First of all I want to thank everybody who provided feedback for Nordenfelt 0.4. The overall response was quite positive.

One important lesson I’ve learned from feedback so far is that tastes are different. This fact makes evaluating replies sometimes difficult. Finally it is important to have an own position and learn which opinions can and should be ignored. Otherwise there is little chance to get such a project done.

Anyway, thanks to all of you. I’m appreciating the effort you expended in testing my game. Thanks a lot!

Death of the Demo

Version 0.4 was an important milestone. It marked the end of the engine demo phase. Nearly a year of writing the engine was too long for my taste. This experience belongs to the category “if I only had known…”. In case of a sequel of Nordenfelt I’ll exploit this engine as much as I can. That should distribute last year’s effort over one more project. But that’s all still up in the air.

The next few months are dedicated to making the game itself. Thrilling times ahead.

Core Mechanics

After collecting and evaluating all 0.4 feedback from different sources I started designing the core mechanics for the game. By core I mean irrevocable features and rules. It’s quite hard to decide which of the many ideas should be set in stone. Finally it’s good advice to go with mechanics players are familiar with. Therefore I’ve fixed the following points:

Rank System

Many shoot ‘em ups have a rank systems. It can be imagined as some kind of automatic difficulty adjustment. For example when the player beefs his/her weapon up to a high level the enemies start to get angrier, faster and stronger. This way the player is kept challenged. Experienced players exploit the rank system by keeping their equipment levels low. There are many more aspects in the game which influence the rank system. Figuring out what affects the rank is essential for beating the game as well as the highscore.

Score Hunt

This should be self-explanatory: get the best score, on your machine or online.

Equipment Selection

There will be a few types of equipment like bombs or bots which can be used for strategical play. Each game level is different and therefore should be tackled with appropriate equipment.

Upgrading Equipment

Equipment can be upgraded throughout the levels. This makes your ship stronger but also affects the rank (speak difficulty). Only equipment mounted on your ship will be upgraded in levels. Therefore you have to choose wisely what to take with you in each level.

Cheers,
Thomas

Download it!

An Appeal

Version 0.4 has two major improvements: a new GUI and frame rate issue fixes. Now I’m interested in your feedback for them.

Firstly I’m interested if the GUI works for you, what you like about it and what should be cut. I’m aware that it’s consistency is far from complete. This happened by accident but constitutes branches in style. So there is a degree of choice.

Secondly I’m not sure if the frame rate issues are completely fixed. Therefore I need some profiling data from other machines than mine. I’ve added a profiling system which creates a file named profile.csv beside Nordenfelt.exe. It would be great if you could send this file to improve@nordenfelt-thegame.com. Don’t worry, I don’t spy you out. You can inspect the file with any text editor, MS Excel or Open Office to see what’s in there.

I’m looking forward to your replies.

Cheers,
Thomas

2010 is coming to its end. Time to recapitulate what developing Nordenfelt tough me so far.

What Went Right

Early Showcases

The best way to know how your game will perform in the wilderness is by sending it right there. At the beginning I was afraid showing ugly test graphics and features which won’t make it into the final version. I thought people would laugh and ignore my project immediately. But that never happened. There’s the phrase “no interest in how the sausage is made”. Not true, at least for game development.

Dumping Thoughts on the Internet

Posting thoughts, feelings and lessons-learned gives your product a human touch. It shows people that you are not a cold, capitalistic corporation but a human being. They will remember your best/worst hour if you share it with them. And they will remember your game.

Learned How to Handle Feedback

Feedback is a double-edged sword. It can improve your game or push it off track. Don’t follow each advice. Most of them are well-intentioned but may not marry up with your own vision. Finally you can’t be everybody’s darling.

3rd-Party Libraries and Tools

What should I explain here? Simply save work time by using external libraries and tools as much as you can. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Data-Driven Content

That’s a common trade-off: should I hard-code this or define it in an additional file/database/whatever? The former is the fast solution at short sight but the latter becomes apparent to be the better choice in most cases. At the latest tweaking for game-play will extrude many properties in a bunch of files. So why delay it?

What Went Wrong

Lack of Exact Vision

In the shmup genre some distinct game mechanics evolved over time. There are game-play styles like danmaku, maniac or memorizer. Scroll movement can be vertical, horizontal, isometric, inside an arena, etc. From the very beginning I knew that Nordenfelt will become a vertical shooter. Reading about all the different game mechanics and scoring systems soon confused me. What I should go for? Each time I’ve settled for one game mechanic I became aware of two new ones. As long as there is no clear goal you can’t follow the shortest path to it. It’s that simple.

No Clue About Visual Style

In the early days of Nordenfelt I wanted it to have sprite art. It’s the graphics style I like the most in shmups. Some investigation into this visual style made it clear that sprite art would be the wrong choice. Modern high resolution monitors and the cumbersome nature of sprite art made it hardly applicable for me. Prerendered 3D models were the simplest solution I could imagine. This insight took nearly 2 months. In this case my lack of artistic experience wasted many hours.

Less Design Results in More Redesign

Quick and dirty hacks may solve problems immediately. In the long run they become hurdles where you have to jump over each time you alter code around it. Soon they become real show-stoppers. So you have to fix them by redesigning this part of code. The longer you wait the more work (exponentially growing) it will be.

Back-End Features

One of my favorite interests is procedural content generation. I’ve planned using PCG heavily in Nordenfelt. So I started off by implementing algorithms for building levels, distributing enemies and concatenating these levels to an appropriate story. It was really fun… for me! But the game-play did not profit from PCG. Therefore I switched over to handcrafted levels. IMO it’s important to be able to design levels by hand first before you can write algorithms mimicking the design tasks. The human factor won’t disappear from creating game-play in the near future. But PCG can boost the boring parts a lot.

Forging Nails Yourself

When you want to do every part of the game yourself don’t be surprised if everything lasts longer than planned. Forging your own nails can be rewarding work but buying them in a hardware store saves you a lot of time.

goto 2011;

That’s it for my very first year in my career as indie game developer. I hope you enjoyed the journey so far and keep following me here, at www.blackgolem.com, on Twitter or Facebook for another year. We will meet again in 2011.

Happy new year,
Thomas

It’s time again to show what’s happening. Quite some new stuff found its way into Nordenfelt:

Simply download the game, unzip it (e.g. with 7-zip) and start Nordenfelt.exe. As usual there is nothing to install and the game can be deleted any time without hassle.

Download Nordenfelt 0.3

Drop me a line what you think. I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Cheers,
Thomas

PS: This blog was abandoned for the last few weeks. Don’t worry, continue button already pressed.

I dismissed blogging because I vowed myself to not write anything before version 0.3 is out. That was in the last week of October. Time flies when you’re having fun! See you next post, very soon.

The release of Nordenfelt 0.2 was well received and got nice feedback. There were many feature suggestions and questions if the game will have feature X or support Y. I’ve caught myself answering the same questions over and over again. Therefore I’ve decided to compile a FAQ list about Nordenfelt. You can read it here or find its link in the site’s main menu in the top right corner.

This is the initial list of frequently asked questions:

Which features will Nordenfelt have?

It’s a Shoot ‘em Up

… where you are going to shoot steampunkish vehicles and machinery.

Arcade Mode

This is the well known quest through a series of levels shooting planes, tanks, ships and other vehicles. A boss will await you at the end of each level. Upgrades and goodies will improve your ship throughout the flight.

Adventure Mode

This mode has a deeper game play depth regarding equipment and missions. You will have a hangar full of air ships with various equipment, an R&D section and strategical missions with different goals.

Which platforms will you support?

Windows XP and higher.

What are the minimum requirements?

You won’t need a high end gaming machine for playing Nordenfelt:

• 1Ghz single core
• 1024×768 screen resolution
• 128MB RAM
• 64MB video RAM
• ~200MB free HDD

Will Nordenfelt be freeware?

No, it will be shareware. A free demo version will be available for download. If you like it I would be happy if you consider buying the full game.

How much will the full game cost?

The price will lie between 10$ and 30$. The final price is still a point at issue.

Release date?

Second quarter 2011.

Which engine do you use?

A homebrewn one. I’m just using a few free libraries like SFML or BOOST as foundation.

For me the most surprising fact was that it was totally unclear that Nordenfelt won’t be free. It’s an understandable assumption due to the sheer amount of free stuff on the internet. Nonetheless I have to make a living from it. Quality will have to legitimate the price tag. So I’m going for it.

Cheers,
Thomas

It is time for the next version of Nordenfelt. It has:

• a new graphics style,
• new player ship,
• better controls,
• weapon upgrades,
• more explosions and
• many more improvements

As usual there is nothing to install. Just unzip the downloaded archive and start Nordenfelt.exe. You can delete the game any time with no hassle.

Download Nordenfelt 0.2

Last time some people had problems starting Nordenfelt 0.1 on Windows XP due to an annoying DLL problem. Let me know if this problem still persists.

Tell me your opinion. I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Cheers,
Thomas

There where quite many answers to my call for your player ship favourites. I’m going to start modelling the finalist tomorrow.

If you haven’t chosen your favourites yet: Please drop me a comment here. The current top 3 are:

1. Concept B
2. Concept G
3. Concept F

Click to Enlarge

Cheers,
Thomas