Finally! SLUDGE 2.0 is finished. More info in this post at Adventure Developers.
It feels good to have finished the almost two year long work on it, but this does not mean that I’ll leave it. Nor have I completely given up on making another game with it. We’ll see what happens.
In case you’re wondering what’s up, here’s a quick update.
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.
If you’re reading this, then you probably already know that I’m working on the adventure game engine called SLUDGE, and have been doing so for a while. But now I’ve become an official SLUDGE developer, and even a project leader. If you are (or may become, or have been) a SLUDGE user, you should head on over to Adventure Developers, where I’ve started a discussion about the future of the engine. I’m interested to hear your opinion.
It’s time for another status update.
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. Continue reading
Now these things also work:
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.
This is another progress update for my work on Sludge.
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.)
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.)
I’m making good progress porting the Sludge game engine to Mac OS.
Here’s what I’ve done since the last update: Continue reading
Sludge progress update:
The z-buffer now (almost) works! All my tests work great except the Interview. I suspect it may be due to the high number of layers used there, but I don’t know. (If I had known, the bug would have been fixed already.)
Edit: Now I know, and now it’s fixed!
I’ve also fixed the bug that was keeping some music silent, so all sound should now work properly.
I’ve now spent some time with Sludge, which means that text now comes in different colours (though it may be a bit too bright – will test some more), speech stays on the screen (I don’t know when I happened to introduce that bug, but now I’ve fixed it), mixOverlay works properly (it was ridiculously easy), and I fixed a small problem that was remaining with pasted sprites.
This means that the following small test programs work as they should (unless I’ve missed something): Continue reading
…or maybe a “lack-of-progress” update. Since my last comment on my last post, I haven’t done anything with either Frasse or Sludge. Time, you know, and so on. I wrote in my last update that expected to get some things done in the week before Easter. True, I have had time to program, and I have gotten things done, but those things have been in another area: I have a brother who is a farmer, and I have helped him with his site where he sells sheep fells. (The site is in Swedish only.)
But you can rest assured that I will return to both Sludge and Frasse. Neither is abandoned. Maybe I’ll get some things done tomorrow…
Happy Easter!