Clouds and shadows

Picture of the moving shadows and clouds/mist

Just giving a quick update on what I've been doing... 

So I've been trying to figure out ways on how I can bring some more "feeling" to the game, and so I came up with the idea of adding moving clouds/mist and shadows and this is the result.

Can you see the shadow behind the player?

The basic idea is that the player has an area around him where he can listen the surroundings, so he knows something is there, but its hard to understand exactly what it is...

I also found out that the base rooms should be organized in some other way resulting in a remade of the whole structure. But at least now the game supports room's with different shapes. It's almost like tetris...

Lots of little news

As you might notice I've been remodeling my blog and turn it into a personal presentation page. This is due the preparation to start working on my thesis, since I didn't had much time I've decided to merge it with the blog. I would be much more comfortable if I had a good host with PHP and database support but this will have to do for now.

So I've added a page with personal info, another page with many of my projects, I probably won't be adding all of them since some are really old and I have some sort of better project using the same technologies.

Since I've add a project demo page what kind of person would I be if I didn't add a OON video? Be aware that 90% of the 2D visuals are going to be replaced once I've found a 2d artist, most of those assets were found in internet... and believe me when I say that finding isometric content is really hard. Meanwhile you can watch in the video the geoscape, base and the player new perspective which will hide the terrain and the creatures outside of player field of view.



I'm also glad to announce that I've found a Musician/Sound Designer that is now helping me with the project. He already started working on 'OON' and I've created some controllers that will help both of us adding music and sound into the game. If you want check more info on him go check his twitter here.

While adding sound content to the game I've found that XNA supports a tech XAct which is design to give some independence to sound designers working with XNA but it seemed lots of work to learn XACT just to add some sound effect and since I've already done some code to assist us we have discarded that for now.

Finally I've been adding to the game the ability to import creatures and weapons into the game by XML which, once its done, I will be able to easily adjust it to allow me to read any kind of information I want or need. This is important because will give the players freedom to add more and more content into the game just by editing an xml, things like special ammunition, weapons, creatures with specific behaviors, tech trees, etc... Also don't worry because if it becomes too much information i might just make another app to be even easier to add content into the game ;)

Shine and Seelentanz

So, its been awhile since I made a post here.
I'm keeping myself quiet about some stuff that has been happening because I don't like to rush myself into taking fast conclusions.
Anyway I've decided to participate into Gamelopers 2012 which is a contest allowing participants to compete with their works on Java, Windows Phone or Qt.

I have already finish my work for sometime now but it's not exactly has I had initially planned. I could/might do some updates later to make it more interesting.  Have some screenshots:

You check the rest in here

I made this game while I was working on several projects and in a month... its not an awesome game but I think its playable.

On other news I've put myself on a journey to learn to work with Unity. I think this will be awesome since I've never work with a framework on 3d games or anything similar and its a path to learn something more on game development by myself.

This is the game/team I've joined

Its a friendly group fighting to learn more and achieve their personal dreams. We still have few members and some don't have much experience like myself (I've just start learning Unity) but if we gather a motivated team who knows where we'll end up :P

Character vision

So I've had some time and, being anxious to make the player vision, I finally was able to investigate a little how this is done and start making some experiences...

The main idea is to make the player only being aware where his eyes are point to, so if  you look a way you wont be able to know whats coming from your back. I'm also thinking in adding hearing which will allow the player to hear noises in the proximity of his/her character. I think that might bring some panic to the players since they can't know for sure where the noise is coming.

lvlML alpha editor

So I finally sent out a video for the level editor... its far from a complete work but its a start and you can already export lvlML files.

So this work was made by myself and Joana Martins

heres the video:

hopefully I will publish the application and lvlML schema once I have a more functional version...

A star path-finding, dialogs, map editor

So after a request I decided to share a simple A Star algorithm code I made in java for my AI project at FEUP

The link is here

I hope it will be helpful...

Anyway I've start working on a map editor interface, and I'm also working out the interface for the game

I've not been stagnated or anything... it's just that I've been busy... but I didn't stop working ;)

I also had  to make a presentation about lvlML(XML) for my classes which hopefully it will be the format in which the game maps will be store into... I'm trying to make this language abstract so it might work for storing levels for different games... but the main objective now is make it work for my maps... We'll see about other games later if I ever get the time for it...

I see dead people!!

Finally I had that so wished time to work on the project. Until my death sentence comes out from exam grades...
So I've been working with lights and some other gameplay features like reloading weapon, firerate, dead bodies, and depth layers. Can you see the zombie near me, behind the tree??? no you cant ;p well only his head. Also some transparency is added when the player is behind an object.
Its getting nice, and from now on things are gonna get easier as the game engine gets more basic methods done.

So I want to remember I'm also searching for some people that help me get some new graphics for the game. For now I am hoping to find more a partner than a worker so... if the game gets released I will pay for the job of course. That can be done in a contract if necessary.
I see this as my personal big project and I'm not sure if I get enough support to get this game finish one day but things seem to going well so...
Until the next post :)

So many zombies... so few brains...

Finally I had a little time (not really) to finish the spawners...
Now this scenary is getting a little more interesting :P

Also I start playing a facebook game!!!
Yes that's right ... I never though it would happen but seems this game had some
stuff similar to the game I'm trying to make... so I gave a  try and got some
ideas for the gameplay...
The game is called War commander, give it a try...

Quick look

Ok here you have a quick screenshot of how a mission currently looks like

Some quick notes of what have done so far:

• Automatic terrain generation on a tile based (height adjusting, objects placing )
• A.I. (Pathfinding, wandering/attack behavior)
• All monster, weapon, animation stuff logic... ( what you see )
• Simple interface (menus, mouseovers, zoom)

Most of the work I've been doing right now is all about making a game engine
so I can control everything in the game easily.

So my priority right now is to make the game playable... that means
kill that zombie and having an objective (win and lose condition)

Of course I have lots of features planned but I won't share them ;p
well... not  yet

Testing my blog

Ok test first post I guess..
I'm not really a person of blogs but I though it would be good to keep track of some of my projects
In special the "OON" (name to be decided)
So I wonder if I'll really keep using this blog.
Let's wait and see.