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[mihiic]

Congrats on your inventory! As someone who has been doing a lot of it recently, I can really appreciate it haha!
Looks amazing, I might be stealing some of the ideas soon, I really like that circular thingy  .

I see you're using Flashpunk. How does it scale on bigger project? I remember hitting the ceiling in two weeks or so, but then again, I was doing particle heavy (like really heavy) action game.

Keep up the good work! 

[vivavolt]

I see you're using Flashpunk. How does it scale on bigger project? I remember hitting the ceiling in two weeks or so, but then again, I was doing particle heavy (like really heavy) action game.

Good question! From a performance standpoint, we're using AIR to build Proof rather than Flash which has pretty massive performance boosts. AIR's (very partially) hardware accelerated but Flashpunk uses software rendering internally. However, we're doing pretty well! Still 60fps for all but the most radical situations. The key, as you've noted, is not having too many entities at a time. It can be frustrating, but software rendering makes life easier in a lot of ways too.

Usually for us the bottleneck has been the game logic rather than the rendering so far. When I come to optimising everything I'll probably write about it all in more detail.

From a code standpoint, I've developed a pretty large layer on top of Flashpunk to enable us to move faster. We use a home-grown entity-component system contained within our Volticpunk project. It's my first time developing a game anywhere near this size (I've made some pretty big web apps before), I'm learning a lot still about software architecture.

In the future though, I'm looking at moving to either Monogame or Unity. C# is a nice language for games, and it's a much more popular environment from a support standpoint.

I look forward to seeing your menus!

[vivavolt]

Hey guys, as promised (maybe slightly later than expected...) I've put together a writeup on the new menu system. Some people asked about this on twitter so I figured I'd share it here too.

It runs through the issues we found with the old menu, from both a user experience and technical perspective; the design process for the new menu and some technical detail about how our menu systems work.

You can read it on our blog.

Happy Monday (from Australia)   

[iammonshushu]

Hey everyone! We've got a new discoverable note to show you guys today. Took a while to put together (with lots of interruptions) so here's the progression:

12:00pm - First Draft


2:45pm - Font Meddling


5:30pm - Font Finalising and Details


7:00pm - Final Product

Click on the images for a larger version. There were a few more steps going back and forth between us with minor changes and adjustments, and you can view the whole album here (http://imgur.com/a/MhXr3#0).

[iammonshushu]

Hey! Lots of tweaking and bug fixing today, so there isn't a lot to show you. I basically spent 8 hours fixing spelling errors and fiddling with details. Fun stuff! Also started work on a couple of new notes, so here are a couple of sneak peeks:

Full version here: http://gfycat.com/FlippantBreakableBushsqueaker

This is another photo for the game, still needs some tweaking. The scene is a little larger than the photo size...

A quick sketch for another note:

I'm feeling a little more confident around the notes now, although there are some aspects (like making handwriting!  ) that I feel are going to kill me before I conquer them... More soon!

[Impmaster]

Wait why is this new image in modern times? I thought the whole thing was in a cave?

[iammonshushu]

Wait why is this new image in modern times? I thought the whole thing was in a cave?

All part of the story! The very beginning of the game is in a cave, then you find your way out, and the story of how you got there is told through the cutscenes and notes. About 3/4 are underground, it just happens to be the first 3/4. So far though, we've only shown a couple of parts that are above ground:

... mostly because those parts of the game aren't done yet. Also, the game is kind of dark and introspective so we've chosen settings (caves, valleys, military bunkers) that reflect that.

[vivavolt]

Got a little technical post for everyone today, this one's about a bug! So there's a part of the game where we have two versions of a level, one "fake" and one "real". These are toggled between dynamically in game, but I won't go in to what they're used for.

The way we accomplish this is by authoring two maps in Ogmo Editor, let's say Test.oel and TestFake.oel. Test.oel specified that is has a fake accompanying map named TestFake. Using this, the game loads both maps and overlays the graphical layers of TestFake on to Test.

Here's the code that creates these fake layers:

You can get a little insight into how some of our API's work from there as an aside.

So, this seems like pretty straightforward code. I decide to run it and the game crashes with a "Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert 0 to VEntity" on the line "fakeLayers.push( added );". So if you aren't aware what that means, basically something was expecting to be given a VEntity (all our game objects inherit from this) and instead it got a 0. So that's pretty weird, but stranger things have happened. I set a breakpoint, broke the code up into smaller statements and stepped through... And everything was fine. No 0's to be found in any variables, and even weirder is that when the game crashes "fakeLayers" actually has all the entries it should, so the "push()" succeeded.

This is about where I used the sophisticated tactic of "alright, no idea what's going on, let's comment some stuff out". I started by commenting out the original error line, only to find the error occurred one line earlier now. This should have been enough for me to spot the problem, but I was too busy being confused. This continued, commenting out one line at a time until I think "hm, maybe the error isn't actually here" and comment out the two for loops below. Turns out that fixed it, but looking at that code it's not immediately obvious what's wrong still.

Well, if you're familiar with Javascript, ECMAScript or ActionScript you might know why. In standard ECMAScript language, running for over an object returns its property names. For example:

Code:

var object: Object = {
    "test": 1,
    "hello": 2
};

for (var i in object) {
    // we get "test" and "hello"
}

Running a for loop on an Array-like object gives us the properties too. However, for an array these are the indices present:

Code:

var array = ["A", "B", "C"];

for (var i in array) {
    // 0, 1, 2
}

Now maybe you can see where my problem is. In ActionScript 3 "for" loops have this behaviour and "for each" loops iterate over the actual contents of an array:

Code:

var array = ["A", "B", "C"];
for each (var i in array) {
    // "A", "B", "C"
}

Realistically, I should've caught this by eye but I've been writing a lot of other languages lately. However, it doesn't help that the runtime error happens on the wrong line. I would've been tempted to add a warning if I were Adobe whenever someone tries to use a raw "for" loop like that on an Array. It's pretty common that you'd rather do that than the explicit:

Code:

for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    
}

Just a little story for you all. Here's a gif of the effect in action:

[vivavolt]

Just a few quick screenshots teasing the area I'm working on at the moment. All the props you see are being refined still 

[iammonshushu]

Hey everyone! We've got some new level design in the game, still making slow progress, but we've been terribly distracted: this past weekend was Ludum Dare #33 (You are the Monster)! We took part, and finished DRAGON TALE: ACQUISITION after 36 hours (back to our respective jobs and studies   ). Its a dragon simulator where you add segments and abilities to your dragon.

You can download and play DRAGON TALE: ACQUISITION here
.

So what about Proof? At the moment we're working on gameplay elements for the latest area - a scientific/military installation with a sort of Cold-war vibe. We're also finalising the story resolution. At the moment I'm doing a rotation in a mental health facility, so the concepts of life stressors, personal bereavement and maladaptive responses are coming up a lot. I might write a short piece on how these have influenced Proof in the coming weeks.

[iammonshushu]

We've started designing the fourth area in the game (the Cliffs area), moving away from the indoor and underground settings of the rest of the game, and into the outdoors. 

We've still work to do in the third area, but its kinda slow and boring for Ben, and I can't show you anything since it's all SPOILERS. So we've started on this area, which will be the final area. It takes place on these mountainous cliffs, so there is an ongoing scenery transition. To that end, we've made a couple of tilesets.

You can view the entire album here, or click on the images for a better resolution

Mountain Top


Foot Hills


Foot Hill Detail

In the process, we made some tiles that didn't work out...

Bleh...

... but that's game development! Sometimes, you make something good that just doesn't work! If you want (more) regular updates, follow Ben on twitter (@vivavolt) - mine has fallen into disuse... Who has time to tweet?!! 

[iammonshushu]

I've been doing some more work on notes this week. Here is the few drafts of one note:

Click here for the full album, or on any picture for a better resolution

1


2


3


4

As well, I did a quick draft of something that might not end up in the final game, although maybe it will be above a desk somewhere...:

Work hard everyone!

[droxon]

I love the artstyle 

[vivavolt]

Just a small update...

He gon' getcha.

[vivavolt]

Just a small part of the game but... Here's our token hacking minigame (the rules are a secret, for now).

[iammonshushu]

Hacking pseudocode!





More soon!

[Oscar Blomqvist]

This looks awesome.

[vivavolt]

Just a small update today, we've refined the hacking puzzle a little (there are two kinds now). This one is a "word search" style puzzle, where the user needs to "find the system password in memory". Obviously, very theoretical!

[vivavolt]

One last progress update on the hacking puzzles for now. I've integrated Ricky's mockups with our pseudo-unix commands:

We've got some tweaking to do on the spacing there, but the general idea is in place. When actually using the computer the commands below the puzzle aren't actually shown until you successfully solve it.

Just for some technical insight, here's how those puzzles are defined in game:

Code:

"puzzle": {
    "solution": [3,3],
    "grid": [
        [1, 2, 3, 4],
        [2, 1, 2, 4],
        [2, 3, 1, 5],
        [3, 2, 3, 5]
    ]
},
"alt_puzzle": {
    "solution": "hashed",
    "grid": [
        ["H", "A", "S", "S"],
        ["A", "S", "H", "E"],
        ["S", "H", "A", "D"],
        ["H", "A", "R", "D"]
    ]
}

We've got some cool art related progress coming up. It's been a turbulent time in the development of the game, lots of changes and lots to talk about.

Also I'm two weeks from graduating university.  

[iammonshushu]

We're still here! We've been working on the business side of things for a bit, as well as some serious planning of where the game is going, what we still need to do and how best to do it. And we were only slightly delayed by the fact Cuba is almost completely devoid of internet 

Today, I've got some new graphics for you. We've decided that the old look for the second area of the game wasn't quite right:

Its a bit too dark, and too similar perhaps to the game's first area. So we had a serious think, and tried a couple of iterations. The first was a view across a river valley:

... but this perspective didn't work with the game, and wasn't exactly what we wanted. So I made Ben start over (sorry buddy), aiming for a jungle/forest look instead of a river valley. This is what he's made:

The New Area 2



Background Trees

And I think these are much better! We're still going for that gloomy darkness, but in game this looks much more like a real place, living and breathing, and much different to area one:

So what do you think? As usual, click any of the images for better resolutions (Imgur scaling does some bad things), and let us know what you think! We should have more and exciting news in the new year. Bring on 2016!