[WIP] Goblins & Grottos

[mattstyles]

8 hours ago, samlancashire said:

This looks great! Thanks for sharing nodewebkit. Never heard of it but had always wondered about packaging my HTML5 games for desktop.

Another tool is Electron, which works in a slightly different way but achieves largely the same thing. It was created by Github to house Atom (their text editor), but it is getting a good work out in a number of newer applications.

[psychicsoftware]

On 24/02/2016 at 8:11 AM, mattstyles said:

Another tool is Electron, which works in a slightly different way but achieves largely the same thing. It was created by Github to house Atom (their text editor), but it is getting a good work out in a number of newer applications.

 

Yeah, I've seen that mentioned too. Is it good?

One of the nice things about nodewebkit is that the Steamworks API has been compiled for it, by Greenheart Games (the guys who made Game Dev Tycoon).. quite a few games on Steam now use it.

[mattstyles]

1 hour ago, psychicsoftware said:

 

Yeah, I've seen that mentioned too. Is it good?

One of the nice things about nodewebkit is that the Steamworks API has been compiled for it, by Greenheart Games (the guys who made Game Dev Tycoon).. quite a few games on Steam now use it.

Yeah, for me Electron was far more stable and much easier to create builds. NW had a few little things that irked me, although that may have changed, certainly an integration with Steamworks is very very handy. I found it very difficult to handle the different contexts that NW requires, an Electron application feels very much more like one coherent app, with NW it always a felt like 2 concerns bolted together and I found that awkward to work around (maybe that has changed now).

I use electron-prebuilt, which just worked straight out of the box for me for both dev and prod-ready builds and it fitted straight into my existing build system for punting out regular ole web apps. I had to do a fair amount of fiddling to get NW to actually output an executable for me, again, I'm sure there is better tooling now to help (I was even active in an NW builder at one stage but it never worked reliably cross platform and the primary maintainer found it hard to keep up with the ever-growing demand).

I follow both projects fairly closely and found that once Electron had caught up with NW the issues opened and commented on were more active and seemed to be dealing with more application problems i.e. "how can I get app X to do feature Y", rather than, "struggling to build on platform Z".

 

[Marius]

Cool !

 

[psychicsoftware]

Patch notes 0.11:

Another bunch of cool updates here, mostly related to region 4 (mountain/evil castle)

New song here!  https://youtu.be/7rTeTjBUqic

Traps/interactive objects:
- added a fireball-firing statue, with user-definable shoot rate and shoot speed
- added circular saw trap that moves between user-defined flags at a user-defined speed
- added disappearing tiles
- added portals which teleport characters and objects from one to another (based on user-defined Portal ID)
- added swinging pendulum axe traps, with user-definable movement speed and swing angle

World objects, added for region 4:
- added snow! which looks really cool - turned on/off in cutscenes
- added bats that flap around and cling to surfaces
- added lava
- added mountain-top background tiles
- added 'evil skull' doorway block
- added various evil castle and mountain decorations: candlesticks, prison bars (foreground), barren trees and bushes, background mountains, green torch, snowman, health pool (decorative only), skeletons, guillotine (decorative), broken barrel, broken vase, pumpkins, giant sword, tombstones, evil pentagram, new spiderwebs, gargoyle statue, new background mountain foliage

Optimisations and tweaks:
- worked out a substantial physics code optimisation which will improve game play on weaker computers
- changed the goblin so that he doesn't switch to 'pushing' mode with small objects
- changed cannonballs so that they do not kill when moving slowly

Audio:
- added villagers 'thump' noise when they run into walls and knock themselves over
- added a new footsteps sound for the goblin when running on soft surfaces
- added sheep galloping and bleeting sounds
- added cow moo and munching sounds

Map editor:
- hero names and creature names now default to real player names downloaded from our database

 

[psychicsoftware]

Patch notes 0.14.0

Map Editor
We have been doing quite a bit of work making the Map Editor easier and quicker to use:
- New Fill Tools for platforms, tree trunks, sawblade paths, background woodbeams, railings, village house walls, snow
- New Random Object Tools for various decoration items: background and foreground moss, and various types of background woodbeams
- Stopped multiple layers of water tiles from being accidentally created
- Improved the ordering and categorisation of all tiles and tools.
- Identified the map region (Cave, Forest, Village, Mountain) that tiles, traps, tools and decorations are associated with - so that they can be filtered by region, making it easier to find the thematically correct items you need to build your maps

Maps
- Added the 15th Official Map "14 - On The Road"
- Tweaked and improved various other maps
- We have most of the remaining maps nearly ready to go - see below

Audio
- sounds for bed bounces and mushroom bounces

Graphics, GUI + World Items
- overhauled the main 'Play' window so that the Official story and Online maps are more obvious
- added a new feature for the Official story whereby your best total score, muffin count, and hero kill count is tracked
- added a new 'More Maps from the Devs' section so that additional maps and stories made by the Devs are easier to see rather than being buried in the Online section. For now, we just have the 2-map "Cheap Sheep" story here. Cheap Sheep is a cutting socio-political commentary on the state of the gaming industry. Or something.
- improved the goblin-on-troll's-head animations
- added new roof spikes
- improved the village-end sprites

Tweaks and Bugfixes
- Reduced excessive background tile recalculations
- Fixed problem with incorrect scrolling when mouse is over the inventory hotbar
- The game now makes a special check for people attempting to play with one hand, i.e. WASD with left shift/left ctrl. Yes, people really do this.. we have seen some youtubers complaining that the game is really hard to play with one hand!

Closing in on Final Release
We have been working really hard as we move towards the final release of the game, and we think you will love the rest of the Official Story, as well as a number of cool features and heroes that we're releasing at that time. Logan is our new Marketing Dude and he has been busy lining up press releases and schmoozing all those Important Press People and Influencers (TM) that we want to be aware of the game. Plus some special release day stunts and shenanigans! .. more on this later.. Bjorn, Ian, and Jonas have been putting together a really cool new cinematic trailer for the game. As usual I (Sam) have been tirelessly working away in the background, making sure the game runs smoothly and the bugs are gone.. as a programmer friend of mine said recently - "The job of the programmer is to make their work invisible. You only notice them when things go wrong"

[psychicsoftware]

Goblins & Grottos will be graduating to Full Release next week, July 7th.

The full release will include:
- the complete 22-map story "A Goblin's Tale"
- a minecart and track system
- a new enemy "the priest" who resurrects heroes
- a new enemy "the dwarf" who loves digging
- a new enemy "the paladin demon boss" who comes with a flexible boss battle creation system (similar to the existing cutscene creation system)

Watch out for more announcements between now and July 7th, and details of our release-day celebration plans!  :-)

Stay up-to-date by following us on Facebook or Twitter or Steam

 

[AnimaChambers]

I bought this game on Steam after what I saw here. Really enjoyed it.

Got a bit frustrated with the keyboard controls though, think you really need a gamepad for this. Think I'd prefer a richer ambient soundscape as well, but that comes down to personal preference I guess.