Month: June 2011

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Setting sail against the winds of whim and staying the course

Wooosh… that’s the sound of another gale force great idea blowing around.
Yup, they’re pretty much everywhere at this time of year. Annoying, persistent, unformed, and generally really exciting!

The thing is, they’re always much more exciting and enticing than what you’re doing ‘now’. Especially if what you’re doing now is rewriting something you’ve done before, in a new engine. In the last 3 weeks I must have changed my mental description of what I’m working on half a dozen times. Each new project, idea, or whim is a terrible distraction that’s so much fun to just dive into.

Because for me the best part is the initial rush of putting ideas and framework into place and start various parts gestating. So when I haev nothing but a couple months of grunt work (asset managers, re-inputing pathfinding algorithems, importing graphics, dealing with text input etc) it is so easy to want to start over and tackle an enticing problem and find out how various systems would interact.

Hell, at this point I’ve practically convinced myself to ditch BSDDoD! and hop into making ‘Irismel’ – the fantasy village simulator instead.  I’ve even started making some basic tiles and mock screenshots.

That’s gotta stop.

It’s time to get excited about BSDDoD! again.  So I’m laying off the big coding for a bit and painting some assets, concept art and visually interesting things.

The upside is that I’ll have things to show before too long and I can get the show back on track.

I am, however, thinking of changing the title from Blood Soaked Deadly Dungeons of Doom! to something more palatable and url worthy.

 

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design Development Games Post

Tech Choices: Walls

Assuming you’ve decided to build a 2d engine for a non side-scroller you quickly come face to face with one of the biggest decisions you’ve had to make so far.  How are you going to represent the game world? Basically there’s two choices each with their own benefits and issues.  There’s the ‘Walls are a block’ approach where everything is a block and the ‘Walls are an attribute’ approach where walls are things that are part of a tile and appear on the edge of a tile.  Here’s a little Pro/Con info that I jotted down while deciding on which way to go for BSDDoD.

Walls are a block.

Example: minecraft, zelda This is probably the most obvious approach to building a 2d world.  Everything about the world construction is handled in a simple array of blocks letting you quickly build a map.

Basic implementation:

It’s essentially a lardge 2d array that contains the structure of the world.  With each location in the world represented by a number.  For pathfinding you can easily implement floodfill tests and even weighting the passability of tiles is pretty trivial.

Upside:

They’re easy to implement and fairly lightweight, make a whole bunch of visibility / raycasting real easy and fast.

Downside:

Aesthetically they’re not as nice/real looking as what can be achieved with thin walls.  Destructible walls are more unrealistic and the wall type is determined by the block that is the wall.  So if you want blocks with different wall textures you have to create and track many more entities. Windows are pretty much out of the question and doors tend to look a bit odd.

Walls are an attribute

Example:  X-com, project Zomboid, old Gold box D&D games, the Sims

Basic implementation:

Every game tile has 4 flags associated with it used for indicating if there’s a wall. This means that there’s a bit of extra overhead but it comes at some interesting benefits.

Upside:

Aesthetically having walls look like walls is a big bonus.  Also the ability to do things like have windows, half height walls, one way doors and portals is nice too.  Also the ability to have different textures for a wall regardless of whats in the neighboring tile is nice (but there’s workarounds for tile based maps for this as well).

Downside:

Complexity.  Pathfinding, line of sight and collision detection all become significantly more involved, not necessarily slower,  just more complicated.

What did I choose?

Well since I’ve got a bunch of the art assets already created for a straight on view, I eventually settled on the Block based walls with the Straight on view (right side of the image above).  Really that was the deciding factor.  The straight on Blocks as an Attribute would just wind up looking odd and I have no need for windows or doors since it’s essentially an arena based shooter.

For the next project I’m leaning toward an isometric Block based map, however with blocks being smaller than the characters, so that will give thinner walls and hopefully a more enjoyable dungeon building experience… but that’s still way off in the distance, percolating on the back burner.

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Four indie things you should be playing

in addition to Minecraft.  There’s a whole bunch of really cool indie stuff that’s coming out.  Here’s four alpha/beta state games that are available for play now.  These are all fairly early in development (Terraria and SP&Z being the most polished) and if you’re interested in watching something awesome come out of the development process and getting to watch things turn into a finished game, warts and all, then these are all excellent examples and well worth your time.

Project Zomboid

 

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/ Isometric Zombie Apocalypse survival game.  As in, really surviving.  Health, hunger, exhaustion & boarding up the windows while scavenging for supplies in a neighborhood infested with the undead.  Really this is going to be very very tense.  The initial version available is still early alpha and manages to do so many things right.

Space Pirates & Zombies

 

http://www.spacepiratesandzombies.com/ Aims to go back to classic space combat and exploration with gameplay like Star Control 2.  You fly around various sectors and perform missions between rival factions to gain favor and unlock blueprints for new ships and weapons.  And then there’s the zombies and an overall massive plot and stuff. Available on impulse only for now.. but Steam is coming as well.

 

Terraria

http://www.terrariaonline.com It’s superficially like a 2D minecraft.. however once you spend a while with it it opens up to be much more.  It has a much higher emphasis on exploring the world, fighting monsters, summoning boss monsters and crafting all sorts of weaponry.  Oh and it has multiplayer support.

Starfarer

http://fractalsoftworks.com/ On the surface it might remind you of SP&Z above.. however gameplay is much slower and strategic. Feeling more like you’re flying large capital ships. At this point it’s a collection of fleet battles but the promise of an open universish campaign mode has lots of promise.  oh and it’s absolutely beautiful and has incredible ships.