next »

[wilbefast]

Hi all,

Recently I migrated from Gamemaker to C/SDL so as to support Linux users (myself included), and for a while now I've been working on a project in C++/SFML (SFML is a fantastic library - more people should use it)!

After a several months of hard work, I've hit my first (self-imposed) milestone: implementing the features I'd become used to in Gamemaker (memory management, object creation, loading, saving, collisions, tiles, views, animations, a level editor and other stuff I've forgotten). So now I can start working on the game proper  
I feel I should tell you all this to justify being proud of something that could be made in gamemaker in one wet afternoon  

• Alpha 1! Here is a video of a cartoon gimp in galoshes shooting fireballs out of his crotch to the tune of "Popcorn"!
• Alpha 2! Here is a video with cool explosion and purple gore: hurray!
• Alpha 3! Here is a video featuring our favourite Gimp having his head asploded. Oh noes!  

In terms of design I'm trying not to be too ambitious (just building the engine is strenuous enough): my primary inspiration is Cyber Dogs, though aiming will be controlled with the mouse.


 
The character, "Man Baby" (not the Gimp in the video, he is place holder) will have to clear a series of levels of all enemies to progress. The game is really about shooting stuff: I'm trying to hearken back to the days of Doom when shooters were just mindless fun. In other words, no voice records, no creepy voices, and in general no ripping off of "System Shock"



I plan to have a fairly original setting though. The game takes place inside a program - the game itself in fact:

• Weapons are debugging-themed (break-points, back-traces, etc)
• Enemies will be bug-themed (errors syntax crap-I'm-becoming-Italian syntax errors, floating-point exceptions, segmentation faults)
• Each level will represents a CPP file, with players moving between them Super Mario World-style along "inclusion" links. In other words, the game's world-map is the UML diagram of the game itself!

The game is being developed for Linux, but there will be a Windows version too, and possible a Mac one if I can find someone rich enough to own one. I will probably be releasing the source-code too, but not until the game is finished.

Here are the most up-to-date demo binaries. This is ALPHA - it will be buggy on some systems, but shouldn't destroy your machine. Still, play at your own risk 

A development log can be found on my website Wilbefast.com or check out Bugger around the Web. I'll also be posting updates (or links to updates) in this thread until I'm ready to expose it to critical attentions, at which point I'll move to feedback. May be quite some time before I'm confident enough to do that though  

Let me know what you think of the video (aside from the quality)  

[flavio]

I think the following points already are in your plan, but I write them to confirm that your work is perfect so far. The main points to manage are (imho): add (blob) shadows; add an explosion or something similar when you hit an enemy; modify the AI: the enemies move in a way too predictable. Very good!

[wilbefast]

Cheers  

Yeah, these are all things that are on my to-do list: what's important that the engine is now capable of supporting them. For instance, like Gamemaker I can mask or completely override the "draw" method of each object (normal it just draw the default sprite) and add, for example, a second sprite, such as a shadow. All in all the current screenshots/video are in no way indicative of what the game is going to look like when it's finished!

As for the AI, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "too predictable", but I do plan to have many different types of enemies, each moving in a different manner (some will charge blindly, others will hit-and-run, others still will stand and fire and escape if you come too close...). I'm going to have to re-do the AI anyway to make it a bit more "cooperative" (otherwise those escaping will block those charging blindly). If you have any suggestions, or know of any AI resources I could look at, it would be very helpful  

In other news, I'm thinking of implementing a couple of slightly outlandish features, and I just wanted to throw it out there 
1. view should be locked to the mouse, not the player. However it look be impossible to scroll too far away from the player. In other words you can "look" in a given direction, but only a certain amount.
2. platforming: the player could jump over enemies an up onto ledges, or across pits. This would be cool, but hell to program, especially in terms of the AI. If I'm going to be redoing the AI anyway though I might as well think about such things now rather than after I've done it...

Thoughts?

[RCIX]

Too bad you can't scan real projects to make levels! Just find a suitably messy one and start bugstomping...

[flavio]

As for the AI, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "too predictable", but I do plan to have many different types of enemies, each moving in a different manner (some will charge blindly, others will hit-and-run, others still will stand and fire and escape if you come too close...). I'm going to have to re-do the AI anyway to make it a bit more "cooperative" (otherwise those escaping will block those charging blindly).

Yes, I mean something like this.

If you have any suggestions, or know of any AI resources I could look at, it would be very helpful  

Mmmm... No, I haven't free resources to share. I've an AI book I consult whenever I need.

1. view should be locked to the mouse, not the player.

That can be judged only on a prototype, it's hard to say if it'll be a successful feature on "paper".

2. platforming: the player could jump over enemies an up onto ledges, or across pits. This would be cool

Yes, it would be cool!

[Igor Hardy]

I hope that future incarnations of the game will retain the crotch-shooting technique.

Is there anywhere I can check Cyber Dogs? I don't know what it is at all.

[wilbefast]

It might be difficult to get CyberDogs running unless you've got DOS-Box:

http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/cyberdogs/

Here's a video though 

[Igor Hardy]

Thanks. Looks quite cool.

Sounds like they stole at least some of the sound effects from Doom.

[capn.lee]

i think you're on the right track here, it needs more enemy types to be interesting and the artwork needs a kick up the arse but you've pointed out these two things yourself already in your blog.

keep it up, you're doing well.

[wilbefast]

Thanks Capn

add (blob) shadows; add an explosion or something similar when you hit an enemy

Done and done 

<< Video >>

<< Blog Post >>

Huzzah!

[flavio]

Wow, it's better than the previous one! You could improve shadows: black shadows aren't realistic, you should merge gray with the background color.

[wilbefast]

Wow, it's better than the previous one! You could improve shadows: black shadows aren't realistic, you should merge gray with the background color.

Thanks  
In fact the shadows aren't gray: they're black with about 75% alpha. In other words, they're already merged with the background layer! The rest is just a matter of setting the alpha:

edit: image moved to first post

Remember: this is really just a tech-demo with some place-holders - fancy stuff can come later

[Blackcorn]

Taking inspiration on a game like Cyberdogs is a great idea. I remember having a ton of fun with this one when I was younger... 

One of the Cyberdogs feature I really enjoy at that time was the fact that you could play the game with another player on the same screen. That was a wicked game to share with some friend. Do you plan to have such an option or not? (I must admit a 2 players split screens for a computer game isn't very trendy nowadays)

[Evan Balster]

Excuses aside and to celebrate this great occasion, here is a video of a cartoon gimp in galoshes shooting fireballs out of his crotch to the tune of "Popcorn"!

Brilliant!  I approve.

Find a nice artist, buy a house and make sweet games together.

[iffi]

<< Video >>

I approve of that music, and the "Popcorn" tune in the other video.

[wilbefast]

Taking inspiration on a game like Cyberdogs is a great idea. I remember having a ton of fun with this one when I was younger...  

One of the Cyberdogs feature I really enjoy at that time was the fact that you could play the game with another player on the same screen. That was a wicked game to share with some friend. Do you plan to have such an option or not? (I must admit a 2 players split screens for a computer game isn't very trendy nowadays)

At the moment I'm using the mouse to control aiming. I reckon the aiming was the one thing that wasn't all that great in Cyberdogs. Maybe adding a button to lock your position (so the arrows would simply make you face different direction) would have been a good idea (eg - SHIFT key in Diablo allows you to aim instead of moving).

I still think I'd rather use the mouse if possible though - dunno, maybe I could also add a mouse-less mode for lap-top users, and add split-screen multiplayer while I'm at it. I'm working on building the engine to be fairly scalable, so these things should be possible. For now I'm doing on the core stuff though.

What I am considering is multiplayer via LAN (or Hamatchi) - I'm almost definitely planning to have competitive play, and as for cooperative play we'll have to see (AI with multiple Player - hmm)...

[wilbefast]

Big update today: we've got videos, screenshots and even playable demos for Windows and Linux Head over here for details 

Speaking of the blog, Blackcorns comment inspired this port - check it out (or don't, I'm not your mum).

Downloads are on indieDB - let me know what you think. WARNING: there are a few problems with Windows 7 and Vista  I'll try to fix this in due course...