Working title: The Clarion Project

edited November 2010 in Projects - Tools
After ten weeks, I am ready to announce my work in progress. This is a very ambitious project utilising orx.

It is a remake of one of the lesser known action/adventure games from 1986 on the Commodore 64, N.E.X.U.S.

Your player must use elevators to get from floor to floor locating parts to underworld secrets which have to be send back to your HQ via computer terminal. If you are found out, you will be stopped. But you have friends on the inside who will assist you.

Current features:

* Walking / running / activating
* Working elevators
* Menuing System
* Map System with background / foreground objects.
* Map indicator System
* Rooms

I have a graphic artist, and one of the music tracks is done (an existing remix of the original). So my small team is growing.

Hoping eventually to have voice artists, beta testers & a game mapper lend their talents.

I'll be using this thread as a kind of 'blog' to publish progress.
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Comments

  • edited November 2010
    This is great, and very exciting, to see such an ambitious project made with orx!

    Do you know under which license/terms you will release it?

    Also, but it's only a personal preference, I like games with no voice acting, especially old school ones. ;)
  • edited November 2010
    Yeah the voices aren't a high priority. May or may not happen.

    In terms on license, it'll most likely be a creative commons license but definitely not GPL (or anything from the FSF for political reasons). :)
  • edited November 2010
    Sounds neat. I'm a big fan of adventure games.
  • edited November 2010
    September Diary

    September 03
    Chose ORX as a development graphics library (good move) and started experimentation.

    September 05
    Ripped all Sprites from the original game as placeholders and laid them out in a PNG grid.

    September 06
    Started cutting up the background tiles.

    September 07
    Continue cutting up Background tiles. Put a player sprite down and make walk left/right animation. Adjustment walking distances based on the current frame.

    September 12
    Work on a method to create and display tiles from an array.

    September 13
    Display animated tile.

    September 14
    Fix problems with all similar tiles animating.

    September 16
    Fixed problem where only the first animation would play on a tile.

    September 17
    Built in run left and right animations.

    September 18
    Fix problems with animation graph and run animations not returning to idle.

    September 19
    Redraw level when player walks right or left to the next screen portion.

    September 20
    Detect when the player is over an elevator tile.

    September 21
    Detect what tile position and map position player is on. Created new clock to calculate when the player has stopped moving for more than a second.

    September 22
    Move up and down levels when pushing up or down over an elevator (no animations or waiting yet)

    September 23
    Position right or left when player stops

    September 25
    Created placeholder elevator animations and hookups. Created a timer call back for an elevator. Only works for one elevator.

    September 27
    Alpha'ed the elevator door anims.

    September 28
    Educating myself on vectors, and organising some of the source into separate headers and files.

    September 30
    Built in press elevator c++ vector and custom object required for multiple elevators. Created enter and exit elevator animations for the player and fixed some elevator issues. Multiple doors open and close on a timer. Player animated to enter door and wait.

    clarion_nexus_september.png
  • edited November 2010
    October Diary

    October 01
    Changed tile graphics to have alpha floors.

    October 03
    Created basic floor carpet tiles in 8 different shades.
    Created floor colour map as an array.

    October 04
    Paint floors first then tiles.
    Resolved layering issues.

    October 05
    Can now press multiple elevators without freaking out the game.

    October 07
    Created Map Panel so that user can locate him/herself in the building.

    October 09
    Created Elevator Panel so that the user can interact with the elevator and select floors.

    October 11
    Map Panel hide/reveal on press up/release, but not on elevators.

    October 13
    Player exit elevator animations.

    October 15
    Created elevator panel interface.

    October 17
    Player can now travel via elevator to different floors via the interface.

    October 19
    Brought in an old bitmap font I created from my Amiga days.

    October 21
    Coded text into the panel and update text on panel interface.

    October 23
    Created flashing map indicator dot which updates on player position throughout the map.

    October 25
    Create live arrow control graphics and neutral control graphics for panels.

    October 27
    Coded classes for panel text objects and arrow objects for constructing a custom panel.

    October 29
    Static elevator is removed in favour of dynamic panel system, using panel text, and control objects.

    clarion_nexus_october.png
  • edited November 2010
    November Diary

    November 01
    Converted the plugin project into a standalone .exe project.

    November 05
    Switched to an Custom Event for updating the running animations instead of a callback for smoother playback. (To do for the others).

    November 07
    Created the concept of Rooms. Built an array to support room data and index to the main map.

    November 08
    Created validation routines to check room data against map data to ensure no errors when building maps. Cuts down on the need for testing each room.

    November 09
    Build door animations, from the original placeholder graphics in the old game.

    November 10
    Linked animations in.

    November 12
    Player can now enter a room. Door opens, the corridor clears and the room is painted.

    clarion_nexus_november12.png
  • edited November 2010
    November 13
    Player can now leave a room and continue in the corridor.

    November 14
    Door now closes and player is left outside the door.

    November 15
    Created more placeholder background tiles and changed to map to include the underground floor. Altered the map tiler routine to allow foreground overlay objects like poles, support columns, walls, trellises, etc. Cut up some foreground objects for display.

    November 16
    Started objectifying the main player into a character class to be used as both a player and an enemy. Requires moving a lot of existing main.cpp code into its own class.

    clarion_nexus_november15.png
  • edited November 2010
    thanks for sharing your development experience, Hope your project would be nice, go along with orx.
  • edited November 2010
    Most certainly my pleasure! It helps me keep track my "blogging" the process here.

    I am so committed to finishing this project. I can't wait to get some real graphics in there too to get rid of the old look. Some test graphics are being prototyped at the moment so I am looking forward to seeing those.
  • edited November 2010
    I'm really looking forward this graphical update.
    You should probably post about the game when you're done on forums such as retro remakes. I'm sure a lot of people would be very happy, like me, to be able to play that game.
  • edited November 2010
    November 17 - 28
    Massive effort to re-organise all player code into a re-useable class. Reconstruct all code to work around a player instance of that class. A whole stack of bugs discovered as a result, timing issues, behavioural sequence problems. All corrected.

    November 29
    Create new instances of a character (enemy agents) and have their positions properly update on screen in reference to actions by the player: ie, when the player moves and the screen is updated, the agents should update into position. TODO: Make the virtual X position (realtime offscreen position) function correctly.

    So although there is not much different to see, the code base underneath is now more properly organised and re-usable. clarion_nexus_november29.png
  • edited December 2010
    December Diary

    December 01
    Onscreen characters now have a virtual X position(independent of the on screen coordinates) that keeps tracks of the real position of each element and are shifted in proportion to the players position.

    December 04
    Enemies now position on their own levels only. They are hidden from the screen when the player is on a level that they are not.

    December 06
    Enemies now are hidden when the player enters a room.

    December 07
    Retooling the menu system to be more flexible and easier to work with.

    December 08
    Created the score panel. Created a score object class (similar to a textbox) to populate onto the score panel.

    December 10
    Finished the function menu system. All functions now map to methods ready to be populated.

    December 12
    Finished initial Player preview panel (to show actions available to the player) & Information Panel (which gives information to the player regard the room contents or notifies if an elevator is coming).

    December 13
    Blocking tile system created that will stop the player moving into illegal areas. This replaces the old IsAtEnd() or IsAtStart() as blocking can occur anywhere along a corridor or level.

    TODO: Finish remaining character anims and movements.

    clarion_nexus_december14.png
  • edited December 2010
    Coming along quite nicely!
  • edited December 2010
    sausage wrote:
    December Diary
    December 01
    Onscreen characters now have a virtual X position(independent of the on screen coordinates) that keeps tracks of the real position of each element and are shifted in proportion to the players position.

    I'm not exactly sure what that means. ^^ Is it something similar to what the camera would do?

    Thanks for the log, it's interesting to see the every day progress. Can we hope for some video or demo for christmas? :D
  • edited December 2010
    Sorry, my scrawling isn't always the clearest. Each character can walk off the screen and continue to wander around. I suppose a little like the camera but each character needs his own virtual X position.

    The system is working pretty well in this regard. It dawned on me I probably over engineered the whole thing and could have done it differently. But it's doing the job fine.

    A video. Actually yes, I should do this because screen shots are fine but don't show the movement or feel.
  • edited December 2010
    December 14
    Fixed a bug in the blocking tiles where a player could often get stuck on one.

    December 15
    Working on Flying kick placeholder graphics. Separate some items from the configs into new config files. Items were getting to cluttered and hard to find. Blocking tiles now working inside the rooms.

    December 17
    Started Flying kick animation but I'm having trouble working it into the graph. I'm going to have to do an online animation test to see what is going wrong.

    December 20
    Fixed enemies not turning around on a blocking tile.

    December 21
    Ok folks, as promised, finally created a video to show the action. Merry Christmas and enjoy!

  • edited December 2010
    Wow, love it! The pixel perfect moves are awesome. :woohoo:

    Looks like things are evolving pretty well. Thanks a lot for that "dedicated" video! B)

    And merry xmas to you too!
  • edited January 2011
    Christmas holidays were a whitewash of jobs around the house and exhaustion at night. I did manage a little work though.

    December 27
    Got flying kick animations working. Re-coded certain sections to accommodate new animations coming in. Flying kicks operate in both directions. The flying kick animation was a barrier and fixing this opens up being able to implement all the remaining movements without experiencing the same bugs again.

    December 30
    Started initial work on the rumours / puzzle system. Designing a flexible class to suit that manipulates text strings in order for the player to put the fragmented pieces back together again.

    clarion_nexus_december30.png

    Progress has of course moved beyond this, so another update in a few days.
  • edited January 2011
    January 2011 Diary

    January 02
    Rumours class continued. All rumours pack into a c++ vector for easy random access.

    January 04
    Rumours class continues. Puzzles can be now logically broken down into any number of pieces, unlike the original game which provided 2, 3 or 4 pieces for each rumour. This allows for crazy 8+ piece puzzles though may not be utilised. Shifting puzzle piece right routine complete.

    January 07
    Fidding with resolution settings on my fonts and GUI objects. Screwed things up and realised I was wasting time. Spent more time getting things back to where they were. Improved the character font sizing and scale, though doesn't look as nice as before. Needs more tweaking.

    January 09
    Displaying problems in the rumour puzzle system. Changed how rumour pieces are stored, how they are scrambled and how they are printed to the screen. ScoreTextPanelObject changed to accommodate usage in the rumour editing panel. Got the rumours displaying nicely in the panel and the user can now shift pieces left and right to try and de-code them.

    Working on colour highlighing for a rumour line. Popped a tutorial for this in the wiki.

    January 11
    Hooked up rumour editing to keys. Can now select rumour lines and edit them to try and solve the puzzle. Panel lights up green when the puzzle is solved. Player can now enter a room and push up against an editing terminal to edit the rumours. Created a shifting panel to allow user to select which rumour to edit.

    January 12
    Font improved. Changed the score GUI control object to nominate the distance between the score part and the text part (to be a more flexible control). Shift Left/Right panel created for the Rumour system. "Select Rumour" panel created as well. All hooked up to the keyboard control. Rumour editing system is now complete and all working perfectly.

    January 13
    Met with my graphics designer and discussed a design strategy, and elements for inspiration. Also met with my in-game music composer and previewed a fragment. Sounding really great, and this is nicely on track.

    Scrambling routine for the rumours is complete. All rumours are scrambled on startup, never the same each time a game is started.

    clarion_nexus_january13_2011A.png
    A. Standing next to the Rumour Editing Terminal. Press up to use.
  • edited January 2011
    clarion_nexus_january13_2011B.png
    B. Choosing a rumour to edit.
  • edited January 2011
    clarion_nexus_january13_2011C.png
    C. Pieces of the puzzle have been shifted left and right, and the rumour is solved.
  • edited January 2011
    It's coming along nicely! Congrats!

    I'm looking forward the new graphic design too. I wonder what the new style will be. :D
  • edited January 2011
    January 15
    Moved the test map around a little to have 8 doors side by side for testing. Built door indexes into the rumours system to tie a room to each rumour piece and assigned pieces to the rooms.

    January 17
    Fixed room lookups and some small bugs. Added furniture searching so that the player can now go and look for pieces to the rumours and start assembling them in a room with a terminal. Information panel shows the player if a piece has been located or not.

    Milestone 2 reached!

    January 19
    Fixed some problems with uninitialised variables causing me grief outside of the development environment.

    First character photo shoot was done today. A quick shoot and the pose is perfect. Needs just to have the background edited and the first one will be ready. Though this part won't be coded till much later.

    January 24
    Resumed work on the remaining character animations and movements like backflips, jumps, punches, sliding. Although I appear to have lost some of this work when I failed to backup the work directory before reimaging the PC. I may have a recent folder somewhere, although if lost, I can redo quickly enough.

    Sorry nothing visual for this end of month. I am expecting some background graphics soon, so perhaps a new shot is not far away.
  • edited January 2011
    sausage wrote:
    January 24
    Resumed work on the remaining character animations and movements like backflips, jumps, punches, sliding. Although I appear to have lost some of this work when I failed to backup the work directory before reimaging the PC. I may have a recent folder somewhere, although if lost, I can redo quickly enough.

    You might want to create a svn/hg/git repository online. Some sites, such as Assembla, offer private hosting for free.
  • edited February 2011
    February Diary

    February 02
    Development stopped while I got the machine back to normal. All work backed up.

    February 03
    Received a few seconds of two of the in-game music pieces from my composer. Sounds great and a nice take on the original.

    February 09
    A long time has past and I have missed many days of development because of my machine. But I am back on the horse now. Started putting the animation cutups for the leap action in.

    February 10
    Problems with the leap animation working properly. Getting re-adjusted to my own code again.

    February 11
    Got the leap animation & action working. Started on the barrel roll action.

    February 12
    Big problems with this action. There are a lot of spewing events, even though it is set up exactly the same as the leap action. I know this problem was fixed in svn. It's time I upgraded perhaps.

    February 13
    Fiddling to avoid using svn. Everything I try just makes the problem different or worse. Downloaded an svn client. Downloaded svn code.

    February 14
    Having compiling problems with orx svn and extern libraries.

    February 15
    Got compiling problems sorted out. Project now builds, but the custom events no longer work at all

    February 16
    On the train from Canberra to Sydney for three and a half hours. Found the changelog and converted my custom event code as per new instructions and all is working again!

    Well nothing visually interesting this time again. Sorry about that. I feel like I am caught in a rut. Perhaps this month, more exciting parts will be added. At this moment, it's all about fleshing things out.
  • edited February 2011
    Sorry about the difficulty with events. Actually that part will probably change again very soon as I'm going to add separate channel support in the anim module along with skeletal (bone) animation. As I'm waiting for an update of the Android port, this might even occur before the 1.3 release candidate.
  • edited February 2011
    It's really all fine... I knew my fix was put in place but I didn't have the confidence at the time to muck about with SVN. Sometimes it's good to be a little forced into new things. Now that I can happily get new versions down, it's not much of a problem. Developing the other player actions has seen a lot less problems for me since.

    Any improvements can only be a good thing!
  • edited February 2011
    I'm glad to see it's working for you and that getting the SVN versions is not too much of a hassle. Looking forward new screenshots, by the way. ;)
  • edited March 2011
    February 18
    On the train from Sydney to Canberra. Fixed the barrel roll. Started and finished crouching. Started and finished the backflip. Started and finished the run and slide action. Very productive train trip.

    February 23
    Working on fixing a bug where a player can leave a room or elevator and get stuck running into a wall. But if the player stops for a brief moment, he won't get stuck. Odd. Having trouble working it out.

    That's it this month. Very scrappy. No HD graphics. Hopefully can tackle that issue in March.

    clarion_nexus_february2011_14.png
  • edited March 2011
    March 2011 Diary

    March 01
    Well, like a man with a camel, I finally got over my hump. Playing around with toon shading in blender today to see how the whole 3d to 2d effect would work. it's a good look. Also started recruiting for a character artist.

    March 02
    Working on the "stuck in the wall" bug. Still.

    March 03
    Stuck in the wall worked out. It was my coordinate system going out of sync. Sloppy code. Fixed sliding while running. Would only allow sliding while walking, but now you can do either.

    March 04
    Converted my character class to take a c++ vector and pack guards and enemies into the vector.

    March 06
    Got the enemies animated again from within the vector.

    March 07
    Fixed an issue where orx would not access the latest information from a class that encapsulates an orxObject. Turned out I was building a vector of objects, not of pointers. Thought I had it right. Once fixed, I added 20 dynamic characters into the game, all walking and running around. Built a sprite sheet to recruit a modeller.

    March 08
    Configured up the "Punched Out" animation and links. Hooked animation into the game. A little rough but working.

    March 09
    Player getting nicely knocked over. Fixed "Punched Out" quirks. Player just needs to lose control in the state. And needs to get back up again.

    March 14
    Working on getting the door to close behind you if you decide not to enter it.

    March 15
    Doors working fine when you decide not to enter. Created a nicer carpet texture to replace the old horrid one. Started working on replacing the elevator tile using Blender. Set up the blend file and started mucking around.

    March 16
    Finished making a modern version of the elevator tile, and with 10 frames rather than 5. Edited it into the ini file and was totally wrapped to see it in the game. Elevator opening and closing is silky smooth. Edited up a video with some old music sketches and posted to Vimeo.

    elevators_old_and_new.png
    Old and new elevators. This is a test and will be improved, but makes a nice start to replacing all the tile assets with modern equivalents.
  • edited March 2011
  • edited March 2011
    A screenshot *and* a video, we're spoiled!

    It's coming alone nicely. Can't wait to see more. :)
  • edited March 2011
    March 17
    Started work on modeling a replacement for the opening/closing door.

    March 18
    In one of my character artist recruitment forum posts, someone mentioned that a 3d render of character sprites so small may not look so good. I ended up downloading a free rigged male character, posed him over a sprite and toon rendered it.

    Finally, I scaled it down using all three target resolutions. It looked ok, pretty happy with that. I run the recruitment drive for another month maybe, and then I guess I'll end up doing the graphics myself (groan).

    March 20
    Got a rough working collision system going and can now do flying kicks to a guard to knock them over. Very satisfying indeed.

    March 21
    Finished an HD version of the door. Added to the config and built into the game. Interestingly, I had an openGL error because my opening door animation bitmap was 2560 x 192. So I had to split the frames onto two lines. I forgot you need to carefully take into account bitmap sizes that become textured objects. Just a tip that I'd forgotten.

    Worked a little on the collision, fixing a bug that would only allow guards on the first level to be attacked.

    March 22
    Put the get up animation in place. Built a delay system so that actions set for a character do not have to fire straight away. This is good for when the character is punched out and lying on the ground. He can have a delay of 5 seconds and flagged to get up, so he won't try and get up for 5 seconds.

    March 23
    Tightened up all the animations that were outstanding. Noticed that the walking and running animations were no longer rock solid. Not sure why that happened, but I adjust all the pixel figures, and our guy plants his feet nice and firmly on the floor again.

    March 24
    Started on enemy AI. Created a guarding "mood" so that all guards turn to face you if you enter their screen space.

    March 25
    Zoned out on youtube doing refresher courses on character modeling :)

    March 26
    Created a "curious" guard mood. The guards will start to follow if you behave strangely nearby them. Guards are now able to "see" you at a certain range. Though the moods and general AI is going to be a little complicated so I'll have to make a small handler for it all to keep everything organised and clean.

    clarion_nexus_march2011_28.png
    Image showing the new door & elevator graphics, and new carpet. Also the collision and ability to slide tackle opponents to the ground!

    That's it for this month. It has been very productive. Next month I hope to fully complete all the AI, sound, and graphical interface.
  • edited April 2011
    April 2011 Diary

    April 01 - 18
    This month I have put the coding aside to focus on the character animation. Finding an artist turned out to be a little more difficult than I anticipated and by the time I worked out what I wanted, it was going to be easier to work on it myself.

    Parts developed over the month, head design, main body and vest, belt, hair, boots. This is the character in progress:

    3dchar_in_progress.png

    Trying not to put too much detail in as most will be lost when turning on toon shading, switching to 2D and scaling down. But it's an ok base. Needs a bit more work.

    I also put out a video showing where things were left off at the end of March, demonstrating collision detection, the new door tile, and simple AI:

  • edited May 2011
    April 19 - 30
    Base character design finished. Second version that has been scaled to be proportionally incorrect to fit the shape of the original sprites.

    Posing the character is almost ready to start. Replacement sprites should be ready shortly and then development can continue.
  • edited May 2011
    May 2011 Diary

    May 04
    Posing has started. Posing over the top of the original character sprites as a way of rotoscoping and keeping things nice and accurate.

    May 06
    Created first HD versions of the walking sprites and placed them into the game. He walks like he has wet himself or has a limp. And the overall look of them, while at first was great to see something new, didn't look right. Not true replacements.

    May 07
    Adjusted the model, fattening the head and limbs a little. Fixing the hair and head. Tighened up the toon shading a little. Created first HD versions of the running sprites and placed them into the game. Running is also not sufficient. Something is quite out.

    May 08
    Spent the evening reworking the source walk and run animation actions in Blender. They are animating much better there now. Packed the walk animations up and brought into orx. Better, but he still appears to limp. Overall, the look of the character itself has much improved, closer to the original.

    May 09
    Working on guard moods. Specifically working on guards becoming curious and starting to follow the player.

    May 10
    Curious guards now following the player, and stopping at a distance when the player stops. Basically keeping their distance to observe the player.

    May 11
    Added sun glasses to the player's character in Blender.

    May 12
    Guard "curious" mood logic is complete. Follows nicely if you stop nearby and will give chase if falling too far behind the player.

    Took another close look at the walk animation in Blender. There is a slight limp there when looking closely. More obvious in the game. Will fix. Noticed needed improvements for the running as well. Seems like I am obsessing over these two animations a lot but they do need to be perfect. They're the ones seen 98% of the time. Other animations don't need to be as strictly controlled.
    little_hi.png
  • edited May 2011
    -- Project paused --

    Something was going to happen eventually. Project has to be temporarily paused while I search for a new job. Hopefully resuming soon.
  • edited May 2011
    :(

    Best of luck for your job search!
  • edited June 2011
    Situation resolved! Work will resume soon.

    nexus_happy.png
  • edited June 2011
    Congrats! =)
  • edited August 2011
    May 18
    Lot of reworking on the walk animation. Very close.

    May 19
    Developed a Gimp Script to help with the laborious task of spite cut up positions and sizes from image to config file. Took a lot longer than I thought. Script-Fu can do a lot of things, sure, but it's a language for savages.

    May 20
    Finished work on the walk animation. Very pleased with it. Time to move to the running animation and then get all the rest in.

    May 21
    Started mapping enemy AI when aggressive.

    May 22
    Aggressive AI continues.
  • edited August 2011
    June 2011 Diary

    Lost job
    Got job

    July 2011 Diary

    July 01 - 19
    Needed time to settle in and got side tracked on my e-commerce website that needed urgent migration.

    July 20 - 27
    Resumed mapping of aggressive AI

    July 28
    Flow diagram of the entire AI is complete. Next step is to get acquainted with the code again and build the smarts back in.

    July 29
    Spent an evening dining with my old code, doing some cleanup and planning the best way to build in some sophisticated AI. Started a new class for processing enemy behaviour.

    nexus_enemy_ai.png

    Above is a flow for the behaviour of the guards when they become aggressive. While not the most thrilling thing to show as part of the diary, but it does represent a lot of time spent. I have numerous drawings and sketches of the flow on scraps of paper and napkins.

    Now to get on with the actual code...
  • edited August 2011
    Nice to see that it's progressing steadily!

    Isn't there a typo in your diag as both the green and red nodes at depth 1 have the same condition?

    That reminds me that orx had a FSM module at some point but I removed it as I didn't write it and couldn't find the time to debug/maintain it. Maybe it'd be interesting to bring it back and see if I can have it data driven via config?
  • edited August 2011
    Yes there is bug there. I only noticed it just after I posted it. I'll have to correct that as it needs an extra condition. But work is progressing nicely and it's very nice to be back on the project.

    I ended up deciding that I am really unhappy with the newer high res / high framerate walk and run animations. My fault was basing them off the old ones which I thought was a good idea at the time. But in reality, it brings out flaws which are hidden at low frame rates.

    My wife bought a treadmill three weeks ago and that will come in very handy for this project (oddly). Details in the next diary.
  • edited August 2011
    August 2011 Diary

    August 01
    Built a small complex command system where a character can be issued a series of instructions based on particular situations.

    August 02
    Fixing Rolling attack

    August 03
    Fixing Rolling attack

    August 06
    Continuing with complex commands. Guards can roll towards the player and flying kick when in attack range. Also, they can choose to run towards the player and kick when in range.

    August 08
    Guards can now creep towards the player to try and get close enough for an attack.

    August 09
    Tried some walk and run tests on the treadmill. Ran some electrical tape strips on the running platform to mark 1 metre distances. Pretty rough result using a webcam at 10FPS. :P I really need to get my 3CCD Panasonic camera repaired. Maybe I'll do that and try again.

    August 10
    Continued on the logic for the attacking guards. They can now pause for a random amount of time to consider their next move.

    August 13
    Guards can now perform additional types of attacks after they miss at close combat range.

    Well, interestingly enough, I have arrived at my initial deadline, my birthday. I was supposed to have finished the project by today. Clearly however, that hasn't happened due to losing a couple of months. The two authors of the original wrote their game in seven months. Unfortunately I haven't made it in a casual (and broken) 11 months. We're talking apples and oranges I know but it would have been good to be done by now. It'll be nice to eventually get a game out, but the exercise is to really get disciplined in c++ via orx.

    August 16
    Re-factored code for Flying Kicks and Barrel Rolls to remove unnecessary duplicated routines for left and right. Makes the code base less clouded and more simple going forward.

    August 17
    Re-factored code for Standing Flips, Leaps, Falling Over & Getting Back Up. Also prepped reference animations for forward and backward flips.

    August 18
    Put in animations and actions for forward and back flipping in both directions.

    August 19
    Added in the keyboard action for forward and rear flipping. Noticed that due to this particular pair of moves, a special delay needed to be added in order to allow secondary key presses so that diagonal actions could be selected. Works pretty well and made many extra improvements to the keyboard controls.

    August 20
    Fixed various bugs in the player control and guard logic. Added the ability for the guard to reconsider his move when in attack range, then run back to rethink an attack.

    August 21
    Fixed more minor guard logic as a result of old controller code.

    August 22
    Guard attacks can now knock down the player via collisions. Punching animation & action has been added. The player can punch out the guards.

    August 23
    Guards can now punch out the player. Aggressive mode also working in both directions. Continued work on posing animations.

    August 24
    Reworked the character model in Blender and set the project up for multiple rotoscope animations. Rotoscoped the flying kick and generated HD frames for it. Got a new flying kick loaded into the game. Needs tweaking but I was pretty tired tonight so, that was enough for the night.

    August 29
    Got my video camera back from the repairers today (YAY!) and it's working perfectly. So I set it up and recorded another run on the treadmill. A better job this time and made sure I didn't run like a chicken like last time.

    Extracted frames out for later rotoscoping. Rotoscoped the barrel roll animation, scaled and loaded into the game. Pretty swish.

    August 30
    Big effort on graphics this evening. Rotoscoped and placed in the game HD versions of the leap, falling over, and the slide. Started on the HD version of the background tiles (apart from animated ones like the elevator & doors).

    Resulting texture file is too large for orx, so that needs re-arranging. It didn't make it into the game files this month.

    August 31
    Rotoscoped the new run animation from the treadmill footage. You can see the process in the screenshot below. You can also see me in my stripey pajamas. Eh... whatever works. I put chalk marks on the treadmill to help with distance and height. By utilising the wonderful Orx guides plugin (shameless plug), I managed to get this into the game effortlessly and doesn't look too bad. Certainly the best running animation so far.

    That's it for this month.

    clarion_nexus_september2011.png
  • edited August 2011
    clarion_nexus_september2011_02.png
    Screenshot showing new sprites.
  • edited August 2011
    rotoscoped_new_run.png
    Rotoscope in progress for the treadmill footage.
  • edited September 2011
    Looking forward to seeing it in movement! Also, happy birthday, a few weeks late! :)

    You should consider adding an unlockable striped pajama outfit as bonus. :D
  • edited October 2011
    September 2011 Diary

    September 01
    Found a bug in the elevator routine. The flying kick control was firing accidently which meant the player was trapped forever in the elevator. Fixed. Continued work on the HD background tiles. They are going to be reconstructed as to allow multi-layer tiles so that elevators, doors and other features can overlay different coloured walls. Which means I no longer require one tile per colour. That would be crazy.

    September 04
    Started work on the LCD panel used by Nexus members and guards to communicate with the player or for reading instructions.

    September 05
    Built LCD class and orx objects.

    September 06
    Happy birthday to The Clarion Project! This time last year I downloaded orx to play around with, and also starting doing screen grabs and mockups. There won't be a second birthday. :)

    Built message scrolling into the LCD. Any number of messages can be added, scrolled from any source. Just needs a nice graphic skin and this module is complete.

    September 08
    Made the HD version of the player pressing an elevator button. But I can't update its position via a custom event like all the other animations. Weird. I'll look into it tomorrow.

    September 11
    Still stuck trying to fix the custom event problem. It has me baffled.

    September 12
    Fixed the custom event problem. I think it was a naming thing but I fixed numerous bugs along the way. Put remaining HD player graphics in.

    September 14
    Worked on the player pulling out a stun rifle. Converted the animation frames and imported in. The Orx config is fussing when the animation completes. It is supposed to go into a different idle loop, but freaks out instead. Dunno. Too tired. Sort it out tomorrow.

    September 15
    As usual, my code was causing the problem. Player kept putting his gun away and taking it out again. Got that sorted and then got the player to put his gun away before he can start walking again (time penalty) and started work on getting the gun to fire. The player now keeps firing over and over. Why? Too tired. Later.

    September 16
    Nice. The player can take our his rifle, fire, and put the rifle away. He can also crouch down while holding the rifle. Couldn't sleep... and as a result the player can now fire multiple bullets left or right while standing or crouching. Still up, and so our player can now shoot down the guards with the stun gun. I think I should probably quit while I'm ahead.

    September 18
    Some work on the new rooftop background graphics tiles.

    September 19
    Worked a lot on the new rooftop tiles. Added the security colour card to the lcd messenger. Still need to make it work with the level colours.

    September 20
    Lots of work this evening on the rooftop tiles and also made a good start on the underground cave background tiles.

    September 21
    Another busy day. Worked through lunch and then put in around 3 hours this evening. A lot of progress of the cave backgrounds. Also fixed a nagging bug where the player would freeze the movement of a guard during an attack. It was driving me nuts. Turned out that I was watching a variable that could be affected externally and isn't meant to be relied upon. Switched to watching the exact animname from the custom events and now everything is perfect. Been a busy day with this, trying to get a lot of effort in to prepare a decent video of the latest work over the last few weeks.

    September 22
    Got the lcd fixed so that you can change the security card colour. Guards can now tell if you have a card that is not right for the current level and will inform you of a warning to leave the area.

    September 24
    Working on the background tiles.

    September 25
    Working on the background tiles.

    September 26
    Re-implemented a part of the level drawing routines to allow multiple layers of tiles in order to use the new system of background tiles I've devised. All working very well and ended up being a lot less hassle than I anticipated. Some graphics need tweaking, but essentially, a lot of new high def backgrounds are in place, and an elevator can be placed on top of any tile now. This means an elevator can be in the cave, be in a wall, or on the roof, and walls can be set any colour (still to be done), independent of the elevator itself.

    The next big news is that I added sound for the first time with the project. Yep, this game has been silent for a year. Just a basic footstep whenever a running character plants a foot down, but it's a start. A busy busy night. Looks like I will have a video to show before the end of the month.

    September 27
    Added more of the new tiles to the game. Also created a couple more new ones and added those as well.

    September 28
    Created the final tiles needed for the end of month video, namely an inside room panel and the rumour editing terminal. Started fixing a bug where your legs stick out in the elevator

    September 29
    Fixed the legs in the elevator bug.

    September 30
    Added some test sounds and fixed a few issues. That's it for the month, I'm knackered. Covered a lot of ground. Hope you guys enjoy the shots. Video should follow in a day or two. Had some issues capturing the sound. Night all.

    nexus_clarion_september01.png
  • edited October 2011
    Firing your stun gun on an attacking guard. nexus_clarion_september02.png
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