More Pleasant

I’ve replaced some of the textures, and added a few graphics enhancements as well. See below:

There is an actual lighting system, that exists, so that’s a plus. The placeholder ball and target have been replaced with 3D spheres as well. Perhaps the most interesting new development, though, is the support for distance joints. Those are those lines you see connecting various objects on the screen. That’s right, that block just swung down there and whacked that other block right off its stand.

It has been interesting to work with Box2D, and make it all jive with the editor, and the rest of the game in turn. A good portion of my work on Rebound lately has been on the editor, and making it foolproof. I learn something new about Box2D very often, and I like the features it offers. I want to make this game as interesting and fun as possible, so if you have any suggestions for physical factors or support for other Box2D features, feel free to comment.

Particle Progress

Rebound is getting some pretty particles. See the screenshot:

Some sparks are just starting to fly from the impact. There’s some fun physics stuff going on there too, I suppose. Rebound is generally progressing nicely. I plan to get some better quality textures in there soon, which should improve that burning itch you feel in your eyeballs. For now though, I hope you’ll excuse the programmer art.  I also hope to work on some general graphics improvements.  We’ll see how that goes.

Rebound is back!

Yes, the secret project is Rebound. Somewhat to my surprise, Rebound has received a lot of attention, despite originally being such a simple prototype. After hearing about people’s interest in it, I resumed work toward making Rebound into a full game. I have been making good progress on it, and showing how it’s coming along is actually worthwhile.

As you can see, the graphics in Rebound have also been improved since the prototype version, with more improvements to come. Instead of barely random levels which quickly become repetitive, as with the original Rebound prototype, the full version loads custom levels from files. It also includes a built-in map editor, so creating additional material will be easy. There are new elements to challenge the player, much more than the randomly placed obstacles in the prototype version. I will be posting updates about the development of Rebound periodically.

It’s coming

So you’re probably hoping I’ll get back around to something with… graphics. Not that there’s anything wrong with text-based games, but games with visuals are a lot easier to get into. Well, I have good news. I’ve been working on just such a project for some time. Hardware trouble had forced me to a different computer, which was a big reason for the text-based nature of the previous games. Now, I’m continuing to work on this new game. I’ll be showing it to you fully soon, but for now, here’s a tantalizingly vague cropped screenshot, as seems to be a tradition for almost-announced projects:

I know it’s not much, but that’s the idea. For now.

Interview with Petri Purho

I recently got a chance to ask Petri Purho of Kloonigames some questions about rapid prototyping, Crayon Physics, etc.

Q: Introduce yourself, however you like.
A: I’m Petri Purho and I’m probably best known for my extremely bad english, without a spell checker. Also I made Crayon Physics.