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...