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[astrofra]

Dear TigSource community,  
I'd like to introduce here a game project I've been involved into during the latest months :

Mr Cleaner, Adventures in Time.

Background :

In a laboratory located in the future, a Scientist is conducting experiments on time travel. Unfortunately, during the experiment, a large amount of radioactive cores are spread through time, all around the ages.
In order to save mankind from a massive radioactivity poisoning, he sends a Robot to clean all this mess, and bring back the cores to his lab.

Todo list :

* Improve the camera alignment on some of the levels.
* Re-write the main menu.
* Add an online leaderboard.
* Think about some sort of achievements.
* Title Screen
* Tutorial, gameplay details : 100% done.
* Fix the save system, currently disabled.
* Joypad controls
* Add the music tracks : 90% done. (oh, it's enuf)
* Tweak the sfx (that are quite annoying atm)
* Visually pimp the few latest levels : 100% done.

Download Link :

Here's is a Win32 playable version of the game. Please keep in mind it's an alpha version (some of the levels might be unplayable, some are not completely re-skinned, and the sfx might sound really annoying atm). Any feedback is welcome...  

MrCleaner Win32 Version 0.9.0 download link.

Official website : http://www.mrcleaner-thegame.com/

Changelog :

V0.9 :
- Added a tutorial, with a nice text to speech.
- When when a core is located on target, its color turns from red to cyan.
- Fixed a few crashes.
- Added a few musics.
- Updated the shape/rendering of the teleporters.

V0.8 :
- Added a few new musics.
- Improved the Game introduction.
- Improved the In-game menu.
- The visual re-skin of the 49 levels is now done.
- The game's replay is working, but might be disabled/buggy in this release

V0.7.3 :
- Added a few new musics.
- Game introduction.
- Game's replay is now working.
- In-game menu was improved.

V0.7.1 :
- Prevent constant update of the HUD time window.
- checked level1 0 - 5
- player.nut - added Test level checkbox on PLAYER, for direct execute level with F5 key
when is True
- Test mode OFF (sorry i forgot OFF this flag)
- in-game menu added [Menu]/[Restart]/[Back] - close pause menu with ESC or button Back
- Draft tutorial level.
- Added the skeleton of the tutorial's coroutine.


Controls :
Rotate CCW, CW        : Left, Right arrow keys
More forward          : Up arrown key
Validate/Trigger Bomb : Space bar
Back to main menu     : Esc

Minimum hardware requirement :
NVidia GEForce series 8000 or ATI Radeon series 3000 graphics card
Intel graphic chips are more than likely to make the game crash.




About the project :

This game was entirely written and level-designed by Andy, who decided to implement a Sokoban-like game with GameStart3D in order to test the engine.

It turned out the game was completely functional in 2 weeks of time, with a set of 50 levels partially designed. He made the initial placeholder graphics with Blender3D, wrote the game in Squirrel, and then entered in contact with me.

As the game was fully playable, Andy asked me to refine the visual side of the game, which I was glad to accept.

The game originally looked like this :




And the 3D assets I re-designed made it look like this :




As the game includes 49 levels, we decided to split it into 7 eras, that the player should travel thru, from the Stone Age to a Distant Future ruled by computers.

At the moment, the graphics of 6 eras out of 7 are almost completed (Stone Age, Egypt, Greece, Middle Age, Industrial Revolution and Post-Nuclear Age) and I'm about to finish the latest one.

After that, I'll have to re-skin the whole game's UI, and we'll probably have to fix some bugs here and there.

As I feel that this project is about to be completed, we might be looking for beta-testers, feedback and possibly a few bug reports will be greatly appreciated

That's why I opened this thread here.
I'll post my latest progress regarding the visuals of the game, and we'll try to post a link to the Win32 version of Mr Cleaner asap

[astrofra]

Here's a video preview I made quickly this morning

[flavio]

Congratulations! It seems very good! How did you decide about the levels number (49)? Because we're doing a similar (regarding the structure) game, and we've some doubts about the number of the levels we should produce... How many hours of gameplay are you getting with 49 levels? This is my only feedback (my only doubt): are 49 levels enough? About the remaining... Wonderful so far!

[astrofra]

Wow, lots of question
I honestly don't know how Andy decided how many levels the game would come with.
My take is that there are 7 * 7 = 49 levels, as each world includes 7 levels.
Each series of 7 levels is split in 4 'basic' levels, and then 3 levels with specific items, such as bombs or portals.

As for the play length, I only completed a few levels so far. In addition, I'd say that the ability of a player to finish a Sokoban greatly depends on his experience and ability to forecast/compute its moves
Some of the levels are really tricky

In the meantime, a screenshot of a levels I tweaked tonight (Industrial Revolution)

[increpare]

Quite the visual "refinement" of the original

So, how are you going about doing the visual theming of the levels?  How much is determined by the basic level structure, how much is determined at run-time (are the uneven stones in the sandy areas hand-placed or placed by code)?

(this was windows-only IIRC, so I can't offer to test unfortunately)

[astrofra]

Hi Increpare !

99% of the non-gameplay elements are hand-placed, using Gamestart's editor and a lot of copy paste. It's a bit like 'painting' to me. I try to find the good rythme, placing the assets so that it visually feels balanced.

Only a few details are scripted so far. The cubes defining the game area are slightly rotated along the Y axis,  randomly.

As for the 'decoration' logic...
Well, the basic rule is : a new different age/era every 7 levels.

For each era I tried to model half a dozen of artifacts that will be identified as typical, that I will arrange differently in each of the 7 levels.

ie.  The Egyptian Era is defined by 2 or 3 architectural elements : column, pots, tiled ground pattern....
So is the Greek age, the Stone age, and so on...

It doesnt really connects to the gameplay but it should stand as a good reward for the player that completes a level.

[Brian Wilbur]

This is really beautiful! I would love to test this.

I honestly had no idea this was called "sokoban"...shows how uninformed I am ...but still...would love to test this

[astrofra]

I honestly had no idea this was called "sokoban"...

According to Wikipedia, Sokoban stands for 'the Warehouse Keeper'

Tonight I decided to start with the last era of the game : the Electronic Future

I quickly made a shader to render & animate the electronic tracks, like this :

[astrofra]

Update.



Several inspiration sources here :
- Tron Legacy, obviously
- The photo of a real PCB, that I traced with Illustrator, then imported into 3DSMax.
- Frozen Synapse.

I still have to improve the shader on the block elements, with some SSS faked in vertex colorn probably...  

[astrofra]

Saturday update, I worked on the end levels and decided to tweak the main UI, including the HUD, the level selector, and started to redesign the main menu ...

I'll be posting a playable version soon

Level Selection re-skin



Last level



End level UI re-skin

[astrofra]

Re-working the title screen (title is missing, so far... )



Project's status updated to 70%

[riverman_jacob]

This is looking really fantastic. It's hard to make a 3D world solid and not like papercraft, in my opinion. You've done a great job with the lighting, textures, and models.

This is why I stay away from 3D, I know I can't compete

Jacob

[astrofra]

It's hard to make a 3D world solid and not like papercraft, in my opinion.

Yup, Thanks dude !
Making 3D is not always about making realistic images. As long as it remains consistent, it might be as non-realistic as possible. It usually relies on shadows, contact areas, lighting, as you stated.

And yes, 3D is kind of an exclusive activity, it's hard to deal with something else beside. That's mainly why I completely quit working with ZBrush, as I wanted to be able to devote a bit to game scripting beside 3D.

Oh, BTW, a Win32 binary was added, up there

[Ichigo Jam]

This looks really nice, but I think there are two things that would make it a lot more enjoyable to play:

1) normal controls where up means go up and left means go left. Seeing as the game's on a square grid, I don't see any advantage to using rotational controls. (Also, it's hard to see which way you're facing when you're behind a wall e.g. at the start of the first level)

2) An undo button would be really really good to have! As with most games of this type, it's incredibly easy to make a silly mistake which results in you needing to restart. On longer levels this quickly becomes very tedious (in general, I haven't played Mr. Cleaner for long enough to get to that point, though.)

[deathtotheweird]

ahh nice. I love sokoban games. actually downloaded it yesterday but forget all about it. gonna have a go now.

[superflat]

God damn is this beautiful. I'm always on the fence about sokoban, but I'll definitely give this a shot when I'm next in Windows.

[astrofra]

Thanks people for your warm feedback 

@Ichigo Jam
A reset button was just added by Andy, so that you can quickly restart the whole level in case of a deadend move. He also implemented a 'recorder' feature, that store every move in a file. The aim of this is to provide a 'Replay' function when the level is complete. But we could imagine to have a UNDO as well...

@Allen @Jasper
Thx buddies
I wasn't aware that Sokoban was such a popular game concept
Cool

PS. The game was update, the reset function is now implemented, among other few things.

[Galaxy613]

Please make the in-game menu selector more noticeable which item is currently selected. At first I thought I had to click them until I tried the arrow keys and only then did I notice the SLIGHT difference in height. Either make the difference even greater, or give the selected item background a different color.

[astrofra]

Galaxy613 Thanks The issue was addressed by Andy.
It should be included on the next release

Last sat/sunday/monday I work on the introduction sequence. We have decided on a narrator character called 'Computer Zentrum' that tells the player what the mission is.

The whole introduction sequence is animated, including the character itself.
Here's how it looks like so far... 

[astrofra]

I worked on the intro audio, as well ... the basic idea is to have the narrator above (sort of cyber giant squid) that explains how the story turns out.
I wanted a female aged voice, somehow robotic.

Click on the capture below for an audio sneak peek :D