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[LaughingLeader]

**Update**
Those reading may be wondering where more recent updates have been. I've decided to put SETI on hold for now, as I explore smaller projects that I can complete in a shorter amount of time. One of these projects is a short game I made for Ludum Dare 25, called "Shadow Possession". You can play the post-compo release of Shadow Possession here: http://www.laughingleader.com/games/shadow-possession-update/

I'll be taking part in One Game a Month, and have already started on this month's game. You can view the devblog for that here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=30758.0

Greetings everyone!

This is my first game ever, titled "SETI: First Contact", or just "SETI" for short.

Screenshots:



*General Game Overview*
SETI: First Contact is a desktop action-platformer with some RPG flavoring. The player takes control of a short astronaut tasked with the mission to discover extra-terrestrial life in the galaxy, starting with the location of a mysterious transmission - Planet Akarios.

The player will have to overcome enemies using a variety of equipment, traverse dangerous terrain, and solve the occasional puzzle to progress. When and if the player discovers and alien presence in the game, the way the player chooses to interact with these beings can change the way the game progresses, and inevitably the ending they experience. There won't be a "karma meter" or anything of that sort, but expect that other people won't like it very much if you open fire on them.

The "RPG flavoring" I mentioned earlier comes in the form of collecting various items to enhance/upgrade your equipment. I'm not a big fan of "grinding", whether it be for experience or loot, so most of the RPG elements in SETI are what I enjoy from RPGs - an interesting story, well-written dialogue, and the progression of equipment/items as the player gets through the game.

Side note: I haven't quite decided if Akarios will be the only planet the game takes place in, or if I'll mix it up with some other planets as well. Either way, expect some pretty extreme environment changes, as a majority of the challenge lies in overcoming the terrain. Lack of oxygen will be prevalent in certain levels, and running out will be met with a collection of unfortunate death animations.

Speaking of death animations, in the spirit of games like Heart of Darkness, SETI will contain a large library of death animations to meet an assortment of untimely deaths. Death will most likely be pretty common for the regular player, and there will be quite a few events that can happen to make dying interesting.

Continuing on, the player's first weapon is his trusty Laser Pistol. It sports an unlimited supply of energy, yet is prone to overheating if fired excessively. Overheating the gun past safe levels will result in the gun forcibly cooling down - unless the player chooses to override this safety and face the risks involved with overheating the gun further. The player will be able to upgrade this gun as they progress, and they can tune the gun's "overheat" mode to fit their preference (still a W.I.P., but I'd like there to be different types of "overheat" attacks along the lines of a short-ranged "napalm" explosion, or a medium-ranged flamethrower-type of effect as the gun expels the excess heat).

*Developer Ramblings*
I make regular posts/updates for SETI: First Contact on my website, as most of them have been for the more technical-side of things. Once the visual side of things start rolling out, I'll be making quite a few more videos and screenshots.

*Short "About Me"*

As a former "artsy-fartsy" avoider of programming and math, in recent years I've since "seen the light" that is the creativity within programming. I started programming for a game mod about a year ago, and have been truly creatively programming(from a blank slate) in the last six months. Before I caught the programmer bug, I went through a 2-year online animation school(animationmentor.com), and did some local filmmaking/commercial work for a local company. I've also only been playing guitar for about 2 years.

I've been a gamer since I was little (used to play computer games like Jill of the Jungle and Home Alone). I've always felt an urge to create my own video game, and it's my hope to be able to successfully create games for a living, and possibly find others to work with in the future. As I'm sure many others have experienced, the "Everest" that the journey as an indie dev can be unhealthily isolating, so it's refreshing to have a place like Tigsource with so many other developers active and present. It's nice to see that others have gone through(or are going through) what you are currently.

Update - 9/6/2012
Detail-rich Blog Post

The Highlights

Past Updates:
(In order of newest first)

Update: 7/22/2012

"Between" Updates:

Relevant Blog Post

DevLog Post

Update: 6/14/2012
Pre-Alpha Update 2:

Video

Completed(ish):

- Death Animation System
- Saving/Loading
- Pausing/Menus
- HUD
- Event System
- Weapon System
- Flag/Equipment System
- Inventory/Item System


Work-In-Progress:

- Planet Akarios Zone 1
- Dynamic Lighting System
- NPCs
- Dialogue

It's hard to believe I've been working on this game for a little over three months. There's still so much to do, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface, considering I barely have any levels done(yet, according to LocMetrics I've went from about 4,000 lines of code to 16,000 since the last update video). I'm starting to design the layout of the levels now that most of the "foundation" of the game is done. It took me longer than I thought it would to get that part done, mainly because I wanted the right setup to be able to pump out a ton of small little details in the game. Things like different walking/jumping/landing sounds depending on what type of surface the player is on, a dynamic death animation system, and having the player be able to customize their gear to a degree(the player is made up of separate parts - the flag, gun arm, gun itself, the player's face, visor, and any external equipment are all separate objects grouped into one). I like to follow the "philosophy of a 1,000 papercuts" - having a lot of smaller details add up to one really big detail(a higher level of quality).

Since a lot of the engine is now done, including a lot of the data-oriented backbone of the game (saving/loading/menus, etc), I've been designing the systems for level-specific and action-specific events. For instance, if the players dies for the very first time, they'll experience the astronaut's "DNA" being pulled out of his dead body and thrown into a Cloning Chamber. After that, they respawn(or get cloned) at a faster rate. As simple as that seems, I hit a few snags on proper camera control and timing everything that happens when the player dies/respawns.

I've also been experimenting with a lighting system. P.O.E.M., the small little robot that hovers over the player's shoulder, provides the player with a source of light in darkness. So far the lighting seems to be working well. I'd like to do some environmental lighting (lights, also perhaps something like having the sun rise), but unfortunately I might shelve the lighting for now though, as NPCs and the dialogue system seem a bit more important.

Pre-Alpha Update 1:


Video | Blog Link

Pre-Alpha First Test:

Video

[Core Xii]

"SETI" is a pretty terrible name, considering it's such a common term. Like calling your game "apple". You should come up with something distinctive.

[SolarLune]

I don't have a problem with the name. I don't know of any other games named SETI, and I had heard of the term maybe once before? It could be a little more exact - maybe "SETI: Cosmonauts" or something? Something added onto the end. Anyway, I like the sound of the game. Keep going!

[LaughingLeader]

I don't have a problem with the name. I don't know of any other games named SETI, and I had heard of the term maybe once before? It could be a little more exact - maybe "SETI: Cosmonauts" or something? Something added onto the end. Anyway, I like the sound of the game. Keep going!

I didn't know of the term "SETI" until I looked up space-related terms a while back. I certainly wouldn't want to work against myself if chances are that people who googled my game would have to filter out a bunch of real-life SETI stuff first. I do like your suggestion of adding something on the end though(and SETI's title still can be labeled as "working"), so I'll have to chew on that a bit and see what feels right. It always takes me a while to name things.

[LaughingLeader]

Sorry for this long delay of an update. I've been working on more of the backbone/underlying code behind everything, so there hasn't been too many visual representations of what I've done since the last update.

I have a "Between Updates" post I made on my blog here, for those interested:
http://www.laughingleader.com/2012/07/21/seti-between-updates/

I also posted a little tutorial/guide for how to create a customized save file in Actionscript 3 + AIR. Up until now I've been using SharedObjects and Flixel's FlxSave functionality, but as this game grows more into the monster it's becoming, the actual Flixel code I'm using becomes less and less. As resources on how to create a save file for an AS3 Desktop game were pretty much non-existent (when I did my searches), I thought I'd write something up since I figured out a solution that works for me.

Link here: http://www.laughingleader.com/2012/07/22/ttt-actionscript-3-air-creating-a-custom-save-file/

A small list of things I'm working on currently:

• NPC/Dialog System (Pretty much finished for the most part. Just needs actual visual dialog boxes and interaction functionality.)
• Datapad System (Journal entries for previous events in the game and observational notes for npcs/enemies/certain environmental objects)
• Level layouts for the first area of the game.

As to not neglect the level-building part of SETI's construction, I've sketched out quite a few level layouts. I'm working towards a balance between enemy and environmental challenges, as I'd like SETI to be less of a "shooting spamfest" and more like Megaman X and Castlevania in terms of proper enemy placement working with the environment to create interesting challenges. One of these environmental challenges I'd like to implement is the lack of oxygen during certain levels, and how the player has to carefully navigate between areas that can refill his oxygen, while avoiding death from enemies and environmental hazards. Sort of like Dead Space did in the various areas where you had to run between broken parts of the ship by entering the vacuum of space.

Anyways, once I start getting to the more visual-side of the updates, and less of the programming side, I'll post screenshots and such on a more regular basis.

[JackMenhorn]

I like where this is going!  Keep it up!

[LaughingLeader]

I wrote a bit of a "technical" update on SETI on my website:

http://www.laughingleader.com/2012/09/06/seti-development-update-3/

Here are the highlights:

The Highlights

• I'm currently looking for a 2D Pixel Artist that will be able to handle the level art.

• The system behind SETI has grown pretty huge (from what it was), with a total of 123 classes at the moment, with 27 directories and 25,729 lines of code.

• I have a "3 profile, 5 save slots per profile (including an Autosave slot)" save system working.

• SETI saves a good amount of persistant data relevant to your progression within the game, like a normal game would (Amazing, right?/sarcasm). This essentially means that I'll be able to do some complex stuff like make certain choices and progression the player makes impact other parts of the game (For instance, I track how many times you break your legs (from fall deaths). Break enough of them and you'll get an interesting surprise the next time you're cloned.)

• I've implemented a quite extensive amount of gamepad support. Currently it's just meant for those that can bind keyboard keys to their gamepads, but eventually (I hope) I'll be able to have some real gamepad detection (currently I can detect everything but the d-pad and L2/R2 buttons, which are vital).
  
  The "keyboard keys to gamepad buttons" option is still quite handy, as I have a virtual keyboard that works when text-input is necessary. There's also the option to change your "button hint" icons, in case there are those that like to use non-360 gamepads (like me). There's are PS3/360/Generic icon settings, and I'll have support for custom icons in the close future (this is really more of a nicety, as it's pretty easy to implement).

• I have a feature working that I'm pretty excited about: layered music. Nothing truly new to video games as a whole, but quite nice when implemented, as it allows me to blend different layers of a song to accent what's happening on-screen (like if you're in combat, the "combat" layer fades in, syncing perfectly to the other layers).

• Now that most of the core of SETI is built, I can start implementing my mapped-out level layouts and start testing the gameplay. I'm not quite ready to head to an Alpha-release yet, but an Alpha version and a possible demo (for playtesting) should be coming in the next couple of months.

Tangent
It should be noted that I notice things that could be improved when I play other games, and I try to look for those in my own game. Simple, easy-to-use design choices can really give a game that last "10%" it needs to go over the top.

For instance, I was playing an earlier Pokemon game recently (Firered), and I noticed that it would be useful to be able to choose your "Pokemon recently captured" box from the main pause menu somewhere. If I want to catch certain Pokemon just for Pokedex information, I'd like to be able to choose what box those go in, as they're more "clutter" than anything else. Instead (unfortunately), Pokemon seem to get auto-sent to the first box with room (or whatever box you last used at the PC. Not sure which it is), which forces me to have a horribly disorganized box if I go on a catching-spree.

Is this all a huge, game-quitting problem? Of course not, but its the little things together that can have a big impact on a game as a whole. That's what lead me to create a virtual keyboard that's fast and easy to use, even though there may only be a small amount of people that actually ever use it with a keyboard-bound gamepad. If the player is using a gamepad, it's my goal to make it so they never have to use a keyboard.

There's nothing worse than when you're sitting back, relaxing and ready to play, the game forces you to get back up and use a keyboard or mouse to change something (laziness+1).

Concluding

More  details, screenshots, and whatnot can be viewed at my website's blog post.

I'm excited to head to the next phase of development, as it means more visual-goodness, which means more videos and screenshots, and things to get people excited about. Cheers.  

*Update/Edit*
In case it wasn't obvious, I decided on a complete title for SETI.

SETI: First Contact is pretty much everything I could want from a title, as it explains the main underlying story and motivation in the game. Not only that, it's good symbolism for the first game in a potential series(if I ever decide to make a sequel), and good symbolism for my first game ever. Almost like my "first contact" with the rest of the world as a developer.

Needless to say, I'm satisfied.