Humble Voxatron preview

[recs]

http://www.humblebundle.com/



ecco, mi hanno fregato. ho appena preso il royale ma voxatron non me lo faccio sfuggire.

[Firephoenix]

Io aspetto di vedere se e quali giochi aggiungono nei prossimi giorni, cmq e' un'ottima cosa vedere queste iniziative indie (humble e royale).

Si da una mano a gente che ha spesso le palle di innovare ma non ha i mezzi, e qualcosa va anche in beneficienza.

[recs]

a voxatron ci ho fatto un paio di partite.

carino, ci sono già vari livelli e l'editor l'ho solo visto di sfuggita ma sembra completo.

[blastomorpha]

Non ho capito se quando Voxatron sarà ultimato potrò fare l'upgrade al gioco completo senza pagare o dovrò comunque comprarlo

[recs]

tutti gli aggiornamenti di voxatron sono inclusi, ovviamente.

lo ha rilasciato ora per far creare contenuti con l'editor e per beta testing.

diciamo che ha quasi completato il motore, a mano a mano che ci lavora verrà aggiornata la pagina del bundle (succede già con cortex command, non è una novità), la modalità adventure che c'è ora è poco più di una demo. non vuole mostrare il single prima che sia pronto per il rilascio vero.

edit: cmq blocks that matter non è male, binding of isaac è stata una sorpresa più che gradita. avrei preso il bundle anche solo per quello. voxatron l'ho messo in pausa dopo essere arrivato ai livelli platform con la lava. decisamente i meno riusciti come meccanica, anche se la lava è ben fatta.

[blastomorpha]

Grazie per la risposta. Quindi superando i 4.95$ si hanno i 3 giochi completi, ottimo
Edit: ora 5.07$

[recs]

beh calcolando quanto costano singolarmente valgono ampiamente la spesa.

ovviamente deve piacere il genere. per ora quello che mi ha preso meno è blocks that matter, ma credo che lo finirò cmq.

[Tyus da bass]

Isaac bello ma non sono riuscito a impostare i comandi del pad 360 e giocarci con la tastiera è una palla

[recs]

xpadder o simili?

io lo gioco con la tastiera senza problemi, hanno anche fixato il bug della roba di halloween che non si salvava.

[blastomorpha]

Io ho provato il Joy2Key che viene menzionato dal gioco stesso, ma dà problemi con le leve analogiche (pad della 360 col cavo); spero di risolvere con xpadder perché con la tastiera mi imbroglio facilmente e il gioco già mi sembra tosto di suo.
Comunque al momento sto giocando a BTM, forte
Voxatron (che si controlla come Isaac ma mi ci trovo meglio con la tastiera) invece è proprio una festa di pixel e anche la colonna sonora è una figata
Soldi ben spesi

[recs]

voxatron cmq è stato aggiornato dalla prima release.

ora si possono settare diversi sistemi di input, incluso mouse e tastiera. non l'ho ancora provato.

[blastomorpha]

Hanno aggiunto 4 "mini-giochi" al bundle, Gish, Jasper's Journeys, Chocolate Castle e Zen Puzzle Garden!
Non ne conosco neanche uno, ma dalla descrizione Gish sembra quello più interessante ed è l'unico con la chiave Steam

[recs]

gish non è un mini gioco.

un platformer sfizioso e non lunghissimo. era incluso nel primo bundle ed è stato già regalato come extra in altri humble bundle.

gli altri giochi di lexaloffe a quanto leggo non sono ne mini ne tanto male, più in la li proverò.

[blastomorpha]

Ho scritto "mini" perché loro li definiscono così nella descrizione della nuova offerra arrivata per mail, non era per sminuirli

[recs]

lo so, l'ho scritto per correggere il tiro leggendo i commenti su indie games. gish è l'unico che ho giocato.

[blastomorpha]

E com'è? Alla BTM?

[recs]

mi è piaciuto, si basa sulla fisica e ha alcuni passaggi in cui si deve ragionare un minimo (non enigmi, ma nel contesto delle "regole" del gioco) per andare avanti. essenzialmente si può cambiare stato del protagonista in duro, fluido, adesivo e neutro e si deve arrivare in fondo al livello. ci sono anche nemici e boss, non è difficilissimo, ha qualche anno e alcuni punti a favore possono non sapere più di nuovo se si gioca a molti platformer indie. cmq lo proverei se interessa il genere un minimo.

edit: consiglio di giocarlo con un controller. io l'ho fatto con quello della 360.

[recs]

I changed my BBS name to zep around 4 months ago, so some people still call me lexaloffle. Technically lexaloffle is the studio, but because it has been mostly a one man operation the difference is academic. I prefer zep though (: (It's from my name IRL -- Joseph)

Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt, FadedReality! These long silences are no good though -- I'm planning to get more incremental updates and development diary entries going. The coming version is a mixture of platform support, bug fixes and a lot of new engine code that isn't accessible yet, so it has been an unfortunate combination of time consuming work without many interesting features to report on. I have a tendency to go into hermit mode to get stuff like that done. Sorry to make you worry, Verazzi!

I'll post another dev diary at the end of the week, but just a mini-update to let you know what's happening:

- I made a saving system that allows two-way doors (with permanently killed monsters/collected item/destroyed walls etc).

- Rewrote the year-old internal monster code so that it still supports old maps but is now super-flexible for adding new monsters (and eventually for the monster designer)

- I enlisted the services of another modeler/level designer onto the project (apart from me, I mean). Partly to speed up development of the main game world which is quite large, but also to work on more demo levels that will be coupled with major engine updates to demonstrate new features.

- Designed an inventory system that will probably make it into 0.2.0. The player can collect special items and select which weapon to use etc. This will allow for rpg-ish style levels and exploratory adventure levels.

- I moved into a new office! Previously I was doing lexaloffle mostly on a laptop on trains and in cafes. I'll miss my hobo friends but it's great for productivity.

I don't want to take a stab at when 0.1.7 will be ready, because I've woefully wrong about it (and don't want to fumble it out just for the sake of sticking to schedule). But I only have one non-trivial task left (new linux packaging) so it won't be long at all.

By the way, if you haven't seen it already here's a map of planned development updates

giusto per ricordare che lo sviluppo sta continuando, ed è solo agli inizi.

se qualcuno fosse interessato, anche cortex command pare in dirittura di arrivo quest'anno, era nei primi bundle.

[recs]

non si è dimenticato il gioco.

ecco la nebbia:

Spoiler:

[blastomorpha]

In effetti non si vede niente

[recs]

ha spostato l'immagine temporaneamente.

http://twitpic.com/8vofem

[recs]

ecco qualche altra novità: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=1140

Voxatron Development Diary 2

[This is a series of posts on the development of Voxatron. The game is available in alpha form and buying a copy entitles you to all future updates. There's also a development plan and a FAQ]

Voxatron Team Size Doubles



Until the first alpha release of Voxatron I had been working mostly solo. Usually I like making games this way -- keeping every aspect of the game in mind and letting ideas from different departments interact with each other directly without the pesky need for inter-human communication.

The scope of the project grew somewhat from the original design however, rendering this approach impractical due to the volume of work. Especially in the area of modelling and level design; the planned game world of 1.0 spans a number of environments that all require attention to detail. What Voxatron needed was someone whose aesthetic sensibilities were aligned such that I could treat them as a bionic brain implant. And who could turn out great stuff like a freaky wizard.

With these things in mind, I'm very pleased to welcome Anthony Flack to the project, who is probably best known for his clay-animated games. Mr. Flack will be helping out with level and model design along with additional demo worlds that will ship with major alpha releases. He has already been pushing some serious voxels (pictured) for a sci-fi themed level designed to show off the new features of 0.2.0.

0.2.0 Engine Features & Monster Designer

I was planning on rolling out engine features gradually as they become operational, but as it turns out many of them can (and should) be implemented as one unified system. So the good news is, I'll be bumping the Monster Designer up to the 0.2.0 release (instead of 0.3), and it will be super-flexible for designing levels and characters. The bad news is, it will take a little longer.

The scheme for designing objects in 0.2.0 looks something like this:

In the current version you can design one type of object: a static prop. In 0.2, you'll be able to choose between 5 types: MONSTER, DOOR, PICKUP, PLAYER and ANIMATION. These additional types all come with a similar set of properties:

1. Generic physical properties. Hitbox-size (no more tiny doors), density and interaction mode (e.g holograms don't affect other objects and can be walked through)

2. A list of states. Each state has a little animation attached to it and can be used to represent things like a monster shooting, a door opening, or a segment of an animation.

3. A list of events. Each event has a condition (IF bump into wall) and an action (THEN jump). They can be used to define (among other things) monster behaviour and the transition between different states under different circumstances.

This set of properties should allow for a fairly broad range of possibilities: NPCs, speech bubbles, rideable creatures/vehicles and jumping boots spring to mind. After seeing what the BBS community was able to squeeze out of 0.1.*, I have high hopes for 0.2!

Apart from customisable objects, there are a couple of other things that should make it in: persistent worlds (go back to the previous room and all the objects and wall destruction are still there), special voxel properties (indestructible, crumbly) and per-room light effects like moonlight, dusk or ground fog:



Voxatron in a Browser

After discovering that Adobe's experimental C->SWF compiler Alchemy will be officially supported later this year, I was inspired to revisit the possibility of extending my in-house framework to support flash as a target. I'd already done this (kind of) with Zen Puzzle Garden and Chocolate Castle BBS puzzles, which can be played directly in the browser. But now I can compile any of my projects to flash without modifying a single line of code. This also goes for Voxatron, and as horrendous as the idea of running a software renderer in actionscript byte code may seem, the results aren't that terrible.



Unfortunately it only manages around 14-20 fps depending on the room complexity, but that's enough to be playable. Also the standard renderer is way too slow running on a virtual machine, so I had to use an orthogonal view (no perspective) as you can see. It needs some work to make it usable, but I don't see it ever replacing the whole Voxatron experience. Rather, it might be useful as a way to preview BBS levels right from the BBS post, and to share levels with people who don't own the game.

GDC & Volumetric Displays

Last week I got back from a trip to San Francisco for another round of GDC and then across to Boston & New York to meet up with other developers and stay with old friends. As usual, the highlights of the trip were unplanned small moments. Last year, it was running into the Humble Bundle crew at a party and drunkenly explaining my ingenious idea for a Lexaloffle bundle to launch Voxatron (it honestly didn't occur to me they might want to collaborate on that). This year it was an impromptu tutorial by a Russian lady selling cosmetics on how to covertly stratify prices, Stephen Lavelle showing me a version of Neko Puzzle he'd hacked together running with weird (but equivalent) geometric axioms, and borrowing Evan Balster's accordion for just long enough to be mistaken for a hobo.

Just before returning I had one last meeting with some people working on a Volumetric Display. Voxatron is designed from the ground up to run on such displays -- in fact, what you're seeing when you play the game is a simulated volumetric display reading from a voxel video memory buffer. The idea is that once a display is available, I can send the memory buffer to the display rather than projecting it onto a 2d surface (your screen). After seeing a demo of an actual physical prototype, and talking with the engineer about how to hook it up with (say) a computer game, I'm more excited than ever about the prospect of seeing Voxatron running in its natural environment within the next year or two. I'll post here as soon as I can talk about anything!





0.1.9 Coming Soon!

I've had my sights on the medium term goal of finishing the Voxatron engine for a while now, and while I think this strategy is more efficient and will produce a better game in the long term, it doesn't produce a much Shiny New Stuff (tm) in the short term. The new plan for 0.2.0 doesn't help this situation, as it has become an all or nothing monster of an update. The sci-fi level I'm making with Anthony for the 0.2.0 release is potentially fairly hefty too -- by some standards it would weigh in as an entire game.

For these reasons, I've decided to take a detour for the next couple of weeks and hack some code and content into the game willy-nilly! There are a few new monsters I've been itching to add, and always put them off until the new object designing system to reduce mess. I'm aware now of the risk that Voxatron development now is _too_ tidy -- an opaque chrysalis that is all promise and no butterfly. I say, let's slice that thing open a bit and wrench some half-developed butterfly out.

Here's what I'm planning to add for an update that will be out at the end of next week:
- new weapons: grenade, sword of enternity (replaces _dojo), no_weapon
- new monsters: doom-like exploding barrel, speedy gremlins, bullet hell boss, spikey weed
- indestructible voxels
- 2-way doors
- controllable camera angle
- screenshot button

[recs]

Changelog for 0.2.0

Added: spiky weed, barrel of doom, hound, trioc, roach
Added: 2-way doors (green)
Added: use-once doors (blue)
Added: NODOOR trigger (true iff no blue doors)
Added: screenshot button (F6)
Added: base weapons: Sword of eternity & peagun
Added: _char properties: speed, jump, base weapon
Added: indestructible floating voxels
Added: voxel text drawing command
Added: help tips for items
Added: editor z-clipping, allow closer camera
Changed: navigator icons now much smaller
Changed: turned down maximum monsters limit from 8192 to 4096
Removed: rendering options (temporary)
Fixed: player can't shoot immediately after entering room
Fixed: player not hurt by frozen monsters
Fixed: thumbnails in timeline empty



For level designers, there's information in vox.txt about how to use the doors and new _char properties, but one thing I forgot to mention is indestructible voxels. The three colours at the bottom right of the palette can not be destroyed, and are able to hover in mid-air. So you can use them to anchor structures (like clouds / platforms) that need to float indefinitely.

With the new base weapon system, it should no longer be necessary to use the _dojo hack. Just select the base weapon too in your character definition. e.g.:
_char 256 256 2

Here's a short demo level:

Fox Demo 0.2 Voxatron Level #6107

Have fun!

si scarica dal link dell'humble bundle.