were back in the saddle

After many years working on private projects we are back to making games, i have ported my URandom system just today to our latest project and it is working perfectly. I will use this to layout the maps so we can have an endless arena to explore :)

More soon as soon as we have something to demonstrate...

More Death than ever...

Well releasing the game isnt the end of it, we have been secretly updating it over the last few days but more exciting updates are on their way these may change the whole experience for the better.

Some of the things that have been added so far are:
1) Drop gold - you can now collect gold for score (this will be changing soon so dont get used to it ;) )
2) Variable enemies - these monsters slowly get faster and faster so you cant just 'sit there' shooting them forever
3) Moving directly at the player - they used to move more like robotron now they are more 'upto date' in their movement.
4) Death skull - this end of game visage is the brain child of out brilliant (if rather twisted) artist Emm :)

However we arent stopping there we have loads to add to make the game more challenging and fun to play, things like:
1) rotating bullets so it looks even more spectacular.
2) Power ups - these are coming soon once we have them implemented the game will never be the same again
3) Enemy bullets - You thought you would be the only one to shoot, this will keep you moving ;)
4) More high score stuff - this is planned but is a WIP.

More soon...

Progress on our latest project, and Pickford Bros latest..

We are making nice progress on the game and its coming along rather nicely, the whole game itself is slowly coming together really well from what it was. Originally it was going to be something akin to a tetris style game but has since 'mutated' into something much more fast paced and fun to play. I have got around to adding in the Super Fruits these will help the player as they appear and are 'used' once they are set off who knows what will happen but you can guarantee that whatever happens it will be fun :)

Its games like this that make programming worthwhile there are loads of times when coding you look at the project and think where is the end, then there is sometimes when your working on the project and its incredibly fun and exciting seeing each step of the game coming together to the final build. Another great aspect of games is getting emails from people who enjoy the games you create.

I have loads of top secret projects on the go at the moment that will be revealed as they bear fruit, these range from simple experiments to much more complex and elaborate ideas. This is one of the great things about being an indie you can experiment your not writing 'Sims 56' or another fifa you can let your imagination run riot and create whatever world you want to play in after all as the saying goes 'the world is your oyster' and if you design every aspect of it, it certainly is :)

One game that I do play in me spare time (yes I do get a few seconds here and there) is Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint ( http://itunes.apple.com/app/magnetic-billiards-blueprint/id432152950 ) this game is a very easy to play but ludicrously hard to put down game, its free to play and I would heartily recommend it to everyone so why not get on over to the App Store and get the game on your iPhone or iPad :) On the whole the game is a perfect example of a game that simple to play but you will always strive to get a better score on it as its very quick and easy to get into, these days thats quite hard to find in any game. Most I have come across these days you need a phd to get through some of the tutorials then theres the other end of the scale this is one such game :)

More soon...

Its been a while but we still here...

Well LOADS has happened in the last few weeks we have new design tools at our disposal and load of other plans and ideas to implement, one of the games we are working on at the moment is coming together nicely. We have so much on the go at the same time that we been snowed under.

Emm has been playing with ZBrush and load of other 3d and 2d art and art packages, hes learning loads of new techniques each day that will allow us to make games faster and look much better. This single thing alone will benefit not just us but everyone who buys our games, after all people dont want a game that looks ok they want something that looks INCREDIBLE :).

Whilst Emm has been working on his art I have been looking at Leadwerks Engine 2.5, Unity and Unreal Development Kit, all of them are amazing products but some have niggles that I dont feel comfortable with. To cut a long story short we have chosen Unity for its ease of use and ease of importing media into it, we can use png, jpg, tga and bmp textures and a massive variety of model formats too. Leadwerks although a far technically superior product has annoying DDS textures which have to be power of 2 to me this is wasted space in a file (coming from ZX81 days every wasted byte is a waste I used to make games as big as Ultima, Frontier etc that fitted on a 360Kb 5.25" disk), yeah I hear people scream but hard disks are in the terrabytes but why waste bytes if you dont have to? As an example; if I made a game thats 10Mb and has a massive universe for the player to play in and is downloadable even on 56Kb modems (yes I did create one back in the day called SF2000) or I create a massive space epic that wastes the odd space here and there and comes in at 40Mb which would you sooner download? We didnt chose UDK at this time simply as our games wont require its power and the editor is Windows only (not a good selling point when it can release 'OSX' games too?).

So yes we have been very busy and we are still here, loads of things are happening and once we have something concrete to put piccies of we will do :D

More soon...

Adding polish as we go...

Today I have been looking at major sections of the game engine and completing some sections, some of these have been quite fun to complete others have been laborious and taxing. However not to be disheartened I have got loads completed on the game front and it edges closer and closer to completion and release.

Since our last entry I have added the following;
1) CLI - yeah the CLI was removed in favour of a GUI based system for people playing the game on joysticks so everything is to hand but there is now a new 'Hardcore Hacker' mode where the CLI replaces all the GUI elements on the terminal screens and is quite fun to use providing you know what your way around things like MS-DOS or Terminal. I have completed the hacker system for that section now so thats one thing off the list, the only terminal thing to check is GUI downloading of logs then that will be a go (this hasnt been completed as I am waiting to discuss with Emm what each level will be so I can make appropriate log entries for each area).

2) Shadows - now they are cast by walls, aliens, chairs, tables, doors everything and they look amazing. I do really like the new look shadow system and it complements the game perfectly.

3) Extra stuff for player - I have given him another clip as ammo was a bit scarce I will add more ammo as the time goes on along with all the items that are in the game items section ;)

Quite a lot of the stuff is behind the scenes coding stuff, these are simply things you will never ever see that keep the game running smoothly. One major test I do for any game is quite simply I start the game and go into it then leave the computer on for 24 hours. If the game is running stuff after then im happy, this may sound strange to you BUT quite a few games these days crash after a few hours so if our game runs for a whole day then its fine :). If it crashes however I will fix the crash and try again. If the game isnt to my liking I will change something and make it more efficient one such thing was the renderer, it has gone through about five to eight revisions to get to where it is now. The lighting alone has gone through five (mainly thanks to Emm changing it all the time ;) ).

Well onwards and upwards...

More soon...

Tons of stuffs...

We havent posted for a few days as we have been beavering away at getting Leviathan to a much more complete state. We have been hard at work on loads of sections of the game, these are as follows:

1) Main terminals - there was a small glitch in the system this has now been fixed. Its amazing how these things occur but they appear every now and again ;) Im sure glad I found it rather than when it was released.

2) Furniture placement - there was an error in placing the furniture, yup another one. I have now moved the code to another area of the rendering system this should give us a theoretical speed increase of about 10% as one of the rendering loops has been removed.

3) Health terminals - these have been added to the game engine now and can be used by the player (for a price of 10 credits for 1 point of health), they also run out of charge and have to recharge over time the animation for that was added today :)

4) Blood - instead of the old system where it was just removed (looked cheap) the alien blood now fades out and looks more professional. Its little things like that which adds polish to a game.

5) Aliens - these little guys no longer run into walls like depressed lemmings, now they will keep away from them depending on their size, so smaller aliens will get closer to the wall than the bigger ones (or the MUCH bigger ones) :). I have also found time to give them a AI system and speed system so the smaller aliens whizz around the level and the bigger ones are a bit slower. On the AI front the current crop of aliens are just 'foragers' they will look for food, other classes are hunters and some others that will be disclosed at a later date. Hunters are exactly that they will hunt the player or any hostile entity.

6) HUD - I have added Emm's amazing new hud and let me tell you this thing makes the game look soooooo much more professional, we could be talking about a bitmap brothers game given the quality :). I have also moved the minimap to the relevant place on the hud and setup player ones systems so they work correctly. I have yet to do player 2's they are on tomorrows list.

7)Kills - alien kills just net you experience now, for credits you have to search. Searching will also net you ammo which also now runs out so be careful this isnt a blast everything game you have to be tactical.

8)Breakthrough - aliens now can break through the floor, this is made even more perilous when they break through nearby :). I have yet to locate a suitable sound effect to represent this but I am looking for one.

9) Duct fans - they now have a noise all to themselves :), this sets them off perfectly :)

10)Joystick controls on main menu - you can now use joystick on the main menu the main reason for this is portability we can use the control method on other platforms that dont have a mouse for example XBox 360 :D

As you can see we have been very busy with getting the game to a more complete state we still have a way to go but once we get there the game will definitely shine with the best of them.

More soon...

More progress...

Today has been a good day, firstly I have fixed loads of bugs that have happened during the creation of certain systems in the game but I have also added loads to the game. This is as follows;

New data system - now the monsters get loaded from the monster data files. This loads in the graphics, data and specifications of the monster the game then reads in this data into each monster and shows images loaded into the data segment. Basically this means I can change any monster in the game by adjusting the data file :).

Monster loading - now all monster data is in the pak file the system itself extracts the data then uses it to move forwards. This should allow me to actually add monsters into the game by simply adding the line of data to the data file. Right have the monsters now loaded from the data file now all I need to do is make it so the whole spawning system caters for the nice new monsters.

Terminal graphic - this is now in the game engine but doesnt appear in the game as yet this will be soon.

Sound system and image system - no they are all loaded from data files, there is nothing that is internal in the game engine. EVERYTHING is in the data file now so no matter what you do we can adjust the data to create new games.

The end result of this is the game is moving to a more independent approach and pak files will allow modding and downloadable content to be made available at a later date making the games continue well after the first version is complete.

Emm is churning out some stunning graphics which will really make this game shine, once its all come together it should be something really special. I just got to stop Emm from having the game running in the background whilst hes working, he had it going for hours last night just so he could head the background noises its ambient sounds like this that also make a simple game great one thing sadly overlooked in so many games these days.

More soon...

Bug squashing...

Well I have been looking at the code and have managed to squash a number of annoying bugs these are as follows:
1) Player searching of beds sometimes brought up the terminal, this has now been fixed so only active terminals will bring up the terminal system.

2) Broken terminals - you can now turn off the backing effect of the broken terminals as this was seen by my tester to be too annoying and headache inducing. This effect will be changed later on.

3) Searching - now you get health or some ammo at the moment. Later on you will get some other items, I have also added a system that will allow for key in game items to be placed on areas in the game this basically means we can place things like logs and keycards in the game for players to find :). Dont worry special items will be displayed on the game screen for the player to pickup.

I still have loads to do on the game however, things like:
1) Fog of war on minimap - this will be next
Edit:Emm requested this one, and its now been implemented. Now the entire map is blank unless you uncover it as you go.

2) Aliens injuring player - this is also on todays list. Yes gone will be immortality ;)
Edit:Well this is in, it needed some tweaking of the main system because one alien could kill the player in two seconds. We know it would be realistic like that but it was rather difficult when the player gets attacked by up to fifty aliens.

3) Gibs (pronounced - jibs) - this is on todays list. Aliens will explode in a gush of body parts, those who played the old Amiga game Gloom will know what I mean :).

4) Credits - players will find money by searching as well. Credit chips or something like that :D
Edit: This is in now, the player can get credits from searching :)

5) Tick - this little critter will also be in the game by the end of the day
Edit: The tick is now in there as an image file, I just have to add the code in the background to load the little critter in and then that will be comeplete as well. Once the whole thing is in there and the new monster data is loaded the game will be one more step to completion :)

Once all these things are in then I can move onto other areas like artificial intelligence or adding more to the hud. I still need to work on the searching dialog so you see what you actually get for your trouble if anything :).

Edit: I have also fixed some issues that arose from certain aspects of the game for example only player 1 would clear the fog out the way this has now been changed so both players can. There are still two things to sort before I can relax for the day and these will be done soon. I will probably fix other things as I go to make the game much more complete.


Also the entire system has had a major overhaul gone is any code in the game that is game dependent its now all in the pak file. Now when the game starts it locates these files loads them in and it sets up the game this makes it more independent of everything and allows us to expand the system later. Adding other pak files will when complete just be a case of loading them as required moving through the game.

More soon...

Getting more complete...

Well as time passes the game is coming together rather nicely, I still have to add some of the stuff Emm has sent me but we have been working on some of the effects that will be in the game over the past day or so which is good. Still I have found time to get the main menu system almost complete there is still some stuff to add to it but the system now works as required.

Today I have been finalising the player 2 controls so both players can be in the game, there was a rather annoying bug in the system that took ages to trace but that has been fixed now. Also I have been looking at a Chaos Engine style camera so none of the players can go off of the screen, although they still can go off the screen at the moment which will be fixed before the next build goes to Emm it does look quite nice :D. I still also have to sort the offset system so it smooths out more rather than moving around jerkily.

Things I still have to do is add the Tick to the game I still have to work out how this performs in the game, also add in Player 2's AI if you play a one player game. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of my favorite subjects there is nothing better than creating an AI that behaves and acts like a human being, my last published creation Space Combat/WarZone (the game was released as Space Combat although I called it WarZone dont ask I dont have a idea on this either) still has people trying to beat the AI who routinely runs around the levels in groups, using grenades, explosive barrels and other things although I havent programmed them too.

For me coding AI is not boxing them in with ludicrous rules or scripting the hell out of everything its just making them behave using the same rules as the player. For example a player wants to go up a floor to the next level, they would locate a stairway and then make their way to it, all I do for my AI is use pathfinding to locate the nearest stairway and then allow them to follow the path to it. If they see enemy characters on the way they have a choice either attack or continue along the path. Its these little lines of code that make the computer players come alive, because they have the same restrictions you have it gives them a more 'human' feel.

More soon...

Pak success...

Well I have packed up the test data that I wanted to see if I could extract it again and it works. I have managed to locate the files inside the pak file and extract them to a bank so they can be passed to Blitz for whatever we want to be done with them. Its my hope that you can load the sound/image/whatever from a bank so that I can bypass everything in between :).

If not I will sort something to make it work as required :D

After the next tests I want to get everything pak'ed and then move to getting furniture into the game engine so we can search things :)

EDIT:Early tests on the whole system are very promising, they have all worked 100%. On the Leviathan front I am VERY please to say that the game even works perfectly on my netbook and at 30fps :D. On the pak front the system we have in place will allow us to expand our games into more areas it will also allow us to offer DLC if we wanted without having to rewrite the game every time. A BIG bonus of the entire system is I wont have to release a new complete game for every patch I can just release the executable and this would replace the old one :).

More soon...

So much to do, so little time...

We have been hard at work here at Graveyard Dogs, Emm has been churning out graphics, images and stuff like a person possessed whilst I have been tapping away every second I can muster adding more and more to the game engine making the game more and more complete.

We have finally got around to adding the following:
1) The final map generation - this now makes alien breed like maps and can make an infinite number of them :)
2) Gun stuff - we can now hear the gun, its a nice sight to behold and once its all complete we can do much more :D
3) Fog of war - this adds so much to the game engine and makes it much more desperate and sinister :D
4) New player character - this is one of Emm's specials the character looks amazing and suits the game perfectly.
5) Massed aliens - they are everywhere and they attack from every angle :) There is still little changes that need to be sorted here BUT they are coming together.
6) Spawning - the aliens now no longer just stay dead when you kill them the system can spawn them elsewhere so you are never alone.

All in all we have been adding loads of other things under the hood BUT the game is now coming together and once its complete and polished to a fine shine we can get the game out there to the masses :D. Its always good at times like this not to lose focus as to what we are doing and where we are going with a particular game otherwise it will never get complete. Once this game is out there we intend on starting the next one, yes there is no peace for the wicked :).

More soon...

Creating worlds...

Yep we are creating worlds, once byte and one pixel at a time.

I have finally merged the new generation code into the Leviathan engine and walking around the levels is quite 'sinister' the game itself is quite dark and it suits it perfectly. One thing that has come up which I was rather putting off is the wall generator this now has to be coded as the new levels are more 'complete' than the previous ones :).

EDIT:Well I have sorted the torch system 'to a fashion' its not how I want it but it works 90% of the time, I do have code though that I will add in its place that will make the whole system MUCH faster than it originally is now. I have a little refining to do on it but after thats all complete which should be sunday at the latest then I will merge that code with the main game and then move forwards with checking everything and getting the new lighting code in there.

One thing to remember about writing games is snazzy effects look loverly and are brilliant BUT if they cost you rendering frames they arent worth it, for example imagine a brilliantly modelled scene with absolutely pixel perfect graphics but it runs at one frame a second, doesnt make a good game does it. On the other hand look a a simpler scene looks ok good playability but runs at sixty frames a second, BIG difference. Unfortunately loads of games these days seem to have 'ignored' that one and allow lag in places which in my opinion ruins a game.

Well once more unto the breach dear friends...

More soon...

Opening their eyes...

In the immortal words of the Linda in Evil Dead our aliens now can say 'I can seeeee you', our little aliens now have their line of sight algorithm in place meaning if you are in their sight they can see you. This adds to the realism of the game for example some monsters will have a limited field of view this helps as you could sneak around them but others have a full 360 degree field of view making them impossible to sneak up on.

I have also added a system in place where aliens can now exhibit rudimentary intelligence, I want them to be believable in the game when they attack the player this will make the whole game a much more immersive experience.

Myself and Emm have also worked out the different types of creatures you will meet in the game from ship crew to the monsters in there, this adds to the realism and immersion of the game itself after all its much more of a game when you come across someone you actually care for rather than 'its just another pixel'. Its always a good idea to flesh out a back story for these games as well as that will also add to the tension :)

More soon...

Darkness to light...

After a brainstorming session with Emm (we have these when we can find our brains ;) ) we come up with loads of stuff to add even more to the game, one such thing I like is the lighting system. Dont get me wrong its not Unreal3 with its pixel perfect lighting or its doom3 with its power outage and complete darkness, no this light suits our game perfectly.

Once all the sections of the game are in this will be a classic game in its own right :D, I love playing the game already and its about 25% of the way to completion. Once its all in there we can have loads of things for the player to explore and do and the whole idea of the game will come together as it is not.

More soon...

Moving times...

Ok today after a busy but very enjoyable day :)

I have got around to adding in player ones controls they can now move around the level, this is rather rudimentary but they do collide with things :). Once the entire system is complete I will add in shooting next so the player can actually do something to the aliens :).

More soon...

They are back...

Just when you thought it was safe, they are back... I have finally added the monsters back into the game engine now. I took em out earlier to add the random map design system, and now they are back in there.

Also I have added the entrance and exit areas for the player, also the player is in too and now faces the camera correctly. I have also finally got around to adding the doors so next up will be player movement, shooting, combat and lighting.

Once all these are in there the whole game will look absolutely amazing :D

More soon...

Progress for the future...

Ok today I have coded the sections of the game that make it look more appealing to the eyes, and I sent Emm a demo ;).

Also I have got the XBox 360 controller working on me mac, this has already been encoded into BlitzMax so that I can use that for other things and controlling the player in the game. Once the player is in there its my intent to allow for keyboard plus mouse control and XBox 360 controllers for those people with them. I will add a redefine system for other joypads so that other players can define joysticks that they have :D

More soon...

DyEd is getting there...

Well I have been working hard at getting DyEd complete with all the features that Emm has requested and I have added some of my own too, these equate to:
1) Toolbar - this is now in and almost fully functional I still have to do cut,copy and paste but its getting there

2) Grid - I can now turn this on/off (wooo) and change the grid size( yay ) ;)

3) Options - being that I have the editor on a flashdrive putting it into different operating systems (I have Mac/Windows and Linux here) means a reconfiguration of the programs folders now this is sorted as the editor itself now saves the configuration dependent on the operating system its running on.

4) Numerous behind the scenes bug fixes and corrections :)

5) Zooming is also now in there too :), still needs a little work BUT its in there and fast as anything :)

6) Layers are now in there too, I can show/hide Tiles, Backing, Items and prefabs this makes it easier to edit the levels as required.

Once all the features requested are in there the editor will be ready for its initial beta phase and after probably some more adjustments we can move forwards with getting everything in there :)

More soon...