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 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:
Much silence on this site during the last few weeks. Man, I hate not having new stuff to show. There are enough changes under the hood. Nothing fancy but there is work going on all the time. So why don’t tell you about that?
Simply because there is nothing tangible to show. Just words.
Starting the Development Log
There are these great guys over at Wolfire logging every little detail to the public. They use videos to illustrate the changes which often are marginal. They don’t wait until they finished a level or completed a character model. Everything they do leaks to their audience regardless of importance. That’s not bothering people as I thought initially. It’s steady information. When you fire up your feed reader and don’t want to check out Wolfire’s changelog simply filter or delete each of their posts ending with “video changelog”. Information noise stopped.
Following Wolfire’s example I’m starting Nordenfelt’s regular development log. Wednesday becomes Nordenfelt dev log day! Don’t expect many videos and screenshots. Most entries will just be textual. When there is something new going on visually you’ll be the first to know.
Dev Log 0
A short summary what happened during the four weeks:
Automation of Power-Up Distribution
Why doing something by hand when you can automate it? Many shmups use fixed patterns for power-up distribution. Now there is a data-driven system which decides if a destroyed object leaves a power-up. No longer placing them via editor.
Flight Height Graph
Drop shadows of flying objects depend on flight height and position. The higher a plane flies the smaller and more transparent its shadow has to be. So the new flight height graph defines how drop shadows will look like.
Equipment Screen
Nordenfelt excludes equipment decisions from the battle field. Weapons, shields or bombs can be bought and equipped between levels. If you have earned enough cash throughout the levels so far.
Redesign Level 1
According to new equipment all levels have to be adapted accordingly. Nothing more to say at this point.
That’s it for the first entry in this dev log series. See you next Wednesday for dev log 1.
In the meantime feel free to subscribe to Nordenfelt’s RSS feed or follow me on Twitter at @black_golem.
If you read the last post in your feed reader you may have been puzzled what video I was talking about. The embedded Screenr video was stripped from the RSS feed, at least in my reader application. Therefore I’ve copied the video over to YouTube and try to show it to you again:
Please tell me if this post neither contains a video. You know bugs appear in swarms… those damned, little bastards!
I’m tweaking the last few bits of Nordenfelt 0.2. If everything goes right it should be available this weekend. Subscribe to the Nordenfelt newsletter (right side on main page) or to the RSS feed if you want to get informed when it appears.
In the meantime I’ve made a game play video for you. Enjoy!
I just recognized that the RSS feed shows only the very first blog post. This is because I’ve moved the blog to an URL sub directory after posting the first entry. I forgot to update the Feedburner settings accordingly.
The problem should be fixed now. If you are subscribed to this blog’s RSS feed (I hope so) and are missing the last few posts in your feed reader:
Unsubscribe and subscribe again, that should solve the problem.
