{"assets":[],"author_link":"author\/kharza\/","author_name":"Kharza","cat":"October Challenge 2012","categories":["October Challenge 2012"],"comments":[],"epoch":1350346680,"event":"","likes":4,"metadata":{"p_key":"78267","p_author":"Kharza","p_authorkey":"0","p_urlkey":"287277","p_title":"My October Game","p_cat":"October Challenge 2012","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1350346680","p_likes":"4","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":null,"us_name":null,"us_username":null,"event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"source_url":"2012\/10\/16\/my-october-game\/","text":"

I am not really sure this qualifies as an October challenge for me, as I worked on it through the summer off and on.<\/p>\n

I started with my LD21 entry escape from cube mountain, which was a game about making a run to the edge of the map with big crazy cubes chasing you, and ported it to the xbox for the indie games channel.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.ludumdare.com\/compo\/ludum-dare-21\/?action=preview&uid=5649<\/a><\/p>\n

I took the basic perlin style terrain square and made a better fractal style terrain with an atlas of several different types of ground and rock, texturing on steepness and elevation. \u00a0I do a distance from center based vertical falloff with a sharp edge at the sides to give it an island look, and then do a soft particle cloud layer based on elevation in the shaders.<\/p>\n

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Shadows turned out to be a big pain. \u00a0With the soft particles and the main view I had very little EDRam left for the rendertargets. \u00a0The xbox only has 10 megs, so I had to make the shadow targets small, which can make the shadows quite blocky if the onscreen stuff is very spread out. \u00a0I have two best fit targets for objects and enemies and one fixed size for the avatar.<\/p>\n

Also there are no custom shaders for the avatars, so I used some wacky stencil buffer tricks to get it to work with the shadows and soft particle cloud layer.<\/p>\n

In addition to replacing the little prism character with your xbox avatar, I made much better powerups and enemies in max and 3dcoat.<\/div>\n

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To fight back a bit I added magic spells bound to the ABXY buttons and usable items bound to the shoulders and dpad. \u00a0The items are researched sort of xcom style, and then once known can be manufactured and used up. \u00a0Most of them are consumed on use.<\/p>\n

For spells I had this whole big story and a bunch of extra needed art and animation that I ultimately ended up cutting. \u00a0But I kept in the idea that you are at a magical school, and you learn a new spell every semester. \u00a0As soon as I put the magic in though the game just became too easy. \u00a0It was missing the original feel and I wanted to stay true to the original game.<\/p>\n

I ended up making a big blue obelisk that covers the island with an anti-magic field. \u00a0If you can find it and knock it over, magic is on and you can go nuts with spells. \u00a0If you never run across it though you have to rely on your feet and any items you might have. \u00a0This turned out to be VERY confusing to people when I was going through reviews, so I will do an update soon to put some onscreen help for it. \u00a0Nobody reads the how-to-play or loading screens.<\/p>\n

For traditional \u201cGear\u201d I instead had a wacky idea of putting bonuses on items in your dorm room. \u00a0I didn\u2019t think of it at the time but it sort of turned it into a consumerist rpg. \u00a0Furniture and microwaves and tvs all give you bonuses to stats. \u00a0There\u2019s no hidden meaning or deep thought behind it, It just sort of accidentally happened.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a shot of the dorm:<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a whole bunch of stuff you can collect, this is just the basic stuff. \u00a0And there\u2019s a menu option to change the colors of everything so you can make it look however you want. \u00a0As a programmer I think I didn\u2019t do a very good job on the art here. \u00a0It is very difficult to make a scene match the xbox avatar\u2019s look. \u00a0In the Island gameplay it is so distant that it doesn\u2019t really clash but in a close up scene, it needs to have the same style.<\/p>\n

It went up on the indie channel tonight after languishing forever in reviews. \u00a0The most difficult part of this whole process was not having any feedback, but I got plenty when the reviews started. \u00a0I really hope that the future consoles will allow some form of early build testing for normal users.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a gameplay trailer. \u00a0Since I made it I\u2019ve made a few changes to controls and made all the on ground stuff much bigger, all based on review feedback.<\/p>\n