In a marathon spurt of productivity, I've implemented the entire Survival mode. While it still needs some tweaking, the wave system works very well and it is reasonably challenging for me.
I think you guys will enjoy it a lot, especially when you take down two Giants and milk their corpses for sweet experience.
I may delay the game a couple of days to iron out some content bugs here and there and make sure the final mission is working properly; it's got a lot of abnormal code that the other missions won't display.
After that, it's just solid bug testing. I hope you guys are willing to bang on this thing until it breaks and then tell me why and how it broke!
After that, it's to release the game. I'll feel really lonely once it's gone. Then I'll have to come up with something even better. If I have to patch after release, I'll probably also add some special features (which I'm working on right now).
FYI, the current game-only (no engine) code linecount is 12 415. The engine is another twenty thousand or so on top of it. Meaty.
Just about to go to my "goodbye" lunch but I figured I'd drop here to point out a few things.
Glow development is progressing steadily. Like I told HopeDagger, I think it'll take about 10 minutes per level to beat. That's pretty substantial, and on top of that I've spec'd out the New Game+ and Survival modes for inclusion soon.
I'm also working on the props you'll need for the last level; lots of quest items and things to do. It'll be a more traditional fetch-quest RPG, and less with the blasting in the final map. Which is totally awesome.
More on this when I get back to my home PC. Damn, this game is going quite well.
Anyway, working on the Glow Windows build (major framerate improvements), integrating all of your suggestions and finishing off the first level. It looks like the game is going to be fairly long after all, which should be pretty nice.
Then I have to work on the survival and other game modes. And the hand-out feature when finishing the last map.
Anyway, some of the bugs I've closed this week:
You can now hold down both mouse buttons so you can move and shoot;
Strafing while moving forward is no longer faster than the four cardinal directions;
Damage has been modified;
Some of the indicators have been changed to make them more obvious.
Mousebutton down state resets properly when leaving a tip or cinema scene.
Tag loader and config file saving bug fixes.
Now that I think most of the major gameplay problems are out of the way, it should be pretty easy for me to settle down and make some missions for it. Savage.
I think, since the Glow news won't be very exciting for awhile, that I should disclose some of the side projects I've been up to.
So here's a short list. Put on a record and listen to the scratched, warbly sound as you read my scratched, warbly ramblings.
Electronics hobbyism -- I'm planning on buying an Arduino board and getting to work on writing some kind of game for it with an LCD panel. Can't hurt, particularly since I can hack it in C, build it on my Mac and have it interface with Processing, one of my favourite tools. If you've gotten a little microcontroller kit and managed to write games for it, I'm interested (please leave a message if so, I want to consult alternatives). I'm debating whether to shell out for a Propeller devboard or a Spartan-3 starter kit instead of this little guy.
Stick Soldiers 3 -- I've been working with some other members of GDNet on this thing, and it's starting to come together. Won't you please check out the joy?
Pyweek 3 -- I'm going to join in on the PyWeek festivities. Such a blast!
That's all for now that's actually making progress, though I also have some other projects (Nehe revitalization, other stuff) that I've been trying to avoid as much as possible to keep from burning out.
This is a progress update. This is only a progress
Posted - 8/12/2006 1:07:45 AM
Since HopeDagger has been on me to post an update, here is one.
I have been working on the first level of the game today, but I have been too tired to do much of anything the last few days. I am making some progress, I hope. I think you will enjoy it.
I'm worried that I'm handing out too much ammo, though I guess it's better than not having enough, particularly since I have no ammo-less weapons.
Anyway, more monsters on the way, though they all act generally the same. Perhaps I'll finally do something about how often the player dies in terms of increased damage ratios or something.
I may or may not also add global statistics so you can see how many zombies you've killed overall, how many rounds of ammo expended, how many miles walked, etc. We'll see if I have time for it, and I hope I do. This month is going way too fast.
Started on the final batch of levels that will make it into the game. This requires writing. I have started consulting a professional writer and we'll see what I can get in terms of that. I'm having fun wedging items into random spots in the level, though. You guys will NEVER find half of this garbage.
You can now stop and restart the game properly.
Collision is slightly improved.
Large bugs in the editor are fixed.
Most of the "test" hardcoded code is now gone (hooray hooray) which means that the game is mostly data driven from external sources.
I'm screwing around with the stat bonuses; I want the dexterity and strength bonuses to be more obvious in terms of effect. I'm also considering an 'auto-normalize' function which will try to make all of your stats in harmony, as it were.
That's about it. You'll start seeing some more polished screenshots soon, as the final game comes together (e.g. the test level you guys have seen in the screenshots for the last few months is gone forever). This is really quite exciting!
I just got off the elevator after a long weekend. Some woman was on there who missed her floor, and so, in an attempt to make up for it, she said: "Nice floor!" as I stepped off the lift.
I just said... "thanks" and ran off into my coding alcove.
You can now select weapons in Glow by using the number row on your keyboard, or the mouse wheel. Entertaining? I think so. Useful? Most definitely. Certainly makes the game easier to play, and now it feels more like a first person shooter.
Okay, my little sub-literates, you must go out and purchase a copy of jPod. I finally got around to reading it, and I'm not entirely sure I can ever go back to the train after snickering like a loon through the first 30 pages.
It's like Office Space for game/software/rookie developers, except twisted and wrong. And hilarious.
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