June 2010
3 posts
7 tags
Tasty New Screenshot
Here’s a screenshot of the Dark Forest that we’ve been holding off from publishing. There’s a few things we’ve been keeping secret and now is a good of time as any to release something new.
The Dark Forest is going to have three main layers: the ground level of the forest, the caverns underneath, and the top of the canopy. The Dark Forest is a maze-like area in which the...
A Little Publicitiy
..and I mean a little. It appears that Moldering is making these kind of small appearances all over the web. Thanks to John for writing in: “Hey was watching ‘109 indie games in 10 minutes’ on youtube and your game stood out, love the look of it!
From here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G_jq_otsYM&feature=player_embedded#!”
We didn’t know we were featured in...
Big Progress, Small Update
Hey guys. Just wanted to update real quick and let you know we’ve been doing some cool stuff. We’ve been brainstorming a whole lot and mapped out some of the areas of the game. I don’t want to spoil it to much so I’ll just say that you’ll love it. I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated as we move through the design phase of the project. At this point the engine...
May 2010
1 post
Sound Design is an Art Within Itself
Today was the last day of classes for the semester and I’ve already begun working on Moldering. When I last left off I was working on sound design. Last time I implemented some code to alter the position of the footstep sounds depending on where the player is (running on the left side of the screen played the sound more in the left speaker, and vice versa). Today I added some code to...
April 2010
1 post
Design Phase
Summer break is coming up in 6 weeks or so, so I’ll be able to get in a lot of time for Moldering. I think this time I’m going to start off in a “design” mindset and step away from the technical side of programming the game. I’ve been messing around with generating sound effects, putting thought into how the levels will be designed, and have been messing with music a...
March 2010
8 posts
Intro cut scene
Just a short update. I scripted out the intro cut scene and I am pretty pleased with it, if I do say so myself. The graphics aren’t final, but I’m going to tweak it a bit more and extend it and then maybe I’ll post a video online. I’d definitely like to get some feedback!
James
Revamped Lighting System
A while back I revamped the lighting system and since I recently wrote some code to record gameplay I figured the lighting system was a good candidate for recording and sharing with you guys. Notice how the light sources “bloop” together. Let me know what you think!
-James
Swimming! (look at him go!)
I wrote a short algorithm to output recordings of the game once per frame because I thought it would be cool to show you guys what the swimming looks like. I opted against going with the traditional Mario-style swimming where as the player you need to keep tapping a button to swim. I subscribe to the belief that water stages should be fun, unlike a great deal of game designers who apparently...
Music problems are no more! (Alas!)
For those who don’t remember, I had a lot of problems looping, loading, and playing music in Moldering. Alas, I have solved all of these problems! Music can load, fade, unload, and loop now without a hiccup. I was very frustrated with this a long way back, so this is good news for Moldering!
At this point there are no obvious glitches left. I play constantly as I try new features and I...
Programming Camera Work is a Pain
I started to rework the scrolling system. I wasn’t happy with having the screen lock on to the player at all times when he’s moving through a large map and I wanted something really smooth and fancy, so I decided to rework it. Little did I know how difficult this would become.
I reworked the camera system 3 times, and spent more than 6 hours on it. I finally settled on something...
Moldering's own Scripting Language (.ms files)
One of the first things I want the player to see when they start up Moldering for the first time is a cut scene. A cut scene after all is a list of scripted commands, so I figured I’d take a modular approach and create my own simple scripting language. This was pretty exciting to do. Now I can define scripted events in external files and load them in on the fly. Here’s an example of...
It's been a long time!
So, I had some time, now that I’m on spring break and the first day off seemed like a good day to jump back into programming Moldering. I fixed a problem I was having for the longest time where music wouldn’t loop correctly. Now, music loops without even the tiniest hiccup. That’s a great thing because I was starting to worry that I’d need to scratch the music engine and...
November 2009
2 posts
Blorb; Android Game
So, I’ll stop talking about Blorb on here, since it’s only slightly related (because they’re both games). But, one more shout-out is in order.
Here’s the development blog for Blorb so you can keep up with what I’m doing while Moldering is on hold. I plan to have it released before Christmas and sell it for a small amount, but if I can’t find an artist I...
Need Help (Artist) for a Personal Project
Hey guys…. it’s been a while. We’re still on break from Moldering, but I’m working on a personal project. I’m developing a rather small game for the Android (cell phone operating system designed by Google). The Android is about to become the next big thing. Look into it, it’s serious competition for the the IPhone, as well as all the other independent cell phone...
September 2009
1 post
A Necessary Break
As you may have noticed, we haven’t updated in a while. Both Zack and I are taking school seriously and since it started again just last week we haven’t found much time for the game. This does not mean the game will never see the light of day. We’ve taken breaks from the game, often months at a time. This will be the third or fourth major break we’re taking. That’s...
August 2009
3 posts
Crazy Storms in Upstate NY
We haven’t been able to update because of a crazy electrical storm where Zach and I are staying. Last night a lightning bolt struck close to the house we were staying at and sparks could be seen right outside the window. As a result the router, a computer monitor, and some other electronic gadgets got fried.
I’m at the library now. Hopefully we’ll get things up and running again...
6 tags
Custom Palettes in Level Editor
So, while designing levels in the level editor I was getting sick of scrolling through all the different tiles looking for the ones I wanted. So, I took matters into my own hands and created a class called Palette which extends Java’s JFrame. These little windows can be brought up allowing you to drag a collection of tiles/objects from the editor into them and use them from there.
The...
8 tags
July 2009
18 posts
A Little Love
AuthenticKaizen was running a thread of “promisingly good freeware games in development” on TIGSource . Amazingly, he’s turned this thread into a fully-fledged website. It’s a great place to check out indie-games in development.
Pixel Prospector
What does this have to do with us you ask? At the time of this post Moldering is on the front page! It also has it’s own...
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Ogg Music Support
We’re using Ogg because it’s royalty free and provides fine compression. Using J-Ogg, I’ve managed to get streams to play, but I ran into a problem. The game hangs when the song is finished (either that or it continually loops the last buffer)… so I’ve got to do some debugging before I can move on.
Anyway, Ogg streaming is great. We can have a large library of music...
Project Chainsaw
The guys over at SharkArm Studies stopped by to say hello on our devblog and linked us up to their new game-in-progress Project Chainsaw. The game is in a similar fashion to Moldering and looks very promising. I figured I’d do them a little bit of advertising and shout out about their game since it looks great.
Here’s a link to their development blog:
...
3 tags
Site Updates
I added some new site navigation on the right side as well as expanded the about page.
On another note, I’ve also been working on some collision detection stuff and have been doing some musing about designing an online sketch pad that works per-map for designing the world of Moldering.
I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated!
-James
2 tags
Menu Music:
Written by Team Leader James Daniello...
7 tags
What is Moldering?!
Moldering is a 2D platformer inspired by the classics for Super Nintendo like Zelda and Super Metroid and was also partly inspired by the Knytt Series. It started as a personal project by James Daniello, a Computer Programming major, to help him learn Java and computer programming in general, and has evolved into something much bigger.
The game takes place on a small alien planet that, in the...
You just lost the game!
Sorry, had to do it. :P
RULE 1: You are always playing The Game.
RULE 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
-James
4 tags
Game Update!
We’ve got the graphics for three worlds of the eight worlds just about reworked and finalized. There’s still some objects we need to add along with additional tiles, but we’re happy with the way these worlds are panning out.
I won’t go into too much details to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but here is the rundown of the world secuencing at the moment. Links are provided...
5 tags
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Back from Vacation
Hey, we’re back from vacation, and while I was away I programmed some cool things.
1. Slow-motion. This is a temporary slow motion in which everything is slowed.
2. Slow-motion 2. This slow motion allows the player to move at regular speed while everything else is slowed down.
3. Save points. These points can save and load the player’s position.
4. Death. The player can die now and...
Vacation
Zack and I and a couple of friends are taking a vacation in the Adirondacks for the next week. There’s no phone service or internet so we won’t be updating.
See you next Monday!
-James
4 tags
Custom Polygons as Boundaries
I created a mechanism for drawing custom polygon shapes in the level editor. These shapes can be used to draw boundaries. Unfortunately because they’re created as Box2D polygons they must meet these requirements:
1. Must be convex. Concave shapes are not allowed. However concave shapes can be simulated by using multiple polygons.
2. Must be drawn clockwise. I don’t really get why...
3 tags
Twitching Problem Fixed
Just a small update. I fixed a problem with stacks of boxes becoming unstable when gravity was enabled. The problem was from having sleep disabled for box2d objects. Sleep needs to be enabled to simulate resting contact.
-James
4 tags
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Added forces on Y-axis
I just got finished adding a ‘weight’ to the player so he now adds force to objects he’s standing on. So, for example, as the player stands on a box the box and player will fall from the added weight of the character, and, any box moving upwards will also move the character with it.
-James
6 tags
Ground and Air Friction for 2 Dimensions
Added friction to moldering, both for air and ground. The equation is:
Acceleration = Acceleration - (Acceleration*u);
where u is friction. This value is different depending on whether player is on ground or in air. For example, I set u to .35 when on the ground. This prevents the player from slipping around. However, I can make this value lower to simulate ice, or higher to simulate sand.
...
June 2009
24 posts
3 tags
Box2D: Collision Space in Level Editor
I stayed up late and wrote code. Holding ‘B’ in the level editor draws collision boxes which create static Box2D shapes. These save and then load in-game and prevent Box2D objects from wedging between what would have been joins between touching tiles.
This removed a major glitch from the game (and Box2D engine?) allowing for a smoother game experience. Now I need to work out a few...
4 tags
Major Change: Physics
I’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of days rewriting buggy code. I scraped a lot of the in-game physics and brought in an external engine, merging it with the engine we already had. I don’t think the transition could have been any smoother, which is all any programmer could hope for.
The outside code is open source, so we aren’t limited in its uses. I used the Java...
4 tags
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[Solved] Friction Problem
Solved: See this post.
So, now that I have drag, expressed as:
k1=.09;
k2=.01;
drag=(k1*accAccumX)+
(k2*(accAccumX*Math.abs(accAccumX)));
accAccumX-=drag;
grandVelX=accAccumX;
My objects will reach a maximum velocity and slow down accordingly. However, they don’t slow down appropriately when on the ground. What I need to devise is a...
6 tags
Drag as a Result of Speed
I was having a lot of problems trying to create a drag force as a result of speed. I finally got it after realizing that you don’t multiply the drag to the acceleration you add it as it’s an opposing force.
For anyone interested the code looks like this:
k1=.09;
k2=.01;
drag=(k1*accAccumX)+ (k2*(accAccumX*Math.abs(accAccumX)));
...
Fixed my update problem
If you haven’t seen my problem check the post below. I was having a problem where objects affecting each other (in terms of force) wouldn’t show their effects on the second object until the next update cycle. The objects being affected would appear to lag because it wouldn’t be until the next update cycle that the changes were shown.
By adding a list of all the forces acting on...
3 tags
[SOLVED] Great game physics book not helping
I’m reading Game Physics Engine Development by Ian Millington. It’s helping me figure out lots of collision and force related equations. However I still have a code problem this book isn’t helping to resolve. Let me break it down:
The game has a main cycle…
1. Update every object
2. Draw the result
3. Repeat
A problem occurs when an object applies force to another...
4 tags
Video capturing = yay!
It turns out my video codecs were corrupt. I reinstalled them and got my hands on Camtasia, it’s an awesome program for capturing and editing video. I won’t be uploading crap videos anymore.
-James
