VectorStorm Blog

I’ve just updated Win32 and OSX builds of the VectorStorm test games and Muncher’s Labyrinth, to support configurable gamepads. (Including most of the “Stage two” features I mentioned before).

As it turns out, SDL doesn’t provide support for the ‘hotplug’ feature I wanted to implement, so I had to drop that. Hopefully it’ll be included in the SDL 1.3 series, when that eventuates.

So I’m generally pleased with how Muncher’s Labyrinth turned out, especially bearing in mind how little time I had to put it together.

Since the original release on Sunday night, I’ve made a few more minor modifications.Most notably, there have been a few crash fixes, and in 1.0.3 I improved the Meat AI so that they behave a little more sensibly when there is more Meat than Shinies in the maze. (You can grab the 1.0.3 build over on the Muncher’s Labyrinth “Get Games” link in the sidebar)

But most of my time since Sunday has been going into trying to come up with a reliable and useful build system under Windows. As it turns out, making a build using Visual Studio Express gets me into the whole dynamic runtime “DLL Hell”problem, where many people don’t have the required versions of the redistributable runtime dlls already installed, and I can’t simply include the dlls in the application folder due to Microsoft’s SxS runtime system. And I’d really rather avoid having to learn how to put together an installer.

I have a MinGW build of Muncher’s being tested right now, and if that works, then I’ll probably move to that, since it relies on a runtime dll that’s been shipped with Windows since 95, so that’s probably a lot more safe to assume will be present. (But honestly, I still far prefer the Visual Studio IDE)

I expect that I’ll return to Muncher’s again sometime in the future. I have a bunch of ideas for improvements to it, which will be fun to try out when I’m not under a big deadline. Most notably:

• Get rid of the minimap, and instead use on-screen direction indicators to entrances
• Level progression (ie: survive with a certain number of shinies, and advance to the next level)
• I want a seamless transition from the title screen into the game; use the same maze in the title screen as in game, so we can just zoom in on it to see the action.
• Better adaptive difficulty levels.
• Improve the generation of “broken wall” particles so that the wall actually appears to shatter as you hit it.

So plenty of things to do. But I’m going to leave it for the moment, and come back in a few weeks or months, so I can see it with fresh eyes.

All done, and with nearly an hour to spare!

I spent way too much time polishing.. to the extent that I’ve spent the last hour writing a backstory.

Right now I’m putting together binary packages; expect them up within about a half hour or so.

I’m immensely pleased with how this came out. I’ll be glowing for a week!

Grab Munchers Labyrinth from here.

Plenty more Munchers stuff has gone in in the last four hours.

Most notably, there is now music, sound, a game over sequence (it’s kind of weak, but it’s there, and it’s a whole lot less abrupt and confusing than the one from Damsel), and a whole bunch of tweaks to gameplay, including an adaptive difficulty level that makes the game more difficult when you’re doing better at it.

There are also a number of engine improvements under the hood, including a very basic implementation of visibility culling, so we’re not wasting time and effort rendering things that aren’t anywhere onscreen. (And yes, that was actually causing problems for me)I estimate that I probably have another two or three hours of work left to do before I’ll be calling this done. But right now, it’s time for a break. And food.

Stuff left to do after my break: Improve two sprites. Improve the ‘Game Over’ sequence a little. Play all the way through the game one last time, to verify that the adaptive difficulty levels are vaguely reasonable.

It’s difficult to believe how quickly progress has been made..  Here’s what’s left to do:

• Music (if any)
• Sound
• “Game Over” sequence  (maybe a high score table?)
• Misc. polish

Well, I did it! From initial concept to fully playable prototype in just one day. (And I even still have several hours left in the day! But I think I’ll take a little time off to watch Iron Chef, which I taped earlier today)

I’m not going to give away the gameplay, except to say that I think this is one of the most fun games I’ve written in an awfully long time, and that I think it would extend into a more fully scaled game rather easily. And that the game is played to a finite time limit; the player has infinite lives.

Stuff that remains to be done:

• Music (if any; not sure if it’s appropriate for this game)
• Sound (need a lot of sound effects for this game)
• Title screen menu (I’ll probably blatantly steal the Asteroids one again)
• “How to play” screen.
• “Story” screen.
• General polish.

Looking very good for the release tomorrow. I might do another hour’s work on it later tonight, but for right now, Allez Cuisine!

So I’ve made a rather major change of direction with Munchers. Up until today, I had been building a game which I’ve finally decided just wasn’t sufficiently “Munchers”; the Muncher was basically just a projectile in a pretty standard artillery-style game.

So I’ve changed direction, and am now working toward a different goal-game. I find it interesting that I did this with Damsel as well, except that the game change happened on the Thursday, with Damsel, whereas it didn’t happen until Saturday morning, this time. (But I still expect to have a fully playable game by the end of the day, and that’ll still leave me ahead of Damsel!)

I now have a randomly generated world, and some basic player control. Just need to add some enemies, and some simple pathfinding and AI for them, and it’ll be fully playable. But right now, it’s time to break for lunch. Back in half an hour!

Yesterday I talked a bit about how much time I had lost, trying to extend VectorStorm’s collision system to support colliding bounding spheres against line segments, when I really should have just hardcoded the particular boundaries I wanted things to be restricted from crossing.

Today, I’m singing a different tune; I tried my hand at it again, and have had success! This dramatically simplifies some of the Munchers code, as it means I can simply drop collision lines into my collision scene, and have objects automatically react to them in reasonable ways, without spending time coding each one individually. This should actually save me a lot of time, and let me put a good deal more into Munchers than I had originally expected.

The down side, of course, is that I still don’t have a first playable version. That’ll be tomorrow, I suspect. As long as I get that first playable version of the game before Sunday, I’ll still be doing better than I did with Damsel!

Just a quick note..  it’s Thursday night, and I don’t have a “first playable” of the game idea, although I do have a pretty solid game design in my head, and the basic game mechanics are mostly implemented.

So I’m further along now than I was with Damsel at this time of the week, but  not as far as I really wanted to be.  I wasted far too much time today trying to extend the VectorStorm collision system to support line segments..  I should really just hardcode support for the collision lines that I really need (honestly, just the borders of the play area), and I’d have been a lot further along now, if I hadn’t been tempted into attempting system-level work.  That’s an important lesson for the next time I do one of these. 

Not too much to talk about, today; I’ve done a lot of thinking about design, but haven’t really come to a definite design decision. However, I’ve started on code and some visual design. In particular, I have an initial, rough design for the Munchers, whatever they turn out to be in regards to the gameplay. I’m imagining them coming in a whole variety of colours.