I'm adding stuff to the game day by day now. So you'll probably see alot of updates as you have recently. I just added some time of day coloring. There will be a sun and moon during the correct times and I haven't added those yet but they will be there when the game is released or maybe in a future video. I'm happy with this video because it's something I need on how I setup the storyline. I hope you enjoy. Go Laugh Yourself!


 

This video shows off some parallax scrolling. It's not perfect but it does show off that it works (I'll adjust when I actually make my levels). It works automatically with each layer (so I don't have to change stuff in xml) that's added in the map. I'm glad to have this implemented in my game because it's something that I thought would be so awesome (with the ideas that I have for Tears). Well, Go Laugh Yourself!


 

Yea. I got a little tired doing not doing anything artistic for Tears, so I went to put in some simple BLOOM! I had to make it a subtle bloom because it would be a little bit too bright. I'm trying to figure out what to do next and will have something to show when it's done. :) (I'll try to make it a regular thing to post with something to show). Go Laugh Yourself!

Yea, I've been busy, and in a good way (well besides school). I've got "seamless" loading for levels working. I haven't put it under a stress test with objects and such (which I will) and right now it's only limited going left and right. I just have to add a little bit of code so I can get vertical stuff working. :) The video starts off with a static camera to show you how there's only at most 3 maps "loaded" at a time, that's why it's zoomed out like that. Then it shows how the user would see it. I'm so happy this is working. I had a little flicker problem but I fixed that with a little movement of the camera. Go Laugh Yourself!

 

I've been working hard on this collision business. I'm using tiles for collisions for levels. I'm going to work on inclines next. I might start working on enemies and A.i. after that so I can get a little gameplay going. Well, until the next update. Go Laugh Yourself!

 

Hey, no game updates as I'm tweaking my collision detection system. Anyways, me and my friend ElementCy are doing a little contest against each other. Both of our games are 2D platformers but his is more of a parody compared to my original story. The contest is Duo Platformer Barrage . The contest doesn't end until Jan 31st, 2010. So we have less than a year to work our butts off to compete in the realm of Community Games. You know who's game to buy. :P More details on this later. Go Laugh Yourself!

Yes, I have released a video of Tears. It's in alpha stage and all of the animations are not finished (especially the jumping animation that's only one frame right now). I just wanted to show something to you guys since you've been reading alot and not seeing that much. The next video should have more in store. Should is the keyword in that sentence. Any feedback (even right now) would be awesome. Go Laugh Yourself

  

Well, it's the end of the week and spring break is basically over for me. It was successful since I did get my basic collision detection working for Tears. The system was just for platforms. I still have to make (or just use and modify someone else's) quadtree to make it effecient since these boxes are going to be everywhere. Anyways, now I'm stuck again for what I need to do for the game. I could either, work on some art for the pause/main menu, work on finishing up the quadtree (which actually won't take that much time so that's really not an option), work on some A.I. or something. I don't know. It's hard keeping yourself motivated but I will come up with something so I can keep this blog up to date and show you guys progress. Well, Go Laugh Yourself.

Hey, once again. Of course I haven't been updating my blog because of school and such. But NOW, I'm on Spring Break (w00t). I haven't worked that much (besides a little collision detection) on Tears that much, coding-wise. I DO have the basic storyline. So I have some direction, which in my case, I need in order to finish things. The past couple of days, I have been figuring out what type of art style I want the game to be. So I think I have it figured out (but it might change when I put gameplay in). I've also been working on some sprites for Sil, with and without "costume". Only the heads though, and some angles. I need to get some inspiration on how I want the parents to look and I need some ideas for some bad guys. I have a little idea on how I want the game to look like when you start out. All that is good but I know soon I need to work on code and get some gameplay up. All of that will happen once I get collision detection working.

Here's a picture of the different styles that I was thinking about. I selected sprite number 2 for now, even though I do like number 5. We'll see how it looks when I start playing around in the game.


Let me know what you think :)

Oh and Go Laugh Yourself!

Happy New Years everybody. I've been sick since Christmas and just got back from out of town. So I haven't been working on Tears as much as I want to but I did get a basis for my tileengine to work. Just gotta work on the collision detection so I can work on some movement and camera stuff. I will say that the game will be using camera movement alot. Well, at least that's the plan, everything could change but I don't want sacrifice the main things I have in my vision for this game. It is my dream game afterall. I'll update with pics when I have something pic-worthy of showing...lol.

Go Laugh Yourself!

Well, classes are over and I'm back at work with Tears. I have alot done since I've had time for the past couple of days. During the semester, I made but didn't finish a little menu system. I finished and polished it so it should be good to go. I have a main screen (my title with it and it's logo for the hell of it) and it's main menu. I have loading and saving a game working. It works perfectly (error checking and everything) it just doesn't look cool (yet). I'll make deletion work later, it shouldn't be difficult. I don't know what to work on next but when it's finished I'll show it. Here's the main screen. I hope you like the final logo and title font. :)

Oh and I almost forgot, Go Laugh Yourself!

Hey guys/girls. Sorry I haven't been updating my blog like I used to. I've been busy with school (gotta get good grades) and spending time with my sexy ass girlfriend and living life. I stopped doing some programming but not all since some of my classes make me program. I added another feature to my editor which still needs some fixes so I haven't rereleased it yet. It's basically having the ability to change the source rectangle by 1 in any direction by the arrows. I also made a little animation for my character in Tears and put him in a game. Finally, I'm working on my game. I'm currently making animations to have something to work with for running, jumping and such. Hopefully I'll have something to show when I get further into development.

-Go Laugh Yourself

Ok. I have two different aliases. One is Sub-Zedox and the other is just Zedox. I've been using Sub-Zedox since Mortal Kombat came out in 1991 (yes, it's derived from Sub-Zero), me and my cousin you used to fight and I randomly started saying that (yea, I'm weird like that). I dropped the "Sub" part of my name a long long time ago and I sometimes still use the "Sub" part. As the years have progressed the number of names using "Zedox" or even "Sub-Zedox" have grown exponentially. I'm not saying that people don't use the same aliases but alot of people copy someone else's name and I guess I'm one of those people that other people decided to copy. I remember not that many years ago that I was the only person through several (and I used all of them) search engines that would pop up. At most it was like 2-3 pages of just links that I made. Now a whole bunch of random people that aren't me are using that name. I just wanted to point out that this has been my alias (along with Sil-Zedox and Sil, but only a couple of years ago but "Sil" seems kinda common anyways) for the longest and I claim that I am the first and only true "Sub-Zedox", "Zedox". So Go Laugh Yourself! (Yes, that's how I'm ending this entry).

Continuing on in this series. Here's how I thought about loading a game.

User selects to load a game

• Check if user that selected to load (the player index) is signed in
  • if the user is not signed in
    • Prompt user sign in (SIGN IN LINE)
      • if user cancels
        • Prompt: "You must be signed in to load game. Are you sure you want to cancel?"
          • if user accepts canceling
            
            • cancel loading the game
          • if user declines
            
            • go to SIGN IN LINE
      • if user accepts
        • set save directory string to profile directory
  • if the user is signed in
    • Check profile for saved game file
      • if save file doesn't exist
        • Prompt: "No save file, start a new game?"
          • if user declines
            • cancel loading the game
          • if user accepts
            • set save directory string to profile directory
            • create a save game file in the directory
            • start a new game
      • if save file does exist
        • check for corrupted file
          • if the file is corrupted
            • Prompt: "Corrupted File"
            • Cancel loading (you could ask to start a new game here as well)
          • if the file is valid
            • load the saved game file
            • start game
              

My next entry will be exiting a game.
Go Laugh Yourself!

I started work on Tears and I did part of the beginning design that I discussed in the previous article, then I got a brain fart on what I wanted to do next. So I started thinking that I need to write on paper some design decisions I need to make now so that I'm not "hacking" my code after the game is finished. Here's a little something I just came up with (I literally just finished writing this in my composition notebook) when starting a new game.

Player chooses a new game or trial game (this is if you want the user to save a trial game):

• Check for signed in gamer profile of the playerindex that selected to start the game.
  • If the playerindex does not have a signed in gamer profile
    • Prompt user to sign in
      • If user cancels
        • Prompt: "Are you sure you don't want to use a profile? You will not be able to save otherwise."
          • If yes
            • Flag saveable boolean value to false
            • Flag sign-in boolean value to false
            • Start game
          • If no
            • Flag sign-in boolean value to true
      • If user accepts
        • Flag sign-in boolean value to true
          
• Check profile for saved game file(s) in all connected save devices
  • If user does not contain saved game file(s)
    • Prompt user to choose storage device (SAVE LINE)
      
      • If user cancels
        • Prompt: "Are you sure you don't want to save?"
        • If yes
          • Flag saveable boolean value to false
          • Start game
        • If no
          • Go to SAVE LINE
      • If user accepts
        • Flag saveable boolean value to true
        • Set savedir string to profile directory
  • If user does contain saved game file(s)
    • Start game
• Create gamefile in profile directory with current settings
• Start game

I hope you understand the logic. If it's confusing in anyway, just let me know and I'll respond as soon as I can. Go Laugh Yourself!

I've been thinking on how I am going to design my game for a long time now and starting writing it down. Instead of doing classes and such, I started with what will happen when the player starts the game. I came up with a basic design and I'm going to share it with you. I had some influence on the Gamefest 2008 advice for making a game.

• User selects trial game
  • Boolean: isTrial is set to true
  • Start two threads
    
    • Start a thread that loads the trial mode data.
    • Start another thread that displays opening screens (i.e. using engine, created by, intro stuff)
  • Display main menu screen
    • Note: If loading thread is not finished loading, display a loading screen (should be different from opening screens)
    • "Kill" loading and screen threads.
      
  • Display menu ("Start Trial", etc...)
    • Use start button or 'A' button to "sign-in" the primary user.
      
    • "Purchase Game" selection should be at the bottom of the menu
      
  • Start trial game
  • End trial game (Time limit or end of trial depending on the design of the trial)
  • Display a "Thank you for trying out <GameName>, for more features, etc..." and show pictures of full game beside it.
• User selects full game
  • Boolean: isTrial is set to false
  • Start two threads
    
    • Start a thread that loads the full game data.
    • Start another thread that displays opening screens (i.e. using engine, created by, intro stuff)
  • Display main menu screen
    • Note: If loading thread is not finished loading, display a loading screen (should be different from opening screens)
    • "Kill" loading and screen threads.
  • Display menu ("Start Game", etc...)
    • Use start button or 'A' button to "sign-in" the primary user. 
  • Start game
  • End game 

That's basically how I have it set up for my game. I use two threads to load and display screens so that when the player enters the game they don't have that much, if any, loading. Go Laugh Yourself!

My Ray Editor is being hosted (kinda) by Ziggyware.com. Go and have fun with it. Don't break it! Both video tutorials are available at the site as well. Enjoy. Go Laugh Yourself!
Ray Editor

Hey Everyone,

Yesterday Microsoft announced Xbox Live Community Games. I'm going to say "XCG" for short. This is exciting news. Now any Creator's Club Member can submit his or her game for millions of user to play, and get paid for it. It will launch this holiday season on Xbox Live. I am already working on Tears and starting to crank out stuff to get my game going. Of course I don't plan on having my game done for a long period of time (I'm aiming for next fall) and this just excellerates my passion for the thing I want to do with the rest of my life. For more information go to XNA.

Update on Ray Editor:

Since I am starting work on my game, I am not forgetting the Ray Editor. I will still try to update it as needed for bugs and stuff. My game will need a level editor so that might be the next step that I am going to take. This will not be a regular Tile Editor since there are a plethora of them out there. I'll keep you posted on it.
Until then...Go Laugh Yourself!

Well, I have submitted my entry to Ziggyware.com's contest. It is my input editor and animation editor. It comes with two samples, one for the windows platform and another for the Zune platform. I've just had trouble uploading two tutorials (that cover how to use each editor) to YouTube (because it was too long) and Soapbox (it cuts off the movie really short) so right now I'm in the process of uploading my movie to my live spaces so you guys can download and watch at your discretion. Sorry they couldn't be online like how I wanted them to be.

The samples are really cool because they combine the use of both animation and input engine but they are still separate, which is what i was going for when designing the engine. The samples DO NOT include any null checking (which could easily be handled) and the video tutorials have a little sync error I couldnt fix but is still viewable. The samples do include a spritesheet I used to create Pipe Fighter so you'll have access to that. Note that the editor is only for use with XNA 3.0 CTP framework. I decided to use this because 3.0 will be coming out soon and I don't want to change code again to use C# 3.0 features and I'm not entering DBP 2.0 contest, so I'll work on making my game with 3.0. Any questions or comments are welcome. Feedback (negative or positive) is definitely welcome. Go Laugh Yourself!

Well, I thought this out a little bit more and I redesigned the input editor once again. This time it's much easier to manage for me and you. It's done in ribbon style format, so it should be easy to follow. Ziggyware's contest deadline has been extended for another two weeks. I was happy at first but now I'm am kinda scared because it gives other people more time to enter and polish up things that are really good (i.e. PixelIce). Well, in order for me to win now, I have to do a better job on my input editor and the examples, and I will try to make and include the Character Animation Editor as well. I already have the engine which I discussed in an earlier blog entry, so for details go there. Well, wish me luck. Oh, and Go Laugh Yourself!