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[Belimoth]

I like where this is going, looking forward to getting something playable.

[agersant]

Update 12
Today I made it possible to place NPCs on maps using the editor (Tiled). I also made it impossible for an attack to hit the same ennemy twice.
I think my next task is designing a dialog box, I wish I could do it now but I need some sleep before work!

Pierre is busy until Wednesday but hopefully we'll get some eye-candy by the end of the week.

[agersant]

Update 13
Today Pierre made his first map with his tileset! I really love the way it looks even though he hasn't used half of his beautiful tiles. He's also still fiddling with the palette but there we are :


I spent time choosing a font for the dialog box and a new font for the menu because it turns out the one I had chosen earlier isn't free. It takes hours to a typograph-nazi like me to do so. I ended up going for DejaVu Sans & Cabin.
Also, I looked up information about Bitmap Fonts and I decided I was going to redo the text rendering code in my engine. The current version uses bitmap fonts laid out in a custom layout and doesn't support kerning pairs. I am going to support bitmap fonts and data from Angelcode's BMFont instead. It will probably take me the weekend though.

[agersant]

Update 14
I didn't think I'd have time to code today but I did \o/
I started working on my new bitmap font renderer and I coded most of the core functionality. All that's left is validating and loading the data from BMFont's .fnt files, removing the existing code, handling tabulations and testing it all. I'm glad I had time to work on this today because I'll be able to do more interesting stuff this weekend =)

[dota_mtdew]

good glad you guys are still working on it
i'll send you an e-card if you finish it

[Eldboll]

This looks pretty brilliant. Really hoping you guys are able to convert the essence of the concept art into the in game graphics, they all look dope!

[agersant]

Update 15
This weekend I finished working on my new bitmap font rendering code, squashed a few nasty engine bugs (related to bitmap scaling) and did a bit of UI code. Now I have a ~robust system so that the player can control windows/menus/dialogs/himself in a smooth succession.

Here is our dialog box :


And here is the Game Over screen which Pierre did :

[agersant]

Update 16
Today I gave the player the ability to jump and I also added pit traps (which can be placed in the editor). It was all surprisingly easy and didn't take much code (at all).
It's also possible to jump over small characters, which wasnt something I was sure I could achieve with my current game code.

Pierre started working on an animation for the tentacle monster that was posted a few pages ago as a concept art. It looks great so far =)

Also, today I had a chat with my friend Armand and I'm glad to confirm he is on board for making music. It's always a pleasure to work with him and I'm very enthusiastic about the first few measures I've heard =)

[agersant]

Update 17
Today I fought with BMFont to get beautiful bitmap fonts but it turns out that the anti-aliasing in Photoshop is way too good to be matched. Here are a few settings attempts I did to get a decent render of Cabin Semibold at size 13. Photoshop's render is in the top-left corner :

Because of this, I decided to switch to pixel fonts which will have no AA problems. I am now using Westa and Ronda which I think look beautiful.

I also started coding the game's frontend (New game / Continue menu) and made a very useful function that splits messages so that they fit in multiple dialog boxes.

Meanwhile, Shin started working on animation keyframes for the remaining monsters of our prototype. Here is the gargoyle WIP :

[Belimoth]

I like the look of that.

[agersant]

Update 18
In the last couple days, I wrote lots of boring code to add input textfields, buttons and basic forms to my engine. I used it all to make a snappy animated frontend. It's not complete yet but it will do for now.

Today I took a break from code and wrote the intro text and mocked up the intro screen layout.

[agersant]

Update 19
This weekend I finished coding the game frontend and I also coded the save points (including user registration, which is very boring to do). Armand has been working hard on the music and has more or less 3 tracks complete. My next task will be to remove the dust of the sound bit of my engine if needed and make an easy way to associate the musics with the maps =)
I also wrote the text for the intro cutscene and since then it has received some love by Adarias (ndchristie) who is much better than me at writing in English!

Pierre has been laptop deprived for a few days, I dont know what he's up to. No eye-candy today :x

[agersant]

Update 20
Yesterday I made particle effects for a fire-god sprite (artwork a few updates above) to get back in the mood.
Today I started coding the intro cutscene (which is just some sort of text/diaporama) while Pierre made all the 6 illustrations for it. Here are 2 of our favourites :

[ANtY]

Update 20
Yesterday I made particle effects for a fire-god sprite (artwork a few updates above) to get back in the mood.
Today I started coding the intro cutscene (which is just some sort of text/diaporama) while Pierre made all the 6 illustrations for it. Here are 2 of our favourites :

They look awesome, will we be able to see the intro soon? :p

[agersant]

They look awesome, will we be able to see the intro soon? :p

With the rest of the prototype demo =)
No ETA yet sorry.

Update 21
Today I finished coding the intro (without music). That's it!

[DanFessler]

I'm truly loving the art direction and character concepts from this.  Definitely going to watch this thread

[Ninja Dodo]

La classe! Gorgeous art and game sounds intriguing. Can't wait to see more.

[agersant]

@Ninja Dodo > Thanks for the encouragement! I've been following your project with great interest too =)

@DanFessler > Many thanks, Pierre (and I) is familiar with your art so he appreciates the compliment all the more =)

[agersant]

Update 22
Today I improved the audio part of my engine (added fade in/out, gradual panning and fixed a few bugs) and I added music to the title screen and intro =)

[agersant]

Update 23
It's been a while since I last updated this devlog but work hasn't stopped.

I've been doing some display optimization and bug fixing, providing editor support to Pierre and adding "terrain type" attributes to the tilesets. We can now do things like stairs (already implemented), water or slippery floor.
I reworked the networking bit of my engine (it's not multiplayer, just the game communicating with a server). The server side is now written in HaXe and compiled to PHP/Neko and the game defaults to whichever is on the server (it used to be written in PHP).
Right now I'm working on a tool that makes huge vgmaps-like images of our levels to get a large scale overview of what we're doing.

Pierre has worked on the main character animations. We are now both satisfied by what he blocked out for the walk cycle and the attack animation. He also made a sprite I really like :

Best of all, he completed 37 out of the 39 maps for our prototype (thanks the Tiled map editor)!

Armand (our musician) has completed all his tracks for the prototype and designed a few SFX but we'll need more of these in the future. I've also been discussing with him to define a data format to store audio data (events, buses, sound schemes etc.) that could give a bit more audio processing power to "my" engine =)