No more posts until easter

I will not make any more posts on this blog until Easter due to the lenten season.

Let Me Set The Theme For My Game...

In my game, you are a person that crashed from a plane in the middle of nowhere. You are lost, injured, and beaten... Luckily, you have the will to survive! You must use your resources, Build your colony with other players, and fight of enemies.

You can play in a world where you control what you do, and build what you want. You can enjoy playing with friends, journeying to the deepest caves, or even travel to the sky world! You can build anything, but you just have to collect the resources. If you run out of resources, you must fight to control more land!

As this game is called "The FIGHT For Survival", you must fight for your survival. This game is a combination of RPG, MMOG, FPS, Sandbox, and Crafting games into a smooth, enjoyable game-play. When this game is done, it should be a very fun game!

Just so you know, this game is not a knock-off!!! This game is a combination of all the good parts of many different games. The feature of MMOG was from another game, as was FPS. Sandbox play was a good point from another game, and I decided to work my game from there. RPG is a result of the addition of the other facts, and, it should help polish it off!

In my game, I have done a lot of research on good and bad features from games. In FPS games, the maps aren't exactly a sandbox. In sandbox, you don't get guns out of the box (you have to mod it). With MMOG, there is an uncontrolled environment that allows lots of bad language. This game is just a piece of everything put together into a smooth, flowing game!

512 Pixel Textures

I have been working on my game, TFFS, and I have made a lot of
realistic textures. You can see some of the textures on the right side of this post. They are diamond, gold, dirt, stone, water, and lava.

I made these textures using Corel Photoshop Pro X3, and a bunch of images I found on the internet. For diamond, I used a
square quartz texture, and layered it onto a stone texture. Then, I erased everything except what is showing, and darkened the edges, and the area around it.

For gold, I did the same thing as diamond. For dirt, I layered a couple of smaller dirt textures together. For stone, I took a big texture, cropped it, and mirror/flipped the image into four
segments, then made it look natural.

The water texture is an example of a seamless texture that does not look natural. It looks symmetrical on all four sides, and has unnatural lines. I can work on this so that it looks more natural, and add some animation to it!

I hope this post showed you that my game will be fun!

More Improvements On My Game

My game, TFFS, is meant to have a somewhat realistic play, and a mix between realistic and cartoonish textures. In a previous post, I showed some textures. Those textures are probably going to only be optional (for slow computers). I am working on better 512x512 textures, and should be able to show some of them soon.

As for models, they will have a blocky feel, but more realistic textures. The players will have a look that is somewhat realistic, but still cartoon-like. In my game, I will try and make good animals, blocks, items, player skins, and menus. If any part of my game doesn't feel as sleek as it could be, please tell me!

My concept of space in the game is that there are mostly blocks, that are lined up. In the world of blocks, there are also animals, vehicles, players, and machines. The all blocks take up a certain area, but some blocks are placed together, or affect other blocks. For instance, water moves to other blocks, and fire spreads. There could be magnets that move other magnets, and trees that grow.

In my game, when a tree grows, it starts out as a plant. It grows into a bigger plant, and it eventually turns into blocks of wood and leaves. As it gets older, it grows bigger and thicker. Trees may reach heights of several blocks, and thicknesses of 2 blocks. Trees will also spread naturally.

Animals will spawn during map generation, and will not spawn again. Instead, animals breed. In other words, pests can be controlled, and good animals can be sustained. In this game, animals become a commodity that can't be wasted. You can tame horses, or catch cows, even befriend monkeys. There will be a wide variety of animals, ready to catch!

Thank you for your interest.
Doc

What I Need To Do To Finish My Game

My game will be very advanced, and have a very complicated system. Sometimes, I am intimidated by the fact that I have to write all of the code. My game has a lot of features. My game will have animals, crafting, random terrain, mmog, etc. I have a lot of coding to do..

This is a small insight of what I have to do:

1. Startup Window
2. Username Check (eventually)
3. LWJGL Start
4. Physics
5. Terrain Generation
6. Main Menu
7. Animation
8. Sound
9. Music
10. Block Script
11. Chunk Saving
12. Chunk Loading
13. Weather (eventually)
    
14. Seasons (eventually)
15. Temperature (eventually)
16. Crafting
17. Special Effects
18. Textures
19. Distribution
20. Block Selection
21. Chunk Removal
    
22. AI (Artificial Intelligence)
23. Multi-player
24. Server
25. Chat Box
26. Seed Service (my game uses seeds, so this is a way to keep track of your favorite ones)
27. Day/Night

Well, now you know a little more about what I have to do for my game (indie game). I hope that my game (and also first actual java application....) will work quite nicely. Probably, I will put up a block list for all of the planned blocks. Thank you so much for following my game's development!

Thanks,
Doc

A List Of Blocks In My Game

In my game, I expect to have many blocks and items eventually (several hundred). So far, I have a long way to go, but I am getting started. My game will have lots of crafting recipes, so I will make lots of resources. In my game, there will also be a lot of vehicles, and animals, providing more uses for resources, and more sources. (Yes, I will be working on the textures.)

So far, I have the following resources:

• Dirt
• Stone
• Wood (Oak, Apple, Pine, Latex)
• Sand
• Leaves (Oak, Apple, Pine, Latex)
• Water
• Lava
• Bamboo
• Banana
• Sugar Cane
• Bamboo Wall
• Sugar Cane Wall
• Banana Wall
• Glass
• Coal
• Gold Ore
• Iron Ore
• Bauxite (aluminum ore)
• Copper Ore
• Laapis Lazuli
• Grass
  
• Wheat
  
• Rice
• Pumpkin
• Mushroom (jack-o-lantern, red, brown)
• Giant Venus Fly Trap Seeds
• Rubber
  
• Wire
• Circuits (a compact version of a circuit)
• Flowers (red, yellow, blue)
• Openable Window
• Crafting Table
• Electric Table
• Butchering Table
• Vehicle Flat
• And Much, Much More....

As you have read, I have lots of ideas for items and blocks. If I get enough attention, I will continue to update, and add most of these things. Those images are just to show that I am actually working on the game, and to give you a look at my game. I may eventually add an optional HD texture pack. If you have any comments, ideas for plants, blocks, items, or ores, please comment!

Thanks for reading!

Doc

My Company's Future

I am making a game off of what I believe to be a great idea. If my game goes well, and lots of people buy it, I am planning on making a sequel. In my sequel, I will probably make it more realistic, with better graphics. In my first game, I plan on making it myself, but I will probably accept some of the ideas given to me.

At first, this started out as a rough idea, and it went to a great idea (I think so, comment to tell me otherwise). Finally, I have started the code. I plan on updating it for a long time, and then probably releasing it for free. I expect it to be done this summer. You may say that I am wasting my time telling you so early.

Why aren't I making it free? I am not making it free so that I can continue to develop it as a job, and dedicate more time to it. I can also advertise, and make the MMOG part more fun. My game will also have a more professional experience.

How will my game be sold? It will be sold online with a downloadable installer. You will create a free account to play the free version, and you can upgrade to a full account to play online.

Thank you for supporting my game!

Doc

Terrain Generation In TFFS

My game will have more than 1,000,000,000,000,000 maps! How do I store that many maps in a downloadable file? (Or even make that many) How do I add one Gazillion maps to my game, but still keep the download size reasonable? It's called 3-D multifractual perlin noise. It takes numbers and letters, and turns it into a flowing, beautiful map.

But how does it work? How do I turn a seed like "183h91bc9d90dbnd" into a map? First I need to turn the seed into an integer. But I still don't have a map. I only have "183648951598459" (example). I am going to need a lot more numbers than that, but, I still want the map to be dependent on the seed (same seed = same map). To get more numbers, I use Java's seeded random number generator, and whenever I need a number, I just ask for one (they are still dependent on the seed!).

How do I make it 3-D? Simply, it looks at each block and checks whether it is solid. In more technical terms, it interpolates between eight points (see picture) using 1-D perlin noise. Eventually, it returns the answer to whether or not it is solid based on weights (if the weight is between 0 and 1, it is solid).

But what about caves? Imagine, you are without any resources to build a house, and you can't sleep in a cave because I never implemented cave generation. You generate a 2-D heightmap, and then use 3-d perlin noise to variate it in the different layers. Now you don't have to be robbed by raccoons (too bad you didn't have resources, anyway) and eaten by bears!

Thanks for following my development!

Doc