[Journal] Bending Techniques

[me]

Hey All,

First I started out drawing some bending of iron. But when
googling for some inspiration I found : http://www.earthflame.com/
And that is propably the route I'm taking.
There are different kind of bending powers that you can have to
alter things in your surroundings.
The title of the web-paged is: water, earth, fire and air: Bending Techniques
And I simplified it to "BENDING TECHNIQUES"

So, in my game there will be 'bending spells' and/or abilities that
will be used to get you through a maze.
My engine is maze-grid based so that will fit the bill nicely

This is the first drawing / test of the iron-bending that I let slide:

http://mazeland.net/duke/start.jpg
You can use these ideas 


I will be using some tools that I have used in the past:

GIMP
YAWCam
MapEditor by JuddMan
Anim8or

The engine I'm using is my own and it is grid-2d-based.
Java 1.1 Applet that should run on all browsers on all
platforms....


I'm now going to make my DUKE BENDER.


Best regards from

M.E.

[Eli Delventhal]

Ha, that's great, I never would have thought of that use for bending. Cool.

[me]

Hello All,

Birth of Duke: http://mazeland.net/duke/birthofduke/duke.html

This was made using a webcam and YawCam (java app!)
Due to the nature of clay it is much faster to create animation
with 'natural' lighting and moving weight.
Anim8or can be used but I don't want to spend too much time
right now on building meshes and stuff.

In the past I had used a similar technique but with four
cameras that capture the direction simultaneously.
But the quality and lighting settings of each cam was different
(even using same branch and type webcam!)
So, this time I used a clay floor that I marked out so that
each frame would still be a little bit at the same spot.
Without it you will have different perspective to work with (ARGHHH!)

Next step will be to move the gif to GIMP to make it transparent
and resize to a tilesize that I can work with.

@DemonPants: Avatar wikipedia has nice bending arts and techniques

Best regards from

M.E.

PS Maybe this inspiration will make it into the game .. not sure at the moment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vZx5oqVZgc

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[me]

Last post this session.

Some scribbles of ideas that popped up so far:
http://mazeland.net/duke/ideas.html

Going to bed now and propably think for some
more ideas while waiting to fall asleep.

Bye for now!

Best regards from

M.E.

[Eli Delventhal]

Cool stuff. That Youtube video was hilarious.

[me]

OK, I'm a liar. Not my last post this session.
I was lying in bed and this idea came to me:

AIRDUKE
EARTHDUKE
WATERDUKE
FIREDUKE

Each of them have their own powers.
But they can (and should) interact to get to
their own 'ElementSpots'
So AirDuke should end up on its Air-End-Tile.

If all dukes in the level have reached their
spots the level is finished.

Propably the first levels will be trainee-levels
where there will be one or maybe two dukes
in them.

Some dukes can past some elements, while
other dukes can past none of them. Depending
on the elements.

Some objects/elements cannot be moved but
need to be 'solved' in order to pass them.

By using the bending power (=push) the
dukes can manipulate the elements and objects.

That will be pretty much the basic gameplay.

Well, hopefully I can really get some sleep now 


Best regards from

M.E.

[me]

After some sleep I started 2 and half hours ago on
the base-duke.
Later each duke (air,water,earth and fire) will get
his own color. Or maybe some kind of other mark.

http://mazeland.net/duke/birthofduke/duke.html

Using Gimp I resized the original captured image and made it
transparent. Next step was to use a sharptool to get a bit
of contrast going on.
Using the Select-by-Color tool I changed the colors to a
bit more 'duke' color.
The original clay figure didn't had the back top.
Arms where added for both the walk cycle and the push cycle.

Those animations sure take a long time and now that I
see them on a white background I see a lot of left over pixels
here and there.
These will propably be gone later. Usually I would spend much
more time on finishing the sprite. I started a bit on the first
stand (front walk) but time is slipping and I want to CODE !!!!!

Hopefully next journal entry will have something to play with
for you!


Best regards from

M.E.

(I feel a bit lonely. Lucky Alan_W is joining the journal posts)

[h3ckboy]

they are pretty good sprites. although you are right, the are some random sprites in need of zapping, but pretty good so far.

[me]

Hello All,

So .. I have something to show.
http://mazeland.net/duke/index.html

At the moment a lot of the art is temporary and
hopefully tomorrow can be used to make it
worthwhile to look at.

You can view the source files if you want but
I warn you .. it is not nice to look at!

http://mazeland.net/duke/sources.html

Apart from some loaned sources the
source code maybe used freely.
GifDecoder has some LZW patent restrictions
inside.


To Be Done:

- More Dukes, each doing its own thing (= also new levels)
- When more dukes are in one screen make
  'nextlevel' depend on all dukes
- Some help screens in between levels
- Some buttons in the bar below LEVELS to do the
  same action as the BackSpace and ESCAPE

- Music / Sound
- HighScore list (low priority)


Tested on SUSE Linux, Safari on OSX
Mozilla and Internet Explorer.
As well as appletviewer (1.4.2)

Found that jdk 1.5.0 on Solaris for Intel
wasn't working but that is running on a
system that isn't intend to run solaris 10:
TOOO slow!


Some testresults would be nice .. for future
Engine work. *don't have the time now*



Best regards from

M.E.

[Riven]

FYI: crashed Opera when closing the page.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[me]

Sorry Riven,

didn't know it had so much bending power 
Unfortunately I haven't had the chance of
working with Opera.
Downloading it now .. for future tests!
Thanks for the report!
Edit: Downloaded and installed Opera 9.6
on iMac (yeah I know, old) and I played
two levels and closed the page and could
still navigate to other pages with Opera..
must be something more to this.... Well,
I'm going to work on more stuff.

GamePlay wise I made a decision to go
towards two objects for each duke.
The EarthDuke will have a Wood element
like a ball and a tree-bark like structure.
The Ball can be moved by bending power
and the tree section can be pushed.

The FireDuke will have a coblet of fire
to be moved and some flames to
move through bending power.

The AirDuke will have a cloud to be
pushed and a tornado to be bended.

The WaterDuke will have a bucket
of water to be moved and a water
ball to be bended.

I'm working on a matrix of the elements
what happens when each of the elements
hits the other and/or duke.


Oh jeah and there will be Iron object(s)
that can't be altered and two types of
directional (bending) changing objects.
Tubes will alter the route of the bended
power elements. One type of tube can
be moved, the other is bolted down so
it cannot be moved.

Best regards from

M.E.

[me]

At 16.00 I had a really bad dip .. was trying to modify
copy32.java instead of object32.java  and not just
once ....
I'm winding down a bit today and hopefully get
a better night sleep without pondering too much.

Fell behind schedule due to the game logic of the tubes.

But I manage to make some different dukes before
calling it a day today:

http://mazeland.net/duke/birthofduke/duke.html
I don't think there will be too much time left to clean these
sprites up, so it will have to do for now.

The 'original' duke will be the Duke of Air.
Red will be the Duke of Fire, Duke of Water is Blue
and Brown is for the Duke of Earth.

The bending power objects are giving me the most problems
as the powers should clash and push forward the other
powers.
Direction and space problems, but propably will be figured out
tomorrow.


Best regards from

M.E.

[me]

Hey All,

A new day a new build.
http://mazeland.net/duke/index.html

Check out the MapEditor by Judd(Man)
(http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/2d-map-editor/18068/view.html)

This is the editor in action:
http://mazeland.net/duke/birthofduke/mapeditor.jpg


Best regards from

M.E.

[me]

Hello All,

There is a new build:
http://mazeland.net/duke/index.html

It is becomming a game now.
I'm a bit worried by the learning-curve. There
is so much that you need to learn before you
can bend the powers.

If anybody has a suggestion on the kind of level
difficulty, I'm more than happy to listen.

My girlfriend (who was a great sport for letting
me enter) did some beta-tests and I adjusted
here and there to hopefully get everybody
to play and not get frustrated!

The gameplay should be complete and the
remainder of today will be in level design.

I have to start early at work tomorrow
(alarm at 05.00) so I can't make it late tonight ....

Best regards from

M.E.

[Riven]

On the starting screen, 'Duke of Earth' kinda misses the _ of the E, making it look like 'Duke of Farth'


Anyway, nice that you actually get something working. I never wrote a game framework, so I'm dealing with a very crappy, nearly unworkable base.

You have only 12 hours remaining...!

[Eli Delventhal]

Looks cool, I really like the sprites - taking them from photos makes them look really unique.

One thing I might try to adjust is allowing you to move while holding multiple arrow keys down.

[me]

Thanks Riven. Hopefully fixed

@DemonPants: Sorry I am done. I will see if I can put it
in my engine later on. But as for now I'm calling it DONE!

There are 20 levels for your enjoyment and I have
made a poll for my entrance.
(if I made a mistake please help to correct it ...)

Credits go to JuddMan for his MapEditor and
to my girlfriend who was so kind to support me
during this weekend.


Best regards from

M.E.

PS:
No Music (could be easy drop , but I wanted to
make an option to turn it off and I don't have the time for it)
No HighScoreList.
Well I'm pleased that I have made a complete game from
scratch (Using my engine/framework)