First video!

Here's a first look at the game in motion. I guess you can get the basic idea about the gameplay mechanics from this video. Enjoy!

First soundtrack!

Blue Core got it's first action packed soundtrack that will be present in the final (hardest and fastest) levels of the game. Check it out! This briliant piece of music was created by Brian Bonsteel. Check out his work at BonsteelAudio.
Send your feedback to svargaforge@gmail.com

Collision detection

The collision detection was really hard on me. It was the toughest part of programing yet. First I had to make an alternative to the dark GDK integrated function because it was quite inaccurate. So what I did was, I had a loop return the X and Y coordinates of all the particles that were shot out from the center, and then if any of those coordinates were located in the 'ring' where the pad is moving AND have the same rotation as the pad, the particle would get deleted.

This is the ring area that I am talking about (marked in purple):

I achieved this by using the good old circle equation: 

x² + y² = radius²
Example

I simply inserted the X and Y coordinates of the particles into the function, switched the '=' with a > and for the radius I used the inner edge of the ring.
what you get is this. The next step was to limit the area from the outside, so I added the same equation, enlarged the size of the radius(by the width of the pad) and switch the '>' with a '<'. and I got me a lovely ring. The third condition requires the particle sprite to have the same angle as the pad and the whole thing works!

Well... it almost works. The real problem arises here. Spinning the pad and the particles around reqires the use of the dbWrapValue(Value) (a Dark GDK function), wich wraps the value of the angle (it doesn't let a value go out of the bounds of 0°-359° for example 359°+10°=9° instead of 369°). This caused a problem at the top of the game area (where the angle is 0°) If the pad was on the left side of the 0° mark and the particle was on the right like this:

The pad value was something like 355° and the particle value was for example 3°. Those values are far apart, so I had to make an exeption and make a separate collision function for values that revolved around the 0° mark where the values get wraped. It works perfectly now.

Progress so far + screenshots

For now the main gameplay mechanics work. This is usually the fastest, easiest and the most fun part in game development. It took me three weekends to complete and it was quite a challenge, because it took quite some maths and logic to figure some stuff out. For instance how fast must the pad be moving to go at the same speed as the particles hit the edge. The part that gave me the biggest headache was collision detection. Dark GDK has an integrated function, that lets you return a value if a sprite is hitting another sprite, but it did not work very smoothly, so I had to make my own (more on that in an upcoming post).

Now I'm just trying to separate different game sections, like the main menu, the menu where you choose levels that you want to replay, the game itself, the game over screen, the section that restarts the game, etc. I'm trying to get the basic architecture of the game planned out basically. For this I am using some temporary sprites just so I can test if the mechanics work.

Thus far I've made a temporary main menu:

And a temporary "choose level" menu:

For an artist of my caliber the 3D buttons look pretty neat (if these were the early 90's). The bloody stain is also a temporary asset with which you choose which level you want to play and press space to engage it.

Project details

Time to talk about the details of the project. The programming is being done by me in C++. I am using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express edition. It's free. For easier development I am using the Dark GDK (game development kit) engine, which is also free and it has a great community that includes some very helpful individuals.

First agreements about the game art were also made today. The art will be developed in Photoshop CS5.

Screenshots will follow as soon as anything new comes along.

Screenshots!

Here are some screenshots of the gameplay. Note that this game is still awaiting the creation of more artistic sprites so I'm currently using some minimalistic substitutes that I (a man with no artistic talent) have made just so  I can see what's happening on the screen.

It is best that I explain how the game mechaics work below this screenshot. Basically the player controlls the red pad. The game only has two controlls: left and right(don't need to explain what they do right?). The game then continues to shoot a series of green squares from the center of the screen. The goal of the game is to catch all the squares without any of them escaping. Simple and hopefully fun.

If you have any questions about anything contact me at svargaforge@gmail.com

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting this game development blog. There will be content as soon as there's something to post about. Stick around!