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[Gauss Jordan]

Our crowd-funding presentation is heavily updated now! Put a lot of effort into making a video for it. It was really fun and new of an experience to make

I was meaning to get back into the code as soon as we uploaded the video, but I've been really concerned that the campaign didn't get very good reception. I'm gonna have to put some more effort in it. Please, consider supporting us and pre-order the game: http://www.indiegogo.com/Runners-Grinders

I'd really appreciate if you could look at it with your critical eye and give us some feedback. I've got a feeling there's more we can do to better the reception of our campaign.

Moving on to something really neat, we decided that we will release early alpha-versions here at TIGsource, so we can test the mechanics on a variety of devices. We're not sure if we want to release it openly, or it it'll be closed, but shout out if you are interested in testing!

[Gauss Jordan]

What's up TIGSource!
I'm feeling incredibly hot today! At least my fingers are smoking hot from all the coding I've done today!

I can now confirm this about the game's future:

• The game will have battle in it, with dungeons an all that! The game deserves to have a really good battle mode. However, you'll not fight as Hjalte, but instead as avatars that he incarnates with different abilities
• Archank Mindlecrook, one of the playable avatars
  
• The game will be playable on PC! To more comfortably play the game, you'll be able to sync your mobile to an online account. Using a browser with Java, you can then play on your computer granting you better controls and screen!
• We will release the game here at TIGsource as open Alpha. The first version will be released within the near two weeks!
• The Open Alpha will be free to play, but once we release it you can also start to pre-order the game for $6!

The procedural generation is working smooth now! Prepare for much updates in this particular field! It's so much fun testing it because you can paint procedurally generated landscape with a brush. I'm not letting you do it though, you'll have to move physically to move the brush





One more thing I think I should mention is our crowd-funding campaign. Well, I can't say it was a success. I want to thank everybody who contributed really much, but I'm sorry to say we can't achieve all of the things we promised if it would've been successful. It does not hurt our motivation though and I'm making progress like a train with a plow... yeah... or whatever I think i meant like, that all is well and stuff.

[Starflier]

So, I thought I understood how this game is going to work, but now I'm terribly confused...

Is your avatar's movement actually controlled by your movement in the real world? If so, what does the PC version do?

[Gauss Jordan]

So, I thought I understood how this game is going to work, but now I'm terribly confused...

Is your avatar's movement actually controlled by your movement in the real world? If so, what does the PC version do?

Heh, I can see why. Our idea of how movement works did change a bit over the course of this thread.

So to answer your question - Not really. Real world movement will only traverse you over the worldmap.
When you do that, you get updates in a message log. This message log consists of places you've visited in your path. As you pop up the message log, you can start playing through the events in your visits. That is, if you visited a dungeon along the way you can play through it.

[Gauss Jordan]

Our website is aired!
www.runnersgrinders.net

In other news, we are participating in Swedish Game Awards!
This has boosted our team spirit, and our school offered to make a course out of the project, freeing up lots of time. I've been skipping courses and living on savings for a while now, but this changes everything for the two other teammates!

Here's is the worldmap running on my phone. The white+green path was recorded from my apartment to our workplace! There's some cool advanced algorithms involved here, which is exactly why it took so much time to get this working.


Nothing impressive here yet, but this is the beginning of the in-location view, with Mr. Cubicle Blackworth as main character.

[Gauss Jordan]

Also, here's a major dump of the graphics I've been working on:




I'm afraid this is it for now. Do ask if you want to squeeze out more from me

[Ashkin]

Not sure if this was answered before, but: What if you run to a place, it generates a town, and then you can't get back to that place in the meatspace so you can NEVER VISIT THAT TOWN AGAIN?

[Landshark RAWR]

aren't towns placed that you visit often as a sort of crossroad

[Gauss Jordan]

Not sure if this was answered before, but: What if you run to a place, it generates a town, and then you can't get back to that place in the meatspace so you can NEVER VISIT THAT TOWN AGAIN?

Don't worry about that. We will implement a sort of "travel mode" where you move along the paths that you've generated, merely reading your velocity from the GPS. This means that you can visit places without really physically being there. To generate new locations however, you need to physically be on spot

We'll probably also offer an option to "reconstruct" your world, meaning that your world is erased, but all the locations in your savefile and all other crucial data is stored and shoved into a new world. Your old locations will pop up as you start generate new areas. This would solve potential problems if you are like moving to another city.

[Gauss Jordan]

I updated our logo, from this:

To this:


Oh, and someone was awesome enough to make a bead sprite out of our main character Love to you man <3

[Gauss Jordan]

Ui and basic gameplay is shaping up!

The radial item menu is designed to be as quick as possible to use. Touch the corner and the menu will pop up to the shown size. Keep your finger at the screen and move around to scroll in the list. Release your finger to use or equip item. It works really smoothly :D

[Ashkin]

Mmmm, lovely pixel work as always.

[Gauss Jordan]

This is footage from the first dungeon, "Frostburn Temple".
It will appear within a radius of 500 metres from where you created the game.

Don't mind those wooden creatures. They just want to soak in the lava or whatever

[Gauss Jordan]

Fighting system starting to take shape.

The enemies are designed to be very responsive and blocks your attack if they are prepared. Even though I have "grinders" in the name, I want to move away from a grinding and button-mashing kind of battle system, instead making every enemy into a tiny puzzle.

Of course there will be grinding, but that comes with the running part Exercising is a hell of a grinding

[Gauss Jordan]

Good people of TIGsource!

I have good news and very sad news...

----Warning, major rant!-----
First off, the bad news - One of the team members decided to leave the project. It hurts me pretty badly, and it leaves me so frustrated of the overall history of the team. I've been putting a lot of effort getting the team to work and given them warning several times. Each time I've gotten royal promises and just the bit of work to persuade me, but in the end it's more like they have held those team positions in hostage. I'm sure they did not mean to hurt me but I've not had it easy and feel cheap-tricked and held back.

So, when it looked like we had a final chance to make things work (taking a university course with the game as project) for the following period, one of the team members just blatantly decided to leave. This together with the fact that the third team member refuses to work in all but his own codespace, which means he have only been working on the level editor :/ Gawd, you have no idea how much I long for working with competent, inspiring and hardworking people.

I want you all to know that I alone have made most of the work. I have made all graphics so far, all publicity and the website (not so much effort put there though), all game design AND most of the code. I was questioning whether or not I could make this on my own, but judging by how much work I've done I'm pretty confident I can make this on my own. But I have to sacrifice a lot of the content that I wanted finished for the milestone and competition. Instead, I'll put all my effort on the code. This is a bit sad, but it's what I have to do.

Trying to keep up the pace I've been sacrificing more and more of my time. It's incredible though, I feel stronger and more motivated than ever and I can work all my wake time without growing tired at all The motivation I feel for this game is huge, and I will do everything in my power to keep it floating. I don't know how long I can manage to do that though, so any support is welcome. Especially hugs

 Oh well, sorry for that rant. Now for the jolly good parts!



The in-game mode is now connected with the worldmap. This means that you can now place a location in the worldmap, go to the real-world position it represent and get that visit stored in the event-log shown above. You can scroll through this list and may play through the event lying first in the queue. Doing this takes you to the in-game mode featuring the battles, puzzles and NPC dialogs

Next thing to work on is making locations actually appear on the worldmap on their own. Also, they should be relevant to your current progress in the game.

I've also been working on a little tileset for the very first place in the game - the crashsite of your expeditions airship.



I SO want to make a gameplay video now. Making a video that could represent a game such as this requires a bit more effort though I'm sure I can work something out though.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Sucks about all the drama you've been having but the game is coming along great and nice to hear that you're feeling more motivated with it.

[HernanZh]

Aw, sucks to hear that. If only we could create clones of ourselves, so we had reliable people with the same motivation to work with

[Gauss Jordan]

Thanks guys! Your comments really helps me get through the day

You know how I've been working on everything in this game? I've actually been doing even more.
The game itself is taking shape but what's really starting to take shape though is the collectors edition I'm planning for Runners Grinders. It will feature a utility belt that will make you look really cool while running out on quests!

I've already done the CAD-design for all parts and send them to a production-company. I'm just waiting for response from the manufacturers of the flashlight, mana-potions etc.



Head on to www.runnersgrinders.net/blog/ to fetch your preorder of the collectors-edition!

[JudahRoydes]

Super funny! you had me for a second. Well anyway I am totally the kind of guy that would rock that stuff lol.

[Gauss Jordan]

So I've been awfully quiet for some time now. It's kinda awkward that the last you heard of me was an April fools joke

Very much has happened. I'll probably have to pause and continue the story tomorrow.

Week 1-2:
As I suspected, the second team member dropped out shortly after the first one did. This meant that I had to make the level editor too.
At this point I started working 12 hours each day, and I've kept that routine quite stubbornly. Some of the days I've simply not had the energy to work fully effectively, but that's inevitable.

The code produced by the previous team-member was in a horrible and nightmarish state so there was no way I would continue on that code. I rewrote the editor almost from scratch, and had the same functionality after a week. After two weeks the editor was mostly finished with a system to add entities and change settings on them.

During this time I also got in touch with Judah Roydes who is now making the music. I'm really grateful that he kept working with me even if the game got into this unstable situation

Week 3:

• Made a cutscene system and an interface for it in the editor.
• Added three levels of persistence for entities - Room, location and world
• Added an enemy called "Cube Oh Face", an icecube which actually cannot move on it's own

Week 4:

• Hookshot for Archank
• Projectiles
• Manabar
• Door which is opened by sacrificing mana
• Recharging mana by moving IRL!
• Fixed horrible horrible bugs!

More screenshots and changelogs coming up tomorrow. Now I must sleep!