05.16.2013 

Not much to report today. Worked on a bunch of behind the scenes stuff to clean up code, and repositioned the little popup that tells you how much you’ve just looted. Now it also animates from zero to the amount, instead of just showing the final value, so it draws a bit more attention visually and makes the amount seem more impressive. It looks cool.

The “ka-ching” sound still needs more variation, it can get repetitive - though not as annoying as it was when every time you looted an additional 10% from an object it popped up. With faster looting speeds, that was just kind of obnoxious.

Played with my Ouya for a bit, looked into getting Unity set up to compile for it, might pull out a simple game I was working on a few months back and see if I can get that running. Changing the controls for Robber to use a gamepad instead of touch controls shouldn’t be too big a deal, and I can map the buttons on the face of the gamepad to the four actions a player can perform…that should work well, I think.

Just a quick update:

  • Lighting is in, more or less. Occasionally there’s a glitch on the last two tiles generated where it won’t light properly upon initial load, but it’s close enough that I’ll just note the bug and move on to another task. It only happens once ever dozen levels or so, should be fun to track down…
  • Started getting windows in. Right now, no objects are placed in front of a window, so I need to update the object database with another field to track if each object can be placed in front of a window. For example: A short bookshelf, or a table with a lamp, should be able to go in front of a window, but a tall bookcase or shelving shouldn’t. This shouldn’t take too long to add, though it might slow down level generation…will have to play with it.
  • Updated background with moon phases (right now it’s random, maybe at some point I can connect it to the actual day & time) and added new clouds. The clouds, for some reason, are slowing down the animation of the door opening, so I might have to optimize the cloud graphic or shrink it down so it’s not taking up so much CPU time on mobile devices. Maybe it could just tile more…the entire graphic is never fully visible on-screen at any point so I could probably get away with it.
  • Camera movement now smoothly moves to player location instead of being locked to the player. This results in less scrolling, and when the camera does move, it’s much smoother. Still a little finicky, but better than most of what I’ve seen on mobile, so I’m calling it done for now and making a note to revisit after more important things are completed.
  • Decided I’ll probably aim for a tablet-only release at first, then roll it out to mobile devices with smaller screens. Android tablets first, because that’s what I have more readily available to test on. While Robber ran pretty when I last tested it on an iPad Getn 1, my lack of interest in anything Apple always has me testing more on Android-based devices. In its current state it runs pretty well even on the $50 MK-808B Android stick, so on newer and more powerful devices it should be hitting a near-constant 60fps.
  • Got my own Ouya, finally, after dealing with a bunch of silly shipping issues that could have been easily avoided. Adding support for Ouya and its gamepad doesn’t look very difficult, so I’ll probably do it, even if only for my own benefit…I don’t have much interest in adding yet ANOTHER storefront to worry about. We’ll see.

I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to update this dev blog more, so stay tuned!

I figured out how to create tile-based “lighting” based on savegame data. Since it’s basically just checking for the state of lights on a tile, and on the tiles to the right/left of each tile, it’s really, really quick. It’s also interactive - turn off a light (or turn off the power to the house) and the lights will go out. If unlit areas that are effected by light are overlapping, they’ll turn a different shade to show that they’re being effected by two (or more) lights. Awesome! I still need to add back in the “Flashlight” effect that follows the player so that you can see darker areas when you’re in front of them, but I’d already figured that out and will just need to combine it with the base scene lighting once it’s fully complete. ETA: end of the week, hopefully. I’m going to dig into adding some colored lighting after I’ve finishing implementing single-color lighting. Since the RGB values are all being controlled separately, it should be easy to set up a table of data for each light type so they can be assigned their own colors. This happy accident totally changes the look of the game and, I think, drastically improves it. Very exciting times! If I were a real, actual developer this probably wouldn’t be all that exciting (it really WAS simple to do, once I figured out what to do), but as someone who’s just willing (and stubborn) enough to keep banging their head against a wall to figure something new out, I’m pretty proud of myself.
Pop-upView Separately

I figured out how to create tile-based “lighting” based on savegame data. Since it’s basically just checking for the state of lights on a tile, and on the tiles to the right/left of each tile, it’s really, really quick. It’s also interactive - turn off a light (or turn off the power to the house) and the lights will go out. If unlit areas that are effected by light are overlapping, they’ll turn a different shade to show that they’re being effected by two (or more) lights. Awesome!

I still need to add back in the “Flashlight” effect that follows the player so that you can see darker areas when you’re in front of them, but I’d already figured that out and will just need to combine it with the base scene lighting once it’s fully complete. ETA: end of the week, hopefully.

I’m going to dig into adding some colored lighting after I’ve finishing implementing single-color lighting. Since the RGB values are all being controlled separately, it should be easy to set up a table of data for each light type so they can be assigned their own colors.

This happy accident totally changes the look of the game and, I think, drastically improves it. Very exciting times! If I were a real, actual developer this probably wouldn’t be all that exciting (it really WAS simple to do, once I figured out what to do), but as someone who’s just willing (and stubborn) enough to keep banging their head against a wall to figure something new out, I’m pretty proud of myself.

Been awhile. Had lots of real-life stuff going on, but for the past month or so I’ve been working on Robber about 75% of my waking time.

Added object visibility based on Player Distance. Initially the lighting effect was just going to be a simple 2D overlay, but doing it this new way allows the visibility to actually effect gameplay and it’s a more efficient solution.

Also: Did some initial Ouya testing and pretty much everything works right away, though I’ll need to add full Ouya gamepad support since the game is really only set up for touch-based gameplay right now.

I’ve been thinking about wrapping up gameplay on the house portion, polishing up the menus and HUD, and releasing a public beta for Android on the Google Play store. Maybe that would help stir up some interest? And as always, you can apply to be a beta tester here: link

  • 10 Plays
  • FMSneakyBubble Pipe Media

Enjoy some sweet, sweet tunage from Nate at Bubble Pipe Media, musician & sound designer for Robber: A Game of Property Reallocation.

I’m thinkin’ we might have to sell a soundtrack.

Boring Text Update #2

Because all of the updates are code updates, and even good code is boring to look at.

  • Rewrote the level generation system so that there can be up to 256 room types, each with 256 object types in each room. In theory, this will give us, oh, about 65,536 potential variations for a level. I figure that should cover enough variations, yes?
  • Rewriting the animation system, again, so that it’ll tie in better with level generation and won’t load animations that aren’t needed for that specific level. This should help decrease load times.
  • Levels can now be of ANY size, and not just limited to a 4x9 grid. This was sorta-kinda in there from the beginning but was never tested - not it has been, tweaks have been made to speed it up and iron out a few odd player movement bugs that occurred due to some wonky code. Also, scrolling now works properly.
  • Starting implementing a more robust waypoint system, so players/enemies can move from a position on one level to another without requiring an extra tap after the player has moved to a new floor. Should help streamline gameplay. 
  • Starting adding zooming functionality, though I don’t know if it will make it into the final game; it’s a nice way to see and appreciate the pixel art up close, but it doesn’t really add anything to the game.

Prettier updates, with pretty pictures, as they occur. Things are moving swiftly, so that shouldn’t be too long.

Happy new year everyone!

Here’s a few new in-progress screenshots. Level generation now includes two additional bedroom types, and while the artwork still needs to be inserted for most of the random objects, room generation is in there and didn’t irreparably break anything, which I call progress!

More updates coming soon. Hoping to get the bedroom objects inserted this weekend. That’ll leave a few more room types (every house needs at least one bathroom, right), after which it’ll be time to get the enemy AI working properly.

And remember, you can sign up to be a tester here:
http://pixelmetal.com/beta-signup/

Other updates:

  • Visibility Meter is now effected by lights and whether they’re turned on or off
  • Visibility Meter takes into account player movement and if the player is hidden in a room or not
  • Visibility meter now checks whether or not the player is near a sound-generating object, and if that object is on or off. For example, the player can turn on a radio to distract enemies, and if they get far enough away from it then the enemy is more likely to go see what’s going on with the radio than chase the player. Yay, strategy!
  • More sound effects now implemented 

Top