Greater Than Games

GL_LINEAR & GL_NEAREST

2009-05-01T02:32:00.002-04:00

GL_LINEAR caused some problems where occasionally there would be borders around some textures. For some reason, you can't actually start them at 0.0 and end at 1.0. You have to start at 0.0+d and end at 1.0-d where d = 0.5/(width) or 0.5/(height) depending on the dimension. So I decided to go with GL_NEAREST instead even though GL_LINEAR is supposed to "look" better.

More stuff

2009-04-29T23:36:00.001-04:00

Enemies now have attack animations like the player, so they don't just kill you by proximity. We've also added some more textures to the map, and now they look a bit nicer.

On Top of That

2009-04-29T02:12:00.002-04:00

On top of that, with local variables comes the introduction of the campsite, the location that centers the NPCs and main plot.

Speaking of plot... how about a first taste of the introduction?

-OPENING SEQUENCE-

FADE IN:

EXT. BEACH – LATE AFTERNOON

The PC--henceforth referred to as JACK--and a team of five other members stand on the sands of a deserted island. Jack (an explorer), Alice (a nurse), Karen (a diver), Hunter (a hunter), Harvey (a chef), and Prof. Helms (a professor) walk off their boat and onto the shoreline. The hunter looks forward. Tall crags stand at either side of the small beach.

HUNTER
Hey, Jack! We’re gonna start unloading the boat.

KAREN
Could you bring more crap, Hunter? We’re supposed to be bringing treasure back, and we’re not even gonna have room.

HUNTER
Oh, let it go, Karen. You ever tried to trap wild animals for food? It takes a lot of tools, okay? Here, Jack. Take this. I’ll take care of her—

KAREN
I’m right here. I can hear you.

HUNTER
Jack, just take my blade and go clear us a path. We gotta find some empty area to pitch the camp. Think you can handle it?

The hunter hands Jack a machete and walks back towards the boat.

INFO
You have gotten a machete. It has been assigned to the “A” key. To swing your machete, simply press A in front of your target. Try cutting down the bushes ahead.

A low wind blows.

PROF. HELMS
We’d better hurry up before the winds pick up. The tents will never pitch against a storm.

HUNTER
Hurry up then, Jack. Let us know when you find a spot.

Schrooms, Herbs, and Variables! Oh my!

2009-04-28T16:11:00.003-04:00

Well we finally put in healing items. We were keeping that one from you guys cause we're sadistic. Oh yeah local variables! Now you shouldn't have to meet an NPC over and over. :-D

Monsoon progress so far

2009-04-27T21:48:00.008-04:00

We've got transparent rain!

Trees and NPCs!

Text boxes!

Canyons!

Forest mazes!

Portraits

2009-04-21T13:48:00.003-04:00

First of several portraits for the characters. This one's for Alice, the nurse.

And here's concept art for several more.

We need widescreen monitors

2009-04-17T17:02:00.002-04:00

There aren't enough pixels for this type of project. So many files, so many places with things to fix...

Events

2009-04-15T13:01:00.002-04:00

Right now we have text events and map transfer events but more importantly we have an Event Loader and an architecture to have conditional statements and to trigger events in succession. The short of it.... We can start making actual content!!

Wooohoo! Now to work on how to control focus.

2009-04-13T15:04:00.001-04:00

Got map transfering done in a cheap and quick hack-ish way.

Finally got DevIL installed at the ugrad machines. Took a lot of emails with the support staff...

Monster Graphics

2009-04-08T15:32:00.003-04:00

God bless Warren for putting us in contact with the great and powerful OZ (aka Greg Barley) who agreed to help us with the monster graphics for our game. I showed him a bunch of concept art and explanations, as well as our design document, and he turned my screwy imagination into actual graphical manifestations. That are quite sexy, I must say. Here's his concept art and spriting for the world to drool over...

Deadlines For the Week

2009-04-08T15:31:00.001-04:00

MONDAY
-Re-Send the Design Document [ME] CHECK
-E-mail Greg about the up-face directions [ME] CHECK

TUESDAY
-Dialogue Work [ELAN]
-Break up enemy graphics [ME] CHECK

WEDNESDAY
-* Finish *Dialogue Boxes [ELAN]
- *Finish *HUD/Menu Graphics [ME]

THURSDAY
- *FINISH* Map Transfer [WILSON]
- *FINISH *Some of the Enemies (3-4) [MATT]
- *FINISH *Upper Layer Implementation [WILSON]

THIS WEEKEND
- *FINISH* implementing 2 tile character animation [ALL]
- *IMPLEMENT *Hud/Menu [ALL]

Monsoon on Windows!

2009-04-04T23:47:00.002-04:00

After a lot of suffering, I finally got Monsoon working on Windows! Yay!

Scenery in MapMaker

2009-04-04T16:16:00.003-04:00

We now have another layer working in MapMaker, the scenery layer. Now we can add trees and other such objects to the map.

MapMaker also has a few other improvements. First, the name of the map file is displayed at the bottom of the grid panel. Second, it is possible to right-click a tile in the grid panel to select it, rather than find it in the side panel.

Meeting With Warren

2009-03-25T18:12:00.002-04:00

Met with Warren on Monday; his peer, Greg is helping us with the art for the monsters, so I showed him all of the concept sketches. Another peer, Katie, came and met with the programmers, and helped us all get the next few weeks in order in terms of our agenda. We're looking to finish map transfers and map layers this week, and then I'll be building the island this weekend and the beginning of next week. Next week will be all about events: NPC's, cutscenes, cutting down trees, and maybe some UI. OH BOY. BIG DAYS AHEAD.......

Not really game related

2009-03-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

But I think a reboot is in order

Old and New

2009-03-13T16:26:00.002-04:00

Things done since last time:
-enemies
-hp bar
-game end
-Intrigue and Mystery!
-EXTREME COMBAT!!!!
-Sweeet sounds
-No sleep
-Even More Intrigue and Mystery!!!
Why does Capitalization follow no real Pattern? WHO KNOwS!

More Mapmaker Upgrades

2009-03-13T11:54:00.002-04:00

For the record, it is now possible to toggle the gridlines via the toolbar menu, and possible to edit the upper layer. The toolbar has a function for layers, and it changes what is visible in the left panel to a series of upper layer events.

MapMaker upgrades

2009-03-12T16:51:00.004-04:00

Now that the engine is much more advanced, I've added in MapMaker support for multiple layers, and I also added grid lines. Right now, there is no way to modify the upper layers, and the grid lines aren't toggleable, but that support will come soon.

In the forest?

2009-03-10T18:59:00.003-04:00

hehe...

MapMaker modifications

2009-03-10T18:36:00.002-04:00

I've been modifying MapMaker and its related files to cooperate with our engine. I updated the format of our bitmaps.txt file, which contains the data for our background tile images. We also moved around some of the directories, so MapMaker works with the new organization now, too.

Forest Maze

2009-03-10T10:48:00.002-04:00

Here's a snapshot of the recently completed Forest Maze.
Made a lot of progress last night. Re-exported all of the tile sheets as individual tiles because OpenGL performs terribly with image sheets. Can't identify neccessary pixels, it has to be a decimal between 0 and 1. Practically useless with a tileset of 36 images across.
Almost completed the first enemy-->a bush.
Also, making progress on camera and cleaner movement.
More to come over the next few days.

MapMaker improvements

2009-03-04T22:11:00.002-05:00

MapMaker is now a little more powerful. It can read in tile images from arbitrary locations in a larger image file, so now it is not necessary to place each tile image into a separate file.

It is also now possible to drag certain tile types across the screen to create larger patches of a certain type. For example, the user can drag the water tile over a rectangular region to create a pool of water, and MapMaker (sort of) knows which component of the water tiles goes where.

The Title Screen

2009-03-04T17:20:00.002-05:00

The Title screen I'm working on for now. Each letter is designed after a different Sin.

Alpha Version

2009-03-04T12:40:00.002-05:00

The Alpha version release date is set to March 13th. Since the last time I posted, I have decided to use FMOD instead of OpenAL since FMOD comes with much better documentation and is just as easy to learn and use. Within the next couple of days, we hope to have basic playable functionality of the engine. There are still features yet to be implemented...

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

2009-02-24T16:57:00.009-05:00

IN ORDER: Pride, Alice, Lust, Hunter, Prof. Helms, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Karen, Harvey

OH MY GOD, a lot got finished today. As of last night, I've written up 14 different types of monsters and found concept images from other games to inspire our eventual graphics for them. 5/7 Sins have original graphics. 3 and a half songs are ready for the soundtrack, and all of the NPC graphics are done. I wrote up bios for the NPCs and descriptions for the weapons and items. I compiled all of this (minus the music) in our Design Document and I plan to send that out shortly. Here's some images, though, to whet appetites.

More MapMaker features

2009-02-22T23:47:00.004-05:00

I got a few more features implemented since the last time I updated. First off, I added the ability to insert new columns and rows into the grid. Input is in the form "3*R0 r2 C12 c5", which means "insert three new rows before row 0, one new row before row 2, one column before column 12 (if there are less than 12 columns, the column will be inserted at the end), and insert one column before column 5. The commands are inserted into a priority queue before they are enacted, so that the actual result of the command will be "r2, r0, r0, r0, c12, c5", so that the result of the resize is clear and consistent.

Next, I added the simple ability to resize the grid panel's viewport to any resolution, so that the user can increase or decrease the size of the MapMaker window. The user can use the scroll bars to move around the grid, if the grid is larger than the viewport.

Finally, I added the ability to place groups of related tiles. For example, the blue tile shown on the right is part of a group of four tiles. When I place the tile onto the grid, it also places its three related tiles into appropriate positions on the grid.

OpenAL

2009-02-22T22:18:00.001-05:00

OpenAL works with wav files. YAY! Now just a lot of other file formats to deal with...

Walking Animation

2009-02-20T18:58:00.001-05:00

Walking animations working! I can't get a good screenshot but bear with me.

The Flowcharts

2009-02-20T15:06:00.006-05:00

The first flowchart displays the progression of the prologue. I'm gonna upload these in a hopefully higher quality later with the development of the later acts.

The second picture portrays the first major act, where the player will have his/her first simple choices.

MapMaker - Now with functionality

2009-02-18T00:58:00.004-05:00

I've made some progress since the last post, so here's what's changed since the last post on MapMaker:

Tiles are now clickable, so I can select a tile in the bitmap panel and change the tile at any location on the grid by clicking on it.

There is now support for a scroll pane and scroll bars. This will be useful once I implement the ability to resize the grid.

The bitmap selection panel has been streamlined, by getting rid of the file name and turning the icons themselves into radio buttons. Each icon also has a "selected" state, so that it is easy to tell which bitmap has been selected.

Files can now be saved and loaded. The file chooser filters by file extension (.txt for our maps), and its default directory is the maps folder.

Next on my to-do list is implement methods to allow the user to resize the grid.

Transparency

2009-02-17T19:00:00.010-05:00

Woohoo! After about two and a half hours of trying to get transparency to work, turns out an 'A' was forgotten when updating the old version! Check it out! :-D

On the left is the little ninja dude.
On the right is him hiding behind a tree trunk.

I guess next on the list is animation. :-)

Tiling Engine

2009-02-17T18:25:00.003-05:00

So we have a semi working tiling engine using OpenGL. It is currently serving as a testbed for different features we're working on. Currently it displays the map, scenery (if we want), and your character which you can move around the screen using the keyboard.

Right now grass is the only transversable terrain and dirt/nothing acts as walls. Textures are stored as bitmaps and are loaded into a RGBA (A = alpha channel) matrix.
I've been working to try and implement chromakey-ing our bitmaps so a certain color (in our case pink) would be rendered as transparent.

The engine also handles basic lighting (night time version of the map shown in picture) by adjusting the color while rendering.

Two Random Things

2009-02-17T16:50:00.002-05:00

Two Random Things I wanted posted from our last collaboration after class: the top five priorities of the game and the main items we designated as our environment tools.

The BIG FIVE
1. Exploration
2. Increasing Interactivity (as gameplay progresses)
3. Simple Combat (not taking the gameplay's focus)
4. Branching Paths (of any magnitude)
5. Eeriness

The Main Items
-Torch
-Bow and Arrow
-Machete
-Ax
-Fishing Rod
-Climbing Rope/Ladder
-Inflatable Raft
-Teleportation Item
-Reveal Other-Time-of-Day-Items Tool

Development Tools - MapMaker

2009-02-15T19:13:00.003-05:00

It's not much so far, but I've been hard at work making a simple map editor for our project. Right now, the program can successfully read, parse, and display a map stored in a text file. When this is done, hopefully it will make it much easier for us to design and manage maps. It certainly beats manually editing a matrix of numerals in a text editor.

Next, I will make the tile pieces on the right selectable, and then I will allow the user to click on any spot on the grid and change that tile to the selected tile. Eventually, I will add the ability to change the dimensions of the map, import new textures, move through different layers on the image (background, obstacles, etc.), and, of course, save the modified map files.

The Plot

2009-02-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

In the effort to share without sharing too much, here's the basic premise as it stands--might I add we're doing a thriller RPG, being rather audacious SoB's:

MONSOON

The PC arrives with a skill-balanced research team to hunt treasure on a deserted island. Shortly into exploration, the team’s boat vanishes and radio communications with the mainland are shut down. The PC must then explore the island, stay alive, and uncover the mysteries that plague the dark nights of the cruel monsoon season. Environment exploration/ item collection, puzzle-solving, and stealth are the key elements of gameplay.

Hello

2009-02-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

We are Greater Than Games and we are greater than you.