After several weeks of tweaking the explosion sound effects got finished. Ticking off this big task from the todo list was great. 🙂

More illustrative work is the improvement of the gauge graphics. Here you can see a pre-post comparison:

I’m quite happy with the result. An essential part of designing the new version was to get inspiration from other gauge designs on the internet. Just a few examples:

The longer I’m into game development the more I see how important copying given design is. There is no applause for wheel reinventers.

Cheers,
Thomas

PS: Just to remind you about the @nordenfeltgame Twitter feed. Feel free to follow and get dedicated info about what’s going on at the the Nordenfelt development front.

During the last few weeks I’ve spent most time on improving the first boss, fixing minor bugs and finalizing music/sfx. The last point is quite bothersome. Each time I think the sounds are OK and revisit them they are no longer acceptable. Is it the mood changing each day which keeps me off from completing these tasks?

Finally the boss’ cannons became separately destructible:

There’s a new twitter feed dedicated to Nordenfelt. Just info about the game will pop up there. Feel free to follow @nordenfeltgame if you’re interested in fat-free, just-the-game news:

Cheers,
Thomas

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. 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