Twilight Updates & News

Productive Weekends...

20/09/2009 & 27/09/2009

Now that I seem to be getting a bit more used to my new life of working in London, and things have settled down more just generally, I seem to be finding a few hours here and there to devote towards my hobby projects. So yes... that means more work on Twilight!! Good Good :)

Below you should find - unless it's wandered off somewhere - a screenshot/sample of a new world style. This is the "Clockwork Forest" and will be the first zone Annabell discovers on her travels. Keep in mind this graphic is still work in progress.

On a less visual note I have also implemented 60% of the backend database design which will allow seperate users to save their progress through-out the game. And I have also rewritten portions of the Game Engine, namely the parts that handle the loading, displaying and controlling of the Parallax layers.

Why the rewrite?  This is to take advantage of optimisations I have learned over the last few months, to add multipage support, and to add more specific control of the parallax. The Engine now supports TweenLite/TweenMax motioning and has some extra special effects like ground shake and local animations.

Oh well, it seems... - 10/08/2009

... this project has gone the same way as the others. That's the fundamental problem with life. I don't have enough of it, well in respect to time that is. Anyway, whilst I haven't had many free minutes to sit down and bash things out on a computer - I've even found checking my emails to be difficult to fit in at the moment - I have instead, had much time to ponder things. Mainly while travelling to my new job. So instead of any actual coding, I've been planning further parts of the game. And as with any planning I get flashes of the elements I would like to see working.

Don't worry I am getting somewhere with this...

To cut a long story short, I did actually end up with a whole free day to myself yesterday - amazing I know - so unlike many would do, those of whom would probably point and frown at me, I stayed in and powered up Photoshop. This has allowed me to transform some ideas that were merely vapours of thought, in to solid images. It's not much I know, but I'm still determined to finish "Twilight - a long way till morning" even if I have to work nights to do it ;)

It's been a while - 13/03/2009

Yes, yes... I know it's been a while. As usual other "high-priority" projects have taken.. well.. priority. Hopefully however, if my attempt to find an Online Game Developer job in London is successful I wont have to worry about juggling other non-game projects around, and will be able to focus on doing something that I really enjoy.

Anyway, possibilities aside, I thought it would be good to post at least something up here so that, if anyone is actually out there and reading, they wont feel I've abandoned Twilight. So here is my quick post in-between firing off job applications.

You might well wonder - if you've had a play with the demo that is - where the rest of Annabell's world will lead? Well if you haven't then hey, no harm done. So for those out there who do like musing about things that go beyond the box, here is the "next screen" in the demo... well possibly ;)

New Publish - 09/10/2008

Right, just until i get everything ironed out I've added a new publish of the demo. This shows off the speech-bubbling and more interaction with the level. I'll explain things in greater detail later but for the time being the particle test is no longer triggered by the mouse button, instead it has been moved to the "space bar". The longer you hold the key the farther she'll fire the particle.

The mouse click is now used for interaction with the level. Now Annabell should be able to describe certain objects. You'll notice (well hopefully ;) that for certain key objects her description gets more detailed once you are near to that object. This ability will obviously be put to more use (by me) when i'm hiding a particular answer to a puzzle or - at a point when - in order to progress the player will need to reach a particular key object's physical location (hopefully making it more challenging). The system also allows space for multiple descriptions dependent on character. So once i've introduced other key characters they'll be able to help identify what's going on in the game.

Oh i've also streamlined the HUD and got things ready for when i introduce both the Game Menu and Inventory panels. Plus I've resized the game window so that i'll be able to better support smaller resolution screens. 800 x 600 is much better than 1000x700 or whatever it was before.

You can access this version of the game here:

[ Engine III.1 ]

Sub-Levels - 07/10/2008

Right well i got part of the way towards introducing sub-levels today, although i am rather tired now and seeing as it is 3 in the morning i don't think i'll press on any further ;)

Basically sub-levels are small parts of the map that can be accessed temporarily. These will normally be small buildings or areas that require a change in view in order to display things correctly. The image above is the current layout of Annabell's house and will be accessed via an option given to Annabell when she is within reach of the house door. Obviously to fit in with the story line i will have to make things look aged and forgotten... but then again knowing me i may completely change the layout before i even get round to doing that.

Anyway, i now have the system loading the relevant data, the one major thing i have left is getting it to update the trigger map. This needs to happen in the right way and obviously in such a way that it's optimised and quick to switch back and forth between main map and sub map. That's not the kind of coding i can do whilst half asleep :)

Particle Addition - 07/10/2008

As a quick test i have added the creation of Particle instances to the mouse click. Eventually i do hope to have certain "powers" available to Annabell that will be controlled via the mouse. Which means she'll be free to move about at the same time and - depending on how carried away i get - allowing her to deal with multiple enemies at once. What I've just placed in the demo is not the exact implementation of what i had in mind. But it is a good starting point, and it's a nice way to show off what I've got working so far.

The Particle Class allows the quick creation of any shape, size and colour particle with the added options of Filter Effects (blur and glow) and the addition of different types of trails. It automatically interacts with the landscape, air resistance and gravity... although - as you will soon see - it still suffers from having no vertical collision detection (just the same as Annabell). Eventually i hope to add animation abilities to the particles so they can morph, have creation and death animations, and so they can cause other effects to take place (i.e. the creation of other particle systems).

In the end i intend to use particles for most of the light effects, so.. Fire, Water, Special Powers or Abilities, Spot and Street Lighting.

I am quite please with how it's working so far as the code seems pretty robust for my first attempt at Particle code. Plus it seems rather optimised so all in all it's going well. The next hurdle really will be adding highlighted movement lines.. the kind that you always see in Anime or the like.. as i would like to accentuate Annabell's (and other character's) movements to show a difference between normal moves and those that are "powered".

Bug Fix - 05/10/2008

Just fixed a problem with the "Character Tracking" feature, there seemed to be a minute problem when the layer positioning code switched from moving the character to moving the background. This switch occurs in order to give the illusion that the camara is tracking Annabell as she runs.. in actual fact what happens is she stops moving and her forces are transfered to the movement of the layers. The code is a little more complicated than that due to the fact that i've added in smoothing between the two states.. otherwise the screen scroll is very jerky.. but that is the basic principal. Anyway, to cut a long story short i found the problem - i was failing to cancel the layer movement at a certain point in the process so it meant that the scroll would continue past the map's limits - and so now there is no bug :)

Bugs that still need to be fixed

• Ethereal Annabell - Obviously a rather major bug is the fact that Annabell can jump up through solid rock. I currently have no verticle checking on her surroundings, this will be sorted soon but isn't a priority as the actual work will be straight-forward.
  
  
• Broken Animation Links - There are still moments in Annabells animation that cause link errors, this will all be irradicated as time goes by. Each new ability i add in always causes a few of these so the process will be on-going. The errors are supressed so most of the time you wont notice anything - thanks to my animation blending code - but it can cause problems with keypresses being ignored... which in turn (especially in my case) can lead to very irrate players ;)
  
  
• Vertical Scroll - There is still a problem with the verticle scroll that means the screen will not scroll back up properly. Horizontal is fine, verticle... no... I will be looking in to it.
  
  
• Jump and Run - Having just added the code to handle choices within animation chains - based apon keypress states - i neglected to think about direction change as well... So for the time being if you jump and change direction before you land (left and right keys) you will still carry on in your initial direction until the next animation change over...
  
  
• Animation Override - It seems with the current keypress & animation system there are certain states of action / animation that aren't being reached due to the animation chain being overriden. For instance try rolling and then in mid-roll, try jumping. There seems to be a problem entirely if you are rolling to the left as the up command is ignored. If you roll to the right however, instead of jumping out of the roll Annabell just ends up animating to running. This is because the running animation is mid way between the roll and jump and once we get to that stage the right keypress takes over an changes the animation destination to running.
  
  

Almost Pasticle - 04/10/2008

Wow, Okay I didn't quite expect to make so much progress on the particle effects already.. but thanks to AS3 being just damnably amazing - and my nice library of code & classes - I've managed to get the basic class structure together and am already implementing very cool effects :D I'll post a new demo showing off these lighting tricks as soon as i can.

Before I do that however, I may try and implement another effect I've wanted to add in to the Engine.. and this is reflections! Basically because the graphics capabilities of Flash are now so good (and soon to be better with Astro) I know that I'll have a hard time locking myself down to only attempting things I can realistically do in the timescale that I have. I've always had a problem with getting carried away... but dynamic lighting, particle effects and ground reflections are hopefully all with-in the possible - especially if I keep going at this rate - because they all come from very simple premises when dealing in 2d.

Oh one more thing, i've fixed a bug i found in the control system that was meaning additional clunkiness at certain points of animation blending - so that's all fixed. And i've added some more animation "fillers" to smooth out the overall control of Annabell. Just in-case anyone was interested :) These changes have now been uploaded to the demo.

Game Engine III - 01/10/2008

I can't believe how time has flown - as usual it does it with out consulting me first - never the matter.. This update - only the second for this site - will cover how my progress is getting on with the game engine.. I am now on version three. Yes I know, versions one and two didn't even get a look in. But after coming across development problems with both earlier designs there was no choice but to go for a third recode.

Version I was too slow and written in AS2. Version II was based on a possible but faulty idea and was somewhere between AS2 and AS3.. But now version III - I am very pleased to say - has made it to the point of being very much - almost - on it's way to a being full game like environment.. even if I do say so myself. Obviously the vast improvements in AS3 have had nothing to do with it either... ahem.

So even though I am very much talking to myself - at least at the moment - I thought I would put up an example of where I've got to. Obviously this is a rough update.. there are no loading progress bars or anything so it may take a little while before anything appears. To anyone out there who notices there are some nice features that existed in the first engine - like fade-y lights and things - and who might also have noticed they no longer exist in this version.. don't worry; I just haven't got there yet. Actually right now I'm building a Particle class which will allow me to do particle and light effects on the fly, so watch this space.

ps. I've brought across the old engine so that you can compare the differences.. well actually just to prove to myself that the recode was very much worth it. For any of those who want to be awkward and request version II.. trust me.. you really don't. It didn't even get past the parallax scrolling!

[ Demo - Engine III ]

[ Demo - Engine I ]

"But.. What does this new engine boast
     that the old one didn't?"

You might well ask... and if you asked it well, then pull up a chair and I'll tell you in true nothing-to-do-with-the-goon-show-like fashion.

if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about just ignore me.. either that or search wikipedia for "The Goon Show" ying-tong-iddle-i-po! Yes.. I've just been relistening to the shows ;) ... urm.. anyway..

The _NEW Features

• Class Based AS3 Code ::: easier to use and maintain
• Full Animation Engine ::: (this has taken the most time) It allows for far greater control over characters and is generalized to the nth degree so will be used for every character entity in the game. It allows my code to do much of the choice over blending animations, where-as before I had to explain everything in fine detail.
• Better Keyboard Handler ::: This allows for much more accurate detection of the users input. You may find the demo a little clunky to control in places, this is not due to the keyboard handler however. It is actually caused by the lack of animation explaination detail, I have yet to describe all the animation links between part-animations. Once this is done however, the interaction will be far far superior to that of the first. Even allowing for extra control abilities like double hitting keys for special moves.
• XML Based Mapping ::: allows for easy creation of levels and human readable so it speeds up development
• Speech Handler ::: I always needed a way for the in-game characters to talk to each other. I have now implemented this via onscreen speach bubbles. This was the nicest and most streamlined method. Features are that they auto place themselves and always make sure they are visible to the user.
• Scenery Identity Layer ::: I had always planned to have this before, but now I've implemented it... allows the code to detect scenery interactions with characters and the mouse pointer (as I will be bringing the cursor in to the gameplay soon, enabling the point-and-click side to the adventure)
• Optimised & Improved Parallax Scrolling ::: much faster (i can now run the flash movie at a far larger dimension) and I now have greater control by setting the environment positioning to auto track certain characters.
• Nicer HUD design ::: after discovering Diablo II recently I found I really liked certain aspects of their HUD. So I redesigned mine along the same lines, I was never quite happy with the original as it was lacking a lot. Now - if no-one complains at me about copyright or anything - I am very happy with the way it looks. The empty spaces will be used for Quick Inventory, but the far right Orb will be used for something a bit more special that I'm not going to reveal yet ;) ... and no it's not Mana!

So there you go, there is more but I can explain things better once I've actually implemented visual demonstrations of what I'm talking about. For now check out the demo. True it doesn't look like much at the moment but trust me.. I'm very happy with how it is and where it's going. And when I'm happy about something, it means I'll spend more time on doing it :)

That's the end of my update.. hopefully it wont be another six months before I say anything more. But then again this is only a side-line project and I have to pay the bills ;) If you do have any comments or anything please let me know at

Annabell Design - 14/04/2008

I've been working on Annabell's character animation recently. I was never fully happy with version one and so decided to take her right back and start from scratch. Originally I was getting in to alsorts of problems (for the later and more complex animations) due to the way I'd built up her existence in vector based shapes.. now I'm working more in a pixel model (more my speciality) which is proving easier (but obviously less flexible with regards to scale - something I hope I shall not need)

She's still a little rough around the edges (she's also not supposed to be viewed at this scale - just in case you were thinking my style was a little blocky ;) but i think it's quite an improvement on the original (which can still be seen in the game engine version one here)

My aim for Twilight is to squeeze a lot of interesting environment, character and interaction detail in.. whilst still showing the big picture the whole time (which is why she and everyone else will be eventually so small).. quite a difficult concept to achieve but i believe I'm up to the challenge :D