Monthly Archives: April 2010

How about another spell?

How about a giant spike of earth to skewer your enemies with? Or perhaps just block their way. Our orangy blob friends don't stand a chance!

This particular blob was hiding under the ground waiting to ambush…sure showed him!

So we've got three basic elemental skills, I have yet to decide how many elements I want to incorporate though I have a pretty good idea of what I'd do as a spell for any given element.

In addition to elemental spells we're going to have spells to help you traverse the dream world. One spell will let you flip gravity so that you can reach the other half of the world… yes part of the world is upside down. There will also be a passive double jump ability, a levitating ability, and more!

Anyways for now these three spells are what you'll see in the first demo. My next task will probably be a bit more level building. I'm sure everyone is getting tired of seeing screenshots from the same dull cave.

Got several updates this time!

A new ice spell, looks cool eh? It shoots out in a cone pattern in front of Maleia. If you move while casting it the spell cancels. It is also a little bit weaker then the Fireball spell but is easier to hit with and can more easily hit a single enemy multiple times.

You also see the flying damage number, like I said nothing too special.

Finally, you can see the spell icons at the bottom right. At the moment you use Tab to switch between your currently selected spell.

I'd love to talk some more but I got a Citizen Kane essay to finish! This week concludes this semester of college, so expect more updates, in fact demand more updates!

Work has slowed as my school semester comes to an end I have more work to do. Plus my addition to FFXI and perhaps other MMOs has sort of reasserted itself but I am not going to let that slow me down…too much.

I added flying damage numbers when the enemies take damage in the game now. I won't post a picture because it really isn't anything exciting. So that's right this game deals with an RPG style of dealing damage. You'll be dealing with things like defense and resistances of your enemies and have skill that will have their situational use versus the various enemies.

Finally, I improved the code a lot and got it running on netbooks again. It's still only about 10 FPS but the frame rate interdependency almost makes it bearable.

I am sooo looking forward to the summer to get some work done, and play a lot more games, oh yeah!!

I've been working mostly on the AI code as well as fixing up the platform movements. The enemies can be killed now and they die with a bunch of orange circle flying out of them while they quickly shrink in size…it works…I guess.

Upon buying a new motherboard for my computer I get way better frame rates now in the game. My Asus EEE 1000H netbook struggles now to push frame rates above 5FPS. So much for making this game netbook compatible. Unfortunately the reason for this is not because the graphics are too much but because there are too many loops in the code and Python isn't very fast. If the game happens to be successful then it is likely to get ported to a faster language/engine rather it be Panda3D with C++ instead of Python or something else that supports consoles like Microsoft XNA. On the bright side if I am no longer shooting for netbook compatibility I can use better graphics!

Finally, I may not have said this yet, but if anyone has an interest in this project and would like to help out I am all for that. I could really use someone to help with level design as I want this to take place in somewhat of a large world. I could always use someone to help me model as well, and voice actors will be a must, but more on that later.

At any rate for a solo project this thing is looking good!