Here is the new Nordenfelt dev log entry for this week.
Quality Level 1.0
Many of the first level’s background segments became “finalized” regarding quality. As we all know that in game development there is no real finality I call it quality level 1.0. Feedback, redesign and polishing will increase this level over time.
Graphic Style Experiments
I’ve revisited an old topic: graphic style experiments. Nordenfelt’s graphics are (some kind of) realistic. It has textures, 3D lightning, accurate shadows, etc. There is hardly any abstraction regarding its look. So I tried a few simple filters to create a different, more artistic appearance. To be true: nothing really worked so far. But it’s an interesting field for further investigation.
Upcoming Forums
Nordenfelt will get a forum within the next weeks. Therefore I’ve checked out some forum software packages. forummatrix.org makes it easy to find out which package to choose.
Product Box
As posted here I cut my teeth on drawing a product box for the game:
It’s just too cool to show it only in one post. 🙂
Sales Page Validation
The sales page is ready and waits for Nordenfelt 0.5 to get completed. Just for fun I dropped the site into the Total Validator and some W3C validators. Man, a load of problems were discovered. It seems today’s browsers are really clever when it comes to masking wrong HTML code.
In a week Nordenfelt 0.5 should hit the shelves. Hell, one WEEK? Subscribe to the RSS feed or Twitter at @black_golem to see if I can make this deadline.
Cheers,
Thomas
I’ve just added a 3d product box to the upcoming sales page:
Drawing this box was really fun, more than drawing game assets. Am I in the wrong business? I don’t think so because coding is even more fun. Sadly the last line of code was several weeks ago. Those were the days … Sigh.
Cheers,
Thomas
A new Wednesday, a new dev log entry.
This week rushed by as if it was just a single day. Most of the time I was setting up the upcoming sales page. There isn’t much to show yet, so …
Wait! There is something I can show you. I’ve spent a day and the following night on the game’s title screen. There were some odd drafts in the beginning but I think it became quite good in the end. Have a look at the drafts in chronological order, starting left top:
As ever feel free to subscribe to Nordenfelt’s RSS feed or follow me on Twitter at @black_golem. New insights every Wednesday.
Cheers,
Thomas
Filed under:
Dev Log, Graphics
Here is the new Nordenfelt dev log. Today (as well as the 6 days before) I was so busy that I nearly forgot to write it. 🙂
OK, what happened in the meantime?
Research for Military Base
As shown in dev log 9 level 1 has a small military base. For investigation I did enter the web and searched for photos and screenshots of reference material. One interesting and steampunky finding was an abandoned russian army base:
English Russia has some really inspirational stuff for steampunk games. Check out its abandoned places.
Set Up FastSpring Account
I’ve investigated quite a few payment providers like PayPal, BMT Micro, Plimus, eSellerate or FastSpring. Finally I chose FastSpring due to these crucial features:
- fair prices,
- customizable order pages,
- many payment methods,
- split testing,
- VAT management and
- Google Analytics/AdWords integration.
The support people are very nice and using their platform is a breeze. It’s highly recommendable.
Installer Software
Another field of investigation were installers. There are many solutions for handling install processes on different platforms. In the end the candidate list narrowed down to NSIS and Inno Setup. You can find a detailed comparison of these free products here.
The coming weeks will be tough. Nordenfelt 0.5 has to be completed and the landing/sales page must be set up. Keep fingers crossed that it will be done early in September. Subscribe to Nordenfelt’s RSS feed or follow me on Twitter at @black_golem to get informed immediately when the next release is happening.
Cheers,
Thomas
A new entry in the weekly development log for Nordenfelt.
This week was also spent on the new homepage. It’s my first graphics-heavy website so it’s uncharted waters for me. As the proverb goes:
Every beginning is hard.
In this case the beginning is way more long (two weeks by now) than hard. Hard and long … Beavis and Butthead come to my mind. 🙂
In the upcoming week I’ll tackle the game itself again. It will be either some GUI refinement or level asset work. We will see … next Wednesday.
Cheers,
Thomas