July 10, 2007
Defender Mode
Well, it took me a while to update this, I’m sorry. I have been working on the game and in a couple side projects, but also spending time getting our project ready to enter it for incubation at my university. Everything is going well, gladly, and I’m sure it’ll continue this way.
I added a new game mode to Lunar Defender, a homage to a few games that inspired me with it, I’m sure you know what kind of game I’m talking about. It’s the Defender Mode. In this one you have to build towers to keep the aliens from reaching your base. The “skeleton” of the mode already works perfectly, it just needs a lot of balancing right now.
But what about the story mode? Wasn’t I working on that? Yeah, I got most things working, the event system is still incomplete, but it can already do enough to build a lot of stages. I need to work on the AI to be able to implement the rest, and I’m quite lazy to get to it. There is a module already for steering behavior, but I rather just learn how it works and code my own, so I may use this knowledge for future projects.
Lunar Defender itself is done already, most of the things left to do involve only balancing and event coding. That’s great, isn’t it? 😀
Oh, one of the side projects I begun is a very basic game engine for the next game we will be working on. It is easier than I thought it was going to be, so that makes my idea possible. Just stay around to hear more about it.
June 12, 2007
Quick Update
Hey, just to let you all know that the game is still in progress. I have finished the GUI module a while ago, and it’s working perfectly. I also implemented it in the game, made the options menu, and the screens you’ll see between missions.
The team that will work on the game is now set: I have gathered two partners that will work on the game with me and we’ll be starting things officially – with a company and everything. Because of that I have been focusing on our meetings instead of posting here. Soon you’ll have new content though, including game art 🙂
Well here’s a screenshot of the main menu, now with the GUI module:
See you soon!
May 21, 2007
Another Screenshot
I’m back baby!
As always, just click to enlarge. It’s 5 am so I’m heading to bed. Tomorrow I’ll explain all the new things you see above 😛
May 20, 2007
New Screenshot
I have worked on the game tonight more than this whole week. I hope this means I’m getting back to work just like before. What’s new? A larger play area, a construction menu, the AI towers, and the building placement thingy. Here in the screenshot, you can see two towers shooting at a moving enemy while I place the third tower(the red means I can’t place it there because it overlaps the main base).
Like it? 😛
May 11, 2007
Working on the AI
So, I have now started to work on the enemy AI for the game. And well, unfortunately I have almost no experience in AI. Most of my experience are the times I programmed a robot in a program called AI Wars or something like that. You had a small bug and you coded his AI, and put him to fight against other bugs. I really enjoyed it, and I thought I also would enjoy making the AI for the game. But so far it has been only annoying me(less than the editors thankfully 😛 ).
Anyway, I tried to make it so the enemy turned around if he saw an object in front of him, then fix his position to reach the player again. But that didn’t really work as expected, so I thought about pathfinding, but before I implemented it, someone at the blitz community pointed me to something called Steering Behaviours, which will work perfectly for my game. Someone already made a module for BlitzMAX that contains that, but instead of using his module I will make my own with only the things I need. I think this is better than reading his code over and over again to find what I need, since this way I will know the methods and functions because I created and named them.
I wanted to make a video of the working AI, but I think this will take longer than I thought it would. In any case, I will keep you updated 🙂
April 28, 2007
Gameplay Video; Game name defined.
So, we now have a name defined to the game, which of course, it not 100% sure to be the final game, but it will at least be the working title. And since I was annoyed by the editors, I decided to record myself playing and post it on youtube. I edited it a bit, added a soundtrack, and there you go, the game’s first gameplay video: 400 kills. You are more than welcome to record and submit your own, as long as you link back to this blog. In case anyone ever does, send me the link and maybe I’ll post it here.
Lunar Defender gameplay video:
April 27, 2007
Editors = Painful, boring process
Well, unfortunately, the editors still had a few bugs, which I am fixing now before I can implement them on the game. And I have to say, I hate them 🙂 Making a game is(so far) a very fun and interesting process, and very very rewarding. But making the editors is too much troublesome, and almost for nothing. Well, unfortunately, they have to be done, and someone has to do them. If we ever evolve to a game development company, I’ll hire someone to do the darn things. I wanted to say that our next public beta will be up this weekend, but unfortunately I can’t say that for sure anymore. But keep your eyes open because when this is done, I’ll have new media and screenshots for you. We have new sprites and better ones. Yes, even Mando 😛
Lunar Defender Workblog 