Just a small update for all the curious minds. Haven’t taken a hiatus, rather some good news. Six of the abilities have been implemented. We’ve been spending time implementing and tweaking them. I’d say three of them are done, mechanically, they just need visual aesthetics to make them more pleasing. The other three need to be tweaked more to get them perfect.
The six abilities so far are: Wind, Fireball, Rock, Earth, Vine, and Bees. Some other ideas we’ve been toying with are Time, Gravity, Teleport, Water, and a few others that we’ll leave hidden for now. Videos should be up soon showing some of them off after we get some new maps done for demonstration purposes.
-James
Zack and I were asked to do an interview about Moldering for a small indie game blog, Grizzly Pixel. The interview provides some insight into Moldering and also us as developers as well. If you want to check out his blog, we’ve given him previously unreleased screenshots showing off the current state of the game and the current abilities. Unfortunately, his post won’t go up until Friday, so for now you can check out the interview in it’s entirety below:
[video]
Lighting, Weather, Parallaxing, OH MY!
Here’s two new video’s to show of some of the new neat-o-rama updates for Moldering. There’s also a few smaller changes, if you pay attention closely (or read the dialog boxes), that haven’t been in previous videos.
The first video shows off the new volumetric and ambient lighting systems. There’s three in place. I personally favor the first, and I believe we’ll be using that for most things. The others might prove useful in caves, or other areas.
#12 Moldering: Lighting Effects
Some ideas we’re toying with: little glowing lightning bugs that hover and dart around, complete with their own light source and strings of glowing mushrooms that glow brighter as you near them. Again, complete with their own light sources.
The next video shows off many different features including the new predictive camera system that lets the player see ahead of them. This video also shows off the dynamic weather system which adds to the atmosphere of the first world, as well as the parallax scrolling that I’ve been meaning to implement for some time now.
#13 Moldering: Parallaxing, Weather, Camera
Since these videos we’ve added some other features, including fading foreground objects. This way the player can enter caves and the walls in front will fade to let the player see into the cave. You’ll see these updates in upcoming videos.
Feedback is always welcomed!
-James
[video]
Okay, small update here. Got the blog running again. Our hosting provider did some server upgrades and it took us a short while to realize that we needed to point our DNS (Domain Name Servers) to a new location.
In terms of updates, we’ve been doing some cool aesthetic work to Moldering and we should have a snazzy new video up soon showing off some of those features.
Stay tuned!
-James
So, I’m working with my hosting to get the blog up and running again. With that said, you probably can’t see this post but will be able to once the site is running smoothly again.
On another note, I’ve integrated our blog posts to automatically repost to our facebook, the blog posts to post to twitter, and the facebook posts to also go to twitter. That’s a lot of automatic information distribution. Luckily there won’t be tumblr going to facebook and from facebook going to twitter, leaving only one copy of each post from each social network going to twitter. If that didn’t make your head spin then I probably want you on the Moldering team XD.
-James
Check the link on the right —->
Or, http://facebook.com/projectmoldering
Add us!
-James
I can’t always work on this game full-time, but when I do, I drink espresso.
I’ve been doing a lot of really solid programming the last couple of weeks and it really shows. The project is continuing to come together. With Zach working on the level creation, Bob on storyboarding, and Phillipe working on art, things are looking better than ever at each new interval (God, it’s great to have fellow team-members).
I could get into the technicalities of what I’ve been doing, but I’ll avoid that for the time being. In the last couple of weeks we’ve done some great developing. I’ve added some of the objects for the actual game, really buckled down and cleaned up the level editor (called the World Builder from here-on-in), and added in-game features that give the game a really polished look (e.g. excellent camera motion, parallex scrolling, blurring and other special effects). This game may take another million and two years until it’s release date but when it’s done, it will be done. We won’t be satisfied until Moldering is of commercial quality and hopefully an immersive experience that people simply cannot forget.
Here’s a great quote from Oddball on the TIGSource forum talking about the game Cafe that sums up our development: “progress on hobby projects [ebb] and [flow],” and currently, Moldering is flowing.
We’ll keep you posted when we have some new media to share. Hopefully we can show off some of the new parallexing soon, or maybe a sneak peak at some of the different game modes, or even info about the new “combat” system (and yes, combat is in quotes for a reason :] ).
-James
It took me about a month to get a map out with the new materials that Philippe supplied us with, but it got done :) Much of the time was spent dealing with making small supplemental art to have a bit more flexibility with the tile set, while making a map. I like what I came up with but, recording video is the next challenge to overcome. These programs do not agree with my lappy toppy very well. If you want to see the new art in action check the video below…
-Zach
It took me some time, but I finally finished chopping up the art work into a tile-able format for our level editor. I ran into a few minor problems along the way, but nothing a little game magic can’t fix (and/or hide from your unknown eyes, mwa haha)!
I have a very busy next few days with my paying job(s), this will slow things a bit for me, unfortunately. With my previous 4 day holiday over the past weekend, that was suppose to free up some time for me to spend meshing things together, but life always gets in the way!
A map showing off our little orange friend running around his new environment will be up as soon as I have a demo level ready!
-Zach
The first world graphics are done, and I got my hands on them tonight! … But there’s no time to work on them now. This weekend is a 4 day-er for me, so hopefully lots of time to play with them. It will be a challenge as it is going to be the first weekend that is above 10 degrees C in a long time.
-Zach