Cool Tutorials

The guys that made N (a little platformer about a ninja that has really cool physics) put up some tutorials about hit detection and some other things that I don't really know about. I just thought I'd start posting stuff that might generate ideas.

Spotlight on Tom

Perhaps with this nifty spotlight we can deduce... where the hell Tom went?

Better Looking Cannon

Bioshock a-rock-a-block

Um, I have a GeForce 7600 in this beast. The game runs great on high detail and looks fantastic, and this rig is probably 2 years old technology-wise. I think the card has shader 2.0? Not sure. You sure you can't play it? Did you try the demo or something?

Fucking Pixel Shader 3.0 or whatever

I can't play Bioshock. I need to get a better card to do it.
But I'm not upset.

What kind of card do you have, Chandon?
Also- Tom: is Pixel Shading Number 3 the shit that you were talking about, with the upgrading and all that jazz?

Hey

Just letting you guys know that I've been in crunch time for school, and will continue to be for a couple more weeks til finals are over. I have 3 projects due by the 4th (one down), 3 exams next week, and a couple finals the week after that. THEN I GET A WEEK OFF. Until then, I won't be making a lot of FX but I will be turning a soundtrack song in for my REASON final project.

Unrelated:
I also bought Bioshock as a reward. It's pretty damn cool and super perty, I suggest you check it out if you liked System Shock 2. Can't wait to get into it some more.

Status Check

What are we planning to do with the spotlight now? Should it be fully-positionable, or perhaps just the lamp on top can be spun? What do you think?

Prepare to Suck

I think our best bet would be to have the vacuum sort of roam freely in an arc on the bottom of the carriage, just like the cannon does at top.
The vacuum is the new lowest layer.

Rat-a-tat-tat

That's the sound my machine gun makes:

10 Percent Smaller

It was too big.

I Need A Crane

The crane is the closest part to the front so far. The "cranechain" part is on the bottom, followed by the "craneclaw" parts, then the "cranehand," and finally the "cranearm" is closest to the viewer.

Mapping the island

Here is how we need to go about getting the first level up and running:

Rollin - Sketch a concept of the level and scale it to size using the Necrocarriage as a measure. You should include: the ground, water, zombie spawn points, game object, level decals (ex. mushrooms), and anything else that will make up the Necropopolis world. Make notes on anything and everything in the sketch.

Tom - Overlay polygons to Rollins concept sketch. The concept sketch will not be in the game. Instead the polygons I lay down will be tiled with some arbitrary texture that I rip off another game (preferably another zombie game so we are more likely to run into legality issues, but any texture will suffice). At some point Rollin or Tom should actually create these textures. Also, I will put in game objects and decals that Rollin defines in the level sketch.

Note: After we get the game play working, it will be valuable to create a level editor, but for the first level or two lets stick with this approach.

Note: Ruth pretended to break up with me again, and then I spent all weekend painting her moms house. Yes, I am a little bitch. Shut your mouths. As far as coding goes, I did working on the carriage physics, so now it does not randomly tip over and it's wheels climb up hills. Making the carriage work will most likely be a work in progress the entire development (ex. adding the spotlight makes the carriage tip to the right, so I had to give other parts more weight for balance).

Fucking end of rant!

Nice

Thanks, Skipper.

Can I get the icon in cornflower blue

Yeah, no...actually I'm kinda busy right now. So, I'm just going to have to ask you to come back later.

Ooo Yeah Papi

That lamp look niiiiiiice.

Right. So. You said you possibly make each joint separately-positionable, right, Tom?
I think I'll do the spotlight next.

Oh yeah- and do you think maybe the background could be just a little bit darker? I like it better that pure black, this way, but it also seems a bit washed-out. Charcoal, that's where we need it.

Fucking lamp

Oh That Lamp

Here is version four or five of the lamp. I think it finally looks pretty good.

An Idea for the Cannon Animation

Okay, so here's an idea for making the cannon firing animation look differently "every time" the cannon is fired (which should happen often).

[Really, if Tom decides to go with particle effects, the idea may be moot- but it might make the whole effect better either way. ]

I make a few sets of a few images of the cannon's flare at different flare-lengths. Let's say three sets of three each at short, medium, and long. Tom writes a little bit of code that, when the player presses the cannon fire button, cycles through a random short image, then medium, long, long, medium, and short again. Something like that. Okay well whatever. Fuck you guys.

Cannons Also Boom

Why does the last one look different than the other two? No fucking idea. Try 'em out anyways, I guess.

Really, I'm guessing this calls for an animation, but we'll see. Png's can hold animations, right?

Dialin' On the Bullet

Bang Bang

These are obviously too big for the machine guns. And they have black backgrounds. I'm sending Tom the tiny, transparent-backgrounded versions of them. Tom, let me know if they work or not... Still haven't figured out exactly how I should treat transparencies.

Those are the old sprites i think.

I put the new sprites in the build I sent in gmail.

I Managed to Get it Stuck

Looking good, Tom! I love the new bounciness of all the parts. It's gratifying to see the machine rattle to life. I managed to accidentally tip the carriage over, and it got stuck sort of bouncing on one wheel and the lamp- further evidence that we need a way for the player to right himself.

So here's what I was thinking: Maybe the crane could attach itself to the ground, as well as objects, and act as a sort of winch to pull the carriage upright when it gets stuck? What do you think?

Other minor things: The cannon should be in front of the fuel tank. And it shouldn't rotate all the way around. And the spotlight should be colored in. And the levels should look really cool.

Also: It does basically look like snow. But maybe we could explain it in the game? It would make sense in a Dead-Body Furnace Level to have ash falling down.

Sprites

Are you using the old ones or the new ones in those screenshots, Tom?

Suck this

Made some new sounds, machinegun and vacuum noises. I like vacuum_running_002 the best I think.

Snow-Ash

Ah fuck it - it looks like snow:

Backgrounds

I've been working on transparent backgrounds, then switching over to black for the cleanup. The conversion between .tiff and .png is what produces those halos sometimes.

Also: The files I'm sending you via email have transparent backgrounds, right? Those are the ones to use.

Spotlight

I added the spotlight in, but you can't control it yet. Also, the guts and lamp limb are now connected in a rickety manner (they wiggle!):

I think an interesting look would be small static spotlights attached to the gunner nest which are angled sharply down so you can view below and around the nests. I guess it would just be an addition to the lamplight, but mostly it would look cool.

Fucking blog images

Posting images on the blog makes them lose their transparency. Anyways Rollin, you should stop working on white backgrounds, instead you use black backgrounds that way you will never have a white halo of pixels - just my 2 cents.

Everything So Far

Lines of Fury

I was looking at the latest screenshots, and I thought to myself, "Some of those parts need outlines." So here is a big update of Necrocarriage parts.

And Then

There could be a third layer for the backgrounds? Maybe? They might be affected by the light differently, I was thinking...

That

...Is an incredibly good idea. That is going to look SO much better. I can see it already.

Perhaps there could be a second "layer" of objects- ones not affected by the light-source polygons?
That way, we could have things like LED lights (or nightvision goggles) that just look bright in the darkness, but don't actually give off a lot of light.

I'm thinking things like "You can see the zombies' red eyes in the dark as they approach."
The player would be aware of the zombies, but the machine gunners couldn't act without the light.

Lighting instead of darking

The original idea for lighting was to symbolize unlit areas by covering them with a black sprite which varied in opacity. I was thinking a better method would be to change the opacity of the individual game objects on a scale 0-1. So a completely lit object in the spotlight would have an opacity of 1 and would be completely visible. A partially lit object would possibly have an opacity value of .5 which would leave the object half transparent. And of course, an object in the dark would have a opacity value of 0 which would be invisible. These values would also determine the machine gunners aim on an object. There would no longer be a need to tint things black where the light doesn't hit, instead the spot light and lamplight will need sprites that show magnitude and direction. I can make those sprites though - Rollin.

Check Out This Flashlight

http://files.filefront.com/The+Apocalyptic+Game+About+Penguins+Client/;8218466;;/fileinfo.html


...(Play through to level two or three).

...Where'd they get those sweet lights?

What to Do

Hm. Now the question is: How do we make the levels look good like that?

I'd like to see the carriage so far with the lighting- I'm not sure the edges of some of the newer parts look right.

Also: The machine gun nests are a little bit too far off of the carriage's hull- their shapes should fit into the lines on the chassis like a puzzle.

Level-esque

I took the mushroom background out and replaced it with a simple 128x32 terrain sprite and scaled it to 1000% instead of 100%. To get the geometry of the terrain sprite I used a polygon mapper. Here is a screen shot with diagnostics so you can see were the vertices of the terrain lay:

Which way to the beach?

I'm showin off my gunz:


Good stuff Rollin!

Gore Fest

Hey, the ash snow thing is a cool idea. Just had a chance to bust out the USB keyboard I got last week, so I'm playing around with REASON to make some dramatic tunes. I'm going for symphonic synth-deathmetal on the current one.

Nice gunner chairs too Rollin. Dig the ammo belts.

Hey Tom, we might need some kinda green particle to act similar to water for Zombie Puke!

Particle Tom:

Particle effects we desire:

1. Blood (falls off, splatters around, and stacks when zombies or characters are hit with things).
2. Gold (hidden up in rafters with body parts; falls and stacks on the ground when knocked down, and is able to be picked up and stored in the fuel tank (behind the icons)).
3. Smoke (comes out of the two exhaust pipes on the fuel tank, and out of the cannon when it is fired; also starts billowing out of parts when they get damaged).
4. Fire (comes out of carriage parts when they are severely damaged; maybe a bit could shoot out of the cannon when it is fired).
5. Water?
6. Dust? (when things hit the ground or run into each other)
7. Ash snow (sweet idea- maybe just in the tomb-ish areas of the game? Or certain levels?)

Basically, the blood, gold, and water would work much the same way, but be different colors. The smoke and fire would work in a second fashion (floating up instead of falling down and splattering around).

Is this okay?

These Look Better

(yup)

Killaz

Locked 'n' Loaded

(bitches)