Vision Riders Entertainment Blog - AetherFall

Fate of AetherFall

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:17:40 -0700

Right now AetherFall just isn't coming together like I want. I may need to take the programming assets from this project and carry them over to another one, then return to AetherFall another time after leaving the concept to sit for awhile and "soak", sort of like a good wine... or... something...

I'd really like to be able to get a game out by the beginning of next year, and the further I get into AetherFall, the more demanding the game is becoming, even after hacking much of the original concept down to size. I'll talk more about it when I know something for certain.

Stupidity At Its Best

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:21:58 -0700

So I added a function in the code that allows the player to skip scenes by tapping the Y button on the controller. I boot up the game to test this and the intro scene for the first level begins to play. My immediant reaction is "Ah man, I've got to sit through this scene again so I can test the button that lets me skip this scene!"

Stupidity.

Head-Desk Much?

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:07:03 -0700

While plodding along in the production of AetherFall, I've been working quite a bit using the game's internal editor to start piecing together the levels. Instead of wasting my time cobbling an overly complicated GUI together for something the player will never see, I took the easy way out. Fore example, if I'm placing a bit of scenery and want to scale it, I hold down the S key on the keyboard and scroll up on the mouse scrollwheel. In the editor, the scroll wheel does the lion's share of everything that isn't simple dragging and dropping.

Only, for some reason, things wouldn't always work how I wanted them. Continuing on with the scaling example, whenever I'd scroll up it would make scenery smaller instead of larger. "Oh," I thought to myself, "I put ++ where I wanted --." (In the C, C++, and C# programming languages these increase and decrease a value by one increment respectively.) So I switched them around and went on my way. Still, I seemed to be making this mistake an awful lot whenever I added new features to the editor. Every time I'd hold the key to alter something, scrolling up would decrease the value while scrolling down would increase it. "Oh bother, I've done it again." And so I would go to fix it each time. But even for me, I seemed to be slipping up an awful lot.

It wasn't until today, some weeks after getting the first parts of the editor together, that I realized why I was making the same mistake over and over again. Put simply, I wasn't making a mistake at all, at least not in the code for the editor. After skimming through the code for handling the mouse my true mistake became clear: I'd coded the game to signal scrolling up on the scrollwheel as scrolling down and vice versa.

Yay Me!

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:28:55 -0700

Just completed (for the most part) the scripting language for AetherFall. It's complete with variables and if-then-else blocks and such, which should prove useful for writing the game's events. I've never completed any sort of scripting engine before, so this has been a real eye-opener for me. I now both understand and appreciate programming languages a lot more because of it. XD

Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as I was dreading it would be, either. Granted, I still have some things to test/debug/clean-up, but the hardest part was simply working out how everything should flow.

The Blog Smells Funny

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:25:29 -0700

Q: Is Swordmaster Odyssey dead?

Heavens no! It will probably be a few more weeks before I get back to it, though. Right now my focus is on getting the initial in-game art for AetherFall together, which is no small feat. Once I get a hold on the style I want, and get into the groove of producing it, things should lighten up quite a bit on that end.

Q: Is Sketchbook Monday dead?

No, I just keep putting it off.

Q: Is My Brother dead?

No, my brother is still alive and well ~~unfortunately~~, and so is My Brother. However, there likely won't be any work on it until next year. The project has not been canceled, just delayed in favor of AetherFall.

Q: Is Procyon dead.

Yes. As explained before, the project was axed due to major story problems, made even worse by a horde of technical problems.

AetherFall: Dante

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:01:47 -0700

This is Dante, the character you will be playing as in AetherFall. He is a star gazer that studies the night sky along with the many sages and scholars that live in a small community on the far side of Laurooga. His adventure begins when he is sent across the continent to deliver a message. You control him directly in the field as the other units under your command tag along. Dante can fight to some degree using his knife and baton, but his power and hit points are low, so you want to keep him out of trouble as much as possible.

Still can't quite capture the charm that the militia unit had.

Inked with pigma micron markers on 12f animation paper. Colored in Photoshop.

AetherFall Skirmisher

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:50:51 -0700

If there's one enemy you don't want to have, it's the Kingdom of Venn and their mercenary skirmishers. Lucky for you, these elite troops only fight for their allies, and it just so happens that Dante is one of them. These guys are much stronger and swifter than the simple militia units, and they can take a real beating without giving up ground to the enemy. But that power comes at a price: they're far more expensive to call up. Skirmishers will be a solid mainstay of your forces throughout the game.

Not quite as satisfied with how this one turned out compared to the militia art. Redrew the head heaven-only-knows how many times, and it still doesn't look right to me. The shading just isn't as sharp either.

Inked on 12f animation paper with pigma microns and colored in Photoshop.

AetherFall Militia

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:37:50 -0700

Project Legion has finally gotten a proper name: AetherFall. The first bits of promotional art are also coming together, the first being the militia unit you may have seen in today's Sketchbook Monday feature.

These militia are cheap to produce and don't pack much of a punch compared to their stronger allies, but their spears allow them to attack from a distance, shielded by their tougher companions. Consisting primarily of farmers and laborers, these little guys have put everything they have on the line and are relying on you to protect their homes and villages by securing victory in the campaigns ahead. Don't let them down!

I actually ended up doing the line art for this little dude twice. The first time I did it in pencil like the in-game graphics--but after scanning it I realized that the line quality just wasn't consistent enough for use outside of the game (web site, print, advertising, etc). In the end, I went back to my good old Pigma Microns. They don't "flow" as well on paper as a pencil, unfortunantly, but they do give me a solid, dependable line. Well, most of the time anyway.

Inked on 12f animation paper and colored in Photoshop.

Platformer + RTS = ?

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:12:14 -0700

I've come up with novel ways to combine elements of both genres in my game thus far. For example, like any good platformer there's plenty of collectibles lying around (id est coins in Mario, rings in Sonic). There's also RTS-style resource gathering, where you must have enough resources in order to build/purchase a new unit (id est gold in WarCraft, et cetera).

In fact, both of these things are one and the same! The collectibles are the resources.

Another Screenshot

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:27:06 -0700

When I get a chance in the coming weeks, I'll probably take some time to explain what's going on with Vision Riders and why we haven't been updating. But in the meantime, here's some more more of that project I've working on. (Click on the screenshot to see a larger version.)

As you can see the game's come along a little further. Even got the game set up so that I can test it on my new XBox 360! Unfortunantly, though, it's not a whole lot of fun to play right now. Your units do most of the work on their own, and there's no strategy to anything. Hopefully this can be corrected as I continue to work on it and discover the game's potential, otherwise I'll just have to scrap the idea and find something else to work on.

Here's What I've Been Up To Lately

nospam@example.com (Dale Johnson) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:30 -0700

Sorry I haven't been getting Swordmaster Odyssey up lately. I'm hoping to get the comic back on track in a few more weeks, so don't fret too much. In the meantime, though, I've been dabbling in programming again, playing around with C# and Microsoft's XNA.

This is a game prototype for a platformer-RTS hybrid I put together over the past week. Not sure if anything will come of it, or if I'll have the time and/or gumption to continue working on it, but thus far it's been an interesting endeavor.