Aeon of Sands - story, switches & burning torches

mummy atacking, door-switch & torch in the background

Back from holidays and we continue to work on 'Aeon of Sands'.

We did lots of tweaks to the gui and skin and i think it looks better and better. What do you think?

I added animated torches (torch+holder) and switches to open doors. I integrated a system where i combine freely any number of switches with any number of doors. This allows me to make really tricky combinations of switch quests ;-).

We also enhanced the melee combat and now it feels more dynamic. Marco and I worked both on the story of the game and I can tell you, that it's not a normal dungeon crawler story. We want to create a great historic background for the world of 'Aeon of Sands' that it feels like a real world not just a dungeon.

But i can't tell yet about the story. Sorry :).

stay tuned
SiENcE

Aeon of Sands - final interface design

In the last weeks we worked hard on the gui, the rpg system, the inventory and graphics. The screenshot shows the prefinal design of the Aeon of Sands - Pyramid interface. The character and weapon icons are only mockups, compass is not included.

Aeon of Sands - new interface design

Now i want to explain, how the game manages it's objects.

The game has 3 big object groups.
-Walls/Frames (non-interactive)
-Items (Enviroment-/Decoration-Items and Equipables).
-NPCs/PC (Npcs/Monsters/Player)

Lets say we want to create an invisible teleporter. Than we have to create an new item of the type 'nonequipable', the category 'teleport' and the definition 'teleposition' to positon {x=2, y=2}. If the player hits the tile where i placed the teleporter in our Leveleditor, the event is activated.

level.item[14] = {
['name']='Teleport to 2,2',
['type']='nonequipable',
['cat']='teleport',
['teleposition']={x=2, y=2},
}

Easy eh?

But we don't want to predefine all events, that a gamedesigner wants to create. Therefore we added a bunch of functions to our event handler. Every Item can trigger events using the onTile, onUpdate and onClick function.

Now, if you want to create an item which triggers an event, and the event is not predefined ('teleposition' is a predefined event) as in our teleporter example, we can choose the onTile function. If the player hits a Tile where this item is placed, the onTile event is triggered.

level.item[18] = {
['name']='Ambient Text',
['type']='nonequipable',
['cat']='text',
onTile = function(self)
print(self.available)
if self:isAvailable() then
scene.gamegui:addSomeText("In front of you is something hidden!")
self.available = false
end
end,
}

We can place the 'Ambient Text' Item anywhere on the map and if the player hits the Tile, the onTile event is triggered and the "In front of you is something hidden!" apprears  in our textbox. Afterwards we have to set the option self.available to false, because we want to trigger this event only once a time, not everytime a player hits this tile.

Next time i feature the inventory system.

Stay tuned!

Aeon of Sands - first look at Pixelgraphics with Lighting Shader

Aeon of Sands: Pyramid - scaling pixelgraphics is a pain

Scaling pixelgraphics is a pain! Don't understand me wrong, I really mean scaling to nativ monitor fullscreen while preserving the aspect ratio.

I write this post, because most indie games start in window (only) mode or do a wrong aspect ratio when scaled. It also hard to find dedicated informations how to solve this issues.

Here are some hints, how to scale right to fullscreen

• Of couse, if you want to draw pixelgraphics, you always choose a low resolution to avoid to much work!
• If you want to scale pixel related graphics you want to choose nearest filter to avoid smoothing!
• If you work with pixelgraphics you don't want to use the build-in monitor scaling!
• If you work with pixelgraphics you don't know, if the user configured his monitor for correct aspect ratio.

A. Most used Monitor resolutions:

1.     1920x1080   16,72 % - 1,77

2.     1366x768    15,71 % - 1,77

3.     1280x1024   10,90 % - 1,25

4.     1680x1050   8,90 %  - 1,60

5.     1024x768    8,59 %  - 1,33

6.     1280x800    8,08 %  - 1,60

7.     1440x900    6,75 %  - 1,60

8.     1600x900    4,60 %  - 1,77

9.     1920x1200   3,34 %  - 1,60

10.    1360x768    1,88 %  - 1,77

B. Used aspect ratios scaled down by integer factors 2 or 3

~680x384  (1920x1080, 1600x900, 1366x768, 1360x768) - 1,77 (16:9)

~640x400  (1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1280x800) - 1,60 (16:10)

~640x512  (1280x1024)  - 1,25 (5:4)

~512x384  (1024x768) - 1,33 (4:3)

Final minimum

512x384 (for pixelgraphics this is enough work)

1. Find the lowest supported resolution!
2. So, make the nativ gameresolution 512x384 (draw everything of the game into this area)
3. Now you are able to scale the gamescreen by integer numbers 2 or 3 depending on the nativ monitor resolution! If you have a monitor at 1920x1200, you can scale by 3 because 512*3x384*3=1536x1152. If your monitor has a nativ resolution of 1920x1080 you can only scale by 2 (512*3x384*3=1024x768).
4. Set the nativ monitor resolution, scale your gamescreen by the choosen factor and center the gamescreen.

It sounds a bit difficult, but here you can see my final result. You will notice, that the borders are different (small size: dark blue/big size: light blue). I overlayed the different aspect ratios resolutions named under B.

Compare:

nativ monitor 640x480 (unscaled gamescreen 512x384)

nativ monitor 1600x1000 (scaled gamescreen by 3*512 x 3*384) (click on the image!)

if you have questions feel free to ask me.

cheers

SiENcE

Ludum Dare 25 - Fisticuffs

Because of i have too much free time (*joke) i participated on Ludum Dare 25 event. The Ludum Dare event is the most biggest gamejam event on internet. It has two competitions. An 48h event for solo developers and an 72h event for teams. The most difficult is, of couse, the 48h event. A developer has todo all stuff alone: getting an idea, gamedesign, programming, graphics, sound, music, balancing and bug fixing.
Thats lots todo, but the deadline makes me really productive.

Last time i created an "jump & run" game TOWER of Evolution.

This time i created the Fisticuffs ice hockey brawl simulation :).

have fun.

Aeon of Sands: Pyramid on iPad / iOS /Android ?

We will release our game Aeon of Sands : Pyramid on Windows / MacOSX & Linux. But what you think about supporting Android or iOS ?

What you think about this? Aeon of Sands: Pyramid on iPad / iOS ?

Aeon of Sands: Pyramid - new Door Screenshots

Yesterday i added ingame door support to Aeon of Sands. The Doorframe is defined as Wall-Block and the Door itself is defined as Item in direction North-South. But than one thing is left. The Door-lateral on the second screenshot. Of couse we can define another Wall-Block where two sides are normal Walltextures and the other two sides show a Walltexture+lateral. But than the upper and lower part of the lateral is cutted, just because the Walltexture is too small. Arrr...

Now my solution: I added the lateral-texture to the Door definition, where i switch the drawing direction of the door on position 0,0 from Norht-South to East-West :-).

stay tuned for next updates on this blog!

SiENcE

Doors are working now :-)

also the Doors lateral

Aeon of Sands: Pyramid - Project renamed!

We finally renamed the game's working title 'Dungeonspace' into:

Aeon of Sands: Pyramid

Beside this, we have another great screenshot for you.

Screenshot shows the new Textbox and 3 possible characters to play.