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I have neglected my blog for the last 6 months or so, largely due to spending a lot of time working on my "ultimate" 2D game development library, culimating all my knowledge I have built up from developing games over
the years and building the best level editing software I have created to date. The package is named Opal, and it is built over the HGE engine, providing high level functionality for rapid development of 2D games.
Quoting from the readme file: using HGE. It operates as a helper library much like hgelib.lib, providing a series of classes to simplify loading game levels & performing a range of common game tasks such as object management, rendering, optimization, collision detection & collision response physics. A polygon-based level editor tool that is aimed at general 2D game development is included in the package. The editor can be customized for use alongside your game by a configuartion file allowing you to define custom entitys that make up your game. The C++ SDK is designed to work alongside this editor." I have created a promotional video comprised of footage from the level editor & sample game projects that come with Opal. You can download Opal 1.1 here. You can view the Opal 1.1 documentation here. Comments here | |||||
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I recently have been working on a long-term plan - a 3D action/acventure game project called Argorn. I'm working with 2 other teammates on ideas & content for the game, and have produced some working code based on the M3D engine I've used for minesweeper & the Sundren demo vid. Comments here | |||||
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I made a video of a 3D Minesweeper clone I developed in around 3-4 hours work last night. Still needs some polishing, but hopefully
it will be a nice little demo to go on my portfolio when done! Comments here | |||||
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It's been on my mind for a while to port my 2D framework into 3D, so over the last week I've been switching the
Tau base code to use Irrlicht for rendering instead of HGE. At the same time I've been developing the classes as I rewrote them with a RPG in mind, and I though I'd post a small video of the progress so far. The artwork is quite rough, but this really is to show off my programming ability, not my artistic skills. Some of the art is mine, some is royalty free, and I've 'borrowed' the HUD design from a different commercial RPG for now. Here's a video of it in action: Comments here | |||||
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Since the Summer I had a bunch of ideas for the 'Nature' demo I posted back in March, and spent a couple weeks polishing it off into a full game The result? 'Tau Grows Up', a 2D Adventure game for children where they play the role of Tau, a small yellow ball that must collect various items from around his world in order to grow up. Later stages in the game require you to sell items you found in order to buy tools from the shop in order to obtain rarer materials. There's even a few secrets and special items thrown in :) Here's a video of it in action: Download link coming soon! | |||||
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Been working on more general ropeman stuff, and thought I'd show off a couple of new 'effects'. First up, electricity!
The effect is currently used with the new teleport sack gun, but I think we'll be seeing more electricity in general from now on! You can see it in action below: The next is a slightly more subtle effect but I'm quite pleased with how its turned out. The need arose for 'breakable' tiles in the game, and I wanted the tiles to leave behind some broken residue after being broke. Rather than having artists create seperate 'broken' textures for whatever tiles we wanted to break, I wrote some code to procedurally create the broken looking tile textures when the map loads. The mapper can set which side of a tile (if any) leaves broken residue behind; Hopefully this will save time on art and give mappers more freedom to be creative with breakable entitys :) 
The shots above show the same region before and after being blown up. Below is a close up to see the detail of the 'broken' tile effect. 
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Ropeman is still in development, but in the meantime I recently found a link to an
interesting algorithm that describes a fast way to simulate a plane of water as a heightmap. I had a go at implementing it using the HGE 2D engine I use
for ropeman and quickly got it working:
I decided its a pretty cool effect and went on to develop it further into a screensaver where boats drive over your screen, leaving trails of ripples behind them! Heres a screenshot of some boats driving over their own code: 
You can download it here. | |||||
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Ropeman version 2 is on the way, and its main feature is going to be multiplayer! A working build supporting multiple players is being
tested at the moment. The multiplayer version takes the format of a race, where all players must tick 'ready!' at the start of a round,
then the race begins. The first player to the end door of a map is the winner. It won't be as simple as just racing though, we're throwing in power ups too, so you'll be able to steal opponents ropes, cut their ropes, slow them down, and more! No videos yet, but heres a screenshot of a 3 player game going on. 
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I made a video of me playing a buckethead song :) | |||||
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Since ropemans release I have been playing around with the concept of a locoroco-styled childrens game using physics. I've attached a video of my work so far below.
I will be turning my focus back on ropeman version 2 soon, but something may come of this in the future. | |||||
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Ropeman was realeased today! Ropeman is a freeware demo game I have been working on along with an artist, Kevan Sigouin. Today we are releasing version 1, a 3-level demo. Click here to download the demo. | |||||