Nifflas' Support Forum
Released Games => Knytt Underground => Pre-release topics => Topic started by: Nifflas on September 15, 2011, 20:54:42
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So, now I live and teach game design 6 hours a week at a school in Denmark called Vallekilde Højskole. Since "The Great Work" is waiting for the documentary to be released, I'm working full time on KnyttWaDF and I'm making great progress.
All the 1440 rooms were completed long ago, and the scripting part of the game runs beautifully now. I'm now writing the game's story, adding NPC's to the game world, and my new quota have landed at one full quest per day. I do playtesting with the game here at Vallekilde and it turns out people really like the game, in particular the player movements (so the Knytt / WaDF combination works well). Despite the game world being entierly complete, I realize that the game is a much larger project than I first thought due to the amount of story and music, and it'll be finished later than I planned. There are still many months of work on this game, perhaps near a year.
The main reason for the delay is that I originally planned the game to have around 800-900 rooms. Then I became obsessed with using up all 1440 rooms of the supported level format, which took four extra months. Now, filling all those areas with quests and music will probably add up to equally much extra work.
Here are some random NPC's from the game.
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Months to a year? can't wait that long! >.>
On the other hand, how much do you think it'll cost and how much room on a computer do you think it'll take?
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If you can run Saira, it'll be no problem running KnyttWaDF. The game will be free and open source, but the massive expansion level (having a game of 1440 rooms and tons of content instead of a short "The Machine" sized adventure) will have a price, though I haven't decided on it yet.
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that sure is a long time to go till completion. I know it will be worth the wait though and I'm glad to hear people are liking the switching element of the game :)
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I don't have Saira, so I have no clue yet. >.>
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I don't have Saira, so I have no clue yet. >.>
Get the demo of Saira and see if it runs on your system.
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i am hoping it is not too expensive. (Another 20 dollars <_<, hey... i got Saira when it was that price. Well, i got an extra friend code when the special was around)...
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Take your time Nifflas. I think we all want this to be as great of a game as possible.
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If people are able to playtest the gameworld already, do you think beta testing will begin any time soon?
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Those characters look very cool.
And I guess as long as you have fun with obsessing over the size and filling everything up, that sounds like it will be a great game and what you want and all, so wohooo! :]
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With the main character's name probably being Mi, and with one of the NPCs being called Re, do we have to expect there to be all the musical notes? If so, is there going to be a Si or a Ti?
Can't wait to see how good the animations are!
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@AA:
Homer J Simpson: Do
.. 'h :D
Sorry, couldn't resist.
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If there's too much music for you to make, have you considered opening the soundtrack up to other musicians, like you have in some of your previous games?
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Well, compensation is a problem. I'm making enough money so that I can live off game development, but I don't make a lot. I mean, if anyone wants to help me out anyway with music, that'd be awesome.
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Given the success of the other contribution threads, one for music contribution might not be a bad idea. Though, I would like to hear from some of your past collaborators...
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Well, compensation is a problem. I'm making enough money so that I can live off game development, but I don't make a lot. I mean, if anyone wants to help me out anyway with music, that'd be awesome.
You could pull some strings and have some forum-goers force Chris Schlarb to collaborate music-wise for free!
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Hatman looks amazing!
It's an interesting idea to have the game be free, but your level not to be. I hope it pays off :)
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I join the "encourage nifflas" gang :). I like the things I saw about the game, so please keep going C)
PS: Glad you are currently teaching, I would love to do that (but I had to focus on other things, :S )
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I'll definitely see how many of the musicians from the previous games who are interested.
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I'll definitely see how many of the musicians from the previous games who are interested.
I would think a good bit of them would be interested :) would be nice to get a good portion of the WaDF composers for this game.
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I'd love to hear some more music from dfast!
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i’m sorry if this question was already asked, but are you going to publish this game on steam? even though it will be free, you can make it $0.99 or more, i think people will pay to have this game in their account)
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The game will be avaliable as two different versions. The plus version (which includes the 1440 room mega episode) will be a commercial product that I can put up on Steam. The standard version doesn't include this episode but is free and completely open source.
For the sake of distributing the game on as many platforms as I can, I need to treat them as two separate products (many services don't offer free games). However, the source code to the free version is fully identical to the plus version (it's the same executable).
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The plus version (which includes the 1440 room mega episode) will be a commercial product that I can put up on Steam.
YAY!!!
Wait...
The plus version (which includes the 1440 room mega episode) will be a commercial product that I can put up on Steam.
Does this mean you will?
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Well, I guess it depends on if Steam accepts the game. I mean, the Steam versions of the games are my biggest income, I can't ignore that.
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Of course they'll accept it :nuts:
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Is it open source, as in, editable through MMF, or something more like Saira or Knytt Stories, with an editor?
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Is it open source, as in, editable through MMF, or something more like Saira or Knytt Stories, with an editor?
The latter option would not mean that they're open source but instead just made with a closed-source level editor.
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The game will be avaliable as two different versions. The plus version (which includes the 1440 room mega episode) will be a commercial product that I can put up on Steam. The standard version doesn't include this episode but is free and completely open source.
For the sake of distributing the game on as many platforms as I can, I need to treat them as two separate products (many services don't offer free games). However, the source code to the free version is fully identical to the plus version (it's the same executable).
Please tell me the 1440 version will be available off steam...
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Please tell me the 1440 version will be available off steam...
Um, that's pretty much what the second sentence you quoted states. But there's no way to confirm that it will be accepted by Steam yet.
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I like characters graphics, but don't quite like how Mi swings hands around when jumping. Also, I'm wondering if you got my PM with hors concours photos?
Is it open source, as in, editable through MMF, or something more like Saira or Knytt Stories, with an editor?
Both.
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Please tell me the 1440 version will be available off steam...
Do you mean available from Steam or not on Steam?
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Whether its from or on steam or at steam or whatever...
Yes, the 1440 room version will be available through steam. I'm not sure if the same game with 2 different modes can be accessible through steam at the same time where one is free and the other isn't. Maybe as a demo version or so. Dunno. I really don't know how steam handles this.
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Do you mean available from Steam or not on Steam?
I mean, not on steam. Or at least, not only on steam.
Something about the whole "charging me twice for games I never receive" policy that I disagree with.
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What about this new Indievania (http://beta.indievania.com/) distribution platform? :]
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Yeah that looks pretty good, plus there's no harm in trying to get it distributed on many different sites now is there?
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Something about the whole "charging me twice for games I never receive" policy that I disagree with.
Of course the plus version will also be avaliable at my own website as a non-Steam version, the way all my games are now.
I'll look into other ways to distribute the game too.
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I'm still on Multimedia Fusion 2, but this time I'm building the game for Mathias' Anaconda runtime, which is a cross platform Mac/Linux/Windows runtime for MMF2 that fixes many of the problems I've been having with earlier games.
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I'm still on Multimedia Fusion 2, but this time I'm building the game for Mathias' Anaconda runtime, which is a cross platform Mac/Linux/Windows runtime for MMF2 that fixes many of the problems I've been having with earlier games.
That's great to hear. can't wait to see how it turns out. hopefully it won't be hard to code in.
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Well, it's identical, though I have to be aware which features that are supported by Anaconda. Mathias who created it have even implemented some specific ones I need.
Unfortunately, the level format of game itself is still becoming more complicated. It's extremely difficult to create a super easy level format while having good support for tons of quest structures. Right now I'm prioritizing making the game's own quest really good, then I have to work out if there's some way I can make it easy to edit.
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Unfortunately, the level format of game itself is still becoming more complicated. It's extremely difficult to create a super easy level format while having good support for tons of quest structures. Right now I'm prioritizing making the game's own quest really good, then I have to work out if there's some way I can make it easy to edit.
Don't worry, simplicity is overrated :P
In the game I am currently writing, I am trying to "complicate then simplify"; basically, I am adding literally everything that comes into my head into the game and level editor. Then, I work out which features will always be needed for all level editors, and which are optional, and make it so that be default, the editor will either ignore the more advanced features, or fill them in for you in some way (either by assuming a value, or by a small "wizard" sub-application).
For example, in my game, you have to specify the colour scheme for each screen, which involves giving RGB values for each of the many, many screen layers. This could be very intimidating for new users, so instead, by default, it only asks for the colour of the foremost layer, and for an "increment value". After both are provided, the editor calculates the colours of the other layers by extrapolation. If desired, you can press a button (currently a little man wearing sunglasses, holding a paintbrush, standing on the word "pro") to edit all the colours individually.
I'm not entirely sure if this is what you're referring to, but blah :crazy:
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Developing better tools earlier is almost always worth the effort. If some quest stuff can be edited easier and more error-prone, I'd suggest adding that to the editor first. Finding the right way to edit quests and dialogs is tricky though.
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Well, I've found pretty nice ways to do everything already. To my knowledge I'm not doing things wrong. Problem is just that my current implementations only make sense to someone who knows programming. I know power and ease of use are not two poles you must put yourself in between. However, tons of time must be invested to create a system that can be both at the same time, and if I did that I'm not sure when the game would ever be done instead. To be honest it's just a lot easier to add a Python hooks and require the level designer to know how to script.
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That sounds simple enough. If this game gains a big level making following we could collect snippets of code for new programmers, enough to make simple levels.
I'm curious of what has hooks. Screens? Objects? Music? I think a special object class specifically for inserting hooks in screens would be very helpful. For instance, if I wanted 30 screens to call the same function I could place hook object 7 in them and code for that instead of the screens. I'm sure you have it all figured out. I'm just imagining possibilities.