Wait, what? You’re telling me it’s been 1 Month already? Holy smokes, it’s crazy.

It makes me sad that there’s nothing to exciting or fun to report for who am i? It simply is not done yet. The scope of the game may have been a bit larger than 4 weeks, as I have a ton of stuff to do for the game still. I have nothing fun or exciting to show yet, as the past four weeks I have been working on the level editor and the tiles in the game.

The next steps for me are to finish up the level editor, adjust some of the gameplay code, start making sound effects and music, and then finally designing the levels. I am not sure how much longer that will realistically take, whether it’s a few weeks or a few months. I don’t want to rush the game and just put it out there when it’s not done.

I would say to expect a demo in two weeks.

I hope this has been fun to follow, even though the last few weeks I barely had any updates. It’s usually not too fun to write about the code I was working on that day.

If you want to follow who am i? from here on out, your best best would be the Hokori Interactive website.

Thanks for letting me be a part of this, and I look forward to participating again in the future.

Holy smokes it’s crazy how quickly time flies! It’s already almost the end of week 3, which means one more week. :O

Things are going well, but I am at the point where thing are just kind of slow moving and all coming together.

I’ve got some new tiles, improved code, and a few other surprises!

Where did the past week go? It flew by! Happy belated Easter if that’s your kind of thing! I didn’t get to work on who am i? this weekend, as I was getting native controller support working with Flash games built in AIR with FlashDevelop. I spent two days getting it working with some projects and making some walkthroughs. Hopefully it will be useful for developers and be something I can expand for Mac and Linux support.

Last week, on Day 5, I spent the day coding some more. I didn’t update as I ended up being super busy with a family gathering in the evening. Today I have been working more on the level editor…

Quick Coding Session

I was kindly asked to record a session of me coding, so I thought it would be fun to show it off a little. Here is a 6x speed video of me coding for around 20 minutes. It’s got some music put over it, and it isn’t really too informative. It’s meant to just give you an idea of my processes.

I use Visual Studio 2010 with the VsVim plug-in, if you were wondering! I should really change the colors, as the white with black text is hard to look at for long periods of time. I typically prefer darker themes when coding.

Level Editor Update – Finally

Layering is in! Having a few problems, but they are ones I should be able to sort out tomorrow. As you can see, there are three layers now – a background, mainground, and foreground layer. I am making a video overview tomorrow of how they all work and so you can see it in action! The awful F is just so I know that it’s a foreground tile. Not actually part of the game.

Development went really well today. Got a lot of stuff done, fixed some other issues, and just moving forward. It’s been slow with the level editor work, but once that’s done it should be like lightning!

I had to stop in a very strange place today. D: What that means is there is nothing cool or fun to show.

However, tomorrow I should be able to show off what I’ve been working on in the level editor! Layers!

I am feeling better today, and I coded most of the day. It was a good day, but not an exciting-let-me-show-it-off-yet kind of day.

Not feeling so hot today. x_x

Mostly laid in bed and drew. It’s probably good to take a day “off”, right?

I made it to Week 2! Three more to go.

Today has been a good day. I started the day off by playing some Mega Man 10 for enemy and bullet reference. I typically like to start my day by doing something I enjoy and end my day by doing something I enjoy. This can consist of watching an episode or two of a TV show on Netflix or Hulu or playing a game for a little bit. Lately I’ve been watching The Office and playing Dragon Quest IX. :3

Anyways, after I played Mega Man for a little bit, I dove right into coding.

Code Galore (Increasing Object Orientedness & Bullets)!

I overhauled the inheritance structure of my code, which should be super useful in the coming days. Basically, the structure before was just to suite the basics. My game objects consisted of Player object and a Level object which contained Tile objects. I’ve now extended this to the following: a Level object still contains Tiles, a base-class called Object now contains a position, texture information, width & height, and some other minor information. A subclass, called Entity, extends Object and contains information like velocity, acceleration, and some other related things. Player objects now extend Entity and a new class called Enemy also extends Entity.

I also spent a lot of time working on adding bullet firing from the player. That means there is now a Bullet class that extends Entity. I also created a Group class that works kind of like Flixel’s FlxGroup. It contains a list of objects and allows the user to add and remove them. I also added input from the controller & keyboard for firing bullets. I am close to getting bullets firing, as I just need to display them and continue expand upon the way the Group class manages bullets. Once they are displaying I’ll implement collision detection for bullets.

I also changed the background of the game to white, which suites the game much better. You can now see the grid lines below in the editor. I also changed the fire color to something more firey.

Organizing What’s Left to Do

In an attempt to better organize what I am working on, I created a Master List of what’s left to do. I am sure I am missing stuff and that they will shift around, but here’s a basic idea of what’s left:

Week 2

• get bullets firing from the player
• implement enemies with simple AI
• refine collision detection
• work on the first batch of enemy sprites
• work on preliminary tile sheets
• implement layered tiling and tile select in the level editor
• work on place holder music and spritesheets

Week 3

• add text output into the level editor for the dialogue
• implement sound effects
• optimize code
• implement music for the levels
• fix camera bounds
• add zooming to the level editor

Week 4

• POLISH
• finalize the sound effects
• finalze the game’s audio
• test the game
• send the game out for testing for those who are interested
• release a demo for Windows (host on the website or on AWS)
• update the a005.me website
• contact Humble Bundle to see if Humble Store is an option, prepare to put the game on Indievania
• port the game to Mac and Linux using MonoGame
• release the game

Week +

• test the game on Xbox 360
• consider the viability of releasing it on XBLIG
• think about releasing the level editor and source code to the public

Even as I look at this, I know I am missing stuff. It’ll come to me eventually! As you can see, I want to release a demo for the game. This will be to get some feedback and go through the distribution process. I would be happy to get the demo out at the end of next week and have a week to fix any bugs or problems that people find.

In regards to the Humble Store, I would really be interesting in using that to distribute the game. If that isn’t an option, I will definitely be using Indievania and exploring other options out there. I haven’t decided on a price point yet, but it will be relatively low!

It’s also worth noting that the last weekend of this project is also the weekend of a Ludum Dare (that I will definitely take part in). I’m not sure what it means for me those two days, but I will figure something out.

Tomorrow

Sprite work! I didn’t get around to working sprites at the time of posting this, as I am working on some other minor things. Then I will implement the new sprites in the game, get bullets firing, and add some level editor features.