Dec 25, 2012

After burner

After a huge "day" of work, here I am at 5h30am, writing this blog message.

The demo will be ready for january, that's for sure. After creating my scale tool, I made the Antimatter Accelerator model. For this purpose, I made another construction "brick" : a torus. Here is the Antimatter Accelerator (that's not a spider!) :

Antimatter Accelerator Model
My first though was that toruses were cool in 3D models! So I refreshed some other to get them better. Here is the work :

New Command Center Model

New Research Center Model

And I have more to show. On the map, the building zone is now limited with fancy barriers. I also added moutains in background and a fake skybox (couldn't make it properly for now). The result is awesome, check it by yourself :

Storm tooltips have now textures

Some ground view of the colony, with great mountains in the back

A global view, zoomed out

The new mouse cursor

Dec 24, 2012

3D management

Managing 3D models is not as easy as it seams. 3D editors use different measuring unities and even space coordinates... In Alone in Space, structures need to be placed on a invisible grid. That means they must not get too big. But they also need to fill as much space as possible.

To handle this problem, our saviour is the ratio! You can display a 3D object with a given ratio to get it bigger or smaller. However, this is still a problem as each model needs a custom ratio.

So I made a tool inside the game to play with models ratio and define the best for each one:



That's not intended to be usable in the final game but this could be handy for modding...

No rest for gamedevs

It seems there is some kind of party today, something with presents and decorated trees...

Ok I'll party, but later. For now, I work on Alone in Space and here are some new models that were still missing :

Carbon Mine model
Metal Plant model
The last model for the january demo will come later (the antimatter accelerator).

Dec 22, 2012

Feedback I said

Hey! That's me again today!

As mentioned in the previous post, I was working on some klind of database to store informations about structures like :
  • Building cost
  • Upgrade cost
  • Name
  • etc
The "database" is done and data is now stored in config files! I continued in this way by implementing structure building costs. And it looks good!

The build menu has been improved. When placing the mouse over a build button, additionnal informations are shown in a window about the build cost. That's still prototyping, but those informations will appear somewhere in the final release :


Sweet holidays

Couldn't work a lot these days.. Meh! But holidays are here so I'll have time to send!

In january, I show Alone in Space projet during a gamedev event so I'm focusing on the GUI right now. I already made this :


That's not the final GUI I want, just some buttons and gauges to show some parts of the gameplay.

I'm also working on creating some kind of database to store structure costs and other things. Building structures for free willl be soon over!

Dec 17, 2012

Life is growing

Being sick sucks...


I'm getting better  but the weekend is over. Damn! In previous message I shown some 3D textured models I made. They're now integrated in the game. Here is how it looks :




Ground texture is still a place holder with low repeat so pixels are big. And if you're wondering what is the red thing on the last screenshot, this is the cursor. It should not display there.

Dec 13, 2012

Textured place holders incomming

Now that I know a simple way to create textured models I see the game growing visually. I made a lot of work on the gameplay, but the visual feedback was missing. That's like a building rising from it's blueprints. Quite impressive and deep feeling, I have to keep calm and move forward.

Here are some models I made :
Refinery place holder

Warehouse place holder
Research Center place holder


You may recognize common forms as I only made 4 different textured "base blocs"! That's good enough for place holders.

Dec 12, 2012

Sick times ahead

This weekend I got sick and couldn't fully work...

A friend helped me applying textures on a model in Blender so I hope to be able to texture my place holders soon. Here comes the first ever textured model I made!
Simpler 3D model ever : a cube
I also worked on gameplay. Structure construction is getting better and better! Warehouse store capacity is now handled : building a warehouse will increase the zone's storage capacity.

Structures are no more built in one click : building takes time. They don't provide any service until construction is done. The 3D model scales up to stop at it's full height when it's done. Cool effect!

Today I could practice on texturing and I found a quick (and dirty) way to create texturized models. Here is the first attempt for the Command Center :
Command Center with textures

Dec 5, 2012

Organization

I just want to code... but I have to organize a little bit.

I made a list of things I have to do on the first step (zone vision). I also continued the list for next steps but some things are still missing. Here is the list :
  • [OK] 3D camera management
  • [OK] Get 2D coordinates from 3D view
  • [OK] Add structures on the 3D view, aligned on the invisible grid
  • [OK] Neighbours conditions for structure construction
  • Resources condition for structure construction
  • [OK] Natural resources harvesting
  • [OK] Energy production (and consumption by the structures)
  • Structures construction time
  • Building bots management
  • [wip] Create the place holders for all structures
  • [OK] Natural resources exhausting
  • Ground digging / earthwork
  • Warehouses
  • Built structure selection
  • Special actions for strucutres (such as building a bot, starting component production, etc...)
  • Structure upgrade
  • The global UI (resources stored, natural resources left in the zone, the actual energy production, the building menu, etc...)
  • Custom structure building
That's quite a big amount of work! And I surely forgot some things. The next step will probably be the UI. Now that the engine works, I need feedback of what's going on. Raw data drawn on the screen is no more enough!

I worked on place holders too, making existing simpler and creating new ones. Here is the work :

The Command Center

The Carbon Mine

The Research Center

The Fuel Refinery

The Solar Plant

The Starport

The Warehouse

Those models are made with Blender (v2.64). I'm new to 3D, so some of them may look... interesting... Don't judge my 3D skills, I'm not a 3D designer! Keep in mind that those models are just place holders. I tried to make them easy to recognize, as I want them in the final game.

Dec 4, 2012

Tough week

Gah...

After a tough weekend previously, that's going to be a whole week! My night planning is almost full.

  • On Mondays I usually take piano lessons
  • Tonight I meet team members of my association to do a debrief about the last game jam
  • Tomorrow, I meet other members of my association to talk about the conference I'll give on january about amateur game projects
  • On Thursday, I meet friends to finalize the event on Guild Wars 2 we're going to perform for our community next day
  • On Friday I perform the event

When am I supposed to work on Alone in Space?!

Coding this week will be hard but I still have time to think about the gameplay and making some project management.

Dec 2, 2012

Energy

Energy management is another gameplay of the game. All structures will need energy to be able to operate properly. This special resource cannot be stored. Unlike the other natural resources, energy must be produced continually to supply the zone's structures.

This part of gameplay is created!
On this screenshot you can see some solar plants supplying 2 refineries. Unfortunately, the solar plants don't produce enough energy for the 2 structures so one of them is currently shut down. In order to tell the player that something is wrong, a rotating storm is shown above the structure.

Dec 1, 2012

On the road again

Structures cannot be built anywhere. They need to be linked to roads in order to load/offload goods. Structures which don't produce resources nor goods need roads too (obviously). Here is a simple pattern :

If you follow the project from it's very early beginning, you'll recognize this outline :-)

Command Centers can be built anywhere but only once (during the colonization process), roads must be linked to a structure, and structures must be linked to at least one road.

This part of the gameplay is done. See you on the next step!

Nov 30, 2012

Produce more, better and faster

Hey!

I had a hard week so I couldn't work as much as I wanted on Alone in Space. However, the week-end is here and that means free time to use!

Tonight, I worked on the transposition between 3D coordinates to 2D coordinates in order to manage zone structures in a 2 dimensions array : [X,Y].

The cursor snapped to the invisible grid was already done so that was not hard work :

That's just a cube for now but it will be a sexy 3D pointer in the future (if a pointer can be sexy)!

After a few moments, I got a simple 2D coordinate vector for my structure array. Yay!

This part done, I could start the structure management. For example, you cannot build a new structure on a square where there is already another structure! The interesting part comes after.

Now that I can handle structures (simplified) construction process, I can start the natural resource extraction process. And THIS is the heart of the project. The resources. Those rare and precious resources the player will chase all around the galaxy.

The core engine was written days ago but I couldnd't test it. And it was well written (cheers me!). A few mistakes or omissions but it is functional.

The game can now manage resource extraction, storage and depletion. Nice point.

Nov 27, 2012

Structure selection

I got some time to work on AiS. I added structure construction selection (simple button for now). It creates a temporary model following the mouse until the player right or left click.

A right click will deselect the structure and the classic cursor will come back and a left click will build the structure. 3D model placement seems ok. I still have tricky bugs with cursor position on map but that's not a big problem (i guess).

Say hello to the refinery structure placeholder. That's a work in progress, I'll add more details on this model later :


Though weekend

The week-end is silently disappearing, as my neurons. That was a tough game jam!

I worked on an old school point & click with 5 other awesome guys. The story :
A man who doesn't remember who he is awake in a frightening railway station. He want to go out of this freaky place.

The game was done using XNA 4.0 and a custom engine I'm working on with a friend : YNA.


The game is open source so feel free to take a look. We'll clean it during this week to get it fully playable : http://imlost.codeplex.com/
YNA source code : http://yna.codeplex.com/

This event was organized by the Game Dev Party

I may not be able to work on Alone in Space tonight but I will get back to development very soon (surely tomorrow). So stay in touch. Big things are coming!

Nov 23, 2012

Game Jam

This week-end i won't be able to work on Alone in Space...


But i'll do gamedev! A game jam is taking place in Lyon this week-end and i'll participate. It seems like i could write one post per day (almost). So don't be surprised if there's nothing new until tuesday or wednesday!

I'll be back next week.

Nov 21, 2012

Natural resources

Tonight i worked on the natural resources extraction. That's it. The core of the game.



Zones will have a starting amount of resources from 4 types :
  • Carbon
  • Metal
  • Gas
  • Antimatter
Each of these natural resources will be differently distributed according to the zone type (space, planet, asteroid...). Randomly distributed of course. Natural resources will have to be stored in warehouses. And those warehouses will have a maximum capacity. Gathered resources at max capacity will be wasted. Oh and by the way, all structures will need energy to operate (produced by special structures).

Yeah, Alone in Space will be hard to master. And also hard to code. :-)

Nov 20, 2012

Work in progress screenshots

I'm currently on the Zone view, managing to place correctly structures on the ground. That's quite done even if i still have somme bugs.

Here are two screenshots showing the actual Zone view in wireframe mode and the first model : the command center.

Say Hello to the Zone view!


As you can see on this one, the camera angle changes as you zoom in.

Nov 19, 2012

Stop complaining and keep moving forward

A day away from my week-end adventures, there is a note to myself i want to share :
Stop complaining and keep moving forward
I'm not a 3D artist, however i'm good at industrial design (i've done a lot during my studies). That's why i'm in search of a 3D software based on industrial design. Something like the Unreal Ed (love it, even with it's bugs) :


In my mind, the 3D representation is the result of the 2D designs. I'm used to. And that's so freaking difficult to get rid of that! I feel lost with only a 3D representation!

With help from a Blender pro, i managed to set up my worskapce with familiar view. Now, i feel better. Home sweet home!


Here we go then, i'll use Blender!

Nov 18, 2012

3D models

I downloaded the evaluation version of MilkShape. This is a simple 3D editor. It was supposed to be a 30 days evaluation software but i was really disappointed to discover that after a few exports (may be 5 or 6), it was not more possible to export anything else.

I have 28 days left but i can no more use this software. That's not what i'm calling a 30 days trial. That's just bullshit...

I have this model of a command center to show, even if i'll have to redesign it in another editor :





Nov 16, 2012

It's all about architecture

Yesterday i could throw away some hours in developing Alone in Space. The game core engine is created, even if it's still empty. I designed it to be used in multiplayer / solo. The multiplayer management is not handled yet, i'll take care of that later but the actual structure makes it possible to handle it.

I also worked on the universe generation. Yeah, generative content is sweet. It gives some depth to a game by getting some randomness. The global generator structure is here, ready to be used. For now, it can generate all kind of visions in the game :
  • Zones
  • Regions
  • Sectors
  • And the galaxy itself as well
Natural resource repartition is still fixed but some random will show up later. This will make the exploration more interesting for the player : will i find an awesome gold mine of just another junk world?


If you're discovering this project, let me introduce the concept of "vision" in Alone in Space. First, the game takes place in space. That's huge. And barely impossible to represent in one simple scene. So i decided to cut the gameplay in visions. Each vision is a representation of space at a different zoom level :
Zone < Region < Sector < Galaxy
The galaxy is separated in sectors. Each sector contains regions. Each region contains zones. That's like russian dolls. Each vision gives different possibilities, according to the zoom level :
  • In Zone vision, you will build structures, harvest natural resources, create advanced components
  • In Region vision, you will explore and colonize new Zones
  • In Sector vision, you will explore planets, asteroïds (represented by Regions)...
  • In the Galaxy vision, you will explore deep space, find new sectors, worm holes, black holes...
Now that "containers" can be generated, i'll be able to go forward and  create the Zone management with :
  • Building structures
  • Harvesting natural resources
  • Creating advanced components
  • Handling catastrophies

Nov 13, 2012

Here we go



The travel begins.

After more than one year of prototyping and gamedesign, the project is now mature enough for the developement to begin.

The first lines of code are already written, the adventure is started. Don't forget to subscribe to the feed to get the lastest fresh news about it!