New year, Robica and Trine 2
2,663
1
Advertisement
First of all happy new year! I hope that 2012 will brings new emotions and sensations.
I wish you all to be productive at your hobby, but still have much time for your friends and families, and other things you love.
So much stuff to write about...
I've done a fair amount of work during the holidays.
I carried my laptop during the holiday trips. You never know when the muse to do stuff will strike you...
Game status
One of the major technical improvements with Robica is Frustum culling.
This was already started ages ago, but I needed some tweaks to make it usable.
For anyone unfamiliar with the technique I recommend this article http://www.lighthous...rustum-culling/ .
Basically you try to determine objects that are outside the visible portion of the camera and not render them.
Since in Robica the view is top down - there is only about 300-400 tiles you can see at once, which makes this very effective.
While this is just a small technical improvement - the effect on the gameplay is huge, because this now allows me to create much bigger levels.
Another aspect of the game I've been working on is the Level editor. Currently the levels are stored as plan text tile maps such as this :
xxx
x0x
xxx
This is easy to edit in a text editor - so I've been doing all the puzzles up until now in notepad. However, as the game becomes more complex - the levels become more complex and I need to edit various other properties of the tiles by hand which is hard.
After some thinking, I've decided to do a very rude In-game level editor.
This will be explained in more detail in a following entry.
The third thing I'm working on is the story line. Robica will have a simple and not too deep story that will drive the player to explore the strange world he will be set in. This will also be explained in a separate blog post.
Finally, since 2011 is over - I'm setting a new deadline for Robica's completion - 6 months.
This (if met) will bring the total development time to a little over than 2 years.
It will be pretty hard to do though.
Other stuff
On another note, unrelated to Robica - is a game called Trine 2 that I've been playing during the holidays,
I must say I'm very impressed with Frozenbyte's creation (as well with their other games).
The game is awesome on many levels and I strongly recommend it if you like platformers with puzzles.
[media]
I wish you all to be productive at your hobby, but still have much time for your friends and families, and other things you love.
So much stuff to write about...
I've done a fair amount of work during the holidays.
I carried my laptop during the holiday trips. You never know when the muse to do stuff will strike you...
Game status
One of the major technical improvements with Robica is Frustum culling.
This was already started ages ago, but I needed some tweaks to make it usable.
For anyone unfamiliar with the technique I recommend this article http://www.lighthous...rustum-culling/ .
Basically you try to determine objects that are outside the visible portion of the camera and not render them.
Since in Robica the view is top down - there is only about 300-400 tiles you can see at once, which makes this very effective.
While this is just a small technical improvement - the effect on the gameplay is huge, because this now allows me to create much bigger levels.
Another aspect of the game I've been working on is the Level editor. Currently the levels are stored as plan text tile maps such as this :
xxx
x0x
xxx
This is easy to edit in a text editor - so I've been doing all the puzzles up until now in notepad. However, as the game becomes more complex - the levels become more complex and I need to edit various other properties of the tiles by hand which is hard.
After some thinking, I've decided to do a very rude In-game level editor.
This will be explained in more detail in a following entry.
The third thing I'm working on is the story line. Robica will have a simple and not too deep story that will drive the player to explore the strange world he will be set in. This will also be explained in a separate blog post.
Finally, since 2011 is over - I'm setting a new deadline for Robica's completion - 6 months.
This (if met) will bring the total development time to a little over than 2 years.
It will be pretty hard to do though.
Other stuff
On another note, unrelated to Robica - is a game called Trine 2 that I've been playing during the holidays,
I must say I'm very impressed with Frozenbyte's creation (as well with their other games).
The game is awesome on many levels and I strongly recommend it if you like platformers with puzzles.
[media]
[/media]
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Discussion