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It shows two things the element the enemy is most resistant too and the HP of the enemy. In most cases the opposing element would be its weakness. Definately not going to be a required ability but most players will probably wants to throw it on when encountering a new type of enemy.

One more thing about abilities... I have decided that you will be able to equip more then one ability but not initially. You'll either have to gain more ability equips by leveling or by finding them in the game world...or perhaps both.

Finally notice the yellow in the mental bar. It's an idea I sort of stole from Monster Hunter. Originally I was just going to have mental restore by itself over time but I decided that only mental used to cast spells could be recovered. The yellow area indicates the amount of mental that can be recovered.

Later phools!

Update: Spelled perceiving wrong in the title! D:]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100725-220726


Enjoy~

Update: Added video player.]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100723-184353


A recreation of a cut scene from Demo 1 though the dialog has been changed up a bit.



The first Cyclob(one eyed blobs, yep nice name) encounter.



First tutorial cut scene demonstrating Maleia's ledge grab ability.



Second tutorial cut scene demonstrating the wall jump. These are both abilities they weren't present in the first demo.

So essentially I designed this cut scene system to be easy to use. The idea is that there will be a time when all there is left to do is make levels and cut scenes and when that time comes it will be a very easy and straight forward process.

Finally... if anyone noticed the text boxes in each picture is in a slightly different spot that's something I just noticed too! *goes to fix*]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100720-213759


That's right she's dead!! And mister innocent looking blob killed her! :(

Hey so yeah...you can die now in DreamSphere! Best be careful.

That's not all though! The game now has sound thanks to Pygame. I reused the music from the first Demo since it was mostly awesome. A friend of mine actually game into the room while I was testing the game the other day and heard the music and said "Hey that sounds like Final Fantasy VII!" Ha he was wrong of course but if my dad's music is sounding like another game with great music in it then we're doing something right here!

Speaking of Demos... I am really really hoping to have Demo #2 ready soon. It's been a year and a half since the first one so I know you are all dying to see it.(Really? lol...)

The demo will be released in the form of a P3D file which will require the Panda3D runtime to play. It's simple to get just go to [url]http://www.panda3d.org/download.php?runtime[/url] and download it! Once you get your hands on my P3D file you'll just merely have to double click it to boot the game up!

Patience my (probably not so) dedicated blog readers!]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100708-013316
First, that rendering I did a few weeks ago is now a playable level...



If you expected it to look just like the render then your expectation of my skills is a bit too high! Regardless it looks very nice in my opinion and I think most players will like it!

Second, I've been working on the abilities system. As I may have stated already you'll find abilities you can equip throughout the game that give you nice little random perks.



Here is what the menu is to look like. And if you wondering what Levitate looks like...



Works just like the hover boots in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time! You can hover for a small amount of time before falling. It only works when walking off of a ledge, not when jumping up.

Also the other ability in the abilities menu at the moment is called 'Perception' and it will allow you to see the health of all the enemies. I imagine it'll place a health bar above the enemy's heads with a icon representing its elemental weakness next to it.

The menu is coming along nicely...still have plenty more work to do though!]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100628-181850


First off, yes the status page is incomplete, I still need to put the mental and exp information under the level.

Secondly, I wanted to talk about some of her stats...

Mental is health in this game. It represents your mental health state. Monsters will constantly try to drain you on mental health so that you can fully become a host to extending the existence of the dream world.

Magic represents your mental abilities and your ability to affect the mental status of others who exist in the dream world. Namely being the monsters.

Spirit represents your mental recovery. The higher it is the faster you are able to recover from a mind assault!

Resistances represent the different ways the mind can be penetrated, they take the form of different elemental attacks. I should also note that resistance also affect your offensive abilities with those elements.

Pushin' along...

UPDATE: Yep I spelled abilities wrong. Or maybe it's a cool new way to spell it, you decide!]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100627-163601


I just get random inspirations to make these kinds of levels. The cool thing is that given the nature of the game I can do whatever I want for levels and technically nothing have to make sense! Naturally I still want a seamless world for the most part but it's not going to be perfect.

I know this rendering isn't perfect. Someone already pointed out that textures need aligning and it's pretty clear that the ground gets clipped off by the sky dome. If you don't like my shotty attempt at a fancy 3D rendering then you probably will like Digital Blasphemy's. Yep my desktop backgrounds on all my computers have his renderings!

Well guys... I think it's time to set a deadline for myself. I want to have a video I can show you guys of the game by the end of July. If at all possible a playable demo as well. Right now there simply isn't enough content to make offering any of that really worthwhile.

Lets get started!]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100623-201521
I recently got myself a new laptop, the Lenovo G555 on sale at newegg.com for $380. I loaded it up with Ubuntu 10.04 and it has become a great machine for working on the game with. I thought I'd show a screenshot of it running in Ubuntu for all you Linux junkies out there!



It's run at about 30FPS here, the max it should do is 60, the snow particle effects is killing the framerate and it really would appear that I need a better particle system. Another thing I noticed is there is no anti-aliasing I don't know if that has anything to do with the ATI drivers in Linux or with Panda3D not having support for it.]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100614-233049
Making cutscenes couldn't be easier either! It reads from a very simple script that looks something like that...


player moveto 10,0,15
player animate run,1
player wait
textbox This is some important dialog!
textbox wait


This cutscene is a simple one, the player character would move to coordinates(X,Y,Z) (10,0,15) while the animation "run" is playing and looping (run,1 where the 1 indicates a loop and a 0 would indicate play once). 'player wait' indicates that the cutscene should wait for all actions involving the playing character to finish before continuing. Then it pulls up the text box and it's the same deal. It should wait for the player to finish reading the text box before proceeding. If you didn't put a 'textbox wait' you could have some actions occurring while the text box was open as well. So I'm hoping it'll be a flexible system. I really want to build a system here that makes it easy to push updates to the game as well as have a community of players make their own content!

So what's next after cutscenes? Well of course there is always tweaking to be done but ultimately we need to add...

* A way to trigger cutscenes.
* Add all the menus for the game. (ie. setting up spells, other options, etc.)
* Add all the spells.
* Add all the levels. (Will definitely take a while.)
* Add more enemies.
* Add epic boss fights.
* Make the male hero character...who still has no name.
* Make the male villain character...who also has no name.

These will probably be added after the initial release...

* Making the male hero a playable character and giving him his unique spells and abilities.
* Making it possible to add additional characters, enemies, spells, cutscenes, and levels for anyone who wishes to make their own mod.

So yep...got my work cut out for me. I know I haven't mentioned this yet but I am hoping to enter this game in the Indie Game Challenge so it has to be done by October. I don't know at this point if I can make it but I'm gonna try!

Wish me luck guys!]]> http://blog.chompycreations.com/index.php?entry=entry100609-184611


I've also got a new spell to show off. It's called Mega Fire(tentative name). It's basically a huge explosion that centers around the character. At higher levels it easily covers the entire screen.



You start with that and you get...



This! It's huge and it's wrecks your foes! So what's the catch? First as you may have noticed in the screenshots it takes a lot of mental to cast. Remember that mental is also your life in this game, so it's a dangerous thing to mess with. It also takes a long time to cast(about 7-8 seconds), so it's not safe to use in the midst of a ton of enemies.

The plan is to have three different types of spell for each element. One spell is the weak but cheap costing and fast casting spell. One is the strong but costly and slow casting spell. The last one is still kind of up in the air... the first idea was to have elemental weapon summoning, but now I am considering just having elemental creature summoning. Regardless this other spell will have some beneficial effect that does more then straight damage.

I've also been working a lot to fine tune that wall jump. I think you guys will like it.

That's all for now!]]>