Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything seems to go wrong? Work is being done. Oh yes, work is being done. But at every step, we are beset upon by mystery and woe! ARGH.
Loading doors! Mr. Triolo animated them. They are lovely:
Good, well-behaved shutters. (Seen in Maya.)
Let’s put them through the same process that we use for importing everything else into the game, la la…
Do your ducts seem old-fashioned? (Presented with apologies to Terry Gilliam.)
I should start by saying that I love pipes. Seriously, I do. But people around here don’t believe me. They think I hate pipes, gears, conveyor belts, and all manner of functional machinery. I love that stuff! I just hate seeing it abused for no good reason. Gears are for doing things, not for slapping to the side of a building just ’cause!
I can say the same thing for what we’ve termed “dynamics lines”. Dynamics are basically fluids or other commodities that are required for tasks that can be either broken up into discrete units (like pails of water) or piped in (like, erm… water pipes). We’ve argued about these a lot. While they’re aesthetically pleasing, if you end up having a giant rat’s nest of pipes for a city, there’s no way you’ll be able to see what’s going on in your settlement. All of the characters become obstructed by a monstrous network of pipes and axles and other means of transmission and you can no longer tell you’re playing a game or where your favorite character is.
This is a problem.
At some point last week we decided that what Clockwork Empires really needs is loading bays. You know, that bit of a building trucks back onto to load and unload goods. No, really. And it’s going to be great!
This is not some sign of utter mundanity, rather, it’s one intersection in a web of interlocking game systems which are forming in Clockwork Empires. And it’ll be key to so much more than a hole in the wall your labourers toss crates through; No, this is Exciting Logistics! This is how everything fits together through space and time, how the labour of your fickle characters is turned, by use of machines and production structures, into valuable commodities which may be improve the well-being of your colony, be used to construct massive factories — or weapons, or perhaps sold off for the greater glory of the Royal Charter Antipodean Trading Company and The Empire. (And that’s why I love Exciting Logistics so much!)
Logistics! Excitement! (This is what happens if you put a lot of effort into cleaning up your concept art. And I admit, I’d totally play a game that looked like this, distribution arrows and all.)
Simulation of Nicholas’s ravings in-engine.
The IGF has announced today that they are removing the Technical Excellence category from their awards because of, quote, “widespread, affordable middleware”. Since I am a shattered pinion of a man, barely holding together and clutching a bottle of gin in the wake of this decision, I… I…
I don’t know what to write about any more.
I lurched into the office this morning. “What do we do?!” I asked nobody in particular. “Let’s… let’s… stop everything! Let’s license Unity! Let’s make a platformer with a lovable quirky twist!” Then David slapped me about a bit.
“You’ve got to blog!” he yelled. “Do it for the children. DO IT SO THEY MAY ONE DAY ENJOY TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE. ”
And so, one day late, we shall blog about technology – because I still believe in a world of Technical Excellence.
or: An Example of Artistic Iteration in the development of Clockwork Empires
The much-improved pine forest as surveyed by one Mr. Rooster Dynamopipe. (“Rooster”? Who’s been screwing with the name list!)
The trees for the forest in Rome: Total War
Yes, we pine for the majestic redwood towering over the domain of Nature. But if the tree towers, how can you very well see what’s behind it? The majesty of nature is lovely until it means you can’t see what the heck is going on in your game.
I have flashbacks of Rome: Total War which, apart from being a very enjoyable game, was not enjoyable when you ended up fighting a battle in a dense forest. Look to the right there; That’s a very sparse example of a forest and it has troubling issues with blocking your line of sight already. The denser forests got pretty packed and made fine maneuvering of units rather frustrating. This is what we want to avoid.
But still: the allure of Majesty! We can’t give up now!
A lot of our time over the last week on the programming side has been spent updating our internal documentation. Since we invested so heavily in back-end programming for the game, there are a lot of systems that we’ve written but have not spent a lot of time interacting with yet. And because we want the game’s content to be malleable enough that people on the team with no programming skill can edit and create content, they need to have reference to consult. It’s not the most exciting work in game development but it needs to be done.
From earlier: Steampunk Colorado
While waiting for some last bits of an object systems rewrite to be finished, I’ve been implementing some of the “high prairie” (aka Yellowstone) biome code that we were talking about at the beginning of the month, with the hope that we can start showing some more varied screenshots. It’s still a work in progress, but here’s where it’s at right now.
Shown here are the biome generators for the high prairie grasslands and the high prairie conifer forest (two of the planned seven “mini-biomes” of the high prairie biome set).
Missing from this forest floor texture: empty cans of cheap beer, discarded cogs left by bands of wandering steampunks.
The biome transitions are still basically straight lines at this point and we’re going to try to cram a bit more biodiversity and foliage variation in there to make things seem a bit more realistic (There was an extensive discussion on the subject of diseased trees). Note also that this is the upper plateau segment of the high prairie biome which is dryer and colder. The lower areas will generally be more green and lush with broadleaf forest.
We’ve done some work to reduce the appearance of terrain texture tiling artifacts (notably some clever spells cast by Mr. Whitman) which has paid off very nicely, and the process of creating terrain is starting to speed up a great deal.
To do this week: work party controls (so you don’t just get anyone doing everything), greener pastures, and hopefully the death of the object framework rewrite. Death in a good way, that is.
Every Subject of The Empire appreciates looking good and staying healthy. Enter: The Barber.
Barbers provide the grooming essential to properly express one’s station in society, from the common tousle-haired labourer to the impeccably coiffed lady & waxed-mustached gentlemen of the highest Order. Their duties do not end there, for they are Industrious and Enterprising as every Upstanding Subject aspires to be: barbers also provide the preventative medical care required in the rugged life of frontier colonization. (Bleeding, leeches, bleeding and leeches, you know.)
Shave and a haircut?
EDIT: A small fix for a (relatively minor) collection of broken save games has just hit Steam. If anybody else has any problems, please let us know. — Nicholas
I burned out on trading cards at around the Magic: The Gathering’s Fourth Edition (because once you play Leviathan in a real game, is there really anything left to do in M:TG?) but I figure if we’re going to do this trading card thing we have to do it right and provide our lovely, ravening fans with something they’d really enjoy.
So! We went and commissioned Stephanie Larsen (who, by the way, with Chestnut St. Pixel Foundry created the Gaslamp Games logo) to do five six new illustrations of various Dredmorian Subjects. Fun was had!
I’ve also tied the proverbial rudder-wheel of the good ship Gaslamp Art Team with the Rope of Neglect and taken a week off Clockwork Empires to paint five Steam profile backgrounds exploring themes in Dredmor ranging from “recycling existing art but being too obsessive over detail to not repaint it completely” to “meticulously accurate renderings of hematite”. Because we know what you like.
There are also a bunch of random badges and emoticons and Diggles and things.
They should be on Steam. Now go enjoy yourselves!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! IT IS NOW PROGRAMMER TIME
Nicholas has now taken over the blogpost to bring you A NEW DREDMOR PATCH. Finally, the damn thing is out of beta and we are ready to bring it to you, our users. Enjoy new features such as THE FOLLOWING CHANGES:
– Diggles now actually dig!
– FIXED: Dual wielding items could cause infinite status buffs.
– “Conversion” support. Items can now augment existing item definitions if they exist. See the mod request thread for syntax.
– FIXED: monsters attacking your summons left over from another level.
– FIXED: random crash w/aquatic monster spawning on entering a new room
– FIXED: mods with cooldown skills not working
– FIXED: bug with Essence’s Essential Skills Pack where kung fu-ing a door will crash to desktop
– FIXED: achievements button misaligned
– FIXED: Steamworks support for x86 Linux
– FIXED: other issues w/x86 and AMD64 Linux builds
– FIXED: Using the Lutefisk Cube on itself in the Pocket Dimension is now Even Cuter.
– Multiple scrollbars.
– FIXED: Inventory filters.
– FIXED: Wand repair achievement.
– FIXED: some monsters can no longer yield XP/treasure/zorkmids
– FIXED: crust tooltips not showing negative damage buffs.
– FIXED: Steam publisher working again. We think.
– FIXED: skills can now require you to have a certain sort of weapon (or shield!) equipped.
– FIXED: held item may disappear when trying to pick up item
– FIXED: stupid broken teaser graffiti
– FIXED: some other stuff? Things? Gah.
Enjoy! (Again, all new stuff is contingent upon us pulling a lever and having Valve process it. Caveat emptor.)
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