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[absenter]

Good luck dinoguy!

edit: Backed! I would've liked to see a lot more gameplay in the video, because I know you guys have worked hard on the game, but as the video stands it looks like you've spent more time on the cutscenes. Not sure if you can re-cut it to have longer gameplay sequences in but I certainly would. Good luck either way, and I laughed at the Moonman cameo! [:D]

I completely understand where you are coming from.

Sam and I have been pounding away at this game and there are a lot of design choices that we feel are very fun and unique to the game. We are kind of walking a thin line between showing what we want to show of the game and giving things away. I also wanted to try and explain the story in a really concise way. Thinking about it as a teaser video, I think it serves it's purpose very well. But maybe it's too much of a tease and doesn't show enough of the game footage. I hope I struck the right balance. We will see!

Thanks so much for your support. Moonman is looking incredible.

[qwurp]

Backed! Best of luck on your campaign.

I agree, more gameplay videos. But as someone whose run a small Kickstarter last year, backers love content updates. It reiterates they've made a good investment and hypes them on the project (usually encouraging them to up their pledges). You should definitely consider leveraging gameplay videos into updates.

[Sam B]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jlowther/dinosword/posts/992593

More illustrations revealed...!

[SeanNoonan]

Life might have become a bit uncertain for me right now... so a token dollar backing for the time being

Good luck! I'll be sure to share on the twitters 

[JustRadek]

Just backed it; good luck with the campaign.

[absenter]

Hello TigSource!

Unfortunately, Dinosword didn't make the goal it set out for on Kickstarter. If you backed the Kickstarter, I wrote a little update about where I've failed and where the game is headed now.

I had to make the difficult decision recently to continue forward without the help of Sam Baylus.

First off, I'd like to say Sam is a great programmer and has many good ideas. He has been working on this project for over a year and I can't thank him enough for the work he has put in.

During the process of the Kickstarter, I was looking to make a demo for Dinosword. There is easily enough artwork to create a demo for Dinosword, but somehow it never happened. There is a years worth of EXE files, sketches, and a Design Document that detail how Chompy's items work, parallax backgrounds, different platform types, etc. But, we never seemed to tie it all together.

I had to move forward. I was working 1 day a week at my day job and 14 hours a day making pixel art every other day for the video. I'm still pretty proud of how the video came out. Sam had thought it would be better to show off small moments of the game rather then make a demo and I begrudgingly went with that decision. Looking back on it, I wish we had something so that people could say more than "This looks good." and be able to say "This is good.", but we never came that far.

I recently wanted to actually create a project timeline with Sam to have multiple benchmarks to get things goals accomplished by. Due to his work schedule he was/is unable to commit to any kind of timeline.

So, if you can program in Gamemaker and think it might be possible to come to an agreement for some form of deadline with me (don't worry, I'm pretty flexible) to get something accomplished, please contact me.

In the meantime, I am realizing that I've become reasonably knowledgeable at programming in Gamemaker. So, until I can find the right fit, I'm going to plug away at Dinosword on my own.

[absenter]

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=44007.0

[absenter]

NEWS!

Hello TigSource. Eight or so days ago, I was in a spot where went from working on the Art for Dinosword to working on the Code/Art for Dinosword. I decided to post a little note on Twitter looking for a programmer to help things along. Luckily, Cactus and Jan from Vlambeer took some time to retweet my post and a lot of very qualified folks applied for the position!

I talked with several people and kinda felt out a few people that fit well with me. Humor, Time zones, and a very strong passion for programming were high on the list of qualifications for the project. Thomas Finch got a hold of me. I was familiar with his work on Ethereal and it turns out we both have a ridiculous drive to make things!

So, without further ado, Thomas Finch is the new programmer for Dinosword. We started working together 6 days ago and he is almost done with a level editor for the game. It feels like we are working at light speeds now.

Thanks to everyone who applied.

Jeremy

[Thomas Finch]

 

[JobLeonard]

  (it's still early here, I got a working day ahead of me)

[absenter]

Here is a small look into the editor that's being made for Dinosword.

Happy Halloween!

[Thomas Finch]

To give people an idea about the level editor, so far:
1. You can select object/tile categories (Animals, Backgrounds, Square Blocks, Angled Blocks, Short Blocks)
2. You can place tiles and delete them easily (left click and right click). As long as you're holding down the keys over any area, the block will be created/deleted so it really feels like you're painting the level!
3. You can zoom in and out
4. You can pan around the room
5. You can shift click and drag to make a selection box.
6. All selected items are highlighted in red. You can delete them by pressing delete or drag them by simply dragging them.
7. You can deselect items by clicking on an empty space.
8. You can also drag single objects by holding middle click and moving them.
9. Most importantly, there is a test mode. Changing to test mode changes the HUD to the game HUD and starts you where you placed the player spawn point. You can play just as if you were playing in the regular game. Then you can switch back to editor mode and everything goes back to its spawn points.

So far, the only objects/tiles available for placement are the player, rabbit and plains ground tiles. I'm focusing on functionality and quality before adding in every object. That's the easy part anyway.

Sometime soon one of us will do a video of us using the level editor to make a quick test room.

[JobLeonard]

Nice! It's a bit weird that the textures change every time you place a tile though.

[Thomas Finch]

Yeah, that's the autotiling system. It rechecks which tiles are around it and changes it's appearance to reflect that. I plan in my next update to it to make only the ones surrounding a newly placed tile recheck their appearance.

[Thomas Finch]

Hey guys, on Feb 2nd we'll be making an actual update but for now I figured I'd fill you guys in on what we've been up to. We've been hoping to secure some sort of funding for Dinosword since the kickstarter failed. In November we worked on a few side projects while we did some research and got in contact with some people. December and part of January we did very little work Dinosword but talked to a lot of possible investors and publishers. Unfortunately, we didn't come to any agreements that we felt were fair enough. We managed to secure a month's worth of funding and we've been working full-time for the last week. The level editor has really been our focus here and it will allow Jeremy's designing to go much smoother. As of now the level editor is already looking fantastic, in my humble opinion. We'll have a lot of awesome stuff to show you guys in a week. Our plan is to, by the end of February, have a full demo of the Plains world, a demo of a boss fight and a fully functional level editor. 

[absenter]

Hello TigSource,

As Thomas mentioned in the previous post, we had talked with a couple folks that were interested in helping to finance Dinosword by providing wages to give us the time/money to finish the game. In the end, I decided to not work with either party.

On one end, it's disappointing that we currently can't solely focus on finishing this game in a timely manner. On the other, the amount of control we would have had to give up to receive funding would have ultimately left us equally (if not more) disappointed. Talking about business is pretty exhausting to my creativity, and had brought any momentum Thomas and I have created down dramatically.

On a positive note, Thomas and I have decided to continue on. We have written up a schedule that details a schedule to have a fully functional demo of Dinosword ready for February 24th. If you are anywhere in the Boston area, I will be showing Dinosword at the Playcrafting Boston Winter Expo ( http://www.playcrafting.com/event-detail/?event_id=13496563585 ). Feel free to stop by and say "Hello".

I started doing a netcast with Jay Tholen (Dropsy the Clown) and Alix/Calvin from Robot Loves Kitty (Upsilon Circuit, Legend of Dungeon) called Feature Creep ( http://featurecreepcast.tumblr.com ). Jay and I made the logo and I made a weird pizza monster picture to compliment our talk. I give a brief little explanation of Dinosword. Please, give it a listen. Calvin is quite the storyteller.

Game Progress:

Thomas and I are in the process of converting the game from 320x240 to 640x360. Which means that the
menus all need to be reworked to fit larger aspect ratio.



I was a bit concerned that at 320x240 there wouldn't be enough room to see ahead. 640x320 seems to correct any issues with the gameplay feeling a bit claustrophobic.



That's about it for now. Thomas is planning on making a post tomorrow to talk more about the level editor. Stay tuned.

Jeremy

P.S. Go help get Moonman funded!!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/eigenbom/moonman

[Thomas Finch]

Hey guys! So, we've been making a ton of progress, especially considering I started the code from scratch. As I said before, our focus has been the level editor, though now we're branching out into everything necessary for the demo.

Here are the main features of the level editor:
- Easy placement and deletion of objects makes it feel like you're painting the level.
- Alt-Clicking on an object allows you to change certain variables about the object, like depth and speed.
- Shift-Clicking and dragging allows you to select multiple objects at once and move them around.
- The HUD allows you to easily save/load the level's design, change object categories and change which object you are placing using the selection bar.
- Pressing 'T' will switch between Test and Edit Mode. This means you can very easily test any changes you make to a level's design even without saving.
- There's a lot more to it, but those are the most important features in my mind.

Here's what we have done so far:
- The main menu is complete.
- There is a level creation form for the level editor that allows you to create new levels and set the level name, description, area type, room height and room width. In the demo you will only be able to create Plains levels, however.
- There is a level load list menu that lists all user-created levels and allows to load or delete any of them.
- 80% of the objects and creatures for the Plains are implemented and placeable in the editor.

What we still have left to do for the demo:
- Code the AI for all plains animals.
- Save/Load system for Story Mode.
- Add a system for loading user-created levels outside of the level editor.
- Program the demo boss fight.
- Fine-tune everything (of course).

Sometime next week I will post a video or gfy of me using the level editor's features.

[siskavard]

I need this game to happen

[JobLeonard]

I like the new resolution, and the new splash screen!

^{But to give some constructive criticism: I think the light blue in the clouds on the left worked a bit better.}

[absenter]

Reworking the Game Hud. There is still some more work to do, but it's starting to come along.



Thomas is working on controller support.

@JobLeonard

Thats for the crit. I've been messing with it a bit. I'll have a newer version to show soon.