I’m making slopes in maps which is a lot of variations of tiles. It’s not so easy with procedural generation but it’ll payback.
Posts from October 2009
I’ve been working hard to rearrange the tilemap data structures. I’m nearly complete. There is nothing to show cause it looks the same but the internal working of the tilemap engine is very promising now. I think I haven’t mentioned this but the tilemap is procedurally generated from a sketch made in a bitmap file. You can see this working in the network test release (Map folder).
The individual tiles are now also generated instead of being painted. In contrary to traditional bitmap files they are made out of several components. A tile mask (for determining alpha values), multiple textures (color, details, blending) and different ways of rendering the textures for the end result. Each tile will also look differently depending on where it is placed on the map (everything made by algorithms).
The rearranging of data has been made so that the map maker can have an infinite possibility of creating these tiles. Each tile can be described in a simple script and then used on the map.
Design changes FAQ
With a team, you would implement strategy, imagine having a sniper to scout ahead while you creep across the level, sticking to the shadows, silently knifing your enemies, while a hacker works hard opening doors and keeping robots from molesting you. You can’t achieve that in a 1 vs 1 match.
The problem with this is that it’s only your imagination. read more »
Link-Dead design changes
I’ve kept this a secret but really I don’t know why cause I can tell. You might have figured this out from the youtube idea videos I post. Link-Dead isn’t going to be a game like Soldat. If you say that LD will be worse than Soldat you’re right – in the sense that I don’t feel like I can do a game that has more action/speed/ease/. I never wanted to compete with Soldat and I won’t so I’ve been thinking how to make something unique. I’ve been actively trying to forget about Soldat. I haven’t played it for a couple months just to have a fresh mind. I haven’t even played any video game in the past months other than GTA IV for a couple weeks. I have an irrational desire to create the most awesome game ever and nothing can stop me. Even by making my life sadder by not playing my favourite game (the one starting with an S).
Since I released a press note about Link-Dead 2 years ago (which you can read on http://link-dead.net) a bit has changed. And it changed a lot about 2 months ago.
Link-Dead will be a real-time team strategy game with person control elements.
Not the other way around.
Soldat CTF in realistic mode is a person control game with team strategy elements. This is the reason why I have been working hard on making bots work right. Some people were asking why so much focus on this? Because the majority of the game will be controlled by your mouse and the bot AI.
Although I haven’t decided on this entirely yet (cause there might and probably will be some deathmatch kill’em all mode), there won’t be games for 32 players or so. Games will be rather played between 2 people, each controlling his team of soldiers. I’ve thought about this for a really long time and didn’t post anything about it, cause I thought it was crazy. There is no game like this out there and it won’t work. But eventually there is 1001 reasons for making this game like this and I am so deeply convinced about the awesomness of this game that I give a fuck about anyones opinion at this point. Link-Dead is gonna kick the nuts out of your sack and squash them. I am greatly inspired by this gameplay approach and it is one of the reasons why my productivity and focus has risen 500% lately. I know exactly what I want and how I want to do it. This means I’m ditching all the stupid programming libraries which have worthless features, I’m losing all my other commitments and projects, I’m ditching everyone involved in this project and am working alone. Like in the good old days when I was making Soldat and I saw that it was the best game ever to be made and I sat on my ass and all I did was create everything by myself from scratch and I didn’t stop working until it was done and thousands and thousands of lucky people could play it. This is the mind-state I am in right now. Let Odin be my witness Link-Dead will be the Greatest.