http://www.wundermint.com/ The Fresh Express RSS en-us Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:01:25 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss CakePHP john@wundermint.com john@wundermint.com http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/99
Now, on to the actual combat concepts. There are a few different approaches I'm considering, all of them pretty rough, but they are:

Twin Stick
Player moves and fires in realtime.
* Very action-oriented; the default winner for "most engaging".

Lock On
Player's burden is to pick targets and maneuver (realtime); AI does the shooting.
* Would accommodate 3D movement pretty well
* Makes gunnery crew a more interesting element

Turn Based
Closer to traditional RPG combat, Skies of Arcadia being an obvious influence.
* Simplest form of play; the player makes executive decisions is never rushed.
* Would facilitate dramatic animations that I will never have time to create.

Fleet
Turnless, "analog" SRPG combat (similar to Growlanser).
* This seems unfun with a single ship, so there would probably have a small fleet to control

More to come next week as I move into some actual prototyping. ]]> Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:12:34 -0600 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/99 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/98
So, it is with mixed emotions (but renewed energy) that I announce my intent to finish Ye Olde Pirate Game. "Finish" is a loose term as it arguably has yet to be started. In an effort to avoid some of the blunders of Oxidus, I'm going to try building this from the inside out instead of outside in. Over the next few weeks (and the past few days as well) I'll be tinkering with different approaches to combat, slapping together a some crude prototypes. Once I've got something with a solid hook.. well, let's talk about that when we get there. ]]> Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:23:57 -0600 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/98 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/97
* Old, outdated engine version. (Wait, is that good?)
* Approximately +30% performance gain. (Yes, it is.)
* Intermittent crashes resolved. (Quite good, in fact.)

So, it's the exact same, but better. The only thing that isn't 100% internal (read: you could notice, but won't so I'm drawing attention to it here) is that the random emblem generation is a fair bit better about picking colors. Retroactively adding new improvements to an old engine proved to be pretty mind-numbing, so I wanted something trivial and visual to offset the pain.

Head on over to the Oxidus website to upgrade if you haven't already. ]]> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:16:07 -0600 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/97 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/96 Oxidus has arrived. Head on over to the Oxidus website to download the client and sign up for an account. It is believed to be stable, but please notify me of any problems you're having. Any and all feedback is welcomed and encouraged.

Existing beta accounts have not been purged. So, if you've already been playing, you won't need to sign up again; just grab the latest version of the client and you'll be on your way.

Good luck and have fun. I'll see you on the battlefield. ]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:33:32 -0600 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/96 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/95 Gruedorf page. Those of you who visited late last week will notice that it has changed yet again. It's mostly superficial changes; I like nothing more than tirelessly adjusting layouts and tweaking colors. Honest. The end result is a much more elegant thing, which is what I wanted all along.

It's not all just fluff, though. Each user profile now has a handy timeline too! Using bright, cheerful colors, it illustrates just how well a participant has (not) performed over the course of Gruedorf. There are some more features I'd like add, but for the immediate future I'd like to get back to Oxidus. Happy 'dorfing to you all! ]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:38:25 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/95 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/94
Gruedorf 2.0

While it looks somewhat different, functionally it's very close to how was before. The bulk of actual improvement was done on the backend, so future improvements and features should be significantly easier to implement. I can't express how bad it used to be; there just are no words.

Feedback is, of course, welcomed and encouraged. ]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:45:09 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/94 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/93
In other news: as I'm writing this, every participant in Gruedorf is failing.

Every. Single. One.
Simultaneously.

This makes me die a little more inside. ]]> Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:18:30 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/93 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/92 not good.

So yeah, everything works except combat. I still can't figure it out. For some reason it is just horribly, terribly broken, except that it still "works". But it's as if the numbers suddenly decided it would be fun to randomly go to the wrong place. I can find no sane explanation. So, in short, everything went better than expected until it went worse than expected.

That's all I've got this week. ]]> Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:11:19 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/92 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/91
* Vista support! This was, in reality, my fault all along; Vista's stricter socket rules exposed the error of my ways.
* Sludge accumulated on the player ship now deteriorates over time. The rate of deterioration is inversely related to the ship's hull volume.
* Assault durations are significantly shorter and more uniform (~50-90 seconds).
* You can now pan the sector map camera by holding right click and "pushing" in a direction.
* Panels highlighted for a tutorial panels now blink briefly to make them more apparent.
* Fixed a bug that allowed notched sliders to be set to intermediary values.

Remaining:

* Light audio clean-up work
* A few bits of additional combat art
* Much dreaded porting to Verge 3.2

Really everything is going swimmingly. Beta player feedback is increasingly positive and I'm steadily progressing toward the finish line. ]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:23:14 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/91 http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/90
The strobe is now a significantly tougher customer. When it flashes, the player's directional controls are temporarily scrambled, making even basic evasion difficult.

And a couple ugly (but simple) bugfixes:
* Fixed a bug that allowed players to attack multiple planets simultaneously.
* Fixed a bug that could cause parts of the player hull to be drawn over the near-death flash.

I know I said I'd give some chatter about these changes, but I want to wait until I've actually pushed the next release out. I've still got a few more bits to tackle this week and then we'll be there. Stay tuned! ]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:10:00 -0500 GMT http://www.wundermint.com/posts/view/90