Little Gods

#1 That looks really cool. Very unusual look. I like it!

- Melv.

#2 Whoa, that looks trippy, indeed. :) Lovely art you've got going on there. Any more info on the game? I'm intrigued. :-p

edit: Just checked out your website. A pong game, huh? Now that's going to be trippy. :)

#3 Very cool, looks fun.

#4 Thanks for the compliments! I'll add another shot once we get farther along. I'm hoping to create one of those movies like Melv does all the time, too. :)

#5 Looks good. submit it to the dev snapshots :D

#6 Good idea, once it's further along. :) It's still got quite a distance to go. Thanks for the comment!

#7 Here's the level editor in progress. It's still very crude, but it works. You can see the character selection screen behind it.


This isn't using tiles at all. I found that they are not adequate for this type of game, where tiles must have positional self-awareness to react to collisions etc. Plus these bricks do more than just sit there. :) So I created my own system with a save format and all that.

Bigger one here.

#8 Cool stuff

#9 Very nice artwork. The game looks really original, it make you really wonder what it would do :) Did you do the save format in C++?

I wonder if the new fileformats will allow editing other objects (player start position(s), enemies and other things that cant be tiles) together with the tiles.

#10 @Edo: The basic gameplay is scoring against your opponent by knocking the balls around, but there's a lot of subtle strategies thanks to a fresh take on the "genre". Powerups are actually god powers called "invocations" that require mana. This isn't your father's pong!! :) The wonderful art is by my partner in crime, Greg Tice. The excellent sound design (which of course isn't in this screenshot!) is by Michael Huang from www.gamenoise.com.

The file format I created is really simple, and it's all done in script. The only C++ I bothered with was to fix some bugs.

All of the game objects are able to load and save themselves, and every object is a "plugin" so that I can expand the game with very little effort. Just drop in some source files, some art and sound, and new stuff appears in the game. Levels, objects, characters, backgrounds are all plugin objects. TorqueScript makes this pretty easy, actually.

The editor is now highly functional. I went from no editor at all to very functional editor in just 2 days (that's about 24 hours since my days are long). Gotta love Torque and T2D. :)

#11 @Jason. Thank you for your explanation, it sounds good (game and solutions). I must say, I came across the exact same needs (fileformat, editor) for Whack N Egg, although a little less critical than in your situation. Is there any chance you will share the fileformat script (with me)?

I also wondered: Are you both doing gamedevelopment full-time (you mentioned 12 hour working days)? And will this game have single play and 'duo-play' (fun!!)?

And yes, it is quite amazing how fast some things can be developed in T2D. An editor in two days :) I am still quite a noob in T2D/TGE (I bought TGE in 2003 but never got started, also because I moved with my GF to Australia) but now after a week in T2D, I already got a lot of stuff running, including code handling all physics for the player (the build-in physics where too unpredictable for good gameplay). Not bad :)

#12 Oh my god I had a huge reply with code and everything, but the server said I don't have permission, and now it's gone. Maybe I'll get up the gumption to redo it.... phooey!!!

#13 Jason, definitely try to repost it if you can. I really want to see how you're doing it :)

My game doesn't really use custom editors - my state data is all based on hard-coding and algorithms. Not ideal, but custom editors would be overkill for this simple type of game.

#14 Testing 1, 2, 3... I still get denied when I try to post! That's really bizarre, because I can post this but I can't post anything with my code in it.

Quote:You don't have permission to access /mg/forums/result.thread.php on this server.

#15 Well, anyway, the format is nothing interesting. I just dump some information about which object, its position, and what configuration info it handed the save function to write to disk. It's text output (nice for cross-platform goodness), and very simple.

So, every object has a serialize() function which returns a string containing data about the object's current state such as sprite frame, number of hits left, etc. That string is written to disk. To load a level, the game just reads the save file, creates each object, and then calls deserialize() on each object, passing to it the same string it got from serialize(). The object will then configure itself based on that string, setting position, frame, number of hits, etc.

Nothing fancy, but it works well.

#16 @Jason: sounds very pythonic :)

#17 I do love me some Python. :)

#18 Just figured I would mention that Little Gods has come a long way since these screens were posted, and if you want all the latest info and screenshots, feel free to visit my website where it's all happening. www.griminventions.com

#19
looking fantastic!
(hope you don't mind me directly linking)

#20 Thanks, Joshua! :)