Back to Idle + Player Turns

This is just a quick update, as a couple of people (Michael and Howard) have been asking me what's going on. There's not much to report, as I've been pretty lazy lately.

I finally got the animated wizards to return to their idle animations after casting a spell or taking damage, so that's good.

The next thing I'm going to work on is figuring out which player's turn it is, and simulating ending the turn to swap control to the other player.

There's a lot left to do before I can even begin working on the balancing, which will probably be the most fun part of the game.  One big thing I've been putting off is the mockup for how exactly the players will allocate their spendable points each turn. What will that screen look like?

There's a lot involved in making a game. I wish I'd started with a simple word scramble game. That would be done by now. :-)

Work Will Continue Soon

I haven't had much time to work on Wizard Combat lately due to work being so hectic this time of year and, well, Portal.  But I'm done with Portal now, so work will continue soon.

Major Gameplay Change

I was going to explain why I decided to do this or that, but it's getting late, so I'm just going to tell you the new direction of the game.

• It is now Turn-based instead of real-time. There will be a time limit on turns to keep things moving at a decent pace.
  
• Cool downs on spells will last for x number of turns instead of seconds.
  
• Since it's turn-based, casting speed has gone away.
  
• Rather than building your character in a long process at the beginning, you will build your wizard on-the-fly, which will enable you to counter your enemy's spells by changing your strategy mid-game.
  

Here's a quick mock-up:

XBOX 360 vs PS3

I always see exchanges like the following in the comments for game-related news:

360fanboy: Halo 3 is the best game ever. PS3 wishes it had a game like Halo 3.
PS3fanboy: At least my system works. I've got 3 friends with 360s, and all 3 have had Red Rings of Death.
360fanboy: PS3 sucks. It sucks because there are no games for it. It's hard to program for, and it's too expensive.

I'd like to finally tackle this complicated debate myself. I have both a 360 and a PS3 now, and I see advantages and disadvantages to both.

If you strictly want a game machine, you should get a 360. There shouldn't be any doubt about that in anybody's mind. PS3 has Heavenly Sword, and that's pretty much it right now.

If you want a high definition movie player that also plays some games, you should get a PS3. It's a better deal. A lot of people would probably read that and think there's no way a PS3 could ever be a better deal than the 360, but let me break it down for you with current prices from Circuit City.

Playstation 3 w/HDMI, 60 GB hard drive, wi-fi built in, Blu-Ray, free online multiplayer
$500

360 Premium Console w/HDMI & 20 GB hard drive
$350
360 Wireless Networking Adapter
$100
360 HD DVD Player
$180
Xbox Live Gold 12 Month Membership Card
$50

PS3 = $500
360 = $680

The PS3 is only a better deal if you want high definition movies, wi-fi, and you play games online.

I'm not totally on Sony's side here, though. I actually think Microsoft had the better idea by making you buy everything separately, that way the cost of entry is a lot lower for people who don't care about all the extras.

I chose the 360 as the platform for Wizard Combat because it was the easiest. There is no free, publicly available development kit (that I'm aware of) for the Playstation 3, and even if there was, I can't imagine it being any easier to use than XNA Game Studio Express.

That said, I really wish there was a free, publicly available development kit for the PS3.

I read some news from the Playstation Blog about Everyday Shooter, and how it became a PS3 exclusive. Apparently, the developer (just one guy) built the game (which looks like another Geometry Wars clone), and people loved it. He had it on display at GDC 2007, and Sony liked it and asked him to port it to PS3. They gave him the development kit, and within 3 days he had it running.

That doesn't make programming for the PS3 sound all that difficult, and it also gives me hope that Wizard Combat might get picked up by a publisher somewhere.

This is something else I found interesting from that article: "So the first thing I did was figure out how I could get a hold of the developer Jonathan Mak or his agent if he had one. I found out that I knew his agent already so I gave him a ring..."

Wait -- developers are supposed to have agents? No wonder MIPSter never took off!

First Video of Wizard Combat in Action

I just uploaded the first video of Wizard Combat.

A few things you'll notice:

• The menu on the title screen works.
• Loading screen works.
• The wizard animations work.
• The water is moving...
• The pop-up menu works.
• Background music works.

Download a high-resolution version of the video here:
http://www.downcastsystems.com/wizardcombat/wizardcombatxna1.wmv

I know it's not much, and it's short, but I was having some trouble with FRAPS capturing the video.  The avi it produced was 160MB.  I had to download Windows Media Encoder to convert it.  Now it's only ~3MB.

Update - No TorqueX

This is just a smattering of updates.

TorqueX seems like a really good 2D engine, but I just can't figure it out. There's way too much noise going on. I've gotten more accomplished (and feel more confident) after I started over from scratch using nothing but XNA.

I downloaded the GameManagementState sample from here:
http://creators.xna.com/Headlines/developmentaspx/archive/2007/01/01/Game-State-Management-Sample.aspx

I now have a working menu system (with background music) that actually goes to the gameplay screen. On the gameplay screen, the background is there, different background music is playing, the two wizards are on their columns, and the idle animations are showing. Pressing Space, A, or B makes them do the casting, taking damage, and idle animations. I'm happy with the progress.

I got the new batch of animations from David Neale. The number of frames have been doubled, so it's a lot smoother. That guy does a great job.

That's all for right now. I hope to have a video up soon of the game (so far) running on the 360. It might be a week or two, though. I want it to look really sharp before I show it to you guys.

Animation Sample

I got the first batch of animations from David Neale. The animation is not as smooth as I'd hoped (but what did I expect from so few frames?), so I'm talking to him now about adding a few extra frames to smooth it out a bit.

Here's an example of the Idle, Spell Casting, and Taking Damage animations in motion. I love the style!

 

The next big test will be to get this actually working in the game. I'm hoping to have that done in a couple of weeks. (No game logic, of course, just the background and animations in game.)

New Version of the Background

Our artist, the excellent David Neale, has just sent me the latest version of the level he's creating. I like the coloring much better, and the columns have much more detail. Also, notice the wizards are in a slightly different stance. Very niiice.

Battle Screen Mockup (Final? Probably not.)

Daniel and I updated the Battle Screen mockup with a few new things tonight:

• Player 1 now only has 4 spells instead of 8.
• Player 1 is under the influence of one of Player 2's spells.
• Player 2 is under the influence of two of Player 1's spells, plus one of his own.
• Player 1 just had 5 damage done to him. (Note the -5.)
• Player 2 just had 2 damage done to him, then 8 damage done to him. (Note the -2 fading out.)

So does this seem workable to you guys? I was a bit worried at first that players would want to know what exactly those spells they're under the influence of are doing to them, but since there are so few spells being flung around, we've decided it's really not that big a deal.

You'll know what your spells  do to you already, or if you need to know, just select it. So you really only don't know what the other person is doing to you, but you will see him cast the spell, so you can read what it does then.

And if it becomes a problem later on, and people really want to know the details of the spells affecting them, we can use the shoulder buttons to scroll through the list of spells influencing the player.

XACT: Cross Platform Audio Creation Tool (from Hell)

After explaining to Robert how difficult it was getting XACT to work, he told me I should put the story up on the blog, so here it is.

Keep in mind that I had not watched the tutorial video on XACT which can be found here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/bb245766.aspx

That would've helped out a bit. (Information that would've been useful to me yesterday, as Adam Sandler would say.)

My goal was to simply get the main menu music to play. 

1. I got my mp3 (Crisis.mp3).
2. I used Audacity to convert it from .mp3 to .wav.
3. I started XACT.
4. There are Wave Banks and Sound Banks. I added Crisis.wav to the Wave Bank.
5. I went into the Sound Bank and clicked "New Sound."  A "Sound" is a container for events. An event is something like "Play Wave."
6. I renamed my New Sound "Crisis."
7. I dragged Crisis.wav from the Wave Bank into the "Crisis" Sound I just created, and it created a "Play Wave" event for me. Robert and I assume it's done like this so you could play multiple sounds at once, like "thunder.wav" and "rain.wav" could become a "Thunderstorm" sound.
8. I changed some settings on "Crisis" so that it would fade out at the end.
9. I created a New Cue and named it "MainMenuMusic."  A Cue is basically a playlist, or a container for Sounds.
10. I dragged the "Crisis" Sound into my "MainMenuMusic" Cue.
11. I saved my XACT project.
    
    This is the true end of the XACT steps, but I had to try to play the sound...
    
12. I tried to play the Cue directly from XACT, but I got an error because I didn't have the XACT Auditioning Utility running.
13. I started the XACT Auditioning Utility.
14. Tried playing again. Nothing. Not an even an error this time.
15. Closed the XACT Auditioning Utility.
16. Closed XACT.
17. Started the XACT Auditioning Utility.
18. Started XACT.
19. Opened my XACT project.
20. Played the cue, and damn if the music didn't start playing! Yes!
    
    Back to the C# Game Project
    
21. I modified my code to be soundBank.PlayCue("MainMenuMusic").
22. I built my C# game project.
23. I ran the game and lo and behold, I see my new main menu and "Crisis" is playing in the background. That was cool.
24. I actually go to sleep and don't think about the game for the rest of the night.

Now, if I had been smart, I would've watched the tutorial video first.  If I'd done that, I could've skipped some steps, as apparently you can just drag the wave straight from the Wave Bank to the Cue section and it creates a Cue and a Sound (with a Play Wave event) for you automatically. Dang.