Update Dec 5th

Oh my gosh. I haven’t been around much, have I?

The main reason for this is that is because I am in the middle of mixing me and my bands first full-lenght Ska / Punk album. But other factors for not posting any Game-Dev related stuff is because I am waiting for the new release of the engine I work with along with that the stats of people visiting the blog dropped just before I took my “Pause”. So please spread this blog. If anyone reads, the longer will I update it. Anyway, along side of this Im working with some 2D Game Development, and trust me, I have bad-ass ideas.

If this remains a vision or something to come, I don’t know. But there is a fact hitting me during this passive period of time that I now understand. If I might start something, I might work on it for weeks in a row, and then maybe write a line or two on a day. But I realize that if I get this going, I might have good chances not to give it up when the stone is rolling.

Very well, what is the news?

Regarding Game Development, I can’t say there is too much, if you want me to be honest. I save everything though. I have everything backed up. But I might just wait for a little upgrade on my setup, making me speeding up this process a bit.

Well, that’s all. Just wanted to keep you updated.

Thanks for reading. I will try to be better on posting.

PS: Feel free to start any discussion anywhere on my blog. Keep this as a forum for other people in the world. Comment and talk to eachother. I want to see that your alive!

Also, I bet you know the deal. Along with an open discussion comes some rules. And that is the same thing you hear everywhere. No racism or offend against other people. No hatred, porn or warez.

I guess that’s it, so I say bye a second time!

Bye!

Update 10 Oct

Wow, not an update in a while…

I might come and go as I wish. Im not working with a company to update this blog on regular basis. So what has been done? I have been lazy. Normally working with games you have a team, a team with different levels of eager to work on the game project. I don’t. So if a person in this team is excited to work on it, there might be another one writing code in a corner who really don’t want to.

With that beeing said, I update this blog because it is not dead. I am just taking a breath out now since I am such a person who works on one thing excessively then take breaks all from one day, to a week, or to a month or two.

So hence my awkward break times, I am still working on it, passively, and I will not rest my case on this one.

Lars

Update Sep 17

For some of you it might not have been known that I apart from working on and with software, I play guitar and do vocals in a Punk/Ska band here in Sweden called Next Step. Half of this month basically have been just about working on some new material for it. I am a busy guy, that’s all.

On the other hand I made a new compile of the game engine, though. I believe you can set additional settings in the “Project Settings” window. Also you can draw some basic shapes into your primary scene.

Apart from that, I refer back to not have worked on it at all in these recent days. Starting a small period now I hope where none of my works goes with fast steps forward, since I will be working on both. And the game? Yeah, then divide all my free time with three. Phew… And in conclusion;

My girlfriend’s birthday is in about 30 minutes, so I have been preparing some stuff for her. You know what it’s like, preparing this, preparing that. Sure I am sure it turns out well in the end. Anyhow, just wanted to say hello, so… Hello, hee hee.

- Lars.

Update Sep 8

I admit it, I could not help it.

I really had to work on the game engine. And I guess you will ask “Why are you? Won’t you work on the game?”, so my concrete anwser to that will be: Yes. I will, and I should. I started working on the engine for fun at my girlfriends place (ironically?) and it kept on rolling from there. I do not know if this is something that will be finished ever, since this is not my prior focus at the moment.

The main focus is to complete the game, or at this time, continue to work on the game. So I am taking a day now working on the engine and working on the game, so I will keep both updated. Since yesterday I updated the engine with a “build”-function, making it possible for you, as a user, to build a working project.

There is some minor fixes to it but I will handle them later. Like the engine closing if the project is already built. Also another bug is that the editor will not be as dynamic I want it to while the engine itself is running. Apart from those, everything is perfect, I guess.

The plan is to add some kind of working area. How will you expect to work on a project in a game engine?

For those who did not know, I worked on a game engine previously called “Crystal Vision Game Engine” (CVGE), and me and a guy called Sirius)(Black had it well updated. After a time of coding, I started it, but when Sirius continued it, I have to say that it got kind of buggy (Not mocking Sirius programming skills).

He sent me screenshots of the build, and it looked great. But when I tried running it, it kind of failed. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the engine, don’t know. So I started CV2D engine. A game engine based upon writing luascripts. This was around 5mb in size after compile, but it had so much more to it. I realized that after a while.

So I started this engine with a different approach, don’t know if this is the new CV2D 2.0 or whatever (hee hee), but it is more stable, and I got more focus on what I really am doing, deviding up functions in classes like never before.

This version is about 300kb atm, so it is very small and I will try to keep it under one mb and have it greatly optimized, comparing to the 200+mb engines out there. This will be simple. Simple working with game-projects, simple work with libraries. Everything should be down-to-ground.

Wow, I should be a book-writer. I am very sorry for big post, but I would like you to know where I stand my ground. I am working on the game, and on the engine. That’s it.

- Lars.

Update Sep 7

Blip. Blop. Game engine. Blop

Working a bit with SDL library in MonoDevelop. Got two forms interacting with eachother. This means, I got one window for the engine and one for the editor part.

More of this I cannot say.

- Lars.

Update Sep 5

Got everything done with the player character now. Although I have problems with the shoes, so I need to seperately attach those / parent them to hos armature.

After this I will focus on the environment. A small thing to log was that I got a problem exporting to .FBX with the “latest” build of Blender. Believe it is a minor problem though, works perfectly in the stable version of 2.59.

The “Public Demonstration” build is available at:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ug7dalnvqdy8zo7

Anyhow, a fast preview from the “Public Demonstration” demo:

Thanks for reading.

- Lars.

Update 2 Sep

Hoo, hoo… As you can see if your following this blog, my good and bad times comes from day to day.

Anyways, FINALLY the basic animations for the first character is aliiive. It has been some time, not much of my time, but yet quite some time for you. You have probably wondered (or not), how this character look like. Does he have a red dog and is he chased by flying sheep? Nope. I’ll break it down to you. He’s boring. That’s right, nothing but a boring, standard, grey, normal, usual, asian, short-haired, Ryo-from-Shenmue (almost ) guy.

Still he has alot of personality. That’s right. He has emotions, plenty of them. And right now I believe he is kind of sad that I (kick me in the butt) reeeally haven’t finished him 100% yet.

Anyhow, here he is, the yet nameless character;

That’s all… Taaa.

- Lars.

Update 1 Sep

Yet again, as for this day, I have a day to work on the game. It is going really passively forward, and I hate passive stuff. But today I have time to get some animations going and I am also layin early on the schedule.

There is nothing more to be said or updated. If I get something going today I will most likely update this post.

Thanks for reading and sorry for a generally small and short update comparing to the other posts.

- Lars.

Update Aug 30

Okaay… As for today I can tell that the player model is finished complete with rig. Worked on animations. Exported to Unity and worked with different materials. Oddly enough I can only use particle materials on the hair to make it transparant the way I want.

I drew up a schedule as of this month and beginning on next month on what there is to work on. Although, I know I hate deadlines and schedules, but it is good in one way. Then you keep working on the project instead of doing it passively thinking that you got almost infinite time.

Anyways, going tooo offtopic this is just what I wanted to report. Working with another guy at the moment, sending code back and forth. And as a sidenote… I do not use mo-cap, so it is very hard for me to make the animations feel natural. It will take time to be satisfied.

Conclusion from the schedule;

Aug ’11
-
Finished part
-
Player model + Texture
Clothing + Texture
Player code
-
Unfinished part
-
Animation – Just started basic running, idle and walking animations.
Organizing a “team” or whatever to work on the project
-

That’s it!

- Lars.

Update 29 Aug

Nothing has been done in around five days so I thought I would give you a few updates.

I exported the new Saigon model and made him work with animations in Unity. He is very high res, but it flows good. I got plans for the static mesh clothes too, and I also worked on some kind of twitching creature.

Also this weekend I was with my friends and I met some new people, some of which who worked with Unity3D in school. Asked one of them if they wanted to help out on this project and I think it worked out OK.

The first cutscene in the game has been polished alot too. I got the general idea and made some simple camera animations soon heading over to music, because I need a simple track so I can time what will actually happen in the first intro cutscene.

And the project has taken massive twists and turns. Now I aim for a more horror kind of thing, and therefor the name “Enchanted Hearts” wont fit too much for this approach.

If you gave up hope because I haven’t posted in a few, too bad. If you still follow, thanks. Means a lot.

- Lars.