QuestLine, my tongue-in-cheek item-trading and arbitrary questing game, has been getting a make over in preparation for an XBox Live Indie Games release. In addition to porting the entire game from ActionScript 3 to C#, I’m also replacing virtually all of the graphics (excepting the item icons, which seem to hold up fairly well) and will be adding some new endings to the game.
I also found myself building some simple editing tools, since I wanted to transition from hard-coded interactions between characters, locations, and items to a more flexible system based on XML descriptions of all the objects in the game. This added quite a bit of tool-building time to the project, but it has made editing the behaviors and responses of characters in the game a considerably smoother process.
Some screen shots of the new look and feel of the game, as well as a couple of images from the editor, are below:
Father O’Malley Part 3 was always intended to be the first of a trilogy of games (released backwards, of course). I’ve been working on Father O’Malley Part 2 on and off for some time now (Wasabi M was developed partly for the purpose of laying out the levels), and I knew I wanted to improve the graphics a bit, but I was pleasantly surprised when I came across the REFMAP artwork. Nothing from REFMAP was suitable out-of-the-box, but with some editing the REFMAP characters turned out to be a great base for both Father O’Malley’s sprite and the sprites of the various zombies.
Once I had the sprites put together, I felt it would really be unfair not to build an updated version of Father O’Malley Part 3 using the new art assets. I also adjusted the difficulty a bit (people seemed to have trouble with the sheer volume of zombies on the later levels of the original), and rebuilt the level generation from scratch, adding pits and crumbling bridges to the mix. I gave the entire game a faster, snappier feel as well — playing the original version of Part 3 feels very sluggish to me now.
The public release of Father O’Malley Part 3 – Born Again Edition will probably land in early April, but in the mean time, here are a few screenshots of the new look and feel of the game:
Posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 8:29 pm under Tools with tags: flixel, Tools, Wasabi M
There’s a small and somewhat experimental update available for Wasabi M which adds support for exporting to flixel 2.0+.
If you’d like to try it, please bear in mind that this is a very early release, and hasn’t been as thoroughly tested as the flixel 1.45 and 1.47+ export targets (you can help by reporting any bugs or issues you find with the exported code, or any trouble you have with installing the export plugin).
To install it, simply replace the existing “Export_Flixel.dll” file in Wasabi M’s plugin folder with the new DLL from the download. As long as you’re running the most recent version, you should see “flixel 2.0″ as an export target in the Project Details window the next time you start Wasabi M.
Supports circular, square, rectangular, and stair-step brushes
Circular and stair-step brushes also support inverted mode
Brushes interact correctly with the three painting modes
NEW/FIXED: Added Wasabi M application and main window icon
This should resolve issues with the icon changing when Wasabi M is pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar
NEW: Relative path support for embedded assets
Applies to the flixel 1.47+ and flixel 1.45 export plugins
FIXED: Removed CsvPath from exported per-Layer data (it’s redundant and is always recalculated during export, so it was just bloating the XML file)
NEW: Added internal support for file type association
NEW: Added default “.WasabiM” extension when loading and saving files
NEW: Added options panel to add or remove file type associations
This should enable recent items and Windows 7 jump list items for Wasabi M
NEW: Added a new “Layer” menu, to distinguish layer operations from map operations
FIXED: Tileset image files should no longer be locked while Wasabi M is running
NOTE: Sprite images may still be locked — this will be resolved soon
UPDATE: Wasabi M now prompts for confirmation when you attempt to exit
This is a temporary approach until proper change detection is in place to prompt only when there are unsaved changes
NEW: Options window added
NEW: Right click can now (via the options window) be set to select the tile under the cursor, or to paint with tile zero
FIXED: Exporting a project containing a map containing a sprite with an empty import value no longer crashes the flixel or FlashPunk exporters
NEW: Added layer fill tool; filling supports tile stamps and random painting mode
NEW: Added flood fill (ALT-Left click) with support for tile stamps, origin aligned painting, and random painting
NEW: Added internal option to export individual layers to CSV files
NEW: Added internal option to import CSV files into individual layers
Note: Out-of-range tile indices are (silently) set to zero after the import
Note: Importing may or may not lead to sensible layers, depending on the currently configured tileset
NEW: A basic progress window is now displayed when exporting projects
NEW: Preliminary auto-edging tool implemented with three modes: flixel, flixel-alternate, and WasabiM
NEW: Added “$class” replacement variable to sprite code generation — $class will be replaced by the sprite’s class name, eliminating the need to specify the class name in two places when creating sprites
UPDATE: The default code for a new sprite is now “new $sprite($x, $y);” instead of “new foo($x, $y);”
FIXED: Resizing sprites out of existence should no longer be possible — the minimum size for sprites should now be 1×1 even when resizing while ignoring the sprite grid
NEW: Optional and adjustable (see the Tools -> Options window) translucent layer rendering
This is not exported — it’s just a design-time convenience
FIXED: Some tile alignment and scaling issues should be resolved (gaps should no longer appear at >100% zooms, and tiles should no longer be distorted at 100% zoom)
NOTE: I’m not sure if this resolves all the tile alignment and scaling problems, so please feel free to report any issues that you run across here
