Worklog for Myke-P

Worklog 1

Train Tracking - Now standing at platform one!

(Posted 2003-02-22)

Finally after a year of hard slog, my first commercial game; "Train Tracking" is now finished and available from the Demon Star website. There's a demo version available for anyone interested (oh, and a "buy now" link for the online download version too. ;) )

Find out more at the game's official website.

Now.. What's next on the agenda.

http://www.demonstar.co.uk
HighEnd: P4 2.4Ghz WinXPHome, 1Gb, AGP8x GeForce Ti4200 128Mb
Midrange: PIII 733Mhz Win98SE, 256Mb, AGP GeForce256 32Mb
Lowend: PII 350Mhz Win95R2, 64Mb, PCI Voodoo3 2000 16Mb

Leaves on the line, or summat!?

(Posted 2002-10-02)

Jeez. It's been ages since the last Train Tracker worklog hasn't it?! :\

So what exactly have I been upto apart from moving to France?

Well, I can't deny there's been a bit of a 'feature creep' issue, but I really think it's been worth it, especially as I'm now past all that and on the home stretch to coding a fully working game. :)

The really exciting developments have begun to show themselves in the last three weeks.

#1. The Station Editor
I took a week to code this up around September 15th and since then George Bray, Ravey, Snarty and XMystik have given it the once-over. I've just finished fixing bugs and looking at gripes and stuff that they found. Version 1.1b is now a reality.

But what is it? Well, Train Tracker's viewpoint is built up from graphic tiles on three (plus a hidden fouth) layers. I'll be buggered if I could find a way to generate good-looking and functional station layouts using the Rnd() command, so I figured a nice GUI coupled with the aesthetic decisions of people was the way forward.

All the screenshots you may have seen in the past were flat Paint Shop Pro mockups that took around an hour each to produce. With the editor, I can 'knock up' an identical layout in 10 minutes or less. :)

Here's a shot of the editor working on one of my favourite layouts created by Steve 'XMystik' Smith.

#2. The Game Engine
Most exciting of all is that the initial stages of the game engine are up and running. Coupled with the layouts produced in the Editor, I've now got trains zooming between the scenery, random train-livery (colours/patterns) and glorious British weather all running seamlessly in front of me.

For my own self-glorifying benefit, here's Steve's level plonked into the game engine.

Next thing on the list is level timetabling, so that the game is fair to play. Once I've figured that monkey out, it'll be time to tie it together with the clicky-game-interface and that's it - the first playable version of Train Tracker!

So, while I apologies for any inconvenience caused by recent delays, I'm happy to announce that it won't be long now. :)

Thrilling night ahead!

(Posted 2002-01-30)

Well indeed. Sometimes programming games is fun. Others, like this, it's not! :)

I've just produced this little VB App. It's to input all my station names, types and other info for Train Tracker.

Tonight, I get to enter Station names from this little list:

This, as they say, could take some time! :-\

Demon Star launched

(Posted 2002-01-23)

To coincide with our first game (signed for publication with Guildhall), Demon Star's website can now officially be unvieled to the public.

I've been tinkering since September, so there's already a fairly nice initial content, including a slightly updated Celestial Rift tutorial, plus a new one about making Blitz AnimStrips really easily! :)

Obviously there's also news of the game, Train Tracker, in the Work In Progress section.

Fingers crossed, enjoy and let me know what you think.

Game on.. finally!?

(Posted 2001-12-18)

Having spent a fair whack of time the last couple o' months working on nifty 2D functions (such as the much-forgotten Image Processing Functions and my latest Random NPC Generator jobbie) , it's about time I stopped tinkering with aesthetics and wrote some *actual* games. That's what we're here for, afterall! :D

Currently I'm working on two such beasts with my partner in crime from the Celestial Rift project, Mark "Sparks" Rayson.

Can't really say much on subject matter for the time being, as it's predominantly stuck firmly on the drawing board, but you can be guaranteed that they'll involve a generous amount of 2D gameplay-abundant fun "for all the family". :)

Stay tuned around the new year for some proper news once things are a little more concrete.