Fun Updates

Well, it seems that are logo image and background image broke, so it goes, very weird......
Edit: Messed with the images and re-up'ed some of it. Should work now. -Nonulok

As far as the updates, alot of the core code is actually finished. Now we are creating the special events and triggers and some visual FX along with updating the node pathing to be more extensive and very invisible to the player. So with this comes updating the hell out of the level editor, which hasn't really been touched since before working on the main engine itself.

So far I did add some sweet changes to the editor to help streamline dev time better. And later tonight should be more updates to the interface and then adding all the "Coded" events to the editor.

Nonulok is working on some sweet boss sprites and screens. The sprite task this time around is not as intensive as last time (DooM 2D) since the amount of sprite animation is low. (most is coded) But the sprites themselves will be some crazy detail and bad ass.

Neuntoter

Some New Updates

Now this blog page is looking a little more like a game dev page thanks to Nonulok's fancy work. As stated in the previous post we now have a company page set up with Desura/ModDB/IndieDB. Which are all actually the same database but different front ends. This actually starts our ball rolling plan that we mapped out for releasing Tik Tok Tank through Desura before bringing it over to Steam.

As far as coding goes I did get some bugs and glitches fixed last night and made some headway on things that needed added. The development is still going smooth. AI is being touched in small pieces while I tackle other things such as world counters that will start events and things like that.

Currently we have a few enemies just for testing purposes for path detection testing and such. We will have more to come of course when Nonulok and I can dedicate some serious time into patterns for enemy attacks and movement to really vamp up the excitement.

Well, that's all for now

Neuntoter

Reason for Upcoming Actions

Just want to explain so no one thinks we are slowing down.

We are working on a big project and doing something else that's big, so we are being pulled in in two directions at once. Why would we do this?? Simple, the first big thing is a sweet game that has been mentioned earlier and right now I am finishing up some of the most important parts.

The second big thing??

Super simple.... We are releasing the current game as a commercial release. We are working with Steam and Desura (the other big project) so of course we need tons of stuff in place for this to happen. Very soon we will be posting pics, vids and game description and features.

What this could do....

This may slow down our posting while we get these two very time consuming things under wraps. We are very excited to be getting to this point and will also be excited when we can deliver our labor of gaming love to you the fans and gamers.

Neuntoter

Happy Weekend

Yes, not really an update post but more like a hello and how ye doing post. Making forward progression still with the rendering portion of the engine and the random dungeon creation parts. Still going very well.

more updates (bigger) soon.....

Neuntoter

Surprise Surprise

While the new engine is going as smooth as it can be going right now, I have actually been focusing on the top down portion more as of late. Nonulok and I have been digging up some ideas for some awesome top down based game. And honestly so far I can't really think of many, if any at all, games that will be set up like this one will be. So we will be finishing this one up before our platformer sees the full light of day.

I really do not want to give away to many details, but we are excited and I am playing the crap out of what is already made just because it's really fun... well to me anyway lol.

Neuntoter

Edited by Nonulok: My eyes! How did you pass English class?

Where The New Engine is Taking Us

Re inventing the platformer is... well.. almost impossible, but with that said making a good one is not. Our intentions with this new engine is not to pull off anything super new with platformers in general but to help mix a good steady paced platforming gameplay with a good challenging paced shooter. Unlike the previous shooter we introduced, (DooM 2D) we will be bring a ton more features to the table this time around. Including some very common features found in standard platforming games today.

1. Ladders: DooM 2D had them, but they were coded like platforms. This time around you actually can climb and descend them like a normal ladder.

2. Two styles of platforms. Ones you can jump up through and jump down through and the kind that only lets you jump up through.

3. Water: Not sure how much it will come into play for our current game but swimming will be in this game with basic water physics. Mostly slowing movement and making jumping higher. Who knows :)

4. Slopes: Thats right, not everything will be blocks anymore. Currently we have 45 angles working. We may make some more variants but also this time around the world tiles are smaller to make design decisions more precise and less blocky.

5. Different ways of animating the world, characters and items. This will hopefully bring our worlds a little more too life, water will move, barrels may have a fire burning on the inside for extra décor reasons. The player's animations will be made of several different sprites to make more dynamic motions. These are just a few examples.

6. Conveyor style blocks. These are very common in platformers and for many reasons. They always play into adding extra obstacle and friction to a characters movement.

7. Basic physics: Let me explain this one a little. Not using Phys-X or Havoc, nor are we trying to achieve such awesomeness but we are however going to get objects to be push-able, maybe even roll down hills. Using boxes and barrels as stepping blocks to get to higher levels. Things like that. Maybe even explosions pushing objects away. That portion depends on time really. (if we have it or not)

8. Better detailed levels: This is made available now since I have also made a lovely level editor which is proving to be tremendous help thus far. Along with detailed levels, this engine is also fully capable of top down levels. Hmm... the possibilities.

Well, that was a big post about progress and up-coming features. I will let you all sit on that and soak it in while we make this all work and get the game closer to beta. Till next time......

Neuntoter

Taking Down Download Links

So as Neuntoter has posted, we were contacted by ID Software directly about some possible copyright issues. I've been surfing around the Internet to remove all links to our game in its current state, but I'm not perfect. I'm making this post to possibly get some help. To anyone reading this: If you see a link to our game still alive somewhere out there, please contact us. Either post a comment here or e-mail me at nonulok@gmail.com. I've either taken down links or e-mailed content managers/webmasters to take down links, but I can't possibly hit every website ever.

This isn't all bad though. We're working on new things as well as getting some new graphics for what used to be the Doom game so we can get that back out there. We've seen hundreds of downloads, had some good feedback, and even got so well known that the president of ID Software personally contacted us. It wasn't great news, but it shows we're starting to actually matter. So thank you people of the Internet. Without word of mouth, our work would have gone nowhere and died shortly after starting. We've never paid for any kind of advertising and have had a budget of pretty close to $0.00 through this whole thing and none of that would have been possible without people taking an interest in what we're doing. So thank you again to you, Internet people, for all the support. We'll have something new up for download ASAP. Promise.

Nonulok

Days Off and Coding Away

for the next 3 days I will be off from my normal job which will open up tons of coding time for the new engine and porting of the DooM 2D game. Hopefully tomorrow I am hoping to have enemy spawning and player projectiles ported over. Oh, all projectiles in the game now will not only be coded more efficiently, they will also be more bad ass since they will be utilizing additive blending. Normal speech.. a slight glow affect for fireballs and explosions instead of just a single sprite animation. Also, projectiles will give off particle based affects, like a missile giving off a trail of smoke. This was always in my plans of implementation but the original code was kinda clustered and prevented such things since calls to other functions and classes were essentially not built correctly. Now since I have the better knowledge I can code these better.

Now you guys and gals can see why I decided to do a rehash of the engine mid production.

Neuntoter

We Now Have a Level Editor

Yeah, this is exciting news because this will really help us speed up creating new levels for the new episodes. Although the creation of this did set us back a little for releasing Episode 1 but it is well worth it. While creating this I also added some new sweet features. Like ladders. Well let me explain better, ladders that you actually climb up and down instead of acting like stacked platforms. Also the levels are (background coding) more efficient so DooM 2D should run that much better. As an example, I dev the game on a 1Ghz X2 cpu and I did see a nice little boost in hectic scenes. The game is coded to run @ 60 FPS.

Well that's it for now

Neuntoter

Minor Updates

I found out that the weapon switching after levels is still broken and for the life of me I can't find the issue this time. It's a mathematical issue with arrays but when I modify the equation it either increments too much or not at all which means the weapon either switches to the next highest or previous lowest. Over all it makes no sense at all.

I did make changes to the health and level caps though. Now you can no longer hit above 100 health nor can you go above the ammo caps either. I played through with it like that and made (to me) a more enjoyable play through since you were really using ammo better. These updates should go live tonight for the demo.

Also tonight Nonulok and I will be working even more on Episode 1 which should introduce improved particles for when barrels, enemies and the player get hit. I am also thinking about creating another version of the DooM 2D game and make it so it is not stage based but having encounters. For example fighting boss after boss in either waves or a boss fight then next level which contains the next boss. Or even barrel puzzle levels. But These will truly intended for short quick plays for those that are always busy and on the go.

Please any one with comments or ideas by all means leave them. Now that the demo is out we would greatly love to hear what you the players are thinking and maybe even what you would expect in the future for this series.

Thank You

Neuntoter

Crunch Time!

It's the night before our game's demo is released and we're staying up till it's done. This release WILL be coming out on Monday even if we have to stay up all night to finish it. We don't have that much left to do. Most of it is fixing a few graphical glitches and adding a few new animations. The coding is pretty much done...for now. The big thing is going to be level design. We have one level pretty much done and hope to get at least 2 more done for release. We're going to start with a limited release to a few select people for bug testing, then it's going live for all! Check back for a MediaFire link (or similar site) after a few days when we know everything is at least functional.

-Nonulok

P.S.
If you want to be a tester, E-Mail me at nonulok@gmail.com

Current Activities

Alright, a quick update as far as were we are and what we are doing.

DooM 2D:
Designing levels, polishing up some sprites. As far as the engine that runs the game minor tweaks will be happening here and there to fix or should I say optimize enemy AI a little more. Polish up the collision detection. And we still need to add music (which the demo will not have). But a 3 level demo is on it's way withing the next few weeks. I can actually guarantee that it will be out before December.

I will dub thee engine Basic 2D. That will be because the way it was programmed was mainly as a one style game sorta engine. We will release a few more games based upon this engine but that will bring us into the next topic.

Ground Zero Engine:
This I actually started the ground work on yesterday. This will be much more of a modular engine to keep it very versatile with how we will be able to utilize it. I am naming it Ground Zero because I am making it modular with the knowledge of when I want to test a new concept, there is my new module. So it will be used as a testing ground also. With this engine I am hoping to bring in more life as in FX, physics, and the likes. This engine will also be 2D. I believe our first mini game may actually be released as a personal test of mine while working on this engine, so the mini game will have some new features that DooM 2D will not be receiving.

That's it for now, all have a wonderful day

Neuntoter

Big Announcement, Well... Sorta

I kinda took a step back from the programming end as a break I guess you could say. last thing I was working on was per pixel collision detection (Fun, fun). IMO, the game runs more than good enough to at least release a short demo of it to the public. Nonulok and I have to sit down and design the levels and add the music. After we release it there will of course be updates to it as we improve our engine and start to work on our new game which will be a very original title. The whole mini games thing will also start to happen so we did not forget about that.

I have also been working on an epic texture pack for Terraria based off the Castlevania series. It is actually turning out really well. More on that when I have a few more things completed. Well thats the update for now, thanks everyone.....

Neuntoter

Currently Working On

Particle emitters and enemy spawners.

The Particle Emitters will be for some sweet multi-particle effects. Ex, smoke trails, fire (not based off sprite animation) etc. should be cool.

The Enemy Spawners, .. we all know what these are and do, need I say more. These will work wonders for boss fights. Adding kindle to the fire never has been so easy ... whu ha ha ha.

Neuntoter

Game Play Question

Kind of torn here. lots of enemies with lesser life or less enemies with more life for better battles. I know they both have their advantages and disadvantages which is why this is a tough decision. The coding makes this a very easy change so no extra programming time for this type of choice, it's more a level design type matter. Hell, we could even mix the two and make some levels have crazy battles and others levels like Contra style were you just go through it killing tons of guys. Hmmm, Think I just answered my question. Please, let me know what your thoughts are on this matter.

Neuntoter

Progress Update

Code wise I actually took a mini break but am back on full force. between trying to put the finishing touches on the "Mini Game" and adding some new things to DooM it does kinda get a little, crazy and fun in very interesting ways. I myself can not wait to get ahold of the new death and idle animations. Nonulok does some great work and the random aspect of how they will die and just not being the same thing over and over will some some extra excitement to the game. The code is actually fully in place for deaths, idle, and hit particles (meaning upon being hit, they will bleed differently everytime). so this will be uber cool.

Neuntoter

Random Animations

So I've been working on some new animations for the characters that are already in game. The plan right now is to have 5 animations that can be randomly called when each enemy dies as well as (hopefully) 5 animations for when the enemies are idle. This system will be based on 2 random numbers generated for each character. At least, that's how it's currently being worked in. This might change. So far, I've been focusing on the Former Human's animations since he's kind of the canon fodder enemy of the game. Currently he has 3 unique death animations and 2 idle animations. I've made more, but that's how many of those I'll actually use and look decent in game. More on this later when I have more of it done.

Nonulok

A Few Updates

Have not posted for a while and yes this project is still very ALIVE and kicking. This is actually more than just a 1 game venture for both Nonulok and I so we have been working on building a business model, including::

1. Building a community

2. A structure on how we will advertise our existence and promote our creations to the masses

3. What changes we will make about the way we will build our community

a. We will post and be more active in Indie based forums and communities.

b. Post in forums and communities that are related to our current project.

(These seem very obvious, but when your heart is focused on the game itself these can easily be overlooked.)

4. We will release "Mini Games" while we work on our main current project.

a. "Mini Games" will consist of a simplified game based off our current engine.

b. They will be 1 or 2 levels with a boss fight at the end.

c. Every week or two another 2 or so levels will be released. (kinda like very short episodes)

d. We understand that 2 levels is kinda not much but they are free and they will be a good 5 or so minutes of fun. And who knows, maybe after the main project is done we will compile all the "episodes" into 1 game and release a free compilation game.

e. These "Mini Games" will be a way of showing that we are active and providing a little gift from us for staying current and an active member in our community.

As far as DooM 2D goes, there has been alot of nice updates and additions. This Saturday we may be doing another video on it's current state. So it is going very well and we are very pleased with it thus far.

As far as a "Mini Game" is concerned, I am already about 1/2 way with having one finished. I am guessing maybe 1 or 2 weeks tops. Oh yeah, where will you get these at???? Well that is easy, we are working on updating this blog space to be like a home page with links to my server that will host the files.

Well that was a huge post but I had a lot to tell ya, until next time......

Neuntoter

Edited by Nonulok for lies.

Player Animations

Well I will say that I am very glad we decided to hold off the alpha testing. Even though the game (looking) is coming out really good, special effects and other such things like a head and gun arm that follow the curser really adds to the overall experience. We also want to add a few more effects to damaging world tiles and enemies themselves. I do understand that it is after all a 2D game, but to go cheezy and not make it special is really just an insult to mine and Nonuloks vision and you the gamers. So special effects will be added in great numbers to hopefully immerse you further into the Hell known as DooM.

Also something to be worked on, ....... wait for it............... a custom death animation for each enemy when killed by the chainsaw. Hmmm, I wonder what that could look like....

Neuntoter

P.S. new video should be posted this Sunday or so with visual updates.

New Player Mechanics

????? New Player Mechanics?????? Whu?? Well, let me explain. As you could clearly see in the video, you always looked forward even while shooting at angles and scoping out your enemies with missiles to the face. Well, I personally wanted to add visuals that would show your currently selected gun in your hand and also show in what direction you are facing, as in angles. Hence new player mechanics. the head, chest, weapon arms, and legs are now all separate pieces that get their own animations, meaning we can do some really cool animation combos with out having to make tons of sprite sheets, .... this makes Nonulok very happy : ) My brother watched the video and funny thing is the first thing he said to me was "he should aim where he is shooting" and I said, "I know, I really want that but not fully sure if I should add that"

Well, I'm adding that, and it seems I was not the only one to think it so, there ya go. When all the angle math and placement works, I will post some short video pimping it out. until then, happy gaming...

Neuntoter