Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s development log. When I’m looking back to dev log 29 I should call this log entry Dev Log 29 Cont’d. They share the same topics: music and the game’s intro.

You can help getting Nordenfelt done, test the game’s latest versions and discuss it in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem. For the very nosy among you I’m running an issue tracker as well.

Let’s have a look what happened (speak continued) since last time.

Nordenfelt’s Soundtrack – Cont’d

I was pondering if Nordenfelt should get canned tracks or a dedicated soundtrack. Right now the game has a very cool intro theme from a stock site. I caught myself firing up Nordenfelt over and over again just to hear this track. That should be a good sign, ain’t it?

Nonetheless, original tunes would be awesome. So I decided to go part canned, part newly composed stuff. The upcoming version 0.5.3 – which is advancing at the rate of a snail – will have just canned tracks. Following versions should receive specially composed works.

Game Intro – Cont’d

Instinct is a funny thing. In our world full of information and education shoved down our throats we forgot to listen to our gut feeling. This is why I’ve tweaked the game intro for several hours just to realize that the first idea was the best. Often initial intentions are right. This happens to me again and again. So I’m tempted to leave out my mind more often and just listen to my guts.

Due to this I’ve updated the start screen to challenge my instincts with art. I’ve added lightning bolts from the Tesla weapon and improved the grunge look:

That’s it for this time. See you in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s development log. I’ve spent the last two weeks at the audio battle front. Finding the right sound effects and background music is not as easy as it … sounds …

You can help getting Nordenfelt done, test the game’s latest versions and discuss it in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem. For the very nosy among you I’m running an issue tracker as well.

Explosion Sounds

As a followup to the new explosion graphics I’ve added some spicy blast effects. Some people complained about the old explosion sounds. No surprise, they were placeholders. The problem with placeholders is that when they are not ugly enough people will see (or hear) them as final. Therefore – as I wrote here – there won’t be any new stuff which is not meant to be final. Make a real job of it and come to an end.

Nordenfelt’s Soundtrack

Nordenfelt will get an epic, orchestral soundtrack. At the moment I have a couple of dozen tracks which may find their way into the game. They come from audio stock sites like www.premiumbeat.com or www.shockwave-sound.com. It’s easy to get preview tracks from these sites and test them right in the game. You may undervalue the interaction between background music and the game itself when you judge them separately. Music heavily influences the game’s atmosphere. So always test the music tracks while playing the game. If they don’t boost the feeling they are worthless.

Game Intro

While I was listening to some intro music candidates my mind already painted (or does a game dev brain render?) a sketch of the game intro itself. It was all about comic-like, steam-powered Star Wars scenes with much ado and whatnot. The usual flight of fancy when your brain skips all limits.

After all this simple screen is what reality dictated:

Reality is cruel, isn’t it?

What the heck, KISS!

Turrets

Last but not least: turrets now leave their pedestals when their heads explode.

In the near future I’ll contact some composers for an offer regarding the soundtrack. I’m wondering how much the whole audio stuff will cost. It’s good to have canned music as fail-safety. A dedicated soundtrack would be better though. It depends on the $$$, as usual.

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s development log. Since the last post the game hit the home stretch regarding explosions.

You can help getting this project done, test Nordenfelt’s latest versions and discuss the game in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem.

Nordenfelt got  its small and medium unit explosions done. Furthermore the GUI shakes now when multiple strong explosions happen at once. Simple gimmickry but easy to code.

Currently I’m working on the end boss its implosion-explosion-fireball ending. Hope it comes off as it promises to be.

When all this eye candy work is done I’m looking forward to improve the gameplay mechanics. More equipment is overdue, mouse cursor aiming may be interesting to try and procedural grinding (money-making) levels sound interesting. Just to name a few.

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s development log. This week I’ve finished the explosion effect for small units.

You can help getting this project done, test Nordenfelt’s latest versions and discuss the game in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem.

Let’s make it short. A picture paints a thousand words:

Sorry for the low-quality GIF animation. My new flat’s internet connection will be set up next week. Until then I have to work with my old, wireless, prepaid-and-soon-depleted modem thingy.

Researching and making these explosions took quite some time. I started it somewhen around dev log 22. Hell, that was 5 weeks ago! Reducing Nordenfelt to part-time development was naturally a step on the brakes. Therefore I’ve decided to continue this dev log in a bi-weekly manner instead of once per week. This way posts will get more substance.

Enjoy the explosion GIF and feel free to support me making more such detonations by preordering Nordenfelt.

See you next week in two weeks.

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s weekly development log. And it’s still about explosions.

This week I’ve checked out some tools for particle effect authoring. There are some free editors out in the Internet wilderness but nothing really worthwhile. So I quit searching for a free solution and found TimelineFX from Rigzsoft. It’s a useful yet affordable tool (£29.99 at time of writing) and comes with a load of free effect libraries.

The good news for all you Blitzmax game coders out there: TimelineFX has a module to integrate the authored effects into Blitzmax applications. The bad news for the rest: other languages are not supported. You have to export effects as sprite sheets and render them as animations in your game. This works well for small effects but becomes bothersome for larger stuff. I’ve already pondered porting the Blitzmax code to C with some SWIG wrappers. But that would be quite a pile of work. No time for side projects aside side project Nordenfelt. You know, time is scarce as full time non-indie. 🙂

What the heck. Some diversified smaller explosions combined work as well. For the diversification I’m currently integrating a new feature into Nordenfelt’s particle engine. Particle attributes will become controllable by graphs. So far they just interpolated from a start value to an end value over lifetime. E.g. a smoke particle can start full opaque and fades linearly to full transparency. The new controller graph can make particles blink, pump, wobble, start delayed, etc. –  everything the heart desires.

As usual: don’t forget that you can help getting Nordenfelt done, test the game’s latest versions and discuss the game in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem.

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s weekly development log. This week was also dedicated to researching and testing explosions. Unfortunately there wasn’t much progress due to many personal distractions. So I won’t show you any altered assets this time but a simple trick how to make opaque sprite sheets transparent with GIMP.

You can help getting Nordenfelt done, test the game’s latest versions and discuss the game in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem.

Many explosion sprite sheets on the Internet have opaque backgrounds. If you wanna use them in your game you have to make their background colors transparent. This can be done by colorkeying (a little bit old-school) or by converting background pixels to transparent ones using target formats like DDS, GIF or PNG. It’s an easy job in case of binary transparency where a pixel is either full transparent or full opaque. Just open the image with GIMP, select all pixels of the background color with this tool and hit the DELETE key. Be sure that the layer has a transparency channel, otherwise add it before you hit DELETE.

Try it with this sprite sheet …

… and you will get this sharp-edged explosion from the 90s:

That’s nice for retro graphics. But what if you have continuous transparency, ranging from 0 to 255? Let’s check out a sprite sheet created with Cliffski’s explosion generator:

Making the black background transparent is quite easy. Simply use GIMP’s color-to-alpha function and choose black:

The closer a pixel’s color is to black the higher its transparency will get. As you can see: it’s a breeze. You just have to know the right function. 🙂

Cheers,
Thomas

Here is the new entry in Nordenfelt‘s weekly development log. This week I was busy researching and testing explosion effects.

You can help getting this project done, test Nordenfelt’s latest versions and discuss the game in the secret development forum with other preorderers by preordering Nordenfelt. If you like to stay in touch, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, email newsletter or listen to my tweets at @black_golem.

To get an idea how I should create stunning explosions I’ve investigated games like Gratuitous Space Battles or Crimzon Clover in motion. For this I ripped some of their gameplay videos from YouTube with UnPlug. IMO it’s hardly possible to research a game while you’re playing it. Therefore it’s better to investigate videos. YouTube is a game researcher’s best friend.

The most impressive fact about explosions and particle effects in general is that they are made from just a few sprites:

Check out the sprites in the top left corner. This masterpiece of smoke, fire, debris and glares was made from 6 simple sprites. The trick is the procedural arrangement of the graphics. Such an explosion would look great in Nordenfelt but it would also bring the game’s frame rate to its knees. Therefore it’s necessary to bake smaller explosions and reuse them as prefabs.

For this reason I’ve integrated animations into the particle engine. This new feature allows combining several smaller effects into a prerendered sprite sheet. The good news is that there are some good explosion sprite sheets available on the internet. Have a look at this free one from TurboSquid:

At the moment I’m testing a few explosion animations with some extra particles for debris, glares, shockwaves and smoke. I’m curious how these SFX will evolve.

That’s it for this week. As mentioned before, feel free to support the project by preordering Nordenfelt. See you next week.

Cheers,
Thomas