New tiles/hazards/characters?

[flipflop]

How many more tiles, hazards and/or characters are we going to be adding to Hooptie before the final release? I have heard several people mention something about an unmoveable icecube tile but that is about it.

Finally, can someone please tell me what "connected pits" are? It was mentioned in several posts but I'm still not sure what they are. :D

Thanks!
- John

[Chris Burkhardt]

How many more tiles, hazards and/or characters are we going to be adding to Hooptie before the final release? I have heard several people mention something about an unmoveable icecube tile but that is about it.This is something I'm sure there will be much conversation over in the near future. I'm sure once DaFalcon gets A full featured level editor in his hands, he will have more ideas for tiles/enemies than Hooptie's little penguin brain could comprehend :D

Finally, can someone please tell me what "connected pits" are? It was mentioned in several posts but I'm still not sure what they are.Yes, I can tell you. When the pit was first conceptualized, it was planned that two pits placed next to each other in the level would connect to make one longer continuous pit (actually, it was originally planned as water... but pits make more sense as penguins can swim :) ). This way you could add big holes and long ditches to make levels more interesting. Adding "connected pits" is just a cosmetic thing, as they have the same functionality of individual pits placed adjacent to each other.

I'm pretty sure this has been implemented (at least mostly) already by.... someone. Ben, maybe?

[DaFalcon]

Well, speaking of new tiles/hazards, I've created a graphic for a possible "immovable" tile ... basically a rock protruding from the ground through the snow....

http://members.aol.com/alanfalcon/rocks.gif

If you like the design, I'll go ahead and create few more rock graphics, so that there will be variety :-) And in case someone wants to take a stab at implementing immovable rocks, here is a single-part tiff file of the image that you can break into two and use:

http://members.aol.com/alanfalcon/rock.tif

[Pazolli]

Graphics look good DaFalcon. A few (say two) more rocks would be great. E-mail me them when you finish.

But getting to John's question, as Chris hinted, you can expect a fair few new sprites or tiles in the future. Ideally you should structure your code so it can accomodate more tiles with not much trouble, but obviously we'll be happy to add more code when new tiles arrive (so you don't have to do anything too fancy in that respect). Generally I think you'll find once you submit your code it will probably change a fair bit with time. Already I have a few ideas of want I want with the editor. For example:


Click and dragging object placement.
Unlimited redos and undos.
An NSDocument foundation.


That said, of course, not all those need to be implemented in the initial CVS submission.

Mark.

[DaFalcon]

I'm workin' on the rock graphics now... As I drifted off to sleep last night, I envisioned a new kind of tile, the "melted snow" tile, which I thought to be rather interesting, though it needs a little bit of brainstorming before it would be good enough to have, I think.

The melted snow tile would be a "connected" tile, like the pits, and would look like just a "dry" spot on the ground, where the snow melted. The special thing about these tiles would be that Hooptie can walk on this, but he can't push ice blocks onto it, because of the traction or whatever. The biggest problem with this, is that is a baddie is walking on the melted ice, there is no way to kill him..! So perhaps an ice block could just be pushed one space into melted ice, but not onto melted ice that is surrounded by other melted ice spots? I'm not sure that would help. What if enemies were simply programmed to stay off of melted ice except to cross it? That would probably be difficult, and possibly be "unrealistic" seeming. But oh, the puzzle-possibilities that could add to a Hooptie level!

As usual, something to think about. . .

[flipflop]

I'm in the process of making the editor easier to extend with new graphics. I have added 3 tabs to the palette: characters, tiles and hazards inorder to make things easier to find once we get a few new tiles added to the game. I have also extended NSDocument as we discussed before and will add BobbyWatson's (which Bobby has already commited the changes into CVS. Thank you for the email!) new level loading and create new level saving code.

The code is in much better shape than it was before. So once I'm finished adding these few features we can commit the editor into CVS. I hope to be done sometime next week...

I'm also adding a new mechanism to make loading new graphics to the editor easy and with out a recompile. I'm going to move all the graphics into a seperate directory instead of adding the graphics to the editor as I did with the current version of the editor. I also am creating a plist file which will define all the graphics useable in the editor and be read in at runtime to generate all the NSImage objects -- something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">
<plist version="0.9">
<dict>

// Name of this image as well as a key into the NSDictionary object. A simple enumeration of the NSDictionary will give us all the images to read in...
<key>Hooptie</key>
<dict>

// Should this be added to the palette? The idea here is to have special editor only images -- for example if the game adds a new tile the editor can't read yet we can display a "unknown" tile marker in it's place. But that "unknown" tile will not be available from the palette
<key>addToPalette</key>
<true/>

// Some tiles are cut into 2 images, a body and a head inorder to give an isometric view of the world. These just define the image file names
<key>bodyImg</key>
<string>103</string>

// An image may not have a head (ie pit and teleporter pad) so a "-1" will tell us that we don't have an head image file.
<key>headImg</key>
<string>104</string>

// Not sure if this is necessary but may be useful when generating a lookup table for an image.
<key>name</key>
<string>kHooptie</string>

// Mouse over the image in the display and get this toolTip
<key>toolTip</key>
<string>Our fearless hero</string>

// Can either be kCharacter, kHazard, kTile or kNothing. This will tell us which palette tab to put the image under.
<key>type</key>
<string>kCharacter</string>

// A direct mapping of this images value with what we read in from a level file
<key>value</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>

This way anyone can drop a new image to the image folder and update the editor plist to inform the editor about the new image. No one needs to touch the code.

Comments or suggestions?
- John

[BobbyWatson]

I was thinking about something similar, though my way of doing it was a bit different : I would've added a menu item (something like "Import new entity" in the File menu), which would've asked the user to select a .tiff file containing the new graphics. Then, I would've added it to the palette.

Anyway, keep up the good work! I'm looking forward to editing my own hooptie levels :)

BobbyWatson

[flipflop]

Good idea Bobby. I really only see one problem with this mechanism - What "value" would the user give to the image so the map file could be read in properly? This could be added to the installation instructions: Move images to folder, select "new entity..." (or whatever) from the menu, and enter in '13' for the "value". But that is prone, IMHO, to user error.

If new images become available we can distribute a new plist with the images. The user can move and replace the old plist file and move the image to the image directory. A simple restart or "refresh" of the editor is all that would be needed.

Keep these ideas and suggestions rolling!
Thanks for the input! :)
- John

[Pazolli]

How will you handle connected pits?

Mark.

[flipflop]

Hehehe, I was going to be lazy and just draw the simple 1x1 pit tile and not worry about drawing connected tiles. ;)

Thanks for pointing this out I had not thought about it.

I'm thinking of having another hazard like a fishing/water hole cut in the ice. I could see having the water hole being exactly like a pit tile where they can be connected but if you move an icecube over it, that icecube sinks in the water forever lost.

How 'bout having the ability to animate a tile too? I can see having a fairly large body of water that could have fish jumping around. More for adding atmosphere to the game than anything else. Maybe even having a walrus jump out of the water and becoming an enemy to watch out for.

OK, you could go bonkers with tiles :)
- John

[Pazolli]

Originally posted by jnikolai
Hehehe, I was going to be lazy and just draw the simple 1x1 pit tile and not worry about drawing connected tiles. ;)

Actually that'll probably be fine for the time being, we can always introduce the connecting pits when we approach the end-user release.

I'm thinking of having another hazard like a fishing/water hole cut in the ice.

Perhaps, soon.

How 'bout having the ability to animate a tile too? I can see having a fairly large body of water that could have fish jumping around. More for adding atmosphere to the game than anything else. Maybe even having a walrus jump out of the water and becoming an enemy to watch out for.

Actually I was thinking about a bit more animation too, like an animated skyline. So it's definitely something that I'm (along with probably most of the team) are thinking about, but for the moment there's a whole heap of other stuff far more urgent that we need to sort out.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Looking forward to the editor,
Mark

[DaFalcon]

Do we want a skyline of clouds that "scrolls" across the screen? At one point I thought about having a sunrise -> sunset as time expires, but then what happens when you get a time powerup, the sun starts setting in the east? :-) So I stopped thinking about that idea. Though if we had anything like that, then it would be cool to have a certain "reflection" color on graphics that changed depending on the time of day; if that makes sense. :) More animation sounds good to me :-)

[Pazolli]

Originally posted by DaFalcon
Do we want a skyline of clouds that "scrolls" across the screen? At one point I thought about having a sunrise -> sunset as time expires, but then what happens when you get a time powerup, the sun starts setting in the east? :-) So I stopped thinking about that idea. Though if we had anything like that, then it would be cool to have a certain "reflection" color on graphics that changed depending on the time of day; if that makes sense. :) More animation sounds good to me :-)

Yes, but let's get the fundamental graphics implemented first.

[DaFalcon]

I have been working on a possible flying robot; one that can fly over pits, but is still low-flying enough that it can be crushed by ice blocks. It has a similar look to the scoutbot in that it has an antenna, and a transparent dome attatched. Though the design is rather simplistic, I'll post a "screenshot" soon so you can take a look/give feedback.

[DaFalcon]

This is that flybot image I promised.. I haven't created an other views/images except for this one, so take a look and let me know what to fix (or if I should come up with something a little more ... different?) before making the various views of "flybot" (is someone going to come up with some better names for these things? :-))

. . . . . . . . http://members.aol.com/alanfalcon/flybot.gif

[Kjurtyl]

Great: a flying Imac. But seriously, I believe it fits rather well with the other bot (what do we call the other bot?) Is it low-flying or hovering? If it would hover on the ground (and the blocks) it could still fall in pits - technically speaking. I'd love to hear that thing fly off into the darkness.

I think it perfectly acceptable to use cheezy names for our enemies, it's been done plenty of times before. Shall we baptize this bot the "fly-bot"?

-Kjurtyl

[DaFalcon]

The other bot I call the ScoutBot beacuse it is the alien's first line of offense, and cheap to create. Aliens? What aliens?! Well, the aliens who are trying to steal all the ice on Earth (something like that) of course! What do you mean you don't see any aliens?! Well, uhm, we just haven't made them yet, that's all.

Anyway, this was intended to be more of a low-flying bot that could fly over pits, though maybe it won't be able to cross two consecutive pits (i.e. it starts to drop as it flies over a pit but recovers if it reaches ice.) I leave that for you to decide. And yeah, as many times as I kept trying to change it because it looked like a flying grape iMac, it kept coming back to a similar design. What does everyone else think, before I go and make the other views? Should I come up with a couple more designs, first? And is it low-flying or hovering?

[flipflop]

I like the Jetson like doo-dad on the butt of the flying bot :) and the antenna ties this bot in with the existing scout bot. Is there an big foozle bot controlling all these other peon bots?

Perhaps adding something simple like a small/pathetic looking propeller will give a better idea that this bot can fly - clumsily - but it can fly over the pits. I can see this bot chugging along on the field, propeller rotating slowly until it gets to a pit where the propeller starts speeding up, smoke spews forth, it back-fires a couple of times and the bot shakes madly but it makes it over the pit for a hard landing on the other side. OK, maybe thats overkill... :p


Just my humble two cents!
- John

[DaFalcon]

I actually added and removed different spinning propellors to the top of the bot at different points in designing it, and every time I liked it better without. I also had a little grab-arm protruding from its rear in the initial design, similar to those in the Game Over screen. Alas, in the end, I settled on that Jetson-like doo-dad to act as a technologically advanced hovering mechanism and add a bit o' visual variety. I have considered having the flybot bob gently up and down in the air as it moves, but keeping that doo-dad steady in relation to the ground (shadow). Does anyone have a problem with these generic-round shadows I've been using? I could probably create more "realistic" shadows, but only if people think it is worthwhile :-)

[Chris Burkhardt]

I like the shadows. The bobbing idea sounds good. Have you made any other views of the hover-bot yet?

[Carlos Camacho]

To quickly jump in for a moment, I have a thread on pre-rendered 3d sprites for the Hooptie game. Please check it out, and let me know if you all want me to continue...

[DaFalcon]

Yes, I exist. :)

I am trying out one new design of the fly-bot before I go and create various views and animations... and then I'll let you choose between the two. Once it is ready, I will post it here . . .

[DaFalcon]

Okay, here is the design for the "other" fly-bot... pick one as it is, or suggest revisions to either image...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.snakequest.com/other/fybot2.jpg

This is a front view of the 'bot. I am still planning to put the "jetsons widget" on the back-side of the 'bot. As a reminder, this would fly over pits (at least over single pits, I don't know if you want it to fly over more than one pit in a row) but it does not hover high enough to raise above ice blocks (making it crushable by Hooptie)...

Here he is in a mock-game situation...


. . . . . . . http://www.snakequest.com/other/flyingame.jpg

[Chris Burkhardt]

Ahh, beautiful, I like that one.

[DaFalcon]

I realize it took me forever to get to, but once I got started I couldn't get stopped, so I've gone ahead and created the tiff files with a "bobbing" up and down animation for each direction of the flybot...

Here is another mockup of what would be a very scary Hooptie level...

http://www.snakequest.com/other/scary.jpg

And here are the tiff files, for whenever someone is ready to implement them... (let me know if there are any problems) (why is it a zip file? DropZip works for me, dropstuff doesn't -- don't worry, this is 100% created in Mac OS X).

http://www.snakequest.com/other/Flybot.zip

[flipflop]

Looks great DaFalcon!

Is it possible to post an animated gif?

[furballphat]

DaFalcon - In OS X you can gzip it. In the terminal cd to wherever the directory you want to archive is and type:
tar -cz directory name > archive name.tgz

[DaFalcon]

Thanks! I'm no coder, but even I can handle that :-)

[DaFalcon]

here you go: an animated gif version of the flybot flying back and forth between two spaces...

I can't speak for the timing, and the coloring is definitely sub-par in this gif, but you can basically see how he will look moving between spaces here.

http://www.snakequest.com/other/flybotanim2.gif

[Render]

DF - Your specular highlights and reflection actually look really nice for the size. Did you render the frames from geometry at higher res and shrink them?

[Pazolli]

Excellent work DaFalcon. :-)

[DaFalcon]

Thanks, Render. Naw, I have been trying to create nice "bubble" reflections and highlights in Photoshop for a long time now, which is part of why I decided to make the bubble a commonality in Hooptie's enemies... that's just 100% Photoshop styles and hand coloring :-)

[Render]

That makes it even more impressive. Really nice work.

[DaFalcon]

Originally posted by furballphat
DaFalcon - In OS X you can gzip it. In the terminal cd to wherever the directory you want to archive is and type:
tar -cz directory name > archive name.tgz

Okay, I've tried doing this and realized that actually I have no idea where to begin :-) I've never tried doing anything in terminal ... I don't know how to cd to a directory (I don't even know how to find out what directory the folder is in?!) ...

[OneSadCookie]

Some useful terminal commands:

ls - list all the files in the current directory (folder)

cd X - change directory to the directory called X. You can use the tab key to auto-complete directory names once you've typed a few characters. / is the root directory, where the Applications and Users folders are. ~ is your home directory. .. is the directory (folder) that contains the one you're currently in. You can drag a folder from the finder to your terminal window to get its path.

The terminal is case-sensitive, it doesn't think that Foo is the same file as fOO.

[Chris Burkhardt]

> You can drag a folder from the finder to your terminal window to
> get its path.

That is the nice thing about the Terminal in OS X... its not completely GUI-less.