Thanks for helping lulz!

Yeah, I'm currently working on putting together the second area. Unfortunately, I probably won't get it finished until I'm back in the states.

I have a question for you (or anyone else who's checked out this version): were you able to figure out how you're supposed to kill the enemies? I think its kind of a weird mechanic, and I want to make sure its clear enough without needing to tell players directly.

Sorry bout that. Try this link:

Linux build v 0.001

Also, check out the list of dependencies in the posts above.

[Windows build v 0.001]

New builds available!

Windows build v 0.001
Linux build v 0.001

Note: The Linux version has some dependencies that you will need to install separately. If anyone is experienced in making installation packages for Linux, please drop me a line. The needed dependencies are openGL, glut, and freetype.

See the main post for more details.

Until I do fully customizable controls, I'm going to keep both space and w for jump. I prefer space too.

All this feedback is great!

The next version will fix the following bugs/problems:

-w for a jump key for sure. I think I'm just used to space from FPS games.
-Holding a block while going through a door will not cause a crash.
-I'll make sure you can't shove the block into that unreachable area.

Also planned for the next version

-a loading bar when first starting a level.
-a new enemy type. This one will be important to get right, because it will also introduce a key AI interaction- the tentacle.
-beard swinging: when you're hanging by your beard and not touching the ground, you should be able to build up momentum and swing right to left.
-linux download

I've also been toying around with a new control idea. What do you guys think of making the right mouse button be an auto-target trigger? Pressing the RMB would cause the beard to shoot at the closest target, so the user doesn't have to aim perfectly.

As for the art stuff- I'm still toying around with a way to make things look cohesive. I'm not an artist, and I consider what I have here to be little more than solid placeholder. Maybe it would be in my best interest to simplify the look a little bit. I have to keep playing around.

Thanks again!

@moi

Ok, I have some questions for you.

First, do you mean, after you complete the first level puzzle and get through the locked door, you fall through the floor? If so, the second level is a place holder, and if you jump over the grassy area, you've jumped out of the level.

The no beard thing is more worrying to me. You should definitely see a beard from the beginning. You should be able to control the beard using your mouse and arrow keys. Were you able to open the hatch, even though you had no beard? Did it react as if you did have a beard and you just couldn't see it? Can you take a screen shot so I can get more detail?

Thanks!

@bamcqern

Thanks for the positive comments. Eventually the controls will be customizable, so that should clear up any problems you had. And physics puzzles are definitely the focus of this game, so I hope I don't let you down 

@lulzaricot

Right on. I'll get linux binaries uploaded ASAP.

[Windows build v 0.001]

Latest builds:
Windows build v 0.001
Linux build v 0.001

(Edit: changed linux download link)
The Linux build does not have the following dependencies included, so you'll have to install them on your own:

OpenGL
Glut
FreeType (a text rasterizer)

I would love to wait until more substantial progress has been made before posting a new build, but I will be losing my Windows dev. machine tomorrow. I'll also be starting a few weeks of internetless travel next week, so I won't have much of a presence here for a while. I'm riding a train from Shanghai all the way across China into Lhasa, Tibet. Then I'm traveling overland to Kahtmandu, where I catch a plane to New Delhi. After 5 days in India, I finally return to the Midwest. I haven't been home for 10 months, so I'm really starting to get excited to be back in the States. Anyone have any suggestions for cool things to do in Tibet or India?

This version includes the following improvements from v 0.000

Tentacle Crabs! (go through the door on the pipes in the basement of the first level)
Carrying blocks while entering a door no longer causes a crash.
Characters face eachother during dialogue.
Objects can't be forced through eachother (I hope).
A loading screen has been added.
Both W and Space can be used to jump.

The tentacle crabs are an important new development. I hope they can introduce Abe's initial combat method without literally spelling it out for players. Also, the tentacle will be an important enemy feature, at least in the first phase of the game.

Controls:
A&D are left and right.
E talks to NPCs and lets you go through doors.

The rest of the controls should be explained through the course of the game.

Interactive beard on the title screen.



Behold a carefully balanced spring and damper system.

@pgil- I especially like that mushroom guy. He looks like he would do a Luigi jump from Mario 2, where he floats back to the ground instead of falling at the normal speed.

Here are a few more screen shots to motivate some demo players!



I added the dynamic beard pointer on the title screen.



Run up walls!



Catch rockets with your beard!

Alright, a Windows version of the demo is here:

Honest Abraham Demo

Hopefully, all you need to know to start is that A & D are left and right. E lets you talk to friendly characters and go through doors. The rest of the controls should be explained in the first level.

Like I said, I'm developing on Linux, so if there's anyone out there who would really like it, I can put a Linux version up too.

I'm really interested to hear how it runs on various machines. My laptop's a dog, but runs this game smoothly. I'm also interested to hear how it looks. I've already noticed some pretty big differences in rendering just between the 3 computers I've tested it on. I'm not sure if its display settings, gfx cards, or opengl implementations that is causing the differences, but I'd love to find out.

Also, assuming the game runs smoothly: how does it feel? Do you like the physics? Can you figure out the first level? Does the difficulty seem right for learning the controls?

All feedback is much appreciated!
 

@Ravine

That's certainly a valid way of looking at it. I, on the other hand, really enjoy implementing my own algorithms and engineering my own code. Sure, it is more difficult than picking up a library, but you gain insights when you write it yourself that you may not otherwise have noticed. For example, my current game idea would never have come to me if I hadn't been playing around with my own physics code trying to break it.

I like using math, I like thinking about physics, and I like writing code. So for me, deciding to build my own physics engine was a no-brainer.

@Aquine

I'm glad your experiment turned out well. Have you posted any vids of the code in action?

No, my goal is to start an independent game company.

Right now, I don't think my financial situation will allow me to finish my current game without having some other means of financial support. I would like that financial support to be a programming job, preferably one in the gaming industry, so I can learn as much as I can about the business as fast as possible. I won't have any job in a few weeks when I return to the USA from a stint teaching middle school in China.

What I am trying to do now is balance my immediate and short term goals.

Immediately, I would like to attract the attention of employers. The job market is pretty bad, and I need to stand out to even get my foot in the door. This will probably have to happen before I run anything resembling a "business." I foresee releasing some demos and building a website during this period.

Long term, I want to run my own business and design my own games. I just don't think I'll be able to sell my current game for at least another year or so.

Ideally, the games and website I make now will help me achieve both of these goals. Even more ideally, I'll be able to figure out a way to support myself without ever even needing another full time job first.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'm glad to hear there's some enthusiasm for this idea.

@Alex
您会说中文吗? 我在上海住.
There's some mandarin under your pic, so I apologize if I guessed wrong. I'm down to my last 2 weeks living in Shanghai. Do you have some connection to China?

Thanks for your honest criticisms. You're spot on on at least 2 counts:
1. I never sat back to think about my palette. It will be an important aspect of design, especially since I'm looking to create a number of different "historic eras." Palette consistency will probably make that process much more effective.
2. My aspect ratios were off. I've gone ahead and fixed that. I think that after staring at this game for so long I just got used to the squished look.

I hate to point out that you were wrong on one:
They're not photoshop filters, they're gimp filters!   :D

Honestly, thanks for the feedback. Do you have any insights for meeting and courting good digital artists? I think the right partner could really give this game a boost, but I don't really have any experience in building my own team. Any insights are much appreciated.

Hey guys,

I've come a long way with this game. I've been developing the physics and graphics engines for the last year and a half, and have finally gotten into the level and character design phase. I think the time spent on the engine has been well worth it, since I think it's bought me some unique game play.

I don't want to give away the whole story just yet, but the demo is planned to cover this:

You are Abraham Lincoln, and the game starts in the Presidential box at Ford's Theater. Before the show starts, a time traveler appears. He warns you of your impending assassination and helps you escape as you learn the controls. You can use your beard to grab objects and enemies and move, shake, and throw them. Abe is also blessed with some strong legs, and if he gets moving fast enough, he can run right up a vertical wall.

After fleeing the theater, you learn that the intended course of history has been disturbed. The consequences are dire, and it's up to Abraham to set things right- all while trying to uncover the plot to kill him. To make things even more difficult, the time traveler wasn't happy to just mess things up in reconstruction era USA. He has taken it upon himself to visit a number of yet to be determined locations, creating trouble for Abe to set right all throughout history.

A number of plot twists are planned, and will be reveled through in-game dialog a la the Zelda games.

I am developing on a Linux machine, and just whipped up a Windows executable. After I send it to some  friends for sanity checking, I'll throw the intro level up here to get some feedback. For now, how about some screenshots?



I want to add a beard hanging from his face that follows your mouse pointer. That's why the area under his head is so empty.





A look at the dialog system.



A test level with some guys shooting rockets. You can grab the rockets with your beard and throw them back!



Worms bursting from the ground in another test level.



How does my baby look so far? I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm proud of what I've come up with so far. The largest hole right now is sound- there isn't any. If anyone has some advice on good tools or resources for sound effects or music, I would be much obliged. Check back here for some demo goodness in the next few days, once I confirm that this bad boy can actually run on other people's computers.

I'm wondering about best practices when integrating Lua into your game design.

Right now, my game uses a pretty weak (IMHO) system for defining conditional statements. For example, certain objects will register important variables with a "game state" dictionary. These variables are given keys based on the name of the object. Other objects (like a door or NPC) can then use conditionals to determine what state they should be in.

Compared to what a real scripting language can do, this is pretty weak. I understand that if I integrate Lua, I should be able to move good chunks of logic into my scripts. For example, I can create a generic enemy class that imports Lua functions for defining the list of goals, functions for choosing which goal to pursue, and functions to act on those goals.

In order to do this, though, it seems that the scripting engine has to have its hooks dug into the program pretty deeply. The Lua scripts for those AI objects would need access to the list of other objects in the level (as well as most of their properties like position, speed, etc), the local level geometry, and so on.

Also, it seems like Lua may be the best bet for level data files as well. Using Lua and some object manager classes, it seems pretty easy to put a level's definition and logic into the same script.

Is there a good resource for learning best practice designs? I can come to good conclusions eventually, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel if its already just common knowledge. I've already had a look at this tutorial on GameDev: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/lua/ but it just focuses on the bare bones.

Thanks!

Thanks MrChoco.

I think you're right in saying that gameplay positions would be the best way to get a foot in the door. I certainly never thought that playing with the HalfLife SDK would have been my best bet for building up a career. I left that behind years ago to pursue more "constructive" projects, and here I find myself trying to get back in. On the upside, its a lot of fun.

@Dunam

Narbacular Drop is the dream. Valve is one of my favorite companies, and I thought Portal was an incredible incarnation of the idea those students invented.

Also, no worries on the "doing something different" front. In my game, you play Abraham Lincoln, and you have to use your extraordinary beard to interact with the environment and fix the universe after a time traveler saves you from assassination and throws off the intended course of history. 

Since this would be my first job in the industry, I would take anything I can get as long as the company seemed solid. While I'm an experienced programmer with good credentials and the ability to learn, I feel like I would still need plenty of on the job training.

I am most interested in AI, gameplay, and engine jobs, but I really only have a couple college courses in graphics and AI and my own projects to give me any credibility. I've done a 2D physics and openGL rendering engine for my current game, along with some pathfinding and FSM AI. I've made a level editor, and a skeleton animator for making new characters. Do you have any suggestions for other features? Or maybe I should focus on taking the features I already have and do all of the other leg work that it will take to turn it into a real game (level editing, drawing sprites, writing dialog, etc etc etc).

Technical articles are a great idea. They would hopefully give an employer something positive to chew on, but I also think that kind of content is a useful marketing tool. It seems to me that part of what makes indy game development so attractive to customers (or at least to myself) is the voyeurism of it all. Developer blogs give a glimpse into the minds of people who are taking risks and solving problems day by day. It's even better than reality TV, since you can post some comments and maybe influence the final game. 

And the resume and cover letters are already making their rounds. Now I have to build something that gives them some more weight.

Cheers. 

Hi Farbs, thanks for the reply!

I worked at a large company that makes electronic test and measurement equipment for a few years before moving out here to China, so hopefully that experience will help me prove that I work well with others.

What I'm more concerned about right now is breaking into a new industry. Most game jobs require a few years of game development. Since I only have my personal game development to show, I'm wondering if there are any specific things I should be focused on showing off.

I imagine that the answer is that I just need to be able to show them a professional looking game that's fun to play. But how do I catch their eye so they even look at it in the first place?

Thanks!

Greetings 

As you may or may not have read in my introduction at the bottom of the Obligatory introduction thread, I'm about to move back to the US from China. I don't yet have a job lined up, and I anticipate the process taking some time.

My dream, of course, is to get an independent game business started up. I have a game that I've been developing for the last year and a half, but it's probably at least another year away from completion. I don't think I have enough financing to keep going, so I need to get a job.

So, I have 2 goals right now. I want to set up a web presence that I can use to court potential employers (in the game industry if possible), but I also want it to also serve as my main marketing organ.

So my questions are: what are the most critical components in order to start generating interest? What should be in a trailer? What is critical mass for a demo? What impresses employers, and is that different from what impresses customers?

I have ideas about all of these, but since I have no experience in marketing (either myself or a product) I don't really trust my opinions.

Thanks for any help!