TIGSource Forums

As soon as I saw the post for the new competition I knew I finally had to be a part of tigsource. I always wanted to enter into a competition here, but life is hard, time is sparse and my job sucks most of my motivation away.
But enough about that...at work I looked through the NES cart images and the one with the whale really got me. In the last month I was often experimenting with the marching cube algorithm and the whale struck me as something I could model with my implementation of the MC.
So the game will have 3d graphics and I think it will play in a 3rd person behind the character view. As I am a programer and not an artist, the characters will all be billboarded sprites. I did not think about any kind of battle system yet, but it will more likely be along the lines of Vagrant Story, than God of war ... and well, it will be piss poor in comparison to these games  ;)

I hope I can put some sort of mock up together tomorrow.

I suggest you make it a choice.

Well I think that should be the twist of the game...be selfish and safe your house, family etc. or sacrifice everything for a greater good. The greater good here would be something along the lines, that the whale really is some kind of god and only if he rests in peace in a special place, a new god will be born.
Hmm...when I think about it...is it even okay to spoiler twists and turns of the game here in the forum?

Before I go to bed...here are two views at an interesting structure, which can easily be made with the marching cubes algorithm. The textures are stolen from somewhere and I don´t want to show too much yet, so bear with me.

(http://www.pictureupload.de/originals/pictures/010710005849_Image3.jpg)
(http://www.pictureupload.de/originals/pictures/010710005932_Image4.jpg)

This is going to be 3D! That's fantastic! Always glad to see a 3D game.

In my spare time I was playing around with creating cave like dungeons, which is a perfect match for the marching cubes algorithm. Here are three screenshots of a very buggy version with a very ugly first try at dynamic lighting.
I was testing the look of normal MC without smoothing the generated polygons, but I don´t think I will continue with this, so next time there will be more rounded edges.
Textures are still not mine and I think, I will start drawing them pretty late into development.

Wow. This thing is starting to look pretty awesome.

HOWEVER! Having a level where you spend the whole thing walking across the back of the whale is a must.

Absolutely, I envision the main part of the game taking place on the "back" of the whale. Something like a floating island, which is high above the ground, which I will have to render somehow, too ... oh what have I gotten into here :)

But I want to have one or two caves to freshen things up a bit.

My biggest fear is, that I can not give you a good feeling of moving through the sky an a freakishly huge "island".

Just start on one of the edges, so you can see the ground moving past below you. And make it so every once in a while, you have to go to a high place / near an edge. That way you can really just appreciate how weird of a situation you are in.

Very interesting take on this one. I almost did it as well. Was thinking more along the lines of an Armored Flying Whale taking revenge upon humans and their cities Sh'mup. But to each their own. Yours is more original. :)

Yours sounds like it would actually be more fun :)

I have to say, that looks awesome.
I love the combination of 3d with low res textures and sprites.
:handanykey::lol: :handthumbsupR:

I agree, it's a really good look.

It's pretty cool, but I think it will look better with lower res textures...

Regarding the textures ...
Well I don´t know yet, what style I will use. In the first pictures you see filtered textures, which blend nicely together, which does not work so well on the unfiltered textures. The resolution is the same in all used textures.
Anyway its really only a design choice, as there are no speed gains in my engine. Unfiltered textures are super if you can use a texture atlas, but I need tiling of the textures over big polygons, so texture atlas is a no go and I don´t want to use too much time fixing that in a shader or something like that.

But I really like the high resolution of the game itself and the low res assets ... it makes the game look like a Playstation game running in an Emulator. And I am quite fond of some old PS1 RPGs (Xenogears or Breath of Fire 4 still look amazing in my eyes).

Oh, another thing ... I was thinking about the art style and I am not sure if the smallish detailed textures are a fit anyway. Maybe it would suit the game, if I used textures with less detail and make it look more like a "painting".

I am not talking about Cellshading, more along the lines of the backgrounds in Studio Ghibli movies (or animes in general). I will have to look around the net a bit to find examples, from which I could learn...

This is pretty much what I pictured when I read the initial post. The way I picture the game, it'd be a fitting style. :handthumbsupL:

(http://www.abcgallery.com/S/sisley/sisley10.jpg)
(http://www.vcxd.com/img/1-5-5/art-impressionism.jpg)

I imagine it like these. This would be a beautiful style, especially for this idea.

Ha, such a look would be absolutely amazing, but hardly feasible for me, as I am neither an artist or have the time and I am not that good of a shader programer (yet).
But I will look into it and do my best, but I think it will be a low res pixel look, with textures which won´t look pixelated, because the will feature only low detail...maybe in the end it will look a bit like cell shading.

To talk a bit about ongoing development, well it is extremely hot in Germany right now, so development slowed down a bit. Today our national Football team has a game in the world cup. I don´t like football (or sport as a whole) but it is a nice way to get together with some friends.
Since the last post I worked a bit on the ground rendering for the land the whale is floating over. It will be low poly and I will heavily fake things like woods and ´
villages and as the whale will cross quite a distance I have to use some sort of random generation for the ground.
So maybe I will have some pictures of an ugly random landscape next time :)

Ah, for the heck of it ... three more screenshots from the editor. Filtering and blending of textures are back in and as you may notice, there are some trees, which are generated procedurally. The trees are something I did maybe a year ago, so it was easy and quick to add them. And maybe this time I find the motivation to add some leaves etc.


Edit: The structure makes no sense at all, right now I am testing the editor and doodeling away. Next week I will finally start and "design" the whale.

I imagined this in cel-shading and such, like a painting, and with SotC style exploring.

I don´t want to get your hopes to high. I am just one progamer with no art background and even if I try my best (and I am commited to finished the game into something playable), it just can not be as cool or good looking as a Ghibli movie.
But that said, I will do everthing I can to make it look good and "stylish".

Regarding the engine...it is my own crappy "engine" if you want to call it that. It is written in c++ using SDL for input, sound etc. and OpenGL for rendering.

But oh my god...it is so hot right now here, I hope I can do anything at all for the game today. Next thing will be deciding, how high the whale is floating, so it is threatening enough fo the people on him, but low enough, so I won´t run into problems rendering the ground level. As I just won´t have enough polygons to do a landscape you can see for miles with no end.

Hah neat: another whale noise buddy - best of luck, man : )

Oh, not saying you have to conform. This actually already looks fantastic; just saying what I imagined it as.

Hi people,

just a little update from the game. I am not particular happy with the title, for one thing ... does it mean "noises which are dying" like a noise which fades out or does it mean "noises of the dying", like someone is in a death struggle, who is giving his last breath.

Work, family and heat are taking their toll, but I managed to start drawing sprites.



If I succeed with making this game, the charactes maybe has to fight again, as I am thinking about integrating the happenings of the game into a larger narrative and connect it to two other projects I am working on from time to time.

I wanted to give a status update. Sorry no pictures today as I am still working on engine code which is not really visible stuff.
The game now has a primitive blue gradient sky sphere and three moons, which are visible from a certain camera angle. On the groundlevel there is a heightmap, which is generated by perlin noise, but I still have some speed issues there and I have to write a shader to texture that thing.
I hope I can put everything together this week and maybe I will produce a small walk around demo on a floating island (to simulate the floating whale), so I can prove I did anything at all.
Oh, and I was pixeling the family of the hero, as he is quite old and was always on a quest, he does not have a wife, but is living in the house of his daughter and grandchildren. The husband of the daughter went to defend his country in a war, which may happen in another game in this world.   

That's a pretty nice character you got there. Personally I enjoy the non-filtered texture look, but I'm like that.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I like the pixelated look too, but I think it is not the right choice for this project. I don´t really want to put the pixeled characters in there, but I can´t help it, the time is just to short to model anything decent in 3d.

And I have been a bit lazy the last days, the heat is back and the PC I wanted to work on the game (a quiet one, because fan noises etc. piss me off quite a bit) died on me. But fear not, the game progresses. Right now I am looking for free textures, which I can use for the moment. I want to use my own stuff in the end, but if the time runs out I do not want to step into legal problems, because of the textures.

But I am kinda embarassed, that I don´t have anything to show for the last days. Hope the people reading this, do not feel cheated. I am still working on this !!!

Showing life signs...
I am still not ready to show anything, but I started working again on the game, after I stopped for some days to complete my new PC, which is for all purposes besides gaming. It is almost completely silent, which makes it much easier to concentrate on the programming, so hopefully development speeds up now.

Right now I am looking into rendering grass on the ground, because everything looks still a bit barren. I am about halfway through with designing the locations, but the hard part will be building them inside the game. For textures, I don´t think I will be able to have a significant amount of time left, to draw them myself, so I will use stock textures.

Storywise the game is changing a little bit, as the whale won´t be a sentient creature, but more something like a pyramid. So it will harbor something inside of it, which maybe is better not seen again.

Hi people,

I did not make enough progress, considering the time which is left. I still hope I can give you something to play, but there are so many loose ends everywhere.
But to show at least something, I captured a video and upped it to youtube. It does not really show anything besides moving the camera through some test geometry and watching the hero "Reynold" walking around.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3T8nS4VGw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE3T8nS4VGw)

Maybe I will write something about the battle system next time, if I can wrestle some time from my wife and child away and actually implement the damn thing.

Shame. It has a very distinct look to it. Reminds me a bit of the SaGa games for the playstation.

I think there's some interesting stuff you could do with that style. Sorry to hear that you may not be finishing it. Maybe with the possible extension you can work us a short demo?

Oh my god...an extension would be awesome :)

The game is picking up steam a little bit right now. I finally got around adding items, which you can pick up and drop somewhere else (a little bit like in Ultima6-8).
The biggest problem for me until now, was loading all the different resources like pictures, sprites, definitions for the stats of items, gui dialogs etc. In the last days I made some good progress in this area and it is much easier getting stuff into the game (maybe someone will even mod the game a bit ... nicer sprites maybe ?). BUT this stuff took way to long ...

Before I go to bed, I will add an inventory screen, to drop the items from the world into. Wish me luck ;)

I am getting kinda pissed at coding these days ... had to think for about 8 hours straight at work about a problem (and could not solve it).
When I got home I almost did not want to work on the game, as I found some VERY bad collision bugs, which I could not solve either. But I just took the Bullet collision library and within the hour my collision problems vanished. Well there is some jittering, which I have to get rid of, but else everything works nicely :)

But there is still not enough content to warrant a demo, I am just crossing my fingers for the extension.

Programming is a matter of immense ammounts of patience. :wizard:

Yeah...patience...I almost did not have any left ... BUUUUUT I finally got my shit together and solved the coding problem at work (and it looks awesome).

Then I came home and in a matter of minutes I could fix the last collision bugs, which were bothering me (and kept me awake until 2.00 in the morning, because Bullet is not as easy to use as I first thought...but great stuff anyway).

Hopefully I can do some more work on the game today, when the kid is in bed. I would love to go into crunch mode for the rest of the competition, but I don´t see it because of the family. God, I love them, but sometimes...

What we need is for someone to invent an atemporal chamber so we can spend 10 hours crunching in it and come out with only a few minutes having passed. :wizard:

Man that would be havoc on our sleeping schedule if it ever comes to be.

Ha...the extension is absolutely great. I am on a two weeks vacation now and the kid is the only distracting factor now (well...there still is Starcraft 2).
I got quite some things done and the engine finally is somewhat complete, but there is still so much assets to be done and I did not yet add the battle system.

The problem here is, that I want the game to be a RPG and I like stats, inventories and I am NOT a fan of realtime battle systems like in Kotor, Mass Effect or Final Fantasy 12 (but at least there you had enough control over the party).
My game will feature only a single character instead of a party so first I thought, I have to do a realtime system, but who am I to tackle something like Diablo 2. But thankfully there are other options like Secret of Mana or Vagrant Story (which have kinda single character Kotor-like systems)... AND Panzer Dragoon RPG, which has a quite cool battle system, because you have to exploit weak enemy spots.

So to make it short, I am trying to do some mix between the Vagrant Story/Panzer Dragoon battle systems. Enemies will be visible on the field and you can attack them or be attacked. The game will not change to a special battle screen (I would have to do extra assets), but will focus on the area, the battle is happening. Then the hero will focus on the enemy and move around him Zelda 64 lock-on style and attack, when some kind of action bar filled up.
So all in all nothing new, maybe even not fun at all, but we have to see...maybe I can´t get that thing to work and you will see "point-click-kill--super-lame-diablo-clone"-system. 

Ahhh...screw it, I am doing "only" a Vagrant Story battle system clone (minus the targeting of body parts). Everything else is just to much trouble.

Yeah, it's often a good idea to scale down your ambitions based on how much time you have.

Damn it...damn it...damn it...I am just not happy with how the game is turning out. I think I will change the viewpoint from the Zelda 64 like view to a more pushed back perspective like in typical isometric games (think Diablo).
The battle system just is not really fun with the Zelda view and I have all kinds of problems with multiple enemies because of the "not-so-realtime" system.
Right now, the player pauses the games to get a mouse cursor to issue commands and click on enemies and I just hate it...it is no fun.
With a view farther away from the character I can use point and click walking instead of WASD and it is okay not to be able to rotate the view all the time, as you see more of the world. The result is, that I always have a mouse cursor to do stuff.

And well...I always liked the more isometric viewpoint better in RPGs anyway . When I can implement it and it works I am free to add party gameplay in future games.

There are some technical problems, because the engine essentially is just on big pile of polygons. For the isometric view, I will throw out the camera which collides with geometry and zooms in on the player character in narrow spots. So now I have to find other ways to deal with obstructing geometry.
Think of going inside a house. Outside you can see everything fine, but when you enter the house the roof should disappear, which is kinda hard to do with a polygon soup.

Well, I have some ideas and first tests seem to proof, that I can do it...so back to work.

Why does it not work out that smoothly all the time. Some shader changes, here a collision check more, there some value tweaking and I am happy how it works and the best thing is, everything can now be controlled by the mouse ... saves me from coding a keymapping menu :)

Okay, I am canceling the game. I just could not do it in the time frame. All I got are some sprites standing around and you could talk to them or kill them by clicking on them.

The project was just to big and ambitious for me to do in one month, with all the stuff going on in life. 5 years ago, when I was still at the university and did not have a child I could do small games in one night easily, but now...well I have to get up, when my kid needs me and not, when I got enough sleep.
I hope you guys do not take this as lame excuses, I really did work on the project every night and even if the game does not make the competition, I got so much work done on my "engine", so the next try at a game might be much more successful.

So, now I am thinking about releasing some sort of walk around demo. Does this make any sense ? And what if I finish the game later, should I just keep posting in this thread or should I put it elsewhere on the board.

Again, I am very sorry and I wish all contestants all the luck in the world :)

I totally understand, I recently dropped out of a 3-month-long art challenge because it was taking up too much of every day. I graduated from college last year and it would have been a good summer break project but now I just got too much stuff to do, and I don't even have a kid or a real job. Plus I wanted to work on this game.

You should release a demo just to make a record of what you've achieved. And if you still think your project is worthwhile, you should finish it! I'm going to keep working on my game after the compo too... :)

I need some feedback, how I should proceed with my indie game career ;)
I could not make the compo, but I want to go on and someday release a real game to the public.
Some days ago I started a blog, because I think it will keep me working on games, so I have something to post there.
The address is http://poisonstudio.wordpress.com/ (http://poisonstudio.wordpress.com/).
Please tell me, if you think, that this is a shameless plug, I will remove this link asap.
But I don´t try to gather viewers, just tell me if a blog helped you focus on your work.

Right now I am designing a little bit on a game, which shares the engine and some ideas wit dying noises. I really liked the whole up in the air stuff. If I can work out some issues, the new game might be about flying around in a world like the on of my failed attempt here.