This updated version of Against the Wall includes two destinations (lift station and a settlement), clouds, xbox controller support, overhauled chunk generation, an improved save system, three new brick types (static, short, medium), and a number of other bug fixes and tweaks.
A webplayer version is not available at this time. This game works on Windows PCs.
Man, I just spent the entire last week doing nothing but coding and working on this game! Several days were devoted to art. The player will be able to walk around a small town during the second level of the game, more about 2/3 of a kilometer up from the starting point. At that point in the game, there will be a few new brick types and hazards to avoid. Now I have to think of an objective for this release… perhaps the player has to grab a flag or ring a bell on the far side of the city? I just need some winning condition to put into place. The final (commercial) release will feature a number of stages with one clear story-driven end-goal. Hopefully I can gather enough interest to warrant seeing this project to its completion.
Also, I let the spam filter up for a couple of days and was flooded! I’ve set it back to its original state, meaning that if you submit a comment, I’ll have to manually approve it. Wish I could leave commenting open, but that doesn’t appear to be an option.
I spent half of today on coding and the other half on finishing up some textures for the windmill-elevator contraption. As I mentioned yesterday, the elevator in this first building functions like a ski lift. The elevator car has four arms. These arms grip either the ascending or descending parts of a large belt drive for mobility.
I also experimented with a few dynamic sky plugins. CloudsToy and Skydome. Skydome isn’t really satisfactory as the sky does not move with the player, eliminating any sense of depth (similar to the current static sky). CloudsToy is a free volumetric clouds program that generates a wide variety of beautiful cloud formations. However, the cloud generator cannot follow the player and can only work within a boxed-in area, meaning the clouds can only be confined to a tiny spot on the world.
I have a solution to this problem that I’ll implement tomorrow. I’m meeting with a few friends tomorrow in New York, so I won’t get much done until Friday. At that point, I hope to work on the mechanics of the elevator system and clean up the game for the 0.3 release.
I spent Tuesday working on new art for the game’s windmill starting area. The first building will essentially function as a machine powering an elevator that will lift the player high into the sky. It’s basically a vertical ski lift that reaches a half-kilometer or so up the wall.
Making the models was no big deal, just time consuming. My real problem is with the textures. I really dislike texturing objects. I’m using Blender, which is a free but flawed 3D modeling program. It is a pain to get everything ready to bake a texture onto an object, and the results never look satisfactory. This is perhaps more due to my lack of experience… though I have been using some version of the program for several years now.
If there is anything that I am willing to spend money on, out of pocket, it would be the texturing of art assets.
I’m going to be coding again tomorrow (today). I’m pushing to get version 0.3 out so that I can get some feedback on the brick types.
MarbleMind sent this video to me in earlier in July, though I’d share it here: