Dev Blog: Project Moldering

Blorb; Android Game

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:24:08 -0500

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 don’t know if that will be possible.

Leave a comment here, there, and please feel free to bookmark the site. I’ll keep it interesting for Android developers as well as game programmers and enthusiasts alike.

Cheers!

James

Need Help (Artist) for a Personal Project

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:22:00 -0500

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 operating systems.

Anyway, I’ve got the whole game documented out, I’ve got an engine up and running, and I’m progressively working on the project. I plan to have the game out within a month (give or take a small while), but there’s a catch: I don’t have an artist. The artist who was helping us moved on to some really great looking projects and I wish him all the best. So, he won’t be helping out on this one. For now, I’m creating dummy graphics for each of the objects and their states and programming and designing the entire game out without the final graphics.

If anyone is interested this is a paid position. The entire set of 2D graphics for the game will be given to the artist and they just need to be redone. The artist will receive monetary compensation all upfront after the set of graphics are completed and returned. There shouldn’t be more than 5-8 hours of work (assuming you’re experienced).

I’m not planning on hearing anything back immediately but I remain hopeful that someone out there will catch wind of this and be happy to jump along. Wish me the best,

James

[P.S. Use the link provided but ignore all of the parts about volunteering and Project Moldering (as well as the graphics style). Use that link and just put a note that it’s for “Project B”. I don’t want to share my email address with the web and all of its spam bots.]

A Necessary Break

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:52:00 -0400

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 one of the pitfalls of developing an indie-game with no budget and no one paying you—real life gets in the way.

If you would like to keep up with what I am doing you can follow a blog I set up for one of my Computer Science classes. On it I will continue a semester-long discourse on what seems like a great book, “Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought” by Douglas Hofstadter. The title seems obtuse and gives the feeling of a technical read, but the prose is very conversational. If you want to follow it, or just make sure I haven’t disappeared off the face of the earth, here is the link:

iamnotaloop

Here’s to a short break from what continues to be a meaningful project to us! Cheers!

-James

Crazy Storms in Upstate NY

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:47:39 -0400

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 soon.

-James

Custom Palettes in Level Editor

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:24:00 -0400

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 palettes can also be saved and there can be multiple on screen at any given time. It can be very useful to make different palettes for enemies, for different areas, or for anything and load them later.

Now, if I can find the time, I’m going to make a bunch of really useful palettes and save them all for when I want to do some serious level editing.

-James

I reworked the old lighting system and took out the translucent...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:12:00 -0400

I reworked the old lighting system and took out the translucent images we were using as light sources. Now, the game calculates the area of the map, subtracts from it where the light sources are, and draws just the outline of the shapes translucently with increasing stroke size. The result is that when the light sources meet there’s a nice mixing of the areas.

Here’s a nice article on strokes in Java that I used as a reference:

Java 2D Trickery: Light and Shadow

-James

A Little Love

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:48:00 -0400

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 page:

Moldering on Pixel Prospector

So, everyone take a moment to bookmark Pixel Prospector and check back for great new games in development!

James

Some quick Updates: Here’s a quick preview of some new...

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:16:00 -0400

Some quick Updates:

Here’s a quick preview of some new enemies I added to the Moldering world. I’ve used the stock graphics and drew some basic sprites just to get things up and running.

On other news I’ve had some success and some problems with Ogg. I’ve gotten tracks to successfully loop and stop when finished without crashing the system or looping the last second or so. However, there’s a small lag when the track is first loaded and when it starts over.

I wonder, does this have to do with Ogg streaming, is it OpenAL, or something entirely different?

Ogg Music Support

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:09:00 -0400

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 without worrying about running out of memory. As each song is played only a small amount of memory is read in at a time directly from the disk, rather than loading multiple 1-3mb songs into ram or on the heap. Now we can have that huge soundtrack we always dreamed of!

-James

Project Chainsaw

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:24:00 -0400

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:

http://www.sharkarmstudios.com/

But, make sure to check out this video at least to get a feel for the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX7dVsrMewk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fsharkarm.blogspot.com%2F&feature=player_embedded

It appears that the game centers around exploration and using your trusty side-kick/dog to fight your way through the world. They seem to have about the same level of progress done, so keep updated and watch as both develop.

Site Updates

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:55:00 -0400

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

Menu Music: Written by Team Leader James Daniello (bet you...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:03:21 -0400

Menu Music:

Written by Team Leader James Daniello (bet you didn’t know he was a musician too!), this track is one of several candidates for the Main Menu music when you first load the game.

Keep tuned for more music, videos, photos and info about Moldering!

This is a cartoon one of our loyal animators / artists posted...

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:59:00 -0400

This is a cartoon one of our loyal animators / artists posted for us on our forum. It was in response to a frantic post of ideas. Its very fitting by the way…. That’s supposed to be James on the left and Bobby on the right.

-Zach

What is Moldering?!

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:44:00 -0400

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 middle of the night, is suddenly struck by a series of meteors. The meteors crash the player’s hot air balloon and bring a toxic mold (hence the name) to the planet that starts dissolving away the world (hence the name again). In this strange foreign locale, the player moves from one area to the next as the mold becomes more prominent the deeper in he finds himself. As the player uncovers each new meteor they gain new abilities, granting access to previously inaccessible areas along with new ways of interacting with the world and defeating its inhabitants who have become possessed.

The game is planned to have eight worlds and focuses mainly on immersion, exploration, and solid gameplay. The engine is going to be play tested thoroughly, over and over again, to give the most solid experience possible. Box2D has been incorporated to handle the physics based mechanics of the game.

A neat feature of the game is the ability to load in different ‘worlds’, which can be user-made. With a public release of the level editor anyone will be able to create and share new adventures. Or, if we decide to make new world ourselves we can share them online and continue the adventure of Moldering without needing to patch the game.

The game started as James’ learning project, but along the way has gathered a small team of developers; people he met in real life as well as online, who have contributed immensely to its progress. As the game grows (and it still continues to) it takes on new ideas, concepts, team members, and gameplay dynamics. We’re documenting the progress of the game online to help get the word out and possibly help others who are interested in developing their own games.

Is there anything you would like to see in Moldering?

You just lost the game!

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:31:00 -0400

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

Game Update!

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:04:41 -0400

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 with screenshots of the worlds we have revealed.

1. Starting world.

2. First cave.

3. Underwater Cavern.

4. Second Cave.

5. Dark Forest.

6. Mushroom Tops.

7. Research Station/Void

8. Final World.

-James

Here’s a mock-up of the new graphics we’ve worked...

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:15:00 -0400

Here’s a mock-up of the new graphics we’ve worked out for the Dark Forest. As you can see, the little alien is angry that the graphics look so good.

-James

Back from Vacation

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:50:20 -0400

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 the user will need to load the game when this happens.

5. Spikes. The first objects I created as a test to kill the player.

6. Screen shaking effect. This can be used to simulate large things pounding the ground or earthquakes.

Can’t wait to work on some more cool new things.

-James

Vacation

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:02:53 -0400

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

Custom Polygons as Boundaries

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:02:00 -0400

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 this must be done, but hey, its not my rules.

3. Must not exceed 8 vertices.

I’m looking forward to creating some interesting maps!

-James