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[Howard Day]

So I recently started working on an classic-style side scroller. I've done a ton of work on the art, and just recently (within the last week) started to put everything together in a playable form. The name of this little effort is Absent Eden, as explained here:

Your character is an uplifted, human-level intelligence scout gorilla (who's been genetically altered to have several other animals survival traits, sense of smell, hearing, balance, reflexes, that sort of thing. Think 50% Cougar. RAWR.) As the game opens, you're returning to your home planet for debriefing. While in orbit, you signal your controllers of your arrival. As soon as your signal is sent, your ship is targeted, fired upon, and shot down. You wake up next to your wrecked scoutcraft somewhere outside the city. Your goal is to find out what happened to your controllers, and why all the dwellings and city outskirts seem to be deserted.
Thus the name - Absent Eden. There are no people here, just psychotic utility and police bots. All of them intent on eliminating you.
Not the most original storyline, but hey.

I started my efforts on the Pixelation boards - in the Low-spec art section. Those guys have been great, but it's not exactly a high-traffic area and comments and suggestions have been somewhat slow coming. I'd love to get the view of a wider audience! :D
For those interested in the precise beginnings of this project, the original Pixelation thread is here: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=9591.0 No registration required. :D There's also a lot of information about enemy types there.
All the scripting/coding/whatever is being done in the following programs:
Multimedia Fusion 2 Dev
3dsMax 2009
Photoshop CS2

Anyhow, I spent last night fleshing out the animated background, taking one of the pixelation guys crits and trying to separate the foreground and background more - I went warmer in tone than what he did, but it did end up fairly close.


This is *NOT* the latest version! I have left it here for historical purposes.
http://www.hedfiles.net/AEupdate2.zip 13.25MB
Pertinent info:
Use WASD to move, the mouse to aim, and Esc to bring up the menu. Alt-F4 kills the program without needing to go to the menu, and there are 3 view modes available... Normal, 2X Zoom, and Fullscreen.

Known issues:
There's nothing to shoot at quite yet.
The GunApe doesn't animate properly when jumping, runnning backwards, or doing anything other than standing still or running forwards.
The butterflies act a little weird.
The Menu options "Credits" and "How to Play" do nothing.

Updated in this version:
Updated menus with Bugs
New weapon fire - with motion blur.
Fleshed out all the animated foliage.
Added bugs around the flowers
Updated the flags

Next up on the list:
Correct movement animations for the main character.
First enemy type: The RollyPollyBot.
Correct spawning behaviour
Visible In-game HUD with health, score, and heat monitors.
Intro, Main menu.

I'd love any feedback you guys have to give me!

[Alex May]

Oh wow, I was linked to your thread on Pixelation and got wowed. Aren't you the guy who was also doing the crazy low-poly shoot-'em-up assets too? Your work is amazing.


Can't play right now as I'm moving house and should be packing but good to see it getting into a playable state.

[Howard Day]

Thanks, Alex! Yeah, I that same guy. That other project kinda fell to the wayside a bit...still floating around out there for sure, but I have no idea when I'll get back to it. Good luck moving!

[tim-bo-jay]

This be one damn sexy looking game dude :D good start. One thing I would say is when you have bad guys on screen too due to the size of the main character there's gonna be very little room, you may want to make the view a bit bigger so you can fit more on screen but also so when less in on screen it doesn't still feel cluttered

[John Nesky]

Haven't played it yet (currently on a Mac). But I wanna say, the screenshots you posted are simultaneously beautiful and unreadable. It took me a good fifteen seconds to realize that the bluish thing in the bottom left was supposed to be a gorilla-like animal with a large thing on its back, rather than a mech with a big head. I'm assuming its better in motion.

[Ninomojo]

I have to say right now that this is one of the most gorgeous things I've seen in a long time. Wow, it's like MegaMan X on drugs!

The only complaint is that meanwhile well done, the animation of the running cycle of the gorilla is too rigid I think.

Oh, and the trick you used to animated the leaves is awesome! When can we play this?

[george]

Absolutely ridiculous. Looks gorgeous!

One note, changing to either 2x zoom or full screen changes the view for about a second, then it reverts to normal. I tried setting the view directly in the .ini (changing it to 2 instead of 0) but it didn't work.

Keep the updates rolling!

[Howard Day]

tim-bo-jay: Good call! The view will be a little slower and laggy when all is said and done. I'll also move the character more to the left.
John Nesky: That is part of the re-animate effort. Making the whole thing more readable is pretty important. It does make more sense in motion, but there's no reason it can't be better.
Ninomojo:Thanks! I'll be adding shoulder movement to the GunApe, that should help a lot with the overall animation. You can play it when I'm done.
george: Oh, that's a problem. So, can you give me some further info? When you hit 1,2,or 3 does anything happen? Those are the test re-sizing keys 1 is normal 2 is 2x zoom, and 3 is fullscreen. If those aren't working, gimme a heads up at [email protected] - I'll try and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks guys!

[george]

george: Oh, that's a problem. So, can you give me some further info? When you hit 1,2,or 3 does anything happen? Those are the test re-sizing keys 1 is normal 2 is 2x zoom, and 3 is fullscreen.

If I hit those I get a brief flash of the corresponding size (less than a second), but then it snaps back to normal. I'm on Windows XP with Intel integrated graphics if it means anything, I don't have much experience with MMF2, sorry.

[Quicksand-T]

Now this is how you do a 3D side-scroller! The creators of those ugly 3D Sparkster, Bonk, etc. revamps should be knocking on your door!

[Howard Day]

george: Okay - that definitely seems like a DirectX issue. I know those Intel integrated graphics cards have lots and lots of known issues with drivers. I've turned DirectX off for the latest builds - let me know if it works now!
Quicksand-T: Thanks! I've got enough work as it is.

This is the latest version!
http://www.hedfiles.net/AEupdate3.zip 13.25MB

Known issues:
There's nothing to shoot at quite yet.
The GunApe doesn't animate properly when jumping, runnning backwards, or doing anything other than standing still or running forwards.
The Menu options "Credits" and "How to Play" do nothing.

Updated in this version:
Fixed the butterfly motion and behaviour.
New camera system, has some ease-in-ease-out. Much easier on the eyes.
New intro
If you stand idle for too long, a GO! prompt pops up!
Fixed a bunch of haze effect problems.

Currently working on: The GunApe's animations, model.

Next up on the list:
First enemy type: The RollyPollyBot.
Correct spawning behaviour
Visible In-game HUD with health, score, and heat monitors.
Intro, Main menu.

Any thoughts?

[Carrie Nation]

This is just gorgeous, I'm simply blown away by it. Obviously the engine is very WIP but damn are the graphics pretty. Love this style and I hope you keep going with it. Besides that I wish the game was higher rez, or had a bigger screen, or something. I felt like you put a ton of detail into the environment and it's going to waste because I have to squint to see most of it.

[Howard Day]

You should be able to resize the screen! You can either go through the menu (Esc) or use the temp testing keys (1,2,3) to change the display mode. If that's not what you're talking about, I apologize.

[george]

george: Okay - that definitely seems like a DirectX issue. I know those Intel integrated graphics cards have lots and lots of known issues with drivers. I've turned DirectX off for the latest builds - let me know if it works now!

no luck -- I wonder if anyone else is seeing this problem and what their setup is?

[Lurk]

This looks great, love the luminous colors and the subtle details(leaves in the trees, flags). Is it all pre-rendered stuff? In blender?

[Howard Day]

george: Well, crap. So, to help me rule it out, can you verify for me that the ini file is being updated? when you load the thing up, hit 2 or 3. Does the ini file reflect the number you hit? if that ini file is locked somehow, that could also be causing the trouble.
Lurk: Thanks. Radiosity is fun! All this stuff was put together in 3DS MAX 2009.

....Still working on this silly ape's animations.

[george]

OK, changing the view in the game menu (which shows the new view briefly -- a second or two -- longer, I might add, then pressing 1-3, which just shows a flicker of the new view), does not change the setting in .ini. I alt-f4 out, check the ini, and it's still zero.

[Howard Day]

Well, I spent waaaay too much time tracking down what the problem was. I think the issue was that the game was trying to write the ini file to the C:\Windows\ directory, an action that apparently is frowned upon by many user's setups. I tried many different things to get this fixed with the default INI MMF2 object, but no dice. I eventually moved to INI++ and now it works perfectly - I no longer even need to ship an ini file with the EXE. If it doesn't find it on startup, it makes one from a preset. :D
http://www.hedfiles.net/AEUpdate4.exe -14MB

So what do you guys think of the new camera movements? the annoying "GO!" prompts? Any thoughts on any of the stuff I've changed?

[george]

you are my hero! Fullscreen is the tiiiits! 

[Alex May]

Looks nice in motion. Good work!

Couple of things, fullscreen doesn't seem to work on my laptop, which is Windows 7 32 bit - the taskbar appears over the game screen and the mouse cursor is locked to the bottom right corner. Also alt-tabbing out of the application even when windowed causes the mouse pointer to be locked.

You probably don't want this level of detailed gameplay feedback yet but what the hell: Your jumping code isn't testing for just 'up', only for 'up + right' and 'up + left'. The camera seems to lag too much when jumping and the player almost leaves the screen. Also when you point near the player the gun doesn't point downwards enough.

Love the little glowy ears on the gorilla

I think the tree animations could be better, right now it seems like a static tree with a sort of shimmer, rather than a tree in a gentle breeze.