The Kingdom Of Soul

[Pixel Perfect]

Many thanks Aggror and Ywa for your comments.

 

This all looks great Pixel, but it seems you've bogged yourself down with art and level design instead of focusing on the gameplay to complete it within the given time. I'm kind of surprised actually that you would do that given I know how you feel about gameplay vs art.

I can't really argue with you there Rick. With hindsight I definitely set my sights far too high and it proved impossible to complete in a month. The first three weeks were spent programming developing the object selection functionality and inventory system along with an overall 2D graphics manager to support it all and a few other bits of code. I guess my major downfall was in thinking the assets I had planned for conversion (models, textures etc) could be completed in a day leaving me five days left to complete the remaining game play code. It actually took 4 days and left me with insufficient time to complete the deadline at which point I duly admitted defeat and posted in this thread to that effect. Disappointing, but ultimately uplifting as I yet again have learnt so much from this and now feel I have a worthy game project to continue work on.

 

My current move to doing more level design / graphics based work has been mainly by means of contrast. When you program all day long as a profession and then program for three weeks in your spare time on top of that you reach a point where to be honest, you need a break. Well at least at my age I do, and my family will only put up with so much time with me absent and sat behind a computer It all has to be tackled sooner or later in order to complete the vision so moving onto more graphics based work was better than just stopping work altogether for a while.

 

I'm now in no hurry to complete this and instead want to give it the care and attention I feel it deserves still with the intension of releasing it as a playable demo once it’s complete.

 

I have improvements to my current NPC/AI framework mapped out on paper which have yet to be implemented in code and still need to design and code the dialog system. Then there are the overall game play scripts too. Still a lot to do!

 

I have removed the reference to the MAGIAM in the title now as that hardly seems fair being four days past the deadline now.

[Rick]

All very understandable, I just thought it was odd the attention you were giving to the graphics side of things, but I can understand the need for doing something other than programming.

 

From my experience with the MAGIAM:

 

A ) Your graphics and graphic detail basically needs to be bad to make the deadline.

B ) Your gameplay needs to be very specific and requires you to take shortcuts to make the deadline.

C ) You really have to draw out your entire design for the demo and be specific about every single goal you want to achieve. Then reduce your goals to be more realistic given the short time because they will almost always be to high at first.

 

 

Honestly, I found the MAGAIM to be more about project management than making a game. It really shows you why games get features cut and have many bugs. It's strange because I think the people who actually make the game resources (programmers, artists) consider it an art, but it's also a business which means timelines need to be met to control costs, and that often conflicts with the "artists". This is most likely why most indie games never see the light of day. When you have nobody pushing you to complete something by a definite time, we all tend to try for perfection and it never gets done. We rarely want to settle for good enough even though it really is probably good enough.

[Pixel Perfect]

I think I probably agree with every word of that Rick. I have gone over the top on both the graphics and the game mechanics I needed to deploy within such a limited development time scale. I do consider it to have been a worthwhile lesson though and out of the ashes I hope a phoenix will arise. Respect to you and the other finishing contestants of the first contest though because, as I've subsequently discovered, it's not an easy goal to achieve and you guys managed that admirably!

[Richard Simpson]

This is looking cool! I have a question about the waterfall... what makes it appear jerky like that?

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks. It's just experimental at the moment Richard. I've been trying out different techniques. This uses an animated quad and is looking the best so far but the animation is only running at 15fps currently. I'd need to take it up to at least 30fps really to make it look really smooth.

 

As I have no real background in level design (or game design for that matter) I'm trying out a myriad of tests in small areas of the terrain so I can go through the learning curve and discover what works and what doesn't before committing to the full level design.

[Richard Simpson]

Ah, Thanks.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

yeah... great looking visuals... the waterfall is very believable...

 

--Mike

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks Mike, I think you hit on my key goal there ... believable! That's really all I'm looking for and quite happy to settle for that; as this is not a focal point of the game but simply an aspect of the environment the player will pass through.

 

This weekend will see me implementing the updates I've planned to my NPC/AI framework to better accomodate multiple NPC types with their individual AI requirements so I can really get things moving in this game regarding NPC behaviour. Inheritance is a wonderful thing

 

Also, further lessons/adventures in level design ... time permitting!

[Pixel Perfect]

Early experimental results with a river:

 

 

For various reasons this is not a very practical technique and I'd rather use a shader based solution like the one Josh provided for Michael in the GDC Demo he did. Does anyone know if the details of that were ever released?

[Richard Simpson]

Cool! All that needs adding now are some rocks on the river bed!

[Pixel Perfect]

Cheers Richard.

 

Unfortunately the level design has been put on hold whilst I radically re-design my NPC/AI system. Most of the work I have done so far has been with a single NPC type (the soldier from STRANDED) so I could concentrate on developing an AI system; which is working really well. Although it was designed to work with multiple NPC types from the beginning, hence I was able to implement the female character in Kingdom Of Soul, it's not proved flexible enough for my liking.

 

So with the beauty of hindsight I'm now re-coding a better system which will make mixing and matching lots of different NPC Types each with their own AI far easier. This is needed for Kingdom Of Soul far more than was the case with STRANDED as the diversity of character types is likely to be far greater, but of course STRANDED will inherit the same capability as both games are using my same engine. The engine is now designed to support both FPS and RPG/Adventure type games which will run stand alone or in my editor.

 

The work is already partially implemented and I'm hoping to start seriously testing it within the next week. I'm hoping shortly after that to introduce many more characters with their own behaviour traits so that the game really starts to feel like its going somewhere and has a life of its own.

[Richard Simpson]

Sounds good. Looking forward to the next post.

[Josh]

Very nice.

[Flexman]

I like the waterfall effect, sometimes whatever works has to do.

 

And I fully concur with Ricks MAGIAM comments, it really is about project management and what you can get by with. When up against tight deadlines there may be many ways to skin the cat, BUT you only get to choose one. It's hard to do but good a discipline to practice, something I keep telling myself.

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks guys.

 

As a break from programming today I started some experiments with terrian design using the earlier Sandbox terrian tools so I could get some erosion features. I must admit I like the tools. After a little playing around to get the feel of them I was able to produce reasonable results fairly quickly. It's a shame we lost the fractal and erosional stuff in later versions although it's easy enough to port the heightmap of course.

 

The first screen shot shows an ariel view of the terrain topography and the second a would be 'in game' shot:

 

 

[Richard Simpson]

Looking good! What size is that terrain?

[Pixel Perfect]

Cheers Richard. That's a 1024 x 1024 terrain. I'm really just honing my skills in all things 'level design' so come the final design I have a good idea of how to implement what I can see in my head ... and hopefully a good feel for what works and what doesn't.

[tournamentdan]

Great job on the falls,river and terrain. I like the pond scene with the mountain in the back round. Can't wait to see more.

[Pixel Perfect]

Cheers Dan. Might go a little quiet now as I have a lot of programming to do before I can move on but then the project hopefully should get a lot more interesting

[puki]

This looks exciting.

 

It is using a ton of media that I am currently using though.

[dennis]

How did you do those custom cursors?

[Pixel Perfect]

It just an image drawn to the mouse position with the standard mouse cursor hidden. Here's the code from the update procedure of my Inventory UI Manager:

 

if(m_iMode == itemSelect ||
  m_iMode == pickInspect ||
  m_iMode == inventory ||
  m_iMode == inspectView)
{
  DrawImage(m_entHandCursorImage,MouseX()-25,MouseY()-4,64,72);
}

[dennis]

Really great work pixel. would love to play this game !

[Roland]

Pixel. You'r the man. Beautiful work of yours there

[gordonramp]

Nice work Pixel.