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[hryx]

Preface

Within 2 days of GDC ending and saying goodbye to new friends, I became infected with an unknown virus that made me writhe in full-body pain and eventually landed me in the emergency room for a night. Upon recovery, I was attacked by something else -- a very sudden and inexorable motivation to work on a game I designed in 2007. I like to think of this series of events as analogous to changes brought on from, say, being struck by lightning.

This is a new experience for me. I am a musician, not a programmer or artist, and it's teaching me a lot. In light of this, your feedback is completely welcome, be it forgiving or severe.

* I did make a game in 2008 but it took one day and was crappy.

Overview

Tale of the Stolen Rainbow (working title) is a 2-D overhead puzzle/adventure game I'm making with LÖVE. It uses tile-oriented positioning and room-quantized views. It is directly inspired and influenced by a few games from my past, namely:
- Lolo/Eggerland seires, for its room puzzles
- Startropics I & II, for their themes and storytelling
- The Legend of Zelda, for its large room-based maps and inventory items
- Guxt, for reasons I don't remember

While I hope to make well-designed puzzles and action, the focus of my work will be on creating an overall charming little story and world. There will be a sizeable collection of interactive enemies, NPCs, items, and environments, which I will show off as they are implemented. The story will be revealed later.

Videos

The latest ones:






(Sorry, loox like butt. I'll find a codec that transcodes better to Flash Video.)

'shots



The look is intentionally very simple and colorless. The sprites are overly tiny and the animations chunky. Cutesy, pixely graphics is a popular choice for non-artists, I know, I know...

There is something about all the sprites which I believe is unconventional for small pixely games, but I won't mention it until someone points it out. If you're an artist, it may severely aggrivate your pixel-artist-OCD (sorry).

Current status

Nearly the entirety of my work so far has been on the game's engine, which I am fumblingly sculpting in Lua with the help of LÖVE's nice API. I have developed a massive crush on Lua and would marry it if that were legal in my state.

I'm doing "graphic" "work" as needed, but most of the sprites are based on ones I already made 4 years ago.

Things working right now:
- levels: multidimensional tables of game objects with a z-axis for foreground/background layering
- load levels from a text file of my own format
- walking around
- animations and transitions between tiles
- dialogue system
- picking up items and dropping them
- pushing crates
- unlocking doors
- dynamically/procedurally allocate appropriate sprites for brick buildings, shorelines, and bridges based on adjacent pieces
- several other things

Miscellaneous

This is a long-term project and I'm not sure what my pace will be like, if any. I've been working on it day and night for two weeks now, but that can't go on forever because life.

Thanks to Dan Fessler for encouraging me to start a TIGS log. I was nervous because I suck 3D Ballz at online forums. I'll try to keep this up-to-date.

[MaloEspada]

mysteriously, the art style is incredibly charming to me.

[happymonster]

It looks absolutely adorable! 

[Sakar]

This looks wonderful so far. Looking forward to seeing more

[Inanimate]

This has an incredibly charming aesthetic. I have no idea why, it just does.

Looking forward to more updates!

[cactus]

This looks really sweet. So many great style choices, it kind of boggles my mind how good it looks. Good job, Stevie!

[hryx]

gr8pes, m8s! You have all validated my parking.

Big thanks, J-CACT. It means a lot. :>

Today:
- new dialogue system
- - trigger narration and NPC chatter at will
- - type slowly like a REAL LIVE TYPEWRITER
- - skipping, pages for people in a rush
- new NPCs with which to talk (one shown in video)
- new enemies (one shown in video, made benevolent for your safety)
- developed some story and dialogues (none shown)

video:


(different codec, looks better now)

a picture which is boring on its own:


With this dialogue screen I am introducing one of this game's themes: books

Just some fakey fake text for now. And while the blank space above the book isn't used right now, things will go there in the future.

[cactus]

Any progress?

[hryx]

Señor! In a word: yes.

Since last time:
- first draft of complete world map and story outline
- some new NPCs and other objects
- basic level pausing and restarting
- advance to next level upon touching exit
- certain objects only update when in view (e.g. Exit)
- other minor things

In more than one word...

My blistering pace for working on this game slowed dramatically recently -- I'm still making progress, but it's not going to have priority for at least a few weeks. Aside from having a few other important, awesome projects I'm working on (including a certain soundtrack ), I ran into a few "real-life" crises which need to be resolved before I can make good progress. No need to go into those publicly here.

I'm hoping my next update will be visually substantial enough for a video or at least screenshot. For now, have a sch1tty photo:

[hughperkins]

Yeah, I think the art looks very nice, and look forward to seeing how the game turns out.

[saint11]

- - type slowly like a REAL LIVE TYPEWRITER

I feel so nostalgic with this project, It awesome.

[hryx]

Two years ago I got stumped on this. While I like making levels by editing text files, it isn't conducive to level design, nor does it scale to large levels. I didn't like any of the general-purpose level editors I tried, so I decided to make my own. That didn't go well so I stopped.

Fast forward to GDC week 2013. I gave it another shot with some different tools and boom, a half-functional level editor pops into existence. Here's how it's going so far (sorry for big pixx):





Done:
- Integrated with GUI/widget library
- Basic editing tools like draw, erase, lasso select, move, flood fill
- Tile inspector to view/edit object properties
- Object palette
- Layer management

To do:
- Save/load levels
- Undo stack
- Everything else
- Get back to the game

Wish me one luck or two!

[happymonster]

I remember this, adorable!

[SolarLune]

There is something about all the sprites which I believe is unconventional for small pixely games, but I won't mention it until someone points it out.

Is it that all of the sprites are non-power-of-two sized? I.e. The 'trail' squares are 3x3 boxes, the chest and main character sprites are 7x7, the cat 9x9, etc.?

Anyway, cool style. It reminds me of MiniFlake. StarTropics I / II didn't get enough play, man! Keep up development!

[hryx]

Is it that all of the sprites are non-power-of-two sized? I.e. The 'trail' squares are 3x3 boxes, the chest and main character sprites are 7x7, the cat 9x9, etc.?

You win the big prize! The game tiles are 9x9. Remind me to send you the big prize.

[hryx]

Since the editor is a tangent from the actual game, I will give it its own progress bar:
●●●●◐○○○○○

This week's progress:

• Save and load level files
• Cut/copy/paste selection
• Highlight current layer
• Level file format improvements to better support user levels
• Many bugsquishes & internal improvements
• Started backing up in private git repo in case my desktop combusts

XtraMegathanks to Dom2D for putting this in his Visual Showcase #14 (insert 14 exclamation marks)

[hryx]

This (2x) week's editor progress:
●●●●●●○○○○

Stuff accomplished:

• Completely converted to spritebatch-based image drawing
• Handy utilities for logging and performance measuring
• Some new GUI widgets, some improved
• Collect and report warnings to user upon level load/save
• Made performance/FPS not sink like lead poop when >1000 objects are on the map (see first point)
• Lots of other things

Next goals:

• Single-room preview in sidebar
• Basic undo stack
• Wrap it up and get back to the game before June

Topics I learned about this week:

• Sending texture geometry info (quads) to GPU instead of whole image
• What a spritebatch is and how to use it
• Closures, upvalues, and tail calls in Lua

Woof! Failed to post an update last week. 40 hr/week job + active band + 15-30 hrs/week game dev... my ability to skip sleep every other night is slipping. Stuff like this has started happening...



Not to mention: candies hangover. I know you all have it too.