AI .... So Much Fun

So currently working on the background mechanics on AI and other things involving the dumbness ... err, I mean smarts of the enemy. AI is a fun and annoying thing to work on. Since you try to make the "enemy" seem like they know what they are doing without making it too predictable and yet the minor randomness that comes with it can break and not always show it's ugly head when a bug or glitch is in the code. Ah, good times.

Like I said, AI ..... So much fun.

Well, that is where we are at and making some really good progress.

Neuntoter

Time to Let the Cat Out of the Bag

To shed some light on our current project. Remember how I said that I was working with the overhead portion of the engine. Well here it is.....

The current project running name is Tik Tok Tank. It is an overhead arcade style shooter. Featuring:

Weapon and player based power ups.

Enemy spawners.

An over world.

Randomly generated dungeons.

Custom created enemy bases.

Crazy ass bosses.

And tons of different enemy types.

So basically you will be given a certain amount of life to search the over world for enemy dungeons and bases. While on the over world you will be fighting off enemies of various difficulties. after finding a dungeon or base it then turns into smaller maps containing 4 levels then a boss fight. Like stated in features, what makes the dungeons different than the bases. Simple, bases are premade levels with randomly placed enemies and power ups. Dungeons are completely randomly generated. Cool thing is, no one game will be 100% identical.

So what is the progress, A lot is actually working but enemy AI is right now kinda bad. So that is the current big task. We will be posting some video footage and images of its current status. We may also post a percentage meter showing where everything is sitting as far as completion wise.

well for now that's a rap

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