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[JobLeonard]

Any game that tries to maintain at least a semblance of realistic audio experience must consider that objects hitting other objects make unique sounds. Metal on wood, stone on stone, wood on dirt…

That's some serious dedication.

[Kyzrati]

Oh wow. This looks tremendous.

Thanks!

You're on Rock, Paper, Shotgun! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/12/devlog-watch-cogmind-fritz-tiny-wizard/

Thanks for the notice--my Google Alert went off last night and I was like... um... "RPS, really?" So apparently they do devlog things nowadays, too Was pretty excited about that, especially since the pieces haven't even been put together into a "game" yet. Indie Game Enthusiast is also going to mention Cogmind soon.

Any game that tries to maintain at least a semblance of realistic audio experience must consider that objects hitting other objects make unique sounds. Metal on wood, stone on stone, wood on dirt…

That's some serious dedication.

It's very boring work, yes. I think the dedication shows a lot more in X@COM, where there is a huge range of materials (being based in the real world). For Cogmind I was able to narrow it down significantly because there is a much more uniform environment: earth/stone/concrete/metal.

[Kyzrati]

Read about the techniques used to put together the individual sound samples in Cogmind (last post in the sfx series before moving on to something else--right now I'm actually designing robots):
http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/05/sound-design-cogmind/

A two-layer explosion:

[Kyzrati]

Only had a couple days before my latest/current trip, which was just enough time to implement the options and game menus.

[JobLeonard]

Kyzrati, as someone who is about to graduate with a masters in Interaction Design, please... stop making interfaces that are so damn sexy using nothing but text. You're making the rest of us look bad.

[Kyzrati]

Heh, thanks, and now I know who to look to when I need professional advice

While I haven't studied it in a formal capacity, I do have about 15 years experience/practice in graphic design and layout in digital and other media. It's a long-time hobby. I also enjoy photography with an emphasis on shapes and positive/negative space (recently retired my old camera which died after taking about 100,000 shots). I'm sure these interests in the visual arts have their cross-disciplinary benefits!

[JobLeonard]

Oh yes indeed they do! I suck at graphics design - my strength is more in the systems level, putting the right elements together so that they "flow" or bring out interesting interaction possibilities.

[Kyzrati]

My thoughts on crowdfunding as I consider a campaign: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/06/kickstarter/

[AlphaPlus]

This game looks really slick!

[JobLeonard]

Regarding that compression issue, have you tried that "nearest neighbour upscaling before uploading"-trick I talked about?

[Kyzrati]

This game looks really slick!

Thanks!

Regarding that compression issue, have you tried that "nearest neighbour upscaling before uploading"-trick I talked about?

Haven't tried it yet, no, but it's in my notes for when I get around to videos. I definitely did not forget that! Was thinking about it just yesterday while writing the post, in fact, but took a screenshot from the 2012 video just for demonstration purposes. If and when I do figure it out, I'll probably do a dedicated post on ASCII videos

[JobLeonard]

I think you can really push the encoder to have high quality crisp pictures and still have amazing compression. Probably something with reducing the amount of I-frames, since there is very little movement, and increasing the range of the P-frames to be larger than one character, since what movement there is usually involves a whole section of the screen moving one character left/right (when the main view scrolls)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types

Of course, this is useless for the sake of Youtube, which recompresses the video to some one-size-fits-all setting.

[Kyzrati]

Of course, this is useless for the sake of Youtube, which recompresses the video to some one-size-fits-all setting.

Precisely, the annoying part is they compress it after you upload it, so you have to take that into account find workarounds, hence the potential for the advance upscaling. Better ASCII-specific compression is certainly possible, but YouTube isn't configured for that kind of video...

[Kyzrati]

Okay, back to development (finally home after a month away). Time for some map generation: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/06/procedural-map-generation/

This is more an introductory post to the topic, with a few mentions of Cogmind in particular.

[Kyzrati]

Some WIP shots of the tunneling algorithm at work. The introductory post was written before more recent enhancements, but I'll get around to showing some better shots later on once the parameters have been tweaked a bit more.

[YM]

That's a really nice level, I like the fact you've got 1 unit of buffer around the rooms, this example lacked the buffer, but because of that, ended up with some nice non-rectangular rooms. You've got great corridor shapes now, just need great room shapes to match.

[Kyzrati]

Thanks! That other example from the previous post was not mine, though, just someone else's work (there's a link to the source describing the method).

After more enhancements the corridors/halls are getting slightly more rectangular (though still retain lots of character), and the rooms should see some improvement eventually--there will be another post in several weeks about integrating other room types, mostly prefabs (thus they can be any shape--I drew this one the other day for testing). Other more general room shape improvements might depend on the map content, but I've been thinking of working more with rooms eventually.

For now I've moved on to integrating the new map generator into the game itself. About time to put together at least a skeleton of the world to have a more accurate environment in which to add more AI features, which is where I stopped working on robots earlier since I didn't want to test their behavior in the old prototype world.

[YM]

That skull room = HECK YES

[Kyzrati]

Random stuff you do one afternoon is always the best, eh?

[Skizomeuh]

Hey you got covered on RPS. Congrats!