As with Morning's Wrath 1 I'd like to start a thread here showcasing Morning's Wrath 2: Caverns of the North, which is an isometric game and being developed with our new authoring tool "Selenite". I'd love to field any engine/editor or game related questions too. Small video of pre-alpha gameplay: http://www.edigames.com/mwcotnv10.wmv http://www.edigames.com/mwcotnv11.wmv [Edited by - EDI on August 17, 2009 9:50:28 AM]

That looks great. Worlds better looking than the original, and better than malathedra too.

That's what happens when you make enough money from past games to contract art with payment up-front :)

First of all - looks great so far. Anyone looking to make a game and see it through to the end should definitely check out your dev logs as well as your posts here on GameDev. Top notch job on all of your games.

First question is about the editor/authoring tool: I was just wondering what libraries you used for the GUI as it looks very .NET like? I was really surprised to see that it doesn't appear to be an "in game" editor but more of an editor attached to an instance of the game...

Second question is regarding the engine itself: I noticed the blades of grass in the editor and was wondering if those are parts of tiles or individual lines/triangles? I know in the past there has been more of an isometric element (2d) in these games but this looks more full fledged 3d than the others.

Quote:Original post by evillive2
First of all - looks great so far. Anyone looking to make a game and see it through to the end should definitely check out your dev logs as well as your posts here on GameDev. Top notch job on all of your games.

Thanks :)

Quote:
First question is about the editor/authoring tool: I was just wondering what libraries you used for the GUI as it looks very .NET like?

It is indeed .NET and C# using the Scintilla editor component for scripts.

Quote:
I was really surprised to see that it doesn't appear to be an "in game" editor but more of an editor attached to an instance of the game...

Yes, this has been a big point of thought for me over the last few years; while in-game editors can be extremely effective; they often can conflict with the normal operation of the engine and make it far more complex.

I instead, chose to abandon the 'engine' as my 'important part', the editor is really all that matters, the entire game is designed within the editor, and a set of build products are compiled by it; these build products then run on an engine that is built to handle them; the Win32 C++ engine itself is only 6,000 lines of code, and the Flash and XNA/XBOX360 engine is in the works.

Quote:
Second question is regarding the engine itself: I noticed the blades of grass in the editor and was wondering if those are parts of tiles or individual lines/triangles? I know in the past there has been more of an isometric element (2d) in these games but this looks more full fledged 3d than the others.

This game uses all 2D assets, run (under win32) in a 3D api; the blades of grass are baked into the background image; which by the way is rendered as a complete image, and when brought into the editor is automatically sliced into 256x256 pixel sized squares for easy streaming and clipping.

The shining feature of selenite is that it's extremely easy to make games in via the 'productivity oriented' design, and the fact that every object is physics enabled so very fun gameplay effects are easily achieved.

Two new videos, showing a fun prototype for a spell that causes debris to orbit you as a shield and to hurt opponents by crushing force.

http://www.edigames.com/mwcotnv12.wmv

http://www.edigames.com/mwcotnv13.wmv

Quote:This game uses all 2D assets, run (under win32) in a 3D api; the blades of grass are baked into the background image; which by the way is rendered as a complete image, and when brought into the editor is automatically sliced into 256x256 pixel sized squares for easy streaming and clipping.

Am I reading this wrong or did you say you render the background/entire map as a giant image and then slice it up when it comes time to display it?

Seems like your background image would be HUGE and I can't imagine how this would work. Any insight?

the background image, is pre rendered in a 3D package, by an artist; touched up in photoshop to result in an image about 6600x3300 in size.

this image is imported into the editor as a room background, and it is sliced up into images there and each sliced image becomes a resource.


when displaying the map ingame the individual pieces are rendered like square titles.

is that clearer?

[Edited by - EDI on August 20, 2009 9:23:19 AM]

New video, showing prototype spell, 'orbit shield', physics fun galore!

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Playing instead of working :D

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