-IJjE2AhF1_jAXchPQq8gCb90IbQRnuZ8XvBn4z7jIqDqKdXhduFKn4/s1600/NoEdging02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIeEOtAMIi_aZafTx-8P3rijfFZq57XP_sEc-lS_UL2EBzbbhi4tFglR_Cf60ak__j7HYbWIGRc98DVTyOKLK5-IJjE2AhF1_jAXchPQq8gCb90IbQRnuZ8XvBn4z7jIqDqKdXhduFKn4/s320/NoEdging02.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raw Map Data</td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn3mTxkzk9j11XlwgSS28KQB4JQgQ9ebbFKLiZyfDqzo96Q0RD7Z-PNrvUpRLrufAXqpEafosA3RESUHx6prneraBbj21CpbA2gGxB30SMHNN66diGXnDHeCM4n0R2lRXRx6S_Ln0mXiM/s1600/Edging02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn3mTxkzk9j11XlwgSS28KQB4JQgQ9ebbFKLiZyfDqzo96Q0RD7Z-PNrvUpRLrufAXqpEafosA3RESUHx6prneraBbj21CpbA2gGxB30SMHNN66diGXnDHeCM4n0R2lRXRx6S_Ln0mXiM/s320/Edging02.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Edging Tech</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div><div><br />
</div><div>This new tech means I fill out maps very quickly, and add in new terrain types quickly. The world map is quite large, and I'm finding I need a few terrain types to keep the regions unique and interesting.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Other new things that can be seen in todays youtube video - I've upgraded the city graphics with some cheap models from TurboSquid. There's lots of great art on that site now. I've added the new tree and grassland section as well as a snow section that can be seen in this weeks you-tube video. There is now a blizzard spell and spell casting now has a target indicator. The town lamp graphics has been revamped and there is now a signpost object that will be found all over the game giving directions as well as the occasional clue.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I'm mainly adding content now, though there are a number of bugs I need to fix, and features like shops and the minigame framework haven't been started yet. I really don't want to release the game with large parts of it missing but then I don't want to hold it back for years, so I'll probably have to work out which features can be added after release without turning away potential buyers.</div><div><br />
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tua1XzQCx8<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0Tua1XzQCx8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0Tua1XzQCx8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-7682332248419765692010-08-05T06:59:00.000-07:002010-08-05T06:59:58.744-07:00the content work beginsAdded some more spells and began working on the real maps finally. New spells include a WoW style blizzard spell to freeze or slow a group of monsters, and a meteor strike spell, which is like the Rain of Fire except you pick 5 specific targets. Also added a heal spell and a magic shield enchantment. I've given trolls a high level regeneration enchantment so they will regenerate over time. I might need to make some extra strong monster-only enchantments since the player enchantments have to be balanced to be not too overpowering.<br />
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I've started working on the main world map. It's 256x256 which doesn't seem too big until you start trying to fill it with interesting landscape.. I don't think I've got enough variety of tiles yet to give the world enough variety yet, but it should be easy to come up with some more. Also need to add some signposts to guide players around the map. I'll be starting the magenta city map soon also. This city of magic is where the player will start and his tutorial missions will begin.<br />
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Not too much to report. Between StarCraft II being released, catching up on True Blood season 3, and a new project at work, it's been hard to maintain focus on magelore, but I'm still managing to keep some momentum which is good.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-63217055569942989752010-07-29T07:20:00.000-07:002010-07-29T07:52:26.402-07:00Enemy SpellsDespite power blackouts at home and new workloads in my day job, I've managed to get some progress done so I'm uploading a new video today. Enemies can now cast spells and have enchantments. I've started by giving the fire element an immolation enchantment and the ability to cast firebolt. The nice thing is that it takes very little data to set up, so I should be able to go crazy with enemy enchantments. The fire elements data is fairly simple:<br />
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< enemy name="fire.element" desc="fire.element" sprite="fire.element" lvl="5" str="15" dex="2" con="15" int="10" fireresist="100" coldresist="-100" ><br />
< drop chance="10" minCount="50" maxCount="100" name="gold" / ><br />
< enchant name="IMMOLATE" / ><br />
< spell name="FIREBOLT" cond="(randomPercent 50) and (inRange self target 2 4)" / ><br />
< / enemy ><br />
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A simple condition script determines when they should fire the firebolt. This one is a simple random chance when in range of the player. I can make them more complex if needed.<br />
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The immolate spell is also just a simple script:</div><div><br />
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < enchant name="IMMOLATE" desc="IMMOLATE" longdesc="Inflicts 2 points of fire damage to any nearby enemies per move and increases fire resistance by 10" ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < req name="ruby" / ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < req name="abrusseed" quantity="2" / ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < req name="bloodroot" quantity="3" / ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < event name="OnSecondaryStats" script="addStat fireresist (power * 10)" / ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < event name="OnTick" script="foreachneighbour 2 (doDamage it fire (power * 2) immolate)" / ></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> < /enchant ></div><div><br />
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The enchantment increases your fire resist whenever the secondary stats are calculated, and does damage to all neighbouring actors, regardless of friend or foe. I think friendly fire is usually a good thing so I'm letting the fire elements kill other creatures if they go too close. I'm hoping this will create some interesting strategies and dynamics. Creatures will be able to attack other creatures. There will be charisma based spells that can influence creatures into going passive or attacking other creatures.</div><div><br />
Firebolts, on the other hand, are still quite hard coded. I'm still conflicted with which way to go with them. Moving them to script would be good, though the visual effects tend to be very specific per spell so I'll need to think it over more to see if it a few generic systems could cover a lot of spells.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I've also added tabs to the universal inventory screen. The number of elements in the menu was always going to be quite large and scrolling through pages of entries is far too tedious. Splitting into 4 groups seems to cover it well for now. Hopefully I can get by with only four, though I think it may be necessary to split them up further when there are a lot more spells, enchants, missions and beasts.</div><div><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7GzP8ccpAg">Watch on YouTube</a><br />
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</div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-59840520355501050082010-07-25T05:34:00.000-07:002010-07-25T05:34:32.363-07:00More content...no videos...Spent the last night playing Microsoft GameRoom on the PC... I don't have an X360 :( so I've been relegated to playing it on my laptop. Some great classics on there if your into retro gaming. Of course, I may be biased, since I work on GameRoom during the daytime :) I'm in the leaderboards for Scramble and Gyruss... at least for a little while until I get knocked out of the leaderboard.<br />
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I had intended to post a video of the town tonight, but I've reneged and am going to work on adding new content instead. It takes most of a night for me to take video, convert and upload.it along with an accompanying block. I'll definitely get a video next week, and it should have a lot more goodies to show off. The town art is in, but I've not designed any towns yet. I've got nearly enough content to start the tutorial mission and design "magenta" which will be my primary town, for the early missions at least. I still need to add some scripts for locking and unlocking gates, so your trapped until the tutorial mission is over, but that's fairly trivial stuff.<br />
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This week I've added some animated water, fixed up various minor iPad bugs, added some scripts so the immolation enchantment is now working and damaging nearby enemies and a new enemy - fire elemental. Not much point posting a static screenshot of animated water, but I can at least post a shot of the elemental..<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67KPEZ8jUxAz_Eec_wJ3OE8kxug52ZPmPOJN1I9RHcD8KeJ6iArzNIroRIbJgD_klOpoHEMF5JAtDp4vFdvVmtv-RNjCO5Hz_MXoB5sSmyUwV-q8uE0bvuzfYhA3zNl3gLAOcybVm-gA/s1600/fire.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi67KPEZ8jUxAz_Eec_wJ3OE8kxug52ZPmPOJN1I9RHcD8KeJ6iArzNIroRIbJgD_klOpoHEMF5JAtDp4vFdvVmtv-RNjCO5Hz_MXoB5sSmyUwV-q8uE0bvuzfYhA3zNl3gLAOcybVm-gA/s400/fire.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
On an unrelated point, I think I found a great subject for a minigame... The towns and cities in Magelore will have at least one minigame each - not necessarily all available at launch time. This is presented as a mage who will sell you a magical tonic to drink. If you drink it you are transported into the game and return when the game is finished. The games can be any gameplay idea I'd like to prototype. I think I'd definitely be able to come up with way to squeeze Trogdor into a minigame...<br />
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</div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-88781432132311302162010-07-20T08:32:00.000-07:002010-07-20T08:54:52.389-07:00Work started on Town graphicsI've started work on gettng the town graphics into the game and I'm really happy with the progress. I had to add some new features to the lighting system to make it look just right and it all seems to be working out quite well. I've made the wooden floor lighting use an "interior floor" lighting mode where sunlight fades out quickly over distance, so even at midday, the interiors will get quite dark if you don't have any artificial lights. I've added a couple of tables that give light and a wall lantern, so most rooms will be lit 24hrs a day, but it allows me to do complex adjoining rooms that are very dark even during the day. I've also changed the way walls are lit so the entire wall brightens up. Previously the 4 corners of a tile would receive different lighting, and to cut a long story short, this meant that the top verts could go black from being in shadow while the bottom verts would be light... this is a side effect of a trick I use to save on overdraw - everything is actually a flat 2d tileset and just made to look like things are orthographic 3d. Allowing tiles to overlap neighbouring tiles completes the illusion.<br />
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I've added door objects that open and close as you pass through them, which works great with the dynamic lighitng. I've made the doors 50% shadow casting (like the forests) otherwise doors below you would just be black silhouettes due to the shadow system. You can see this in the screenshot below.<br />
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So, here is a teaser screenshot. I'll do a video of it on the weekend as it looks great watching the dynamic lighting kicking in as you walk around and open and close doors..<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0mPaDvKUeE5v7iLCWkCOgeoYKMRRorPUuTWNtCTSLOaIb2SZE_vvC06AR4DfryWq3Ic5Ift5UZjFFe3ZuvhBeUKfNbCHn1Fd5cr4eIARIQSpec0nDtAgGmHX8EVCpNa7DNM2cARIkVco/s1600/MageLore+2010-07-21+01-31-41-42.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0mPaDvKUeE5v7iLCWkCOgeoYKMRRorPUuTWNtCTSLOaIb2SZE_vvC06AR4DfryWq3Ic5Ift5UZjFFe3ZuvhBeUKfNbCHn1Fd5cr4eIARIQSpec0nDtAgGmHX8EVCpNa7DNM2cARIkVco/s320/MageLore+2010-07-21+01-31-41-42.png" width="320" /></a></div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-83772244804396826532010-07-17T07:52:00.000-07:002010-07-18T00:34:01.623-07:00New content - ice magic, respawn points<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Hooray, hazzah and woot.. I've made some actual visual progress at last. A couple of weeks of restructuring and engine fixes are finally over and I've started working on miscellaneous new features. This week, I've done a few additions and modifications.</span></span><br />
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</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Firstly, the death and respawning is in now. Respawn spoints will be spread throughout the maps and are activated by running over them. Only 1 respawn point can be active at once, so the player will respawn back at the most recently activated respawn point. This is meant as a strategic penalty to be managed by the player... Of course, pretty much anything that is a penalty to the player is open to revision since players don't usually appreciate being penalised for anything. Whenever you die, you teleport back to the respawn point and are revived with minimal hitpoints and mana and with any spells/curses or ailments removed.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Secondly, there is now an Ice Bolt spell. This is like Fire Bolt except with a chance to freeze. All cold damage done also attaches a cold status modifier for a few turns which will reduce their movement and attack rate. Also, any frozen enemy has a slightly increased critical hit chance. I pinched that idea from WoW. I hope they forgive me.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrrx-8cPRjKBNxtaHlwhD2YTDGnssEiFSlicIkLmoi5k-q68x22qXzO4f60jMEpE6eUTt7iZj8eV7YcElXETHiCdM09BpqQ7BBAIwZFNaJOg_DjRlu_q9CmsNanHWo5kGHaAlvmTvWoU/s1600/icebolt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigrrx-8cPRjKBNxtaHlwhD2YTDGnssEiFSlicIkLmoi5k-q68x22qXzO4f60jMEpE6eUTt7iZj8eV7YcElXETHiCdM09BpqQ7BBAIwZFNaJOg_DjRlu_q9CmsNanHWo5kGHaAlvmTvWoU/s320/icebolt.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Next, I've upgraded the inventory screen. You can now see exactly how much effect any enchantments have on each stat. This includes indirect effects such as Giant Strength increasing your damage since damage is affected by strength. The enchanted crystals graphics have had a rework and it also shows how effective each crystal is when slotted (since slots are all affected by misc. elements like light/day/war/peace).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYVboMEHBlk4_-xxo9uJX1GCIOcurUimMuLk86jqCWOKiCxPy9seowHNtKF6WZS_hiH7AVHkheHwrtnkPgghN2I9y0yYasQQztxzVG7_BTtXbJ9KEcNPz-N6uZ5ooK4loTAqQ14sZfA_o/s1600/MageLore+2010-07-18+00-58-33-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYVboMEHBlk4_-xxo9uJX1GCIOcurUimMuLk86jqCWOKiCxPy9seowHNtKF6WZS_hiH7AVHkheHwrtnkPgghN2I9y0yYasQQztxzVG7_BTtXbJ9KEcNPz-N6uZ5ooK4loTAqQ14sZfA_o/s320/MageLore+2010-07-18+00-58-33-03.png" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I've added 2 new enemies. Trolls and Ogres. Both of these turn to stone during daylight so there is an element of strategy here, especially if you get quests that involve killing these beasts, or running through an area inhabited by high level ogres or trolls. While they are stone they are completely immune to damage, so no sniping them. You'll need to camp and wait till sundown if you want to battle them.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Finally, I've done some more work adding hi-res versions of more textures and tilemap graphics. Looking forward to getting an iPhone4 to see how they look on the "retina" display.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I think I'll probably work on getting a shop working, and getting some puzzle elements in place yet, but I should dump some more ideas on paper and prioritize them. Looks like a few weeks still till I'm really ready to start laying out real content.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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</span></span></div>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-64454544279859026912010-07-10T07:22:00.000-07:002010-07-10T07:23:54.803-07:00Universal App - Technical DetailsBack again... I've been hard at work upgrading the engine to handle multiple resolution issues properly, since universal apps must deal with 480x320, 960x640 and 1024x768. Most of the systems in the engine jwn systems (just-whats-needed) and it turned out the view system was a nest of hardcoded view sizes. I've got it working fairly well now, and I've had some requests to talk over some technical issues, so tonights blog will be mostly boring technical facts to do with how I handle the universal app problem.<br />
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Firstly, Magelore will be a universal app - which means one download will work on iPhone, iPhone4 and iPad. This means the download will include high definition (2x resolution) artwork that will be used on iPhone4 and iPad. All the apps I've purchased so far for my iPad have been specific "HD" apps that only run on the iPad. I can only guess why this is currently, though I can think of a few factors at play. Currently, you can get away with $5-$11 for an iPad app, but its hard to get more than $1 for an iPhone app.. So packaging iPhone and iPad together would mean you either get no iphone sales, or you get poor return on iPad sales. My answer to this is that I may release a low-def version of the game that is iPhone only if I have to... There's also a possiblility the game will be free with in-app purchases, so initial sales are not important - I want it in as many hands as possible.<br />
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So, as a universal app, I need to support the 3 resolutions. I don't want to have to completely layout the UI 3 times, especially since iPhone and iPhone4 are the same screen size and aspect ratio, it seems more appropriate to make the writing and buttons clearer than smaller. For iPhone4, everything can be identical to the iPhone, just using double resolution art. So I've set the orthographic projection size for both of these to 480x320. No code has to change for the iPhone4 version.<br />
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However, for iPad, you have to deal with a different aspect ratio of 4:3 instead of 3:2. Anyway you do it, some UI will need to have a different co-ordinates. Also, the distance between buttons is physically different with a much bigger screen, so its desirable to move some buttons around to reduce the amount the players will need to move their hands during play. So for iPad, I've gone with ortho co-ordinates of 512x384. This has lots of advantages. Without altering the map renderer, we get slightly more map view area, which is nice, but not so much that its a different game (due to being able to see enemies much further away). It's also very important to stick with ortho co-ordinates that are a multiple of the hardware pixels. This way we still get pixel perfect rendering of fonts and sprites. I ended up spending 3 days getting the font rendering just perfect so all resolutions display their fonts cleanly. As a test, you can see in the image below that the 'i' and the 't' have perfect clean edges - no stretching or bilinear filtering artifacts.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqPBSPjz0zQG8nCR2M5br6bSrqy3Gp03xIUD-H7DsJpchCM3z-7L8d75CdvsEmRdL53NkxQ2kq1ca0RxjVmWHtA5TiatcCDVsbo7xbl6raOCwAAWy2GR5TrFV9TGfCE0ftLxrk08owKnE/s1600/PixelPerfectFonts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqPBSPjz0zQG8nCR2M5br6bSrqy3Gp03xIUD-H7DsJpchCM3z-7L8d75CdvsEmRdL53NkxQ2kq1ca0RxjVmWHtA5TiatcCDVsbo7xbl6raOCwAAWy2GR5TrFV9TGfCE0ftLxrk08owKnE/s400/PixelPerfectFonts.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
The next problem was how to get the game rendering with higher definition sprites. My current sprite pipeline is to load a psd, and each layer becomes a sprite. Another layer can be used to define the "hotspot" of the sprite (also known as the pivot point or handle). Adding a double size sprite in my pipeline would just make them doublesized on screen. There's a lot of solutions to the problems, but I'll just outlay what mine was without going into pages of reasons. The engine now appends a "_hd" to the filename and tries to load that first. If we are NOT in highdef mode, that file is downsized to half size for the low def version. If the "_hd" file is not found, the regular file is loaded instead. For any "_hd" file (that is not downsized), the resulting Image and Sprites are marked as highdef and are rendered at half size. The same system is in place for fonts. I use "BMFont" from AngelCode to generate my fonts. With high def, I can make the fonts a little fancier and they are still readable. In lowdef mode, I've gone for fairly boring fonts, preferring to make sure they are easily readable.<br />
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Here is a sample of how the extra resolution adds to the quality of the graphics. Note that I haven't added highdef versions of the tileset yet.<br />
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Since most of my UI system will go through the universal info screen, I've redesigned that to work of percentages rather than actual co-ordinates. That means it only shows slightly more information on the iPad than the iPhone. Also, it means the art work is quite geometric (rendered boxes and gradient) rather than intricate artwork. I'm not sure if this detracts from the overall production values, so it may change in the final version of the game, but for now it is quite function.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLS5iQ0YBRGM_k9urB5zb95ErJYM_0sfdhlik8nUeYNWmkBKsPVT1oNKLBY8D6R-kmo5Px42dvkHS7IrIv0JtDJrogsy1WMIrys6N0nXhnCXBBae4Ok2nmJCIBJvR6YKeZ9ldVHh1Tnvo/s1600/InformationScreen.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLS5iQ0YBRGM_k9urB5zb95ErJYM_0sfdhlik8nUeYNWmkBKsPVT1oNKLBY8D6R-kmo5Px42dvkHS7IrIv0JtDJrogsy1WMIrys6N0nXhnCXBBae4Ok2nmJCIBJvR6YKeZ9ldVHh1Tnvo/s400/InformationScreen.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Finally, here is a shot of the same scene on iPod, iPhone4 and iPad. To be honest they are screen shots from the PC version running in "compatibility" mode (I can put ipod, iphone4 or ipad on the command line and it emulates the correct backbuffer and viewport sizes).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLho61JSj7uZqZywIYpSsCgKJFgvUTRjOicxfTGuyAS8dkNMl0_M-Rvj2csxV1gPUkIwCgBnjN20wIIPlppClDbY-4_owR_WKZnccIDuhUQUyVN2xJLf6hjL6bBtNmfbT1B_NDKUNUgwI/s1600/MageLore_iPhone.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLho61JSj7uZqZywIYpSsCgKJFgvUTRjOicxfTGuyAS8dkNMl0_M-Rvj2csxV1gPUkIwCgBnjN20wIIPlppClDbY-4_owR_WKZnccIDuhUQUyVN2xJLf6hjL6bBtNmfbT1B_NDKUNUgwI/s200/MageLore_iPhone.png" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">iphone</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rWNdn6bx1Pp7mqb4rNfvW_mnaeRiDPa25dXf72H8aEgsd7npGyBKMLnc9J6z899sryhZQHNrZhxfy5X3hFq9TqfGvMiHDtEsk0e6PIhIQv1wbGhoWPSbXoExrfxLhuJCA3oidncruTQ/s1600/MageLore_iPhone4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rWNdn6bx1Pp7mqb4rNfvW_mnaeRiDPa25dXf72H8aEgsd7npGyBKMLnc9J6z899sryhZQHNrZhxfy5X3hFq9TqfGvMiHDtEsk0e6PIhIQv1wbGhoWPSbXoExrfxLhuJCA3oidncruTQ/s320/MageLore_iPhone4.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">iphone4</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Cn0wLF65hD04mDmHDGnTCCL5GwprRda9kkHKZQ6-6UjXDMvL9r5JENvgYbkFt2nVZT_NwYXUJOFFKYJoLThsQIuz34h-d0v4VhSDsZU11MCDm9-evmPu4lvGotFljjAmN2RzYHmUdlI/s1600/MageLore_iPad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Cn0wLF65hD04mDmHDGnTCCL5GwprRda9kkHKZQ6-6UjXDMvL9r5JENvgYbkFt2nVZT_NwYXUJOFFKYJoLThsQIuz34h-d0v4VhSDsZU11MCDm9-evmPu4lvGotFljjAmN2RzYHmUdlI/s320/MageLore_iPad.png" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">ipad</div><br />
Thats all for now. I've also added icebolts and the ability to freeze enemies, or slow them. I've still got a little work to do - I need to convert the magic absorption stats to magic resistant stats so they can be used to resist freezing or cold effects. Once thats all in I'll do a new gameplay video. Hopefully I can get back to adding content now and less engine work.<br />
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p.s. if you have any questions or topics you'd like me to discuss, please add a comment below or email me.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-64610361875102451992010-07-04T06:03:00.000-07:002010-07-04T06:03:25.305-07:00False Alarm - Old apps are fine...Got confirmation that Apple won't be removing any old 2.0 apps from the appstore - just not allowing new apps to come in using that sdk. This means I don't have to upgrade Venger and my other apps after all. yeah! Back to work on Magelore.<br />
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I've put in support for high definition art now - just need to create it all now... The engine now appends an _hd extension to psd's and png's for the ipad and iphone4 versions so they can load a 32 bit double rez version, and the iphone 3g / ipod will load a 16 bit standard rez version. The plan is to keep the app universal, so if you buy on any platform you can play on every platform with the appropriate graphics set. I'm still stressing over if the app should be free with in app purchases, or a one time price. Plenty of time still to work that one out.<br />
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Anyway, a few more bugs to work out on ipad (alpha is coming out white instead of black, and my touch processing is getting throttled from my render pipeline since switching to CADisplayLink style timer) then back to adding content. I think I'll add some ice magic next, and I want to get some of the more interesting monsters in place - some will turn to stone during the day time, so you will need to hunt them at night. I guess I'll need to make a new todo list and try and prioritise some features. Would be good to get started on the real scripts, but I really want to nail down the feature set as much as possible so I don't have to interrupt writing scripts to do more tech.Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-18483933892202762072010-07-02T06:43:00.000-07:002010-07-02T06:43:37.535-07:00iPad iPad iPadBeen hard at work getting the game working on iPad as a universal app. Turned out all my view information was hacked in badly and needed some cleaning up, but its all good now. I just have to decide what I'm going to do with the extra resolution. iPhone4 is easy because its the same screen size, just double the resolution in x and y. However iPad is a different aspect ratio and a much bigger screen. I think I'll probably just uprez the art and go with 480x360 play area instead of 480x320 - so there's a little bit more vertical map and gui to fill, but otherwise its just generally just going to look much nicer. Also, I'll use all 32 bit sprites for iPad whereas the iphone version s use dithered 16 bit textures.<br />
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Apple just announced that they will stop selling sdk 2.0 apps. I actually have 4 sdk 2.0 apps on the appstore currently under the Wretched Games label, so looks like I'll be spending the next week or so upgrading them all to 3.1.3 so they can keep selling - they still dribble cash in each week so would be ashame to lose that even though its just a bit of pocket money these days. Might upgrade them all to iPad universal apps while I'm at it...<br />
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No video to show off this week, and its unlikely there will be one for next week. I've just taken a week off work but I'll be spending most of my time with the family and working around the house so probably won't help my MageLore progress at all.<br />
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p.s. It's damn cold here!Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1530332680038451796.post-33185224709108485722010-06-26T07:33:00.000-07:002010-06-26T07:37:30.337-07:00All-In-One UI ScreenI've been hard at work this week implementing the all-in-one UI screen. This little wonder replaces my old enchant screen and socket screen... It's simply a long list of everything I track in the game. This currently includes the player stats, inventory of items, crystals, and recipes, players learnt spells.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjveaWCPHORJJiOeDczVrLalsiuEb8wEPEJPkKoqlDUjEZQB9wzOrvyAt1wGLBtjydnGoyaJu78-2CppzjLOg4z2iuxyqZP8DQdXY3REk97TSZz5sH5jJn7aV_KyFuWkBF5cesJuSErheY/s1600/MageLore+2010-06-27+00-11-57-56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjveaWCPHORJJiOeDczVrLalsiuEb8wEPEJPkKoqlDUjEZQB9wzOrvyAt1wGLBtjydnGoyaJu78-2CppzjLOg4z2iuxyqZP8DQdXY3REk97TSZz5sH5jJn7aV_KyFuWkBF5cesJuSErheY/s320/MageLore+2010-06-27+00-11-57-56.jpg" /></a></div>Here's a screenshot of the stats section while the player has points available for upgrading stats.<br />
I expect I'll add a tab on the right to group different sets of information together, but for now, the screen is fully functional and I've deleted the old enchant and socket screens. With only one interface doing all this, I can put a single button on the main game UI for accessing it all and hopefully the player will find it easier access to all the features of the game if there is just a single list to scroll through.<br />
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The screen is still lacking polish - transitions and general artsie goodness, so it will undoubtedly get some love in the proceeding months, but, for now, it is fully functional so I can leave it and move onto other things.<br />
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Apart from working on this, I bought an iPad this week. I love it (though its cost me some productivity this week) !! and the kids love it too. Prior to Aug 2008, I owned absolutely no Apple products and thought them rather overpriced for what you get. Now I have an iPod touch, iPhone 3g, mac mini, iMac, iPad, and I'm queuing up for an iPhone4 as soon as my current contract runs out. I've got Magelore running as a universal app so it opens up as a fullscreen app on the iPad. Currently, this just means it scales from the 16:9 of an iPhone to the 4:3 aspect ratio of the iPad. I'm still thinking through how I'm going to layout the UI on the iPad. I'd like to take advantage of the extra rez to show more content, rather than to simple uprez. However, this basically means every UI element and backdrop now needs 2 sets of co-ordinates.Once I get some UI sorted on the iPad, I'll send through some new screenshots.<br />
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I may lose some dev time soon as I really need to go through all my Wretched Games apps and upgrade them to iPad. Having an iPad myself now, I'm loathe to download iPhone apps and have them scale and blur to a portion of the play area. Instead I mainly just browse the iPad only games since they will be nice and crisp on my screen.<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOp2__bmFVQ">View on You-Tube - Shows Annotations</a>Podestahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11793206468502049886noreply@blogger.com0