I am looking at the game and considering how I can make it better. The graphics will get some small improvements, and a few added animations. The menu system probably should be made prettier (but I’m not so good at that kind of stuff, so we’ll see…) I’m considering adding a short intro to the game, and also give the player a clear goal from the start.

The biggest updates (aside from the ones coming from the upgrade of the game engine) will be in the area of sound. I’ve already revealed that I’m reworking the music and adding some sound effects. What you probably don’t know is that I’m also adding voice acting. I posted in the Voice Acting Alliance Forums (which I found out about through the – mostly good voiced – game Dirty Split) and when I got some really good voices in reply, it got quite interesting. This may even make the game worth replaying for those who have already played it.

But there is a problem. The most interesting replies I got from that forum were all from women, and there are fewer females than males in the game. (I may have more females in my next game.) I’ve managed to fill most roles, and I’ve decided to voice the title character myself (nobody even auditioned for that part!), but there are still five parts left without an actor to play them. Blake, Ike, Tom Braider, the Huge Dog and the King. (I’m still waiting for the recordings of several of the other characters that people have agreed to do, but I hope that I won’t have to worry about those.) So if you who are reading this know another place where I could ask people if they’d be interested to voice a character, I’d like to hear from you. Maybe you’d even be interested to do it yourself? I’m not offering any other compensation than a place in the credits, though. (Or some small favour in return. I’ve agreed to record a few lines for a project of one of the actors, or if you want a piece of music or something that could also be arranged.)

The thought of an in-game hint system has also crossed my mind, but I don’t know if I’ll add that.

I’m aiming for a release around Easter-time, and it still seems realistic to think I’ll make that deadline.

And finally, since the few people who are reading this are likely to have played the game already: If this post reminds you of something that you think I should improve in Frasse, please don’t hesitate to let me know!

My first attempt (in 2002) at making a game with the SLUDGE adventure game engine was a collaboration.

A scene from Mathias Ferguson, Crime Scene Photographer

Mathias Ferguson, Crime Scene Photographer was designed by a man calling himself Ashikaga that I met in an adventure game forum (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure on Usenet). He was to design the game and I would implement it. We got a few scenes done, but in late 2003 Ashikaga found himself too busy and suggested we put the project on hold.

At this point, I started on Frasse (after looking around a bit for another collaborator without success). In 2006, after I’d released Frasse, I wanted to pick up development of Mathias again. Ashikaga was not only still busy with other stuff, but he’d also stopped playing adventure games, so he was not interested and instead gave me permission to do what I want with the game. (Even though we never got far with it, I still would like to pick it up again one day, maybe with another collaborator.)

I then made contact with Deirdra Kiai, asking if she would be interested in a collaboration after she was done with TGTTPOACS. When the reply came a few days later that the game was almost finished and she would indeed like to make a game with me I was thrilled. Not only am I a big fan of her games, we both had a track record of actually finishing games. Surely this time the collaboration would result in something great? We thought a while on what kind of game to make (a platform game? a kart racer?) and decided to try a small one-room conversation-based 3d adventure game. Deirdra would do the design and model the room, I would do character graphics and for the rest I don’t think we had a clear division.

Character concept art for Bob, one of the main characters.

But as St. Edmond’s Second-Best Coffee hasn’t been released, it’s clear that something went wrong this time, too.

Concept art for Child of the Warriors, the other main character

Bob again. This time as a model in Blender.

As there didn’t exist any ready-to-use engines for 3d adventure games, we looked around a bit and decided on Ogre3d. Learning to use that wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, and it was made even more complicated that I had bought my first Mac and I wanted to make it cross-platform. Trying to learn Mac-coding and Ogre3d at the same time was not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Add to that the fact that Ogre3d wasn’t as well supported on Mac as on Windows, and you see what we were up against. We never got the engine to a state where we would be able to start making the actual game.

So the obvious failure here was that we bit off more than we could chew. Even though the scope of the game itself was deliberately small, the technical side of it turned out to be too hard for us. That was definitely the biggest reason for the death of the project.

But there’s more to it than that. The thing that broke the project was once again lack of time, but this time that lack of time was mine. A hobby has to take second place to paid work and other stuff, and when (after a long period of slowly making very little progress) I ended up unable to work at the game at all, the project died. (I don’t remember the exact details, but I think it was something like that.)

I also suspect that the vague work division was a bad thing.

(Deirdra then made Pigeons in the Park. It has some of the spirit of St. Edmond’s Second-Best Coffee even though it’s a different and smaller game, so play that game if you want a taste of what could have been.)

I’ve also played a smaller part in the creation of some games that actually have been made. I’m thinking of Handyman Wanted and 8 Squares in the Garden in particular, where I made the music. It was fun, but I’m not 100% happy with my contribution there. If I get to make music for someone else’s game again, I want to have more control over how it sounds in the game and not just mail some MP3 files to the game maker and then become surprised by how it actually sounds inside the game when it’s released.

I’m still hoping to be part of a collaboration in the future. Feel free to contact me if you have an idea.

I got a lot done on the SLUDGE adventure game engine during the summer. (If you’re interested in knowing more about that, and maybe trying it out, you should head on over to the Adventure Developers forum. That’s where the SLUDGE action is.)

Now my SLUDGE-making speed has slowed down a bit, for two reasons. One is that the vacation is over, and my paid work naturally has priority over this stuff. The other is that I’ve been spending a little time [i]using[/i] the SLUDGE development kit, making Frasse and the Peas of Kejick: Special Edition. No estimated release date for that yet, but I’m hoping to get it done this side of Christmas.

Since my last progress update, I’ve been busy. First with work: End of the semester and such. Not much time for anything else. After that, I went to the south of Sweden for a week to play and learn more about Jazz and World Music. (Yes, that’s me in the picture with a cornet in hand, trying some livelooping.) Great fun, and inspiring. (Some sound clips from the course are also available at the site I linked to, in case you’re curious. It’s me trying an improvised cornet solo in the middle of the Arabian 7/8, and playing the bassoon in the Tango.)

But now I onec again have time for a bit of programming, and am making progress. I’ve been reading the Cocoa programming book by Aaron Hillegass that I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s really good, and I understand why it’s recommended as “the book” to read for people who want to learn Mac programming. As a result, I’m starting to grasp how Mac programming works, and I’ve added an options window for Sludge. I also find Mac GUI programming so enjoyable that the thought of porting the development kit too, and not just the engine, is looking more and more appealing. The idea of maintaining the Windows port is at the same time becoming less appealing, so I’m hoping that someone else will show interest in that department, but if that doesn’t happen I won’t let the Windows port fall behind (much) either.

I’m still waiting for Tim Furnish to add me as a developer at Sludge’s SourceForge site (he said that he would, when he found his password), so that I’ll be able to upload the things I’ve done with the engine.

I may also become sidetracked one weekend. I visited a site related to Allegro (the game development library I used to make Rocket Duel), and learned that there’ll be a new speedhack coming soon. Speedhack is an Allegro programming competition run over three days (starting July 10th), and I’ve registered intent to participate. It might be fun. (The rules aren’t completely known until it has started, but I’m hoping that it’ll be fun, and a bit challenging.)

Thanks, JD, for taking the time to write reviews! (And I’m not saying this because he liked my game. If anyone who doesn’t like my game would like to review it, I’d be equally grateful. I’d probably learn more from that review.)

Instead I have spent some time with Frasse. The original game, and not the sequel. When I release it for the Mac, it will be an updated game, and the area where I really want to update things in in the sound department. I want to use real instruments in the music. Here’s an example: The original version, and the updated one with a live trombone. The new version is far from perfect (I need to practice recording myself) and I’ll probably return to it again before the game is re-released, but I hope you’ll agree it’s an improvement anyway. I plan to do this all over the place, and also add other sounds.

• Collision detection. (I.e. checking if the mouse is over a character.)
• Thumbnails for saved games.
• File rename/delete.
• Parallax layers are pasted properly when doing a freeze.
• getPixelColour (untested, but should work)
• The snapshot-related functions and special effects.

This means that all Sludge games should be playable! There are still things remaining, but everything is going in the right direction. (Beta testers – the updated engine is available at the same location as before.)

I have also ordered two books that should help me learn some things I should know: Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X  (I’m told this is the must-have book for Cocoa programmers) and OpenGL Shading Language.

Lighting works. It was easier to add than I expected. (multitexturing with OpenGL is quite straightforward!) This is an area where the 32 bit graphics (instead of the 16 bit used by Sludge v 1) make things look better. Out of Order in particular looks quite impressive. Tim Furnish did some cool things with the lighting that looks great now that it’s a bit more subtle.

I have also discovered and fixed some bugs.

Now that most systems are functional, I’ve started testing a bit more. I’m now testing all Sludge games I have access to: (I want to make sure that I don’t break anything.)

• Out of Order
• Frasse and the Peas of Kejick
• Nathan’s Second Chance
• The Game that takes Place on a Cruise Ship (and its demo The Interview)
• Cubert Badbone
• Mandy Christmas Adventure
• The sample games, and some small test games I have made.
• (Erwin Broekhuis has also tested it with his work-in-progress.)

Besides these, there are two more Sludge games that I know of that have been released: The Otto Experiment demo and Kats. Both of those have disappeared from the web. If you know where I can find them (Otto in particular) or another game that I have forgot about, please let me know.

Mandy managed to crash the engine when I started it. It turned out that the reason for that was that it’s in Slovak. (Translations are available, but I ran it with the defaults first.) Slovak uses a lot of accents, and those letters are encoded in the Windows text format in the game file, so when the game tried to set the title of the Window, it failed spectacularly. I now convert the title to Unicode, so it works. (Internally, Sludge uses its own text format, so that was never a problem.)

Remaining things to do include:

• Thumbnails for saved games.
• Pixel perfect (or at least close to it) collision detection. (Neither Frasse nor TGTTPOACS can be finished without it.)
• File renaming/deletion (useful for dealing with saved games).
• Pasting parallax layers when freezing.
• getPixelColour
• Some special effects.
• Improve placement of images. Since OpenGL doesn’t care about pixels, images sometimes get placed a pixel or two off. I improved the situation a bit yesterday (by adding 0.325 here and there), but small visual artefacts still turns up in a few places.
• Startup window, for selecting language, window resolution, full screen or not…

There is also launch, launchWith, registryGetString and the functions for movie playing. These are low priority for me. I suppose I won’t get away with removing the launch functions (people have used these, and I guess they might be useful), but I think registry reading should go. (There’s no registry on Mac and what’s the use for the function anyway? there is no function for writing to the registry. Has it been used?) Movie playing, if done at all, should change. I’ve never used those functions, but I recall people having codec problems. “Whatever AVIs Windows can play” is asking for trouble. It needs a defined set of formats.  I’m thinking Ogg Theora, or letting this mostly unused (has it been used at all?) function go.

Here’s what I’ve done since the last update: 

• Saving and loading now works. (No snapshots yet, though.)
• The engine is now resolution independent, and scales everything nicely. It also keeps the aspect ratio constant. (I still have a few checks to add to make downscaling safe.) I experimented a bit with a resizable window, but that was a bit too messy. I’ve read it might be better handled in SDL 1.3, though, so maybe it the future…
• Cocoa integration. Now command+Q works properly, and errors pop up in nice cocoa alert panels. (Game selection is also done through cocoa, unless there is gamedata in the app package.)
• Found and squashed two bugs. 

Now there are no known bugs left, but there are still unimplemented features that to the uninitiated may look like bugs. There are 24 TODOs left in the code. Biggest TODO is the lighting, which I still haven’t touched.