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[dustin]

woo hoo!  This makes me happy to no end.  Not only because I'll be able to run it but it's just nice to see stuff taking advantage of open source (I assume it must be opengl at some level...)

What engine is it?  Or if it's just your own personal thing what is the lowest level code not written by you?  (ie. is it straight opengl or torque or something?)

[Robert]

Sweet as! I'm part of a three-man company that does websites by day and games by night, and we've been working on the engine for a number of years... bordering on seven at last count! The other two guys are the main tech heads, but I know that our graphics guru has a thing for OpenGL so that powers our renderer. We use a few external libraries like python, freetype, cg, boost, opcode, libpng and OpenAL.

It's called EMP cos nukes are cool, it stands for something as well but I never remember.

[Robert]

Cows!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGu-yJvD4RQ

This vid just shows them moving around and breeding (no animations sadly! ) - you can see the little tykes popping out when the Daddy cow cuddles up to the Mummy cow. They also have different states of hungriness - they get really scrawny and have droopy ears when they're half dead from starvation. And then they get in your wheat fields and chow down all your hard work... sheesh.

But hey - no said it'd be easy being the Farm Pioneer.

[Saint]

Cows!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGu-yJvD4RQ

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

[PHeMoX]

This looks awesome, finish it please!!! 

[Massena]

Cows!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGu-yJvD4RQ

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

I'm guessing they still move, but slower. The moving stars were really cool, I think you should make them move at least fast enough to be noticeable.

Great work anyways, I'm in love with your game!

[Robert]

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

I'm guessing they still move, but slower. The moving stars were really cool, I think you should make them move at least fast enough to be noticeable.

We've just increased the speed of the stars in the latest version, so check out the next video and let us know if they're fast enough! We slowed them down because they didn't really look much like stars when they moved so quickly, more like fireflies, and also you lose the parallax when you go hurtling through space as you can't really see them moving in relation to each other. We're hunting after that happy medium!

So this vid is about the crops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWZKVYZjlNc

They are running at really hyperspeed just to show how they grow and die etc. Nothing really new here, it's the same tech that runs the trees. In the game wheat is the fastest of the crops to grow, but you have to feed your cows with it so they end up eating a fair chunk of your output.

[Oddball]

Another beautiful looking game for the VGNG competition. It feels very serene. The stars in the new vid seem about right. Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

[Robert]

Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

In the game so far there a moon and another much larger planet you can fly to. In the crop video you can just see the moon as a gray blob at the top.

We were going to add a day/night cycle, but early on in development it got canned along with revolving planets and orbits. I thought all of that would be a cinch to implement but very quickly found out otherwise!

So space can't stop the farm pioneer. However, bailing out of your spacetruck and landing on the moon, only to watch your vessel hurtle away from you into the inky blackness of space... *that* can stop the farm pioneer. :O

[Smithy]

Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

I'm wearing steel-toed boots right now. There's no means known to man that can stop or even slightly impede me so long as I keep them on. Not even space.

[Massena]

We've just increased the speed of the stars in the latest version, so check out the next video and let us know if they're fast enough! We slowed them down because they didn't really look much like stars when they moved so quickly, more like fireflies, and also you lose the parallax when you go hurtling through space as you can't really see them moving in relation to each other. We're hunting after that happy medium!

They look great 

*that* can stop the farm pioneer. :O

It can only change the farm pioneer, forcing him (it?) to live on the moon, eating dust till he can hitch hike his way back. On comets.

[Robert]

Wow, finally done. In the last three days it's undergone a reasonably big shift in gameplay and a major graphical change, but no wuks aye! Anyway, it's up on the server for all to download.

We've included a wee tutorial system and context sensitive help, but I think it's a bit unclear what's going unless you've read the readme! That's probably the biggest thing I've learned on this, making games accessible is really hard. Please post any feedback you have about playing it!

You can download it here:

http://farmpioneer.wanderingmonster.co.nz/FarmPioneer.zip

Now to get playing everyone else's...


PS: Mac and Linux builds pending!

[Gorman]

Well, i gotta say its been heaps of fun and a total pleasure working with the gang at WMS.

Anyhoo I must go play the game. Theres so many ways to die for someone who is unstoppable. He needs a jet pack or sumfink dammit.

*drifts in space, with no food and no fuel*

[Farmergnome]

same happened to me, apart from that I thought it was beautiful   This is like Christmas so many good games.

I vote 1 for a jetpack, or atleast a game over screen if you just get shot into the void with no fuel, maybe i missed somethin.

[Robert]

Haha yeah, unfortunately he is quite stoppable. =/ Still, he can breathe in space which is a big step towards the holy grail of unstoppableness.

One thing I did forget to mention is that when you exit the game your stats are uploaded to a secret server hidden in a remote part of the Amazonian basin, guarded by a tribe of ferocious warriors once thought extinct. We plan on having a World of Goo-style page where you can see people stats and high scores (if you get far enough into the game you can actually get a score! ) We don't actually store any information that could track you or anything like that, we trash any unique identifiers in a one-way mungification system. Sadly we didn't get time to have an opt-out thing in the UI, so if you are uncomfortable with that process then end the game with alt-F4 instead of through the Escape pause menu. Or just disconnect from the Internet when you play. Sorry about that!

Oh yeah also the high scores page from the main menu is fetched from the server as well, so it might change as we fix it up and make that page better.