Weekend Updates - Indexing and Graphics

A hodge-podge of generally undirected game updates took place over the weekend which I wanted to write about.  Now that the in-game menu functionality is working I'm getting close to having nothing but a handful of random details to cleanup before the engine and game are actually playable entities.

Indexing

One thing I found that I overlooked in my originally programming of the engine was the fact that, since the player is movable, the player may at some points be in front of an object while at other points might be behind an object.  The problem came in when I realized I was not re-ordering the array of on screen objects, so when a player walked behind an object, the entire player sprite was still drawn on top of the sprite for the object which they were supposed to be behind.

On the surface this isn't a major problem and I was able to write up a sorting function to pass to Array.sort which ... sorted things out.  Writing up the function however brought a larger issue to light.  In order to get objects which were literally on top of other objects (ie, a coffee cup on top of a table), I had to introduce a gameHeight property to each game object.  This property I used to indicate how far off the ground something was assumed to be and my sorting function could take this into account when calculating an objects relative position.

This may end up being sufficient for this game, but I feel like the engine in the end needs to more robustly handle the fact that I'm essentially working in a 3d environment but drawing in a 2d context.  For instance, I may end up reworking the object positioning mechanisms so that their position is defined in 3d space and the engine does the work of calculating where to map those objects to in 2d space for presentation purposes.

Graphic Work

I've been putting off drawing more sprites, largely, because I got so sick of it after making all the sprites for the room itself.  This weekend however I decided to hunker down and start work on the panda walk cycles again.  It was as much of a pain as I expected it to be, but I got the forward walk cycle done and am now moving onto the left walk cycle (which will be repeated as the right walk cycle).

All of this graphic work has led me to the conclusion that, for my next game, I need to just pay someone to do this for me.

I still have some cleaning to do, but here's the general idea of what the final walk cycle will look like

So, what is left to be done?  I'll try to get a list together for a future post, if for no other reason than to provide myself with a checklist of sorts.

DnL8Tar

Game Play Decisions - In Game Menu

I've spent time over the last couple months deliberating on (and soliciting opinions concerning) alternatives to the Panda-Town engines current game play scheme.  Right now, when a player clicks on an object in the game, the engine assumes that the player wants to interact with the object.  The engine looks up the appropriate interaction based on the objects current state and then executes that interaction.

While simple, this scheme has a couple drawbacks which have become quite obtrusive in my game design.  First, it limits me to defining one interaction per object per state.  This means, for example, that if I want an object such as a coffee cup to be something the player can pickup, I can not also have it be something the player is able to look at since I can only define one interaction.  A second drawback is that a player clicking on an object may not be in fact attempting to interact with it, they may simply be trying to walk towards it.

I've decided that the play scheme needs to be updated to allow for multiple types of interactions and to force a player to indicate that they are actually attempting to interact with an object.  The direction I am going to take in implementing the first component of the change is to cause a small in game menu to open when a user chooses to interact with an object which exposes more than one type of interaction.  For instance, if a player can either "look" at or "pick up" an object, when the player indicates that they want to interact with the object, they will see a menu with these two choices.

The general idea

Deciding on the best scheme for the second component of the change has proved to be somewhat more cumbersome.  This is due in large part to a restriction I have placed on myself, limiting input to left mouse clicks.  I have placed this restriction on myself in order to allow games made with the engine to be played on devices such as an iPad.  Currently I'm planning on having a player indicate that they wish to interact with an object by double clicking on the object, but I have not settled on that yet.

Side Note: An interesting consequence of the first component of the change being made is that it makes it easier to code interactions from a distance (ie, allowing a player to look at an object from across a room without having to walk up to it).

Side Note 2: I'm readily accepting feedback from anyone who is a point and click game enthusiast (or who has at least played one in their life) concerning the control scheme I've indicated

Caelis Bell Sample Gameplay Video

For the past few months, since approximately January 1, 2011, I have been developing a game in my spare time. This game is named "Caelis Bell." It is a 2D action/adventure game for the PC. I have just finished a sample gameplay video which can be seen below (it's a little cleaner if you watch it at 480p):



This game is written in Java, and will probably be released as a Java-Web-Start game or a downloadable application. It is still far from completion, however.

The story of Caelis Bell begins when three monsters start causing havoc to a kingdom. You play as a young knight named Xavier who is fighting to protect the land. As the plot progresses, you need to find the four pieces of the Caelis Bell, a magical artifact that was broken. Once the four pieces are put together, the bell can be used to defeat the evil sorcerer responsible for the appearance of the monsters.

Even though I have not revealed everything, this plot is still in an early stage of development and subject to change. Character names and the game title are also subject to change.

In case anyone is interested, I also made a puzzle game in Java a few years ago that can be played online as an applet. It is called Ice World. Click the link to play it.

First Look at the Panda Facing Left

I took some time this afternoon to draw up the template image of the panda facing left ... or ... right I suppose from his perspective.  

Looking left

The black outline will serve as the frame of reference for the animation of the panda walking left (or right, I'm going to cheat and just flip the image, making any minor corrections for the rotation necessary.

Panda Town - Hotel Room

I find that working on at least two projects at a time is a good practice, so long as time constraints are imposed on neither.  This way, when one project starts to wear on my soul, it can be temporarily dropped in favor of the other.  By the time the second project becomes a grind, the attractiveness of the first project has freshened.

Finding myself in this situation with Panda Town, after realizing that the art of drawing sprites was quite tedious and time consuming, I allowed the project to take a back seat for a month or two in favor of a Resource Container project which is a concept I've been tinkering with in one form or another for the past couple years. Over the last week I've found myself in a position with that project which is fostering a renewed interest in Panda Town, namely the position of being sick of thinking about the project.

So here we are, firing up Panda Town development again, and with a lot of the initial graphic work out of the way, I'm free to start focusing on the story line and puzzle aspects of the game.  While I haven't solidified things so much that I want to start talking about the concept of the game, I can say the format is going to be puzzle based insomuch as you are confronted with the puzzle of how to use various available items together in the proper sequence and time frame in order to achieve an end.  I'm sure this genre has a proper name but I do not know what it is nor do I have the patience right now to look it up.  Why I've chosen this genre is a subject of a potential future post, but not today's.

Current State of the Hotel Room

Where is the project at?  As I noted above most of the initial sprite work has been done and the general room layout is setup to my satisfaction.  There's more graphic work to be done, namely animation, which I feel is going to be even more draining than the initial development, but this level of completion gives me a test bed on which to develop the story and puzzles.  I've posted an image of the hotel room in which the game takes place and while I'll be cleaning up some of the graphics as time goes on, the image gives the general idea of how the game is going to look and feel.  Tonight I'm going to start really diving into puzzle design as this afternoon I came up with a better mechanism for laying out the story and puzzles than notes in a notebook which I found to be too static for my liking (probably the topic of a future post again, that's two, two future post topics in this post, ah ha hah).

Panda Town Sprite Development

Since this is my first official post about the Panda Town project, for those not yet familiar with the project, it's probably also the first you're hearing about it.  To give you the brief intro, Panda Town is a game I'm working on, the engine of which is entirely Javascript (though the game definition is housed in a tripple-store and delivered asynchronously to the game engine upon request).  Graphics are courtesy of HTML5's canvas element (which is an element with a LOT of potential for those of you who haven't played with it yet).  I'll post more about the engine itself in the future but right now we're talkin' graphics.

Being my first venture into Sprite Graphics (I don't know why I capitalized those words), I'm having to draw and re-draw a lot of the work, but some of the elements are starting to coming together.  I want a bit of a retro feel to my work, something maybe reminiscent of Zak McKracken or Monkey Island (the early Monkey Island, not the newer stuff (which is also solid work) ).  My primary tool thus far has been Photoshop and my best friend in Photoshop has been the 1px pencil tool which gives the image the blocky feel that I'm looking for.

A Panda and his coffee

Working with the constraints of individual pixels and the constraints of a particular feel has been a great exercise thus far.  The medium, while challenging, is also somewhat rewarding, especially for someone who still loves the classic feel of Maniac Mansion or Lolo. Just changing a couple pixels can have a huge effect on the way the image is perceived since you're dealing outside of realism and have to trick the eye into seeing some degree of continuity.  

As I get further into the drawing I'll probably post some more teasers.  At the moment I'm waiting until I figure out what I want the floors and walls to look like (and by that I mean waiting until I have the patience to draw the floors and walls) to post any full rooms.  I also hope to talk a little more about the engine soon since it's close to being done.