Long awaited summer update

Holy shit its been a long time!

The website is new(3rd time?), its fast, colorless, and good enough for now!

There is a new video up, check it out

I don’t know if that will actually show an if there are any typos in this post..
But fuck plugins I’m not slowing this speedy site down!

Links are needed because I haven’t posted in ages:
Twitter
PaulUsul Twitter
YouTube
IndieDb
FaceBook
Twitch dev stream
Tumblr
Website

So many links, so serious. no really I have a fucking tumblr!? What? Actually I linked it to the screenshots section and embedded it(not pretty), so it works well for posting once and getting it out everywhere :)

Now I just need to post this video to indidb and I can go to bed!

Winter slump

Hey..

So November is over and sadly by record probably the worst month in development so far :( I have been in a bit of winter slump and stuck on a task that was/is really challenging. So much time has been wasted on it so far, that for the time being it is being shelved.

December will focus on materials, furniture, sleeping and of course eating, what would christmas be without all the food!

At the start of this slump I tried to avoid it by creating a rule for myself. The rule states a blog post or video should be made each week. If not met I pay a fine in the form of a $ amount to charity and the same in the asset jar. The asset jar is for the asset store or any artist/music work. Now you probably think it’s silly but as a zero budget spare time project it’s a lot for me, in time and money.

So you’re maybe thinking, with the rule in place and no activity for the last 2 weeks, what the hell?

Well here are the 2 charities I picked and the asset jar is filling:

http://www.kiva.org/lend/623654

http://www.kiva.org/lend/638115

I really like Kiva! you get a bang for your buck and the people you help have taken initiative, are responsible for their own success and are not recieving special treatment but a common privilege. I encourage you to read more about it!

 

I hope this post hasn’t been to offtopic and personal, I wanted to post a screenshot just for good mesure but everything is still all fubar

Till next time, take care of your self

Tasks done and YouTube

Howdy!

 

Well easter weekend came and went and while I wish it was longer, the crunch is up. I did get most of the things done and even caught some bugs, yeah!

From last posts list(obviously Sunday is Monday when it’s a holiday):

  • Done! Green cube enemy ai, no stats, no animations, no bullshit! 
  • Done! Mob spawner in waves, random intervals (10-40 secs), classic tower defense proven fun.
  • Done! Action: find and attack
  • Done, no stats/respawn though, just hp&attack Stats: Constitution(hit points), Strength(attack), Vitality(hp regeneration & respawn time)

Nice to have

  • No bar, just a number :( Health bar
  • Done! he’s name is Muktar and he walks sexy! Enemy model, 1h < walk animation

 

All in all the gray list looks good and it feels great with so many done. For this week the goal is to work 1 hour all days but Friday. This was a 10m post, so hopefully not to lacking of content, but still far from long :)

I also got a YouTube channel up: Dwarven Kingdoms. No videos up yet, but got a mic test and hopefully I can squeeze out a video in an hour. Go subscribe so you don’t miss the first video

 

Till next time! hopefully soon, lets say no later than Friday

Hard times, Second wind!

Hey everyone,

 

I got back from my trip to Berlin 2 days ago and even though my hangover is almost gone I still feel quite low. 6 days of non stop partying will do that to you, on top of not getting any work done I must admit I’m feeling quite unmotivated and 5 minutes ago I almost gave up on this entire dream of mine.

That’s one of the reasons I started this site and invested time and effort into it, so I can’t just leave my code in an unfinished project folder and walk away from it. Albeit it’s not a lot of money for some simple hosting and only a handful of days for site development, but it’s not nothing. it’s up and indexed and ad approved and even though there’s no one out there currently reading it. I still feel responsible to something or someone.

 

I think one of the main reasons I get this impulse to give up, is that the task at hand is so large and so much is still unfinished and ugly. I keep telling my self that I will limit the scope and get a demo, but it always grows and I end up fixing, polishing or optimizing something not on the task list in front of me.

So from now on, everything will be slow, ugly and buggy!

 

The battle plan, deadline Sunday.

  • Green cube enemy ai, no stats, no animations, no bullshit!
  • Mob spawner in waves, random intervals (10-40 secs), classic tower defense proven fun.
  • Action: find and attack
  • Stats: Constitution(hit points), Strength(attack), Vitality(hp regeneration & respawn time)

Nice to have

  • Health bar
  • Enemy model, 1h < walk animation

 

As I am making this list I can feel my imagination take over and the list just goes to infinity, together with my brain and any chance of completion. So I have to stop. For any unthinkable chance that I reach the end, I will record a short video of the progress, create a YouTube channel and polish/optimize to my heart’s content :)

I will post back at the end of the weekend, this post really lifted my spirit. Second wind!

And thanks to anyone that reads all of this, you’re the reason I’m fighting on.

Early alpha game demo

Hey everyone,

Some quick updates, I really have to get faster at writing these short updates. They always explode in size and take too much time..

The Site

World response times for DwarvenKinjgdoms.com

Sexy web site response world chart

Well I have worked a lot on getting a unity web player up and in the midst of every thing servers stopped responding :/

I am a big fan of logging now and all ways, so I have my site setup over at pingdom it checks response times and keeps track of up/down time, here is my public log. You don’t have to sign up and sorry for the name dropping, you can just use the tool on their site and it’s quite effective at finding culprits. Also I really like that I can quick check it at work without getting distracted.  As promised I’m trying to include more graphics to make the posts a little more interesting. Obviously I still need some practice :)

What I was working on before my site and host went down was S3 and CloudFront. S3 is amazons file storage and CloudFront is a Content Distribution Network(CDN). You have a main site and then a bunch of automatically updating mirror sites. When a user wants something they simply get it from the closest/best mirror, or what they call an edge location. Which honestly is a better name than “smart mirror”, but I hope it helps get the point across. This kind of technology just makes my inner nerd happy & satisfied.

Well not that anyone is playing the game yet or even knows about it, but I thought I might as well get it setup here using aws and luckily the login/sign-up worked just as before. Actually I hadn’t tried the sign-up, but hey it works. Now we just need a game! Currently there is absolutely no game mechanics or anything resembling.

In other news I have slightly adjusted the site size and gotten approved for Google AdSense. I really hope and dream that in the long haul it will help out with things like domains, hosting and data costs. If you have any preferences/ideas/comments when it comes to site size and/or commercials I’m all ears! I was thinking of keeping all ads completely/minimally out of the Play page and stick to the other pages and hopefully keep it simple and classy.

!The Game

Sorry! One of the reasons I have not been working as much on the game is because of work. 12h days and 50h weeks have totally sapped my energy. The worst part is almost that the products quality is not up to par in my opinion. And is then less likely to get the expansion and accompanying attention it deserves. I really hope it all works out in the end, but I do think it explains my heavy focus on web these last few weeks. I usually don’t love web stuff so I guess it’s not that bad that I have gotten a bunch of stuff done now instead of having to do it in the future.

Something game design related I have been bumping around my head is. Imagine to combatants approaching each other. They have classic rp Action/Movement points and initiative, but should a weapon with larger range ie. a spear make it possible to attack earlier because coming into range sooner or should all melee be the same and weapons with a greater range simply add to initiative. Does it make a difference? The first scenario seems like it would add a bigger chance of imbalance because you could theoretically have some one that’s impossible to get to because of their range. The second approach seems easier to balance, but maybe initiative is to simple a shortcut from round based games and should be cut…

Well this post exploded! In other news I’m going on a short vacation trip to Berlin with friends and bringing my new laptop, so maybe I will get some work done. At least when I get home I will be well rested and in great mood to get coding :D

Let’s end on a quote /usul

“The only way to start a blog is to pretend the audience is there, even if you think it’s zero. The truth is, your friends will come and read it. And then it’ll be your friends and some guy who lives in Cleveland.” – Jonathan Coulton, indie musician, Electronic Musician Magazine 08/2009

Dwarven Kingdoms is ours!

A new home, Dwarven Kingdoms

Dwarven Kingdoms has been chosen! the domain bought and all(2) of the old blog post moved here. This is the new and final foreseeable home for the game and I love it :D

I have been moulding over different names in my head for the past 6 months or so. Names like dwarf craft and Mine Dwarf! where long standing beta names, but where always to generic and didn’t really inspire anything in me; just a place holder and resembling dwarf fortress and mine craft to much. The name Dwarven Kingdoms has the possibility to be epic while not being over the top and with a added postfix episode name like Dwarven Kingdoms: A hero forgotten. It gives it a little depth and makes it less vague.

Look and feel.

5$ in the buzzword-jar for that one. I haven’t chosen a theme or migrated the old one because I hope I can get some help on the matter, from a friend that actually knows a thing or two about design and all that jazz.

A short list of pages I’d like for the site here:

Welcome!

The first place where new comers arrive, should contain all the basics. A trailer showing the game, a short explanation on getting started, learning more, and contributing.

Play.

A wide page with no widgets that contains the game. If you login to the site the game should check and auto login. So you can check remember me and just have a link and play the game, wham bam.

Forums.

A place for suggestions, bug reports and asynchronous banter. Forums are a must have for feedback.

Contributors.

A credits list of people and their contributions, probably also a hall of fame of great players, medals and so forth. Also the great family names of all the seasons

Blog.

A development blog containing my thoughts, ideas and a place to show case game related material. Also a place to collect thoughts from comments on what people think about my ideas and plans.

This is getting a little lengthy and I can’t quite figure out the best format for this bloggy stuff. I’ll sign off to get back to the game and promise that my next post will have some eye candy and less boring lengthy lists :)

Here are some sites I like and that I think will inspire me: RedKnightGames, RandomBasic. Any and all comments are welcome regarding anything :)

/PaulUsul

Movement, animations & ideas

Hi,

While I’m finding it hard to update this blog when I can’t actively work on the game. I have gotten a little done this Sunday.

Simple movement and animation! :D

I imported the great library iTween to speed up development and it’s turning out really great. Some of the network aspects are a little tricky and I now need to clean up/remove the old implementation but all in all this is a good solid step forward. This will also massively simplify the BaseNpc class witch is good because..

 

Food for thought

I have been sketching ideas up the basics for a add-on to the BaseNpc, including things like: stats(str, con, vit, dex, agi, int, wis), race, material(being, MaterialType) bodytype(humanoid(humans, dwarfs, elves, etc), arachnid(spiders, scorpions), dragon(fourlegged winged badass), winged(aves), FourLegged(Felidae, Canidae, Elephantidae)). while the Fourlegged class really makes me nervous that this is not the best way to do it. I think this basic system will fit good with the animation/bones system and chopping off extremity is a must.

Well I hope I post again soon to give a update on the BaseNpc upgrade and maybe even a hostile npc type :D

//PaulUsul

The simple plan

Hi and welcome to the site!

I just got everything setup! I have been sick these last 2 week and a wordPress site was a fitting thing to tinker with over the weekend, so not to kill myself out of boredom.

So here it is, what’s the plan? The main plan is to work on the game then voice thoughts, explain ideas and get feedback here.

Site roadmap:

  • Unity web player with a demo of the game.
  • More forums
  • Tweaking layout
  • Get a good posting habit

Game roadmap:

  • Material creation
  • Item creation
  • Enemy Ai
  • Tools creation
  • Simple combat prototype
  • Demo

I think that’s that for this time, hopefully I will get a good posting habit over this first month.