Dev Blog: Project Moldering

Tasty New Screenshot

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:28:16 -0400

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 player moves back and forth through the brush and among the layers, solving puzzles in an effort to find their way through once having left the Water Cavern.

-James

A Little Publicitiy

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:37:00 -0400

..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 this video until John here pointed this out. Thanks John! However small the publicity is, it’s always great to not only know that we’re being exposed but that people are showing interest; and also that we’re easy enough to find on the web.

Check out all the games in this video. I personally want to play them all; there’s a great indie game movement taking place. However, if you’re looking for Moldering’s brief appearance in the video scroll to about 5:00 in the video.

-James

Big Progress, Small Update

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:29:41 -0400

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 is done completely. That’s a huge point in any game development and can take a long time to get this far. Some people would argue that this next step is the hardest part of game development; developing the game and game world can be just as hard, if not harder than, coding the engine.

Anyway, just wanted to write a short post to let you know the project isn’t dead (and never will be!).

-James

Sound Design is an Art Within Itself

Fri, 14 May 2010 19:36:30 -0400

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 randomize the pitch of each footstep to avoid the “machine gun” effect. Without the bit of code I just added each footstep sound played exactly the same way each time… it’s easy to imagine how a machine gun firing emits the same sound on each shot. This goes a long way in keeping the player from being annoyed.

On other news Louigi Verona contacted me today and notified me he’s working on some new music for Moldering. That’s good news if you ask me, since he did some really cool atmospherical pieces for Moldering. I’ll have to post some of the new songs when hes done for everyone to listen to.

Like I said in my last post, I’m going to spend a lot of time working on the game design, and stay away from programming. So, I’ll be working a lot on the art, the environments, the gameplay, the world map, and sound and special effects work.

Aside from parallax scrolling, not a whole lot comes to mind that needs to be programmed at this point, other than the game specific events and enemies.

So, with summer comes a whole slew of new Moldering content. Stay tuned!

James

Design Phase

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 20:36:59 -0400

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 bit. It will be good to really get a nice style and feeling rolling for the game. Like I’ve been saying all along, atmosphere and ambiance will play a large role in the experience that I’m aiming to create for the player.

So, rather than looking at the game from a mathematical or technical point of view I’m going to spend some time creating the atmosphere and “mood” that Moldering should generate. I just bought some nice resources for deciding on color schemes and have been messing with programs to generate in-game sound effects. If you want to get your hands on these I can let you know what resources I have been using and how they turn out.

James

So, here’s the cut scene I was talking about. The graphics...

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:24:00 -0400

So, here’s the cut scene I was talking about. The graphics are mostly placeholders but the video gets to the point. I want to add parallax scrolling to objects in the background (and maybe the foreground too). So, trees in the background will scroll slowly, with the way background scrolling even slower, etc.

The music is original, written by Louigi Verona. At this point we have 40 songs or so to pick and choose from, so it’s pretty fun trying out different songs and getting different moods.

Unfortunately youtube downgraded the video a bit. But, let me know what you guys think!

James

Intro cut scene

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:41:13 -0400

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

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:45:00 -0400

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!)

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:07:19 -0400

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 believe that water stages should be the most frustrating. :P

So, without further ado, take a look at our little guy swimming!

Music problems are no more! (Alas!)

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:01:01 -0400

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 remove all the bugs as they appear. While I’m not aware of any, I’m sure there are some written down in the backlogs that aren’t immediately apparent.

In other news I’ve added binary search partitioning to speed up gameplay, finite state machines for AI, and added a bunch to the scripting language.

Things are coming along smoothly. However, the weather is so nice today, so I’m going to go outside and enjoy the day!

-James

(P.S. I also started scripting out the first scenes today.)

Programming Camera Work is a Pain

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:03:00 -0400

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 simple, but I’m not completely satisfied with it. I know I’m going to end up reworking it.

Also, I added a few more .ms commands and started working on swimming. It’s late though, so I’m off!

-James

Moldering's own Scripting Language (.ms files)

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:40:00 -0500

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 what the Moldering Scripting language looks like. Surely it will evolve as it grows to encompass more complicated commands:

#START player
control 0
move_right 30
//comment delineation
jump 70
jump 290
stop 400
#LOAD 400 intro02.ms
#END

Here’s a breakdown of the commands. It should be pretty clear, but leave me a comment if you have any questions:

//comments are delineated with "//"
#START  (ex: player)
control 
end_control 
move_right 
move_left 
stop 
jump 
#LOAD  
#END

I’ll be sure to keep the list of commands updated as I go along, so down the line it can be used in conjunction with the level editor by people other than me.

-James

It's been a long time!

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:35:53 -0500

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 start over entirely.

But, now that that’s out of the way I’m going to filter though all the overtly obvious glitches. I know there are some left but I forgot entirely since it’s been so long. Then if with the obvious ones out of the way, I may go through the notes on all the known glitches and see which are actually important (I documented EVERYTHING, so I’m sure some weren’t vital).

Then, who knows… maybe we can start the actual content! The engine is like 98% completed… at this point the game can be started and things programmed as needed. I’d like to have the entire game planned out before starting, but that’s a long tedious task and it might be more fun to jump right in and start developing!

-James

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