Month: April 2011

Update 2 out (finally) and great progress on the engine

I should have a movie soon of the Cryo-tanks for your corpses in the new un-named game…

I am working out the fastest content pipelin possible with this level of graphics =).. good stuff!.. and being that all of it is now in blender (a free application to all) anyone could add content in the future =)… (game after next) 😉

IT is really looking good… I am so excited to be able to do actual real time lighting again =)

Preliminary (Just starting out):
http://ryanmitchellgames.wikispaces.com/Game+Overview
http://ryanmitchellgames.wikispaces.com/Game+Objects
http://ryanmitchellgames.wikispaces.com/Character+Items

Graphics!

POLL!

Would a 3 Day sale of 7.99 for collectors upset people I am getting inundated in email/forums for a sale after the free version release….

After creating games for well over ten years.. It has always come down to graphics.. ;).. so next game will be a power house of pretty =).. I hope to be getting some screens up soon.

WIKI FOR NEW GAME OPEN:
NEW GAME WIKI
http://ryanmitchellgames.wikispaces.com/Game+Overview

Please discuss =).. open design =)

-M.E.:
Update 2 for M.E. should be soon then Update 3 starts =)….

Yeap.. as expected…

Free version added no more sales then I had one day last week.. My plan in the future is to be all free and then IAP the rest of the game… It seems to be the only way to go about things.. At least more people got a chance to at least see it in motion ;)…

Off to work the day job!… I am excited more people got to play in the arena.. We can start tweaking that in Update 3 now!..

I expect update 2 to hit today… or tomorrow..

Tonight I put some more time into SouL_EnginE 2.0.. My weekend was robed from me ;p..

Next game coming together in my mind ;)

I want a quicker to make game before I undertake what will be a HUGE game next… (Think MMO / M.E.)

For now I am targeting a Dungeon Keeper / The Syndicate mash up game…

Create a dungeon just like Dungeon Keeper but with the micro management of the monsters adding awesome technology or magic to your monster types. ;)..

I am leaning towards a Rift style story line to excuse the future and magic combined. I bought the rift book as a kid and loved the mash up of the storyline…

-Rifts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifts_(role-playing_game)

A picture of the game would be:
1. You create a laboratory where your in your tanks you start creating your minions.. as you level up you could for example take the corpse and replace his rib cage with a titanium shell. Add a chain gun to his right arm and a sheild to his left. For his brain you could upgrade to a mind that could detect enemies farther and cast spells.

2. Then in another tank you start a corpse that is full magic. Able to heal and shield your minions close to him.

3. In another tank you start a corpse that after a certain amount of time will explode and summon a demon into the realm to do your bidding. Think bad-ass melee

4. As your characters are built you dig out your dungeon giving homes to your minions, food for them to eat, training areas to train your minnions in level. Research areas to increase your abilities, traps, minnion types, store cash, and spells etc.

5. In the mean time the enemy is digging in your direction to attack your positions and steal your wealth. If they destroy your mainframe then you the AI (Super intelligent computer with self awareness) then game over…

6. AT ANY TIME YOU CAN POSSES A CREATURE AND GO INTO FPS using there skills and fighting down the tunnels…

That is what is floating around in the head right now..

Free version = bad idea again

Note to devs… Now twice I regret making a free version….

It gives those that would never like your game a chance to speak negatively everywhere. It hurts your sales. It hurts your ratings. It hurts your mindset. Just a bad idea over all.

My example I have 120 weapons and skills with decent graphics( I had to support the atari of devices ). Yet I am compared to games with really shiny graphics with 5 weapons no armor sets, no diversity, no originality etc…. Tough when you put your life in something. Without the free version you get people that know they like the genre. They know what they are getting. Thus their input is much more valuable…. I am thinking very heavily of pulling the free version. This is a labor of love not a monetary venture ( as if you can make a living in this market ).

If you have friends that might like a free trail you might ask them
To try soon as I and the M.E. Community do not
Deserve the free version riff raff 😉

What do y’all think?

Not to mention a rough day my son broke his arm on a trampoline… 5 hours in the Er later and 1500 dollars later we have a plaster cast and some pictures of the fracture ;(

Baseball season over poor guy ;(

UPDATE 2 WILL INCLUDE

BOTH VERSIONS UPLOADING… I am testing while they do and can pull them if I find anything.. We get a couple day jump this way..

Update 2 done.. just playing now.. I will test more tomorrow.. then ship it between now and friday.. I have not had any crashes.. That does not mean I do not still have some in there.. 😉

Need to recheck skills and armor set bonus..

Update 2 targets:
————————————
– Level items capped to 50 and strange effects fixed.
– FIXED STATS MENU SAYS GOLD INSTEAD OF COINS NOW
– FIXED ERROR IN MATERIALS FULL MESSAGE
– FIXED OPEN AL CRASH
– FIXED AV MEDIA PLAYER CRASH
– FIXED PLAYER SKELETAL SYSTEM CRASH ON UNLOAD
– FIXED: do not destroy items on create fail
– FIXED: When casting spells with less than enough energy remaining drains your energy back to zero. This can be annoying especially with town portal spells.
– FIXED condition desc.
– ADDED : Armor sets adding more of a boost (+25% for a full set!)
– FIXED (WAS ADDING TO REGEN NOT HEALTH) Vitality seems not to do anything looking at the stats. Should be a passive skill to make sense, but even as an active skill it doesn’t change the number of health points I have.
– FIXED (WAS ADDING HELTH NOT REGEN ENERGY) Vigor according to the stats doesn’t change the speed of Mana regeneration either… Should be a passive skill too… Even as an active skill the energy used up by it is actually stalling the regeneration…
-FIXED DESCRIPTION it is percent and you have to use it.. your item will move to the middle of the screen – Single Handed… Is this an active skill? What is it actually doing? At level 4 it states DMG +25 (%??? Because 25 hitpoints would be not that helpful at higher levels…) Next level is stated as DMG +25.
-FIXED Decrease rate of fire for .223 rifles. They are more accurate and fires faster than pistols. This alone almost renders pistols in general inferior (due to rifle’s higher dps and more constant accuracy) unless one finds himself a pistol with substantially higher power.
-FIXED – Block: No indication of changes between current level (3.5) and next level
-FIXED – Seal of Reflect: Not really sure what this is supposed to do… Quote from the app: “Releasing this seal will reflect damage caused by you back to the attacker.” Does that mean that my attack will end up hurting me?
-FIXED In correspondence, increase rate of fire/power for .308 and .410 rifles. They have a much lower dps compared to the .223 rifles. With the previously mentioned dooms eye bug/issue, these rifles are inefficient and time consuming in dealing with monsters.
-FIXED (CONE FIXED, YOU CAN FIRE FAST BY TAPPING) Increased fire rate for chain guns and smaller cone of fire. They feel pretty underwhelming when compared to chain guns in other games, unless the current design is meant to be substantially different from others.

Working on…
-CANNOT REPRODUCE -You missed? – Noogaadlous doesn’t indicate any damage… Has a huge recovery time though… Much longer than Psychic Push

– Heal: Seems to have had a dip after upgrading it to 1.5 and 2.0… And is sometimes not working at all (I had mentioned that before)… Most easily detectable when using it to top off the health bar after a fight… Only consumes mana then…

Arena server offline…

Onto Collision with the new SouL_EnginE tonight in between hunting crash bugs… the New SouL_Engine and the complete rehash will NOT have these issues =).. so much learned last go around.. K.I.S.S. has always been my motto now it goes into overdrive. =) CONTAINMENT!

Update: Arena server back up!.. They had to reboot it.. (crappy hardware)

Until my hosting service gets back with me.. I think it is a billing issue… Not cheap!.. This is where pirates hurt =).. using resources and not paying for them..

I will have it back up soon..

ng

NICE… the reson yall could not connect is my nice little server hosting service seems to have my server down!… argh!

Update 1AM and Free version is done… Just needs testing.. then back to stability…

One nasty bug in there I cannot seem to find.. I need to get out the older devices.. that is where it seems to hit..

Update: fixed another crash bug and found another =)…good stuff..

TIP: SAVE BEFORE WARPING OR CHANGING LEVELS!

Update: I have the free version playable it will still seem to weigh in at 103 megs or so… not to bad with all the crap that could possible be in the window.. I really do believe in this game =).. I am hoping a free version will really convince people it is worth 9 0.99 cent crap games to get on eLONG good game.. we will see however =).. I will update the changes if any after the free versions release.. I will most probably submit it Monday if there are not any issues =).. then 1.5 weeks later hopefully the free version will be live!..Update 2 and phase 3 of th arena will start up soon after I get a good list of issues.. between here and there I will work on the free version and SouL_EnginE 2 as it seems the graphic tricks still mean sales no matter how good the game play is these days =)… You could have 1 hour long graphical bonanza with 3 different models in 10 rooms with 4 guns and Whammo huge sales…even if it is boring after 15 minutes.. =).. interesting -=)..

Off work soon and after a little break back at the wheel =).. Bigger and better things coming =)

I am going to start the free kicker version for people to try out.. I feel the biggest issue now is player base.. we really need more players to make Arena more viable =)..

SO OFF TO THE RACES THIS WEEKEND 😉

I hope to have it done in a few days…

Still waiting on CE..

Update: scattered showers of reports CE is out.. crosses fingers 😉

While we wait I am moving on SouL_EnginE II .. it really is coming along.. tonight I will be finishing the lighting manager. (pretty simple).. then moving back to menu management. The whole system is working off of a scene graph. I love it. A small small sacrifice of speed for amazing abilities and a small code base… worth it… 😉

Under the weather.. or really the absurd pollen levels!

They are maxed out on the chart here… usually I am ok but a sleepless drug induced night later Clarinex / nyquil / qhatever I could get my hands on… after a few hours at the day job I will be collapsing for a bit…… No idea what is taking CE so long to get done.. I will email apple later today…

Plans for Free try it out version…
I was planning on shoe horning Standard Edition into a free version that you exapand but I cannot come up with a fool proof way of not screwing people who already bought it ;/

So the current plan would be to take a week and put out a free version with:
– The first 12 Quests.
– The first 3 Levels. ( including reyem )
The limitations would be items that cost me money in the end:
– NO mailbox
– NO Arena
– NO Online character stats.

It would be free and on each load the first time in town toss the nag screen offering CE or Standard.

Then when you complete the last quests the same thing. Nag screen offering the versions…I think this is the best route as I do think a LARGE audience would really like M.E.

I just need time to do it.. =).. Once update 1 is fully out I will start collecting issues for Update 2 and while I do that I will start the free version ;)..

After much thought I should have had just one version with all IAP to do everything.. But I wanted to experiment ;)…

I wish apple was more efficient…

Update: I am an idiot! ;)..yes I have the texture units needed.. even though opengl ES returns 0 avail… (BUG APPLE!!!!!) on the road again!..

Update: after much exploration I cannot get a 3rd texture unit to fire… very aggravating as this incurs huge costs otherwise..

Update: Well crap it seems my crappy old mac mini cannot support the multiple texture units I need… well the mac book pro will I will just have to test on the phone.. a time suck..

Update: Well that blogger seems to be wrong as always I read…
Found the specs finally…google fail.. 😉
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/3DDrawing/Conceptual/OpenGLES_ProgrammingGuide/OpenGLESPlatforms/OpenGLESPlatforms.html

Update: Aggravating…I just found out that possibly 3GS only supports 2 texture units!.. 3Gs+ is 8+ (Like it should be!) More research needed as the below is my detail shader

So now a decision..
I want the base material shader to be
(diffuse)( Specular_Map) High Res
RGB A
( Normal Map ) ( HeightMap ) Low Res
RGB A
( Color_Shadow_Map )( Open ) Low Res
RGB Open

Of course lots of other shaders in there but this would be the basic material for walls / floors / or anything with high relief. Sadly… 3gs non Plus do not support this…HMMM.. I am reading more on this.. that would be stupid to support opengl2 and increase the speed so much on a 3GS but leave the texture units at a terrible 2.. 😉

Reading at work, waiting on the boss to get off the phone =)..
—————————————————————————-
There is no reason an update should sit for 4 days waiting in line for a review…

Good news. Last night I got the SouL_EnginE 2.0 up and buzzing.. I showed my wife (who could care less about games) A wall I made with all the bells and whistles (Minus the ambient occlusion and shadow maps). She was pretty impressed.. she even took the phone to investigate the flat polygons that looked 3d ;).. fun stuff.. LOVE IT… I so missed the high level graphics..

Back to work.. tonight my 94 year old grand mother is coming for a visit so no party party I will be on the coach with a laptop 😉

My plan on S.E. 2.0 is to finish the Ambient Occlusion and Shadow mapping. Then get the menu system moved over and rehashed. After that I will move to the batch collapsing and texture at-lasing (for shadow/ambient/singular maps).

Really exciting times with the super tech coming out now… Will consoles be able to out last these devices in a decade? Who knows..Pretty powerful stuff!..

Future Plans :)

Update: Well the vote is going for another long term project… but pretty even.. I really want a break for a bit as the last one almost killed me.. So I will take it under advisement.. M.E. 2.0 will come either way 😉

Update: wow just got back from my 7 year olds baseball game were the other team was not only throwing their illegal bats but 2 parents literally were yelling fighting words at our coach after yelling put downs at our 7 year olds… amazing how times have changed… and how well this iPhone4 takes video that can be emailed without having to expend to much energy 😉 I love technology…

Update: Awesome stuff I have a fully functional serialization and scene graph system in just a few nights =).. all types supported and it is fast as lightning -).. Full implementation of OpenGL_ES 2.0… Now on to the shaders! I need to get the light map side of things done for this model I have as a test. =-)

Well after writing all that I think I will make a poll to see what I should do based off interest -)

While I update Mission Europa I am going to make a quick FPS rts type of game that follows Dungeon Keeper. It will be an engine builder while I update SouL_EnginE to Open_GL es 2.0… I could not tackle M.E. 2.0 ____________ (I already have a name)… It wil be made over the next few months while I update M.E. and make the changes people like ;)… No fear the next big game will be a FPRPG.. 😉 Those are my favorite and it will be a graphical beauty with all the bells and whistles out there now that I will be dropping support for anything that does not support OpenGL es 2.0 😉

So by Christmas I should be gearing up for M.E. 2… 😉 it will be more of a fantasy game with guns ;).. Think more of the old Rift universe.. The book based RPG game of old.. LOTS of BIG plans for it.. for now I need a short game that I can put 50/50 into M.E. and upgrading the engine and its tools 😉

Something like the below video… now do not forget you can go first person at anytime and posses characters to play them in first person… This is a MUCH easier game to make 😉


Of course this could all change if M.E. sales get nuts 😉 or I change my mind it is REALLY early in the process of upgrading the engine.. 😉

SouL_EnginE 2.0 going FAST…

I worked on some of the hash table searches I needed last night.. I am converting to a full scene graph approach now. I will have 2 main graphs an optimized and unoptimized. I will then be able to edit the un-optimized and call optimize where it batch collapses into the optimized tree. I still have to create a new texture atlaser .. but that is later after I get her rendering agian =)

Good stuff waiting on Update 1