Gunslinger

Blog is dead!

2007-01-18T14:54:00.000+01:00

I have extended my "made in home" cms to handle news. I have also a forum (from where the news will be mirrored, some day). Having a blog, a homepage and a forum is to much (I don't even know if anyone reads this?). Anyway... I'm declaring the blog dead from now on. Latest news are found on my site.

I hope you (all my dear readers) know that my game is in open beta. There will be a new release this weekend, featuring a long awaited easy mode.

That's pretty much it from this source.

Exhausted

2007-01-07T00:33:00.000+01:00

Today I have been testing, a lot. The 0.3 version was ready for final testing. Unless some major bugs showed up, this was the last version before going gold (of course, I'm not going to burn many cd:s).

The test was this: play the game four times, one for each combination of choices of storyline and equipment and skills. I let you discover what choices can be made in the storyline, it's not that big deal.

The skills and equipment are intimately connected. Everything revolves around the Theory skill. To handle advanced guns, you need to buy one or two ranks in this skill. You get not bonus to aim, but the guns are better. If you do not buy Theory, it's very economical to buy the skill practice. Practice gives large bonuses with simple weapons. In this game you do not combine theory with practice.

So two of the times, I bought theory. The first time I descided to specialise in plasma weapons. They are very effective against small number of enemies and you never have to reload.

The second time I only bought one rank, allowing for the powerful dart submachinegun. It uses a lot of ammo (I think I used about 6000 darts throughout the game) and this can be a problem, but there is a lot of darts in the air. I also found an Van bistro no-9, a very powerful but short range plasma shotgun. In close range it's probably the most effective weapon in the game (not counting the alien blaster that I have never found).

The third game I focused on practice. At the last map of the game I had two Masterwork flayers (high quality submachinegun) and about 1000 armourpiercing bullets and 2000 ordinary bullets. I started using the ap ammo since my enemies were heavily armoured. Far to early I ran out of ap ammo. Right before I finished the game I had almost ran out of all ammo (there was a lot of shooting).

The last time I used a very nice combo, one Masterwork flayer and a cult orbit
(grenadelauncher). With the orbit I fired mostly incendiary grenades but also plasma. During the end game it was very practical to build walls of fire that the enemies had to walk through to get at me.

The end result: All combinations ended with me defeating the game in the end. Sure there are some minor issues but nothing fatal. It took me about 11 hours of testing to get through everything. I'm a bit tired now.

And then I compiled to exe with excelsior jet. And there were some more issues. I just compiled to exe for the third time, the last I hope.

The file is now ready for download, go to:
http://gunslinger-game.mine.nu.

Finished at last

2007-01-04T23:42:00.000+01:00

Well, almost. I think that it's a playable and enjoyable game from end to start. What remains is testing. I hade to change the whole load-save cycle at the last minute. Now, savegames are encrypted (muhahahahh) with my very secure privately invented encryption engine (if you can crack it, tell me).

Another thing, when the ant task was done with assembling the game distribution file (it's over 100 Mb now) I noticed that the chopped of sound was already there. I thought it only appeared as I compiled it to exe. This might have something to do with the tritonus plugin I use to get javaZoom to work. I hope it is easily fixed, since the sounds sound a lot better when are not chopped of.

Tomorrow is friday, it will be a weekend of test. And then release.

Final testing

2007-01-04T12:10:00.000+01:00

Last night I finished of all but one item on my todo-list for the 0.3 release of the demo. Only some scripting in the ending mission remains (plus the actual ending dialogue). I have reworked all transitions, changing them to doors instead of corridors. I also added music througout the entire game.

After that I will make four complete test runs, one for each combination of weapon style and story line (there are two each). And then I will make myself known to the world.

Unless I am overwhelmed with love poems from players I will quietly begin on something else. I really would like to write a multiplayer game again.

Excelsior jet application gallery and some progress

2006-12-27T22:06:00.000+01:00

Excelsior jet have recently opened their application gallery. I got word today that I was approved for entering it. This sounds really good. Now I just have to finish demo 0.3.

I got a lot of things done today. Sometimes I really wish I had another quest model. Now any number of quests and plotlines can be active at the same time. So everytime a quest tries to script anything, it has to check: am I active, have I been completed? It becomes sort of like spaghetti code scattered over dialogs, triggers, lives and common scripts.

I would like to keep everything that belongs to a certain quest at one place. I think my next campaign will be more like grand theft auto. The world is at peace (apart from the player wreacking havoc on everything). But then the player starts a quest and it runs until is is complete or failed, then the world goes back to beeing at peace. Unfortunately this is not easy to do since my quests is almost always scattered over several maps that have very little shared scope. Well, I guess I will make it better in my next game.

Another thing, I have completed a small cms system for my homepage. Go check it out (I have posted some new screenshots and some music so it's worth some of your time). It is very simple, written in php. It was my first real project in php. I think it turned out pretty good. I solved the problem even if I want to add more features.

The reason for not using java? Well, it would have been easier to design something pretty in java, and it would have taken me the same time. But I would also have to connect tomcat and apache. It shouldn't be a problem but I want my server as bare as possible. Right now I only use flat files, that's right, not even mySQL. Very simple and very clean.

Instant action

2006-12-20T22:42:00.000+01:00

I have found that while demonstrating the game, it took to long a time for the action to happen. Also, the weapons and enemies were kind of weak until far into the game. I wanted something fast, hard, instant action with lots of guns and enemies. A long forgotten item on my todo list has been instant action. Not so anymore.

I have started making a couple of levels for this purpose. No talk, no story, only combat. Also, I have made all eqiupment random. No two games will ever be the same. Well, at least there are a lot of different possibilities. While I played through the game a couple of times a few patterns emerges:

Hightech weapons. You find a mk5, a teardrop zero or a Enforce shotgun. You buy a level of theory and you rock with the medium advanced weapons. Ammo is sparse so you have to rely on good aim and a careful planned tactic.
Lowtech practical weapons. With the cult shotgun or flayer you have to work a little harder for the kills. Hopefully you have found an orbit or handflamer as backup.
Impractical weapons. The lawmaster packs quite a punch but the rate of fire sucks and the clip is small. The big guys go down almost as fast as the small guys, beware of large packs of smaller enemies.
Weird combinations. With only grenadelaunchers or only handflamers the game is odd to say the least. Ammo is very sparse so you have to run fast and maybe settle on not killing everything.
Useless. You only find beer. At least you can get a little drunk before you die. :-)

0.3 closer

2006-12-04T09:16:00.000+01:00

I made some promises about the version 0.3 beeing released after this weekend. It's not going to happen. With the split storyline and missions beeing heavy scripted it has been to much work getting everything together. Right now it's a mess, unique events repeat themselves etc.

But there has been some progress:

There are three four new action levels (and one of them includes a very scary scripted scene).
Numerous bugfixes.
A couple of new guns, including the masterwork flayer and a sonic disruptor.
The new Dodge action that can be used when you have bought the first level of Acrobat. The dodge skill improves with every level of Acrobat.

Stay tuned.

Obstacle code cleanup

2006-11-25T10:54:00.000+01:00

Obstacles is everything in the game that takes up space but does not think. Bullets do not take up space. Sentryguns think. So it's everything between them, furniture, barrels, vehicles, machines, crates etc etc.

This week I have cleaned up the code around them alot. It's now easier to create new ones (even animated) and they behave better (when damaged) and some of them look better. It's feels good to be done, since the game wasn't working in the meantime.

I made a map with all obstacles and then tested walking around and blowing them up. It looked kind of nice in the editor. See for yourself:

Continuation

2006-11-20T09:24:00.000+01:00

At least one person (probably not more) has played through the demo. That got me started on what happened next. I have the whole story outlined but the details are made up as I build the levels. This next level has been quite a hurdle since the storyline split in two. How to build a level that works in both alternatives? But now I am on the track. I think it wont be that long until the whole thing is finished.

So far the demo consists of 14 levels (but only 8 contains any action). I have planned about 7 more action levels and some with only story (those are the hardest). I'm setting a deadline for myself. This will be done in a month from this post.

Automap

2006-11-12T09:29:00.001+01:00

The automap is at last functioning as desired. But I have not yet descided if this is too much help. There is always the mapping item to buy if you get lost. Maybe getting lost should be part of the challeng if you don't have it.

Concept art

2006-11-10T10:42:00.000+01:00

Our illustrator Thomas Eliasson send me some early sketches yesterday. These images are going to be used in the menu and maybe some other places. It is the hero Jareb Mosfet.

I really like the way he thinks. It's dirty, hard and dark. It's not to extreme, the guns are of normal size and everybody can die (probably sooner than later).

Judge for yourself. This is a sketch to descide on the clothing and equipment.

New features and sounds

2006-11-08T07:46:00.000+01:00

Some new features are finished, they will be present in the next version.

The first one is what many of you asked for: Relative control. That means that you move relative your facing. If you face down and press W, you move forward, that means down. I personally is not going to use this, it's to backwards for me. When you face up and strafe, everything is fine. But when you face down and strafe, the direction is mirrored. Of course, you can get used to this, but I already know the controls. One advantage is that it is easier to circle an enemy. Just strafe and keep the mousepointer on the centerpoint.

The second change makes you somewhat slower when you move backwards. It's not much but it will probably be noticeable when you desperately try to back away from an enemy, shooting. Now, it's not such an easy choise anymore. Should I turn and run, or back and shoot.

The third change is that the screen shakes when something explodes. It will probably enhance the immersion.

The automapping feature is on it's way. Right now, most of the lines are drawn. I'm thinking about how to include all of them.

The music dude (Project Grudge) is now our sound dude as well. I got a large pack of sounds this monday. Instead of two sounds for all bullet guns, there are now seven. Better sound and more variety.

There is a new type of gun, called Sonic gun. Sonic gun will be used by riot control and nasty critters that kills their prey with loud noice. The sonic effect is visible as blue expanding circles.

Thats five complete changes and one that is half-way there. Things are happening.

Cats and network cables

2006-11-03T09:56:00.000+01:00

Probably not that many noticed, but my server at home went down for unknown reasons a couple of days ago. I rebooted it but it didn't work. I reattached the network cables, now that did the trick. It must have been the cats (we have two now). But the network cable plugs are awfully old and worn. Someday I will cut the cable and put on new plugs.

The url to my server is http://gunslinger-game.mine.nu
The current page is temporary. I will write a little cms app that displays articles. I'm not sure if I will try my luck with ruby on rails, go with easy php or old java the one that I know best. Right now I'm thinking about java servlet + velocity + jdbc.

Oh yea, the next version of the demo is up. That would be version 0.2.

New features

2006-11-02T22:36:00.000+01:00

The engine will be completed with a handfull of new features. These will be included over the next few weeks.

Shake
By scripting (or by some effects, such as the explosions), the game window will shake. This is much like the drunkeness function, but shaking instead of spinning. The skakes will stop fast, but in the meantime it will be very hard to aim.

Evade
When the player buys the Acrobat skill, he is given the evade ability. Higher Acrobat skill means better evade. Evade lets the player jump very fast and in the meantime makes harder to hit. It also increases the chance to dodge explosions. How far the character can jump, and how hard he is to hit is determined by the Acrobat skill.

Pocket nuke
This is a new effect showing a devastating explosion. It will not be an bitmap animation. Instead it will freese the game window and apply filter effects. Below is a concept image of what it may look like (first the original image):

Automapping
This should let you see a dark gray outline of your previously visited areas.

Relative control
This a new keyboard+mouse control that lets the player move as in a first person shooter. When the player presses the move forward key, the player moves forward, the direction he is aiming.

Think tank

2006-10-30T08:49:00.000+01:00

This weekend has been productive. The author Håkan Hallström and me had a day of work. Mr Hallström had a couple of lessons on scripting in the gunslinger environment. It's not a s easy as it seems at first. Even I had trouble making the characters walk on the correct path. Eventually everyone walked in line, literally.

The sunday were spent digging, the foundation for my carport is soon in place, and shopping new furniture at IKEA. I also had time to fix some bugs in the demo and do a little testing. The day was rounded of with a short game of doom, the boardgame, with my girldfriend. It sure happens a lot.

Demo square, part 3, Release!

2006-10-27T10:46:00.000+02:00

Download the demo from the homepage.

The long awaited demo is finally here. It's not without trouble. And there are a few issues. But I have already got some suggestions that will improve the game experience.

I will not yet spread this to the world. There are still some bugs. I will try to fix the issues coming up soon. And then there will be a new release.

Java and excelsior jet

2006-10-25T10:34:00.000+02:00

I have said this project is written i java, right? Common knowledge is that java:

run on any platform
is slow
is easy to decompile

Plattform independece
As far as this project goes, it wont run unless the graphics are accelerated. Antialiasing, bilinear filtering and such isn't cheap. My laptop turns of acceleration when it's about to run out of battery, and it's really noticeable. Framerate drops to half. So, the part about plattform independence is out the window. Sorry. This game will run on windows (and maybe linux some day). Another reason for this is coming further down this article.

Performance
Java isn't slow. Maybe not as fast as c or c++, but it is starting to catch up. Some benchmarking even show java to be faster, but as I understand it, that was under special conditions. However, the bottleneck (graphics) in my project is handled by openGL or DirectX. And then I am as fast as any game. On my machine (a P4 3GHz with a ATI Radeon 9800) I get the maximum 80 fps.

Reverse engineering
I don't like the idea that my game can be easily decompiled and altered. It has nothing to do with copyright (well, maybe a little bit). I don't want to spoil the game experience, by allowing people to have infinite xp and equipment. Or reading the mission files and finding the secrets, or altering them. This is why I descided to pack everything up in an .exe. Not that it will stop a hacker, but not every java programmer can take it apart in 10 minutes.

Excelsior jet
This is a company/product that takes a java project and compiles it into a windows or linux binary. This has the following advantages and drawbacks:

Java bytecode is hidden from decompilers.
Resources, data files, images and sound are protected.
More accessible, no need for the player to install java.
Faster, no need to interpret the code at runtime or before (jit). It is already compiled into native code.
Not platform independent, but who use their unix machine to play games anyway?

http://www.excelsior-usa.com/jet.html

Demo square, part 2

2006-10-24T10:40:00.000+02:00

I'm almost ready for releasing demo square. This morning, on the train I laid the final hand to the cliffhanger endings (there are two different endings). I will clean up some sound code, and make a nice package of it all with Excelsior jet. Then it will pass through some testing (on a machine that is not used in development) before beeing made public.

Keep in mind when you test this that it is only an alpha version. Many sounds are still missing. The dialog system is to be rewritten. Savegames from this game will probably not work with later releases (I'm not promising anything). Lots of weapons, enemies and equipment remains to be done. Also, I will be happy to recieve trouble reports, but there will likely be no updates to the demo square. You have to wait until the final release.

Summary:
I'm closer to a playable release than ever before. But still a long way from a finished product.

Demo square

2006-10-19T07:46:00.000+02:00

It looks like it's going to be a demo of the demo soon, aka demo^2, aka demo square. I have some things for fix before releasing what I have right now. Encrypting all the data files, fixing some minor issues.

I think the average player can play this from start to end in about two hours. And then he can play again with different skills. Since most equipment found in crates are random and most skills you use depend on the weapons you find, every game is unique in some way.

What is important to know is that this is still an alpha version. It is farily stable (it will very seldom crash) but some features are still not what they should be. Feel free to point them out. A total rewrite of the dialog screen is on the todo-list. But the current version works fine as long as you don't want to read past dialogs (it works but it's not a good solution).

I have not yet descided how to host the file. Suggestions are welcome.

The future

2006-10-17T13:19:00.000+02:00

Right now the project is crawling forward, quite fast, but still crawling like a centaurian bug. It's little feet slipping on the metal floor. But when she lifts her head and looks towards the future, what do she see? Right now, four things are happening.

Gunslinger the engine is beeing completed. The engine can always incroporate a new function but is stable and able. The status has been 99% done for a while.
The demo game is built by me side by side with the engine. It tells me the requirements of the engine. Right now about 40% of the missions and 90% of the other content are done. Deadline is in one month from now. The demo have the following purposes:

Prove that the engine is stable and able.
Deliver a fun game to you.
Test out how the game works on your computer.
Create anticipation towards the next bullet, the bigger game.

Create a longer more dynamic game using the same engine. However, this will take a while. I'm not the one who writes this game, it's the author (more on him in a later post). The purpose of this is to deliver a kick-ass action roleplaying game to you!
Our composer are writing music for the demo and the game. It sounds really good. His artist name is "Project Grudge". More about him in a later post.

Drinking game?!

2006-10-16T09:27:00.000+02:00

One of my coworkers asked me about the status of the game in general and in particular:
"Kan man dricka i spelet?" (Can you take a drink in the game?).

The answer is: of course. There is a function to make the main window spin, and that function is called: setPromille. When drunk it is very hard to aim or interact with people and small objects. Of course you can drink only a little amount and then the spin is only noticeable.

I will now add bottles of beer, wine, vodka and wiskey to the item database. Beer will be stackable, cheap and you have to drink alot to get drunk. Wiskey will be sparese, expensive and get you dead drunk right away. The promille will also make you harder to hit, since you stagger around. And of course body builder (one of the skills) affect how drunk you get.

This calls for a drinking challenge, in the game of course. I have to figure out how this will work.

Todays progress

2006-10-14T20:50:00.000+02:00

This has been a very productive day. My girlfriend have been away most of the day and evening. I have had very little to do but develop my game.

I took another baby step towards ultimate completion. I created a new shotgun, between the advanced combat model and the sawed off. At the same time the combat shotgun was raised to complexity 2 (not everyone know how to handle it, you have to learn how). Hopefully the combat shotgun will not be such an easy choise now. To the left is the image for the new shotgun.

I created the hero version of the warrior bug. The warrior shots plasma from its... rear. The hero (named Chief) also shoots plasma, but a salvo of 5 shots in a spread pattern. It is unpredictable and sometimes very hard to dodge. This new creature needed some improvements to the ShootingBugBrain class.

The most work today, have been scripting a challenge where the player meets more and more formidable foes, until he dies or gives up. It works nicely and proves that scripting can do more than trigger dialogs and such (I knew that). This will be a sidemission in the demo game.

I have also been watching the movie "Stalingrad":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108211/
It was a good war movie, showing the horrors and psycological degradation of the men on the eastern front. It strikes me how far away games are from reality. Nobody in Call of duty wets their pants. I have to do something about this in my game.

When will the release be? Deadline is in one month. Not sure I will make that. For instance there are a lot of sounds to create.

Killer game programming in java

2006-10-13T16:08:00.000+02:00

This book written by Davison is the number one book for me. Do you know java and want to employ graphics, controls and sound, this is the number one book for you as well. I must admitt that I only use the first half, the one that is not about 3D. Someday maybe, then I will know where to look.

Many things have been improved after I took Davisons advice. Go to amazon and check out their reviews. They pretty much agree with me but with more words.
http://www.amazon.com/Killer-Game-Programming-Andrew-Davison/dp/0596007302

The book has it's own homepage with lots of extra material:
http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/

Sure there are other books. Like Brackeens Developing games in java. But where Davison explains technical details, Brackeen develops a framework. It's not a bad book, but I already know software design.

Introduction

2006-10-12T12:25:00.000+02:00

This is the blog of the game engine Gunslinger. It can be used to create action packed sci-fi games or dynamic roleplaying games, or anything in between. It is developed in java as a hobby project. It has the following features:

Top down perspective main view.
Fog of war. What you see is what your character can se. Everything else is black.
BeanShell scripting allow dynamic events and on the fly interaction.
Dialog system with conditions and actions.
Inventory system with different types of weapons, equipment and other items.
Skill system with 10 different skills and specialisation. Combat oriented.
Mission editor with about 10 different grahical tilesets.
Object editor that can create new guns, enemies, items and obstacles.

The status right now: The game engine is stable and has most features.

What remains to be done:

More graphics, tilesets.
More item graphics.
More enemy ai.
Complete the demo game.

Here is a screenshot to give you an idea of what to expect.