Elysian Shadows

Much appreciate the comments Leon. Its still going and the website is being updated every so often. Stay tuned.. :P

I have no idea if this screenshot will show, but trying anyway - too lazy to upload it somewhere else right now...



It's my damn near almost finished PC version of Fizzy & Dizzy.

What I'm working on right now? m'kay here goes.
So let's start of at its very beginning. Thing is we had the assignment to create a simple game (which is my whole form at school... yeah we got computer science lessons) and I wanted to do something, let's say, 2d. Specifically a little platformer. Limitation was that the code had to be in Visual Basic. So I looked at what I got there and tried to use the managed-code GDI+ interface VB provides, called System.Drawing.Graphics.
Turned out that the game was running at a frame rate of about 10 or less (for 352*256 px) on my computer. I failed at the documentation that we had to create (diagrams and whatnot ) because I didn't have much time for it. About a week or something for about 1,500 lines (i don't quite remember, estimated. yeah i still got the code but im too lazy to count now). Finally I came up with some Windows-Forms-based Poker game with the characters of the platformer which I had previously created with assistance of a quite talented artist in my form.
Now I learned a bit more of what VB.net offered me OOP-wise and learned a bit of C# for .net interoperable use of pointers which I was going to need.
I started off experimenting a bit and after a while I decided to create a small layer based 2d engine, fully .net based, with backbones in DirectShow for audio and marginally GDI+ for I/O of Image files.
After a while of learning about image blending algorithms I tried it out and at first it would run pretty much at the same framerate as the old fully GDI+ based game. After some tweaking, speeding up the code with some logical shortening and removing some unnecessarily more-than-once occuring array resizing I got 200 fps when rendering one single layer and about 80 fps when using the same amount of layers (=4) as in the old game at the same resolution (again, 352*256 px). I was quite happy with this because I was not directly accessing the chip like with dx or ogl but rather having a massively single-player offline kernel-calling engine.
DirectShow was a bitch though. I had to look out for a .net-com interface at this point, and i found it. Getting the code done took me another three hours because I hadn't even worked with it before.
I also implemented render timing (so that it has a more/less stable framerate) and I created an extra component, the gxPictureBox, for double buffering and loading gxImages. At that point I'm hoping to be able to fasten the loading process because I suspect it the most time-consuming element in the chain.
u wanna haz screenshot? awkay. You won't see much anyway. Like, the sound and the framerate, but i can tell you it runs smooth as shit



I'm doing this because I will get an assignment like this again, and I don't ever again want to mess with code that runs as slow as a hampered cow. Furthermore, I'm reconstructing the old game in here because I found the idea quite cool, and I had never done anything like a platformer, mostly just, well, applications, and not games^^ And additionally, now I finally know exactly what my code is doing and how. Which I find vital for finding bugs and writing efficient code with it.
Now you know what I'm working on

Van-B wrote:I have no idea if this screenshot will show, but trying anyway - too lazy to upload it somewhere else right now...



It's my damn near almost finished PC version of Fizzy & Dizzy.

On a scale of one to ten... That looks pretty fucking sick. But seriously did you do the art and the programming yourself? What language?

Cheers!. The monkies and backdrop art were done by a freelance artist, I did the foreground stuff and sprites, but I'm getting the bubbles etc redone by the same guy. The PC version is wriiten in DarkBasicPro, and iOS is written in mostly C++.

Ok, some interesting news. 1.) Blitz3D turned out to be a joke. The company's website kept crashing and so It was hindering my progress. 2.) It is NOT cross-platform as I was first told, and I kept getting a lot of MAC and Linux users who want to play. So I was forced to go to something else.

Sooooo where did this leave me ? Well, after crying like a little girl ( kidding ), I'm now coding the game in C++ using the Irrlicht Engine. Yea, I know.. I had to be forced into it, but so far, I got a working program that was tested in both Windows and Linux with no problems. And I found out I can run this for MAC as well, if I port the code over. So yea.. as it stands, I'm back on track using C++ instead of any of those cheesy engines. Now I'm cooking with Power !

thats some pretty colourful artwork

Im working on a minecraft mod in Java, Which reminds me can someone take a look at it for me?

Fanatic wrote:Im working on a minecraft mod in Java, Which reminds me can someone take a look at it for me?

Code: Select all

package net.minecraft.src;

import java.util.Random;

public class mod_MoltonOre extends BaseMod
{
public mod_MoltonOre()
{
ModLoader.RegisterBlock( molton );

ModLoader.AddName (molton, "Molton Ore");
ModLoader.AddName (moltonIngot, "Molton Ingot");
ModLoader.AddName (pickaxeMolton, "Molton Pickaxe");

molton.blockIndexInTexture = ModLoader.addOverride( "/terrain.png", "/oreMolton.png");
moltonIngot.iconIndex = ModLoader.addOverride( "/gui/items.png", "/ingotMolton.png");
pickaxeMolton.iconIndex = ModLoader.addOverride( "/gui/items.png", "/MoltonAxe.png");

ModLoader.AddSmelting(molton.blockID, new ItemStack(moltonIngot, 1));

world = ModLoader.getMinecraftInstance().theWorld;
}

/* Generates in world */
public void GenerateSurface(World world, Random random, int i, int j)
{
for( int a = 0; a < 6; a++ )
{
int posX = i + random.nextInt(16);
int posY = random.nextInt(32);
int posZ = j + random.nextInt(16);
(new WorldGenMinable(molton.blockID, 8)).generate(world, random, posX, posY, posZ);
}


}
/* Generates in world */
{
CraftingManager.getInstance().addRecipe(new ItemStack(pickaxeMolton, 1), new Object[]{
"XXX", " S ", " S ", Character.valueOf('X'), moltonIngot, Character.valueOf('S'), Item.stick
});
}

public String Version()
{
return "1.6.6";

}

/* Custom Objects */
World world;
/* */

public static final Block molton;
public static final Item moltonIngot;
public static final Item pickaxeMolton = new ItemPickaxeMolton(117, EnumToolMaterialAlt.MOLTON).setItemName("pickaxeMolton");

static
{
molton = (new Block(120, 0, Material.rock)).setHardness(3F).setResistance(10F).setStepSound(Block.soundStoneFootstep).setBlockName("molton");
moltonIngot = new Item(1000) .setItemName("moltonIngot");
}

} 

it looks fine to me except for the code that's not in a method (after the second "generates in world"). How does the molten pickaxe perform in comparison to diamond?

Its really just meant to be an aesthetic object, Adding a bit more variety to the game. Anything you think i should change?

Isn't it spelled "molten"? Not trying to nit-pick but if that was the title of the mod, I'd be a lot more likely to download it if it was spelled correctly.

More progress.







~vansicklegames.com

Woah joe, are you doing that all by yourself? That's incredible! Keep up that awesome work!!!!

Totally awesome-ass work, man. Looks like it was severely hard work
The only things I find a bit disturbing are that grass coming off the rocks (at first I wondered what that was), and secondly, the dark lighting in the second screenshot. But the textures look fine, I like the sky and those trees in the bg of screenshot #1 spread some sort of mirthlessness, because of the leaf color and the simplicity of the branches, as if all the smaller ones had fallen off (they look like modeled in winter or fall xD). It seems to get something close to an overall "aura." (although it could certainly be emphasized more)
Oh, and the music in the vid... like rofl. JESUS TURN THAT OFF :P
But, my phattest commendations

Oh, and at e.g. about 6 minutes in the video there's that fortress building up with time, which just appears exceptional to the gamer's eye =)

Rebornxeno: Sure am! I am torn as to whether I should try to start up a team, I have tried before and it didn't go so hot.
BugInTheSYS: Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback. I will modify the trees . Not sure what I was thinking with the music yesterday!