Hopefully I’ll be getting my hands on the new artwork for our first world, and will be able to pump out some levels and some correlating artwork!
On a more unfortunate note, the small surprise I posted a couple weeks back is in quite a rut, my Photoshop skills need a bit of brushing up before I can show what I’ve in mind. So the release on that is… unsure.
[video]
Things are going well for the project, all around. Momentum is starting to pick up, and with the more visitors and feedback we get, the more excited we are getting about bringing you more content!
Our first world’s environment art should be done around the end of this week, and soon after that, more video to show off what we are working on!
I’m also personally working on something that I can hopefully release by the end of the week. We shall see as I am taking a small holiday this weekend as well, so it might be in the middle of next week.
-Zach
I worked for a couple of hours on a new jump animation! I hope it blends well with the game so far. I have to wait until it can be implemented because my programming and/or understanding of code is minimal, for now (mwa hahaha). Hopefully tomorrow.
-Zach-
[video]
Our page on 8-bit funding has just gone live. For those who don’t know it’s a community for donating money to indie game projects that seem promising. The developers get money to fund their projects, and the contributors can get some kick-ass rewards. Hopefully you think our project is promising and would like to contribute any amount. Please do (we can tell you we love you).
Click now:
http://www.8bitfunding.com/project_details.php?p_id=85
I haven’t been posting lately because I’ve been working on parts of the game that haven’t officially been released to the public. Leaving parts of the game secret, I believe, will add to a more authentic experience for the player. I always enjoy exciting knew surprises when playing games and I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for anyone. So, don’t let a lack of updates bum you out. You’ll just have to keep waiting for information on parts of the game that aren’t so secret.
Also, I’ll let you in on one secret. I’m working on a collaboration with a friend, a small game that will be packed chock full o’ 8-bitted goodness with an amazing retro style soundtrack. After we have enough content to show I’ll post a link of something or someplace to see more.
-James
So, my main animator is great, he does these really cool animations for moldering in gif format. However, Moldering doesn’t know how to dissect gifs. I guess I could write code in Moldering to do it, however, I wrote a different program instead. This little program will cut gifs into strip animations. it will also cut out any extra space that isn’t necessary, as well as optimize and index the gif.
Using the program is extremely simple. Double click the jar file, select which gif file to cut up, and then select where to output the file. It supports many output formats including gif, png, bmp, and tiff.
I borrowed some code that was open source from the web, so in the same spirit, I provided the source code here. I definitely didn’t want to download all of those “shareware” gif optimizing programs, see which ones actually did what I wanted, and install them on my computer unsure of what I was really getting. This program is small, fast, and clean—no spyware/bloatware or any other kinds of “ware” except pure, clean, and free (as in free beer) software. Enjoy!
-James
DOWNLOADS:
Program:
http://projectmoldering.com/downloads/giftostrip.zip
Source:
http://projectmoldering.com/downloads/giftostrip/Main.txt
Note: Source is included in the program zip along with the proper folders.
So, lately I’ve delved into developing the actual game content of Moldering. This has been really exciting. The first stages of development were spent solely developing the engine and all of the tools necessary to make the game (which took a couple of years with school and all). A while back, however, Bobby Tew and I started drawing out story boards for the game and we wrote a good chunk of it down on (digital) paper. While developing the game from scratch (something I did as a learning project) I’ve had a lot of great ideas, received some great ideas from others, and scrapped some ideas that wouldn’t fit in the final vision. The game has gone through a great deal of iterations since day one.
Some time a few months ago, however, the engine and all of our tools (like the level editor) were finalized enough to begin making the actual game content. Once we got past that point I’ve been developing sounds and music, tweaking all of the gameplay, and designing, as well as coding, the actual levels and objects required for them. It’s great to see that the game has come this far—there’s really no going back.
Specifically, over the last couple of weeks I’ve spent time finalizing the first “area” of the game as well as re-coding bits of code that weren’t perfect. For example, while I was going to bed one night I thought up a really great way to code level transitions for the player and objects that are permitted to move from map to map. I made a mental note of it and began coding the very next day. It’s great to get the game content in, but it’s also exciting on a personal level to know that I can code things better than when I first started this game. The game is extremely solid because of all the time I put in, and the benefits of having a solid engine to build on have been immense… now it’s time for the good stuff! :)
-James