Working on my 2d bone editor...

2D Game Engine Test

Had a fresh start on the engine this vacation.



Created using:
XNA
Farseer Physics
FlatRedBall
Bitmap Font Generator
(..and some debug GFX from Zelda)

Static world objects and debug rendering

Added static objects to the level format (w/animated textures), and a debug rendering component to help debug the physics.

Slight progression

Soulreaper Console

While looking for some sort of console for XNA games the other day, I came across Neoforce Controls. It's an awesome GUI package for XNA, in the alpha stages of development. I downloaded it, and made my own little console ;).

I know.. not a very exciting screenshot

Manimator

I'm currently going through my old projects and sorting out the useful stuff from the broken crap. Found this useful little tool for managing sprite animations (nevermind the name - horrible pun).

Trying out Unity3D

Dawn of War hacking again

I haven't had the time or effort to code much lately - the job's taking up most of my daytime and I'm usually too tired to code when I get home. But I've managed to dedicate a couple of hours the last couple of days to try and make some advancements on Soulreaper. Lately I've been thinking about the possibility of making the game 3d. I've not decided to go with this option though - I'm just checking out the possibilities. As a part of this, I've removed the dust from my old project of hacking the DoW texture, model and animation formats, and added texture preview capabilities to my model viewer.

Models and textures are taken from Dawn of War by Relic Entertainment

Maps, maps, maps

I've been thinking a lot about how the maps should be created in Soulreaper lately. The plan is to have semi-randomly generated levels like in Diablo but there's an added complexity since the world map is also generated randomly. I'm thinking about using a set of predefined occult symbols as the basis for generating world maps. These symbol/map files will contain enough information for the algorithm to generate exciting world maps with a good distribution of quest places. I think the final look of the world map will be similar to the following map from Final Fantasy XI

Soulreaper characters

I've been doing some updating on the character section of the Soulreaper wiki. I'm just starting on a basic stat system, but the flesh of it will have to be worked out when some characters are up and running in the engine.

Soulreaper - the belly's starting to grow

Long time, no write. I've been really busy lately since I've been working both with Soulreaper and my daytime job. It seems we've come a long way with regards to the Soulreaper classes - even though we're far from finished. I started to create a document containing all class related information yesterday and I'll have it up as soon as possible. I'll have to have a look at how easy/difficult it is to put those kinds of tables into one of our wiki pages - I guess there will be some nasty html tables involved.

With respect to graphics, we've decided to go 100% top-down like-Alien Breed, Mageslayer or the early GTA games. It means that we don't have to draw out all the frames for the different orientations and I believe it fits the overal vertical shooter theme.

Here are some examples of games with a top-down view:

Alien Breed (1 & 2)

Mageslayer

Here's an example by Niklas Jansson of how good top-down can look - now if only he'd work with us on Soulreaper!

Zelda

I've got to say that I really enjoy playing Zelda! And I'm not talking about the newer games, since I haven't yet had the chance to play them, but I'm talking about the good old sprite based Zeldas. I'm currently playing "The Minish Cap" (not that old but retro anyway) which is a beatiful upgrade of the Zelda 3 look and feel, even though they could have added a couple of hours work on the story. But that's not why I'm playing zelda. It's because of the simple arcade style combined with the terrain/item puzzles. I like them so much that I suspect I'll add something like it in Soulreaper. I've been thinking about clever ways to temporarily block off areas and Zelda has got a lot of them.

After deciding to go for a simplistic level-up system and simple items as well, I'm suspecting this might be a good way to get the game a bit more interesting. Certain areas of each level might be locked so coming back later will reward you. Perhaps you'll get an item or even a sub quest. Depending on how complicated the level generation algorithm is going to be, these sub quests could either be locked to that level or they could contain different parts in different levels. It's of course important to make sure the level generator doesn't cause a deadlock situation where you need A to get to B, but you need B to get to A.

In Zelda you either get items or upgrades to get to new areas. I'm expecting upgrades might be the best way to handle this in Soulreaper because of the simple item system. You could for instance get new skills by being trained by a mentor, helping a demon or perhaps sucking the soul from a seraph.

Members of the Soulreaper team

After the previous post about Soulreaper, a member of the team got a bit offended since he wasn't mentioned, so here's a full blog entry just for him ;). The way things are organized now, we're basically three people active on the team: Michael, Me and Niklas - two coders and one muse. He's up for nerdy game discussions whenever he's online and he has already brought a lot of fresh ideas to this projects, so a big up for him ;)

Soulreaper

As some of you might have noticed, I've put up a project section in the menu. I'm planning to put links to all my current projects there - at least those who have got some information online.

The first project I've put up is Soulreaper - an arcade rpg in progress. We're currently two programmers, one story/quest designer and a musician on the team. I'm planning on being a bit more structured with this project than earlier ones so we've set up a wiki, bug tracking system and a source repository. There's not that much information in the wiki yet, but I'll add a bit whenever I can.