Teemu 1.3 on its way

After a while of thinking I decided to finish Teemu 1.3. It deserves that, because I already had refactored it and didn't want to forget it like that. I think I have to reduce some of the original plans, but let's see what happens. The main difference to previous version will be more complex game engine and role-playing system, which I hope is transforming Teemu more a roguelike.

Good thing is that my job begins later than I thought, it's taking yet a month so I guess it could be a nice amount of time to spend on Teemu.

To rogue or not to rogue

With Teemu I proved that I can release a game. While Kaduria is under development I would also wish to prove that I'm a good game designer. I think now it's the time to do that with all new game project. With it I'm stepping out of the narrow roguelike style and simply create a game. I wouldn't be writing this if I had not come up with an excellent idea. The best thing I guess is that with my current knowledge about game design I can and will plan the game before writing any code. I can also do that at least in three stages and also possibly release the game after each stage.

Got a job

I've got two weeks free, then I'll return to my work where I was more than a year ago. I "promised" myself not to do that again and find a real job somewhere with more income. Well that didn't happen and I was kind of forced to accept this job, because the way unemployment system works here in Finland. If you don't accept a job they stop giving you money, so it's a lose-lose situation for people who are not active enough to find a proper job. Low wage jobs are the result of current right-wing politics. These people want to return to good old slavery times, really. Not only that, I met my new boss briefly and there is something wrong with that person. He pulled me away into a corridor to explain what were my tasks in the job, as if it was some kind of secret no one should hear. What a creep.

I'm actually quite depressed. Maybe I need to be more to get out of this situation. I don't like what's happening in my life.

7DRL dev diary - days 6-7

For 7 days this project was a failure, but I will continue it later. One thing I'm waiting for is bmesh for Blender. I've pretty much stopped making 3D stuff until bmesh gets into official release. For those who don't know it's n-gon support for Blender which this far has had only triangles and quads, making certain type of models hard to do. Also with bmesh comes vertex based bevel which for me is the number one tool to build models.

I feel bad about roguelike development right now. It's a phase that will come sometimes, but it should pass in couple of days or weeks. In the meantime I try to concentrate on Brick Atelier which is in many ways a lot easier project than games.

7DRL dev diary - day 5

Day 6 has started, but let's report day 5 first. I was supposed to model 3D yesterday, but didn't do anything. This time of the year is possibly the worst for 7DRL type competition. In arctic regions it's spring time. Snow is starting to melt and sun is rising above the horizon which means it's a blast of bright sunlight after dark winter. It has strange effect on body. On the other hand it's increasing the amount of testosterone, but it's also backfiring in form of tiredness.

It's snowing pretty hard right now, so spring has to wait for a week or two I guess. So does this project, with realistic development time being more like month than 7 days.

7DRL dev diary - days 3-4

I've got a plan of the ship and some basic tiles planned on paper. I haven't yet programmed anything. The small number of tiles made me think of making 3D models of them with 2D rendered tiles from the top side. 3D is cool, because you can then change lighting, colors/textures and the size of the tiles. It also means I wont finish this in 7 days, but it never was the idea of 7DRL for me.

The biggest problem still is the idea of the game. I have no idea what the player should do. Maybe fix something before the ship goes boom? Battle alien creatures that were attached to the ship while visiting a distant planet? Maybe I should just create the game without content and wander around the ship, trying to think it that way. Or I could just release the game without content, making the player think what the hell he is supposed to do.

Update: Got the idea and it's a good one.

7DRL dev diary - days 1-2

This far I have planned the user interface which is going to have a nice style (I guess). When thinking of the theme I was first planning to place the game in a mansion and then on an island with a lighthouse. Boring.

Now it's second day and I felt that I need something different. Then I had an idea: a large spaceship with cargo container halls as central place. They can be just like regular caves in fantasy roguelikes. Places are connected with elevators. It could be cool to create a 3D level structure so elevator shafts (and everything else too) would be placed in their real location.

I've only started day 2 so it's time to plan stuff. The structure of the spaceship and levels, what items you can find, how about some vending machines? And I need some kind of story, what's happening in the spaceship and what the player needs to do.