Messages

1

General / Re: What Are Your Sales Expectations for this Game?

« on: December 20, 2007, 05:19:37 am »

I'd be just curious to know if its selling well, well enough that the two bits can have the success they deserve.  Is the gaming world figuring it out or not?  but of course I knew better than to ask.  couldn't resist.  sorry.  You guys rock.   

2

Gameplay / Re: first impressions

« on: December 08, 2007, 08:38:55 am »

Derek, I can remember you saying something about picking up where 2D games left off.  That at some point in the 90's when everything went to 3D, 2D was forgotten and stopped evolving and that a lot of possibilities in 2D-games just haven't been realized.  I think I walked away from that scratching my head.  I got what you were saying, but I didn't really understand it all the way.

Now that I've finally played Aquaria I get it.  Its a great 2D experience that would make original 2D game designers proud, but at the same time its fresh and offers a whole bunch of new eye-candy and an original art style that doesn't just look "retro" and derivative.  Aquaria strives to be its own beast and does a hell of a job.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention a whole slew of new, previously un-tried game mechanics.  Hell, the whole game is based around a couple startlingly original game mechanics.

Great execution fellahs.  Excellent game.  Just what I was yearning to play back in March when some googling led me to find it. 

Can I pay $50 instead?  Alec, Derek, you deserve my money.

Naw, instead of paying extra I'll just buy a couple more copies for friends and family.

Congratulations on an excellent achievement!

3

General / Re: Aquaria FAQ

« on: July 26, 2007, 02:28:57 am »

Has there been any progress in the area of boxed distribution for Aquaria?  I haven't heard anything about this in a while.  I definitely hope that boxed versions make it into stores at some point.   

4

Games / Re: Our Favorite Downloadable Games

« on: July 24, 2007, 01:59:46 am »

Someone just suggested Plasma Pong in another forum.  its free and totally wild looking,

 

http://www.plasmapong.com/screenshots

5

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 24, 2007, 01:03:40 am »

To do so, I'd have to replace entity_getName() with a function like entity_isName(entity, "Albadfkf!@4") so it can convert internally.

And I'm doing that to the scripts where possible, but obviously, changing all the script functions will still require a load of testing by us.

yes, this becomes a problem if parts of the Lua creatures are hardcoded.  but for the parts that are read in from external scripts, couldn't you convert everything to a unified case at read time?

So yeah, I said it above, I'll say it again, I'm trying to make things case insensitive where possible.

But that doesn't make things take any less amount of time.

sorry this is so much work.  you're doing the work of a whole team.  I hope you get to wade in swimming pool filled with money or date Jessica Alba or something for all your effort. 

edit: oh shit, sorry if you have a girlfriend

6

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 23, 2007, 08:01:39 pm »

but I'm sure there's still some lua scripts out there that are getting the name back and comparing it to "HappyGoLucky", when now it'll be "happygolucky"

i.e. entity_getName(entity) == "HappyGoLucky"

wait, you can't do that anyway, compare a string with ==    can you?  unless its some overloaded C++ operator that I'm not aware of.  in this case you might still want to replace those with

  if  ( !strncasecmp( entity_getName(entity),  "HappyGoLucky", sizeof(typicalEntityString) )  )

7

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 23, 2007, 07:17:18 pm »

its going to require testing EVERYTHING.

judging by the forum you shouldn't have much problem finding testers.   

In the end, its never a case of "just" doing anything

yeah, true that.  and I hadn't even considered lua.   forcing case consciousness for scripters might not be such a bad thing, after all, the fact that they are writing their own scripts implies a certain aptitude.

the leaked ubuntu video looks great btw.

8

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 23, 2007, 05:41:28 pm »

Make Aquaria case in-sensitive like windows is.  This way you don't change the actual file names, but just change them internally, in the program code.  this is what Doom & Quake do.  This way developers and modders can call the files whatever they like, but inside the code the file names are run through a filter and changed to all upper or all lower. 

9

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 14, 2007, 05:00:21 am »

man Alec, I'm sorry these guys fruited out on you.  Thats not cool at all.  I hear and identify with your pains and know that you guys are busting ass to get Aquaria finished.  I'm a programmer.  I've got a finished software mixer that currently works using a DirectSound backend sitting on my harddrive.  It supports an arbitrary number of channels, and will stream one stereo audio track from disk in chunks.  Its not buggy.  It doesn't jitter.  Its real simple and just works. 

I've written small things in ALSA before.   So plugging in an Alsa backend and the Ogg Vorbis probably wouldn't be too difficult.  I code everything when I can, because there's always something, and I have a dayjob, so...

but if you want help, just ask.  I mean, the whole OS fundamentalism is stupid.  I'm a 6-year linux user.  That's how I learned to code.  there are some Brilliant, I just mean fecking brilliant projects written by linux developers and that's why I stuck around.  Alsa for instance.  But I realized that I my ultimate wish is to program games so I switched to Windows. 

and I may be joining a company very soon that is developing for the Mac... 

anyway, bit-blot rocks.  Linux rocks too.  fanboys and zealots don't. 

peace.

10

General / Re: Supported Platforms

« on: July 14, 2007, 04:50:14 am »

You guys are all wrong about handling the case insensitivity.  Its actually very easy to deal with.  You're just looking at it from the wrong end.  Leave the files and their names alone.  PICTURE1.png is the same as picture1.PNG.  Ok, now that's settled, then do as wesley or one of those guys noted and write a function that reads in file names for an entire directory.  then, all you have to do is use a case insensitive string compare.  its that simple. 

STRCASECMP(3)              Linux Programmer's Manual             STRCASECMP(3)

NAME
       strcasecmp, strncasecmp - compare two strings ignoring case

SYNOPSIS
       #include <strings.h>

       int strcasecmp(const char *s1, const char *s2);

       int strncasecmp(const char *s1, const char *s2, size_t n);

DESCRIPTION
       The  strcasecmp() function compares the two strings s1 and s2, ignoring
       the case of the characters.  It returns an integer less than, equal to,
       or  greater than zero if s1 is found, respectively, to be less than, to
       match, or be greater than s2.

That's the manpage, but its in the C standard so its supported on any OS which supports C, which is all of them. 
I'm sure that C++ has something similar in std::string or something, but I don't know C++ as well.  The point is
writing your own would be trivial, you just convert all filenames to lowercase after they are read in. 

for each char if ( char <= 'Z' && char >= 'A' ) char += 'a' - 'A'; 

11

Games / Re: Games We've Loved...

« on: July 14, 2007, 03:41:47 am »

Two games that are awesome are Target Earth for the Sega Genesis,
and Dangerous Dave 2.  Well Dangerous Dave 1 kicks some serious ass too. 

Dave1 is a very primal game experience for me.  Some of Romero's serious passion and
curiosity seem to leak through when you play it.  Things like climbing on trees
and the Jetpack are just ultra-cool.


Original Dave

In Dangerous Dave 2 in the Haunted Mansion you play a wily hick, who pulls
up to a haunted mansion in a pickup truck and decides to go have some fun
with the zombies and ghouls within.  Its got one of the coolest game mechanics
ever in that when you stop blasting zombies dave loads shells into his shotgun
automatically. 

 

You have to be careful though because its pretty easy to run out of ammo when
you are in a tight situation.  you're usually screwed if this happens.

   

The Dave games are challenging too.  I've never gotten to the end of either.

Target Earth compared to some of the games that came out at the same time was
like seeing Metallica for the first time after thinking that there was only
lawrence welk.  It was _intense_.   It has a great plot.  excellent classic-era pixel art, and the
gameplay is challenging.  Oh and the music kicks ass too. 

 
 
 

Its not quite as much a classic as a Castlevania or 2D Metroid game.  Its too
short for one thing.  But it stands up to the greats, IMO, in every other way. 
and you do get to fly in space, which is friggen awesome!

12

General / Re: Editor Dev Thread

« on: June 23, 2007, 02:15:29 am »

I find myself thinking that a few of the effects in Aquaria are completely amazing.  The water distortion effect.  The way Naija was stirring up the bubbles, and the Wavy effect.  I just love it.  I tried picturing the wavy effect applied to the walls in an FPS for example, all the walls undulating in a sine-wave pattern.  yeargh, that would be crazy.

if you don't mind me asking, how does the mesh work?  is the original polygon broken down into many smaller polys and then the vertices are drawn with sine-waves? 

I guess I just don't completely understand how you can do that with OpenGL.  My knowledge of it is fairly limited unfortunately. 
beautiful game,  and you make it all look so easy.

13

General / Re: Editor Dev Thread

« on: June 22, 2007, 08:33:44 pm »

I can't get over the "Wavy" effect.  Is that done with a geometry shader?  it doesn't look pre-rendered to me.

14

General / Re: Easter Eggs in Aquaria

« on: June 02, 2007, 01:17:23 am »

yeah, I realized after I posted that its stupid to ask if there are secrets in the game.  lemme phrase it another way...  Hey, I think secrets in games are really great.  I sure hope you guys put lots of secrets in your game.

15

General / Easter Eggs in Aquaria

« on: June 01, 2007, 10:32:23 pm »

Hey guys, I was wondering if Aquaria will have any easter eggs...  or other hidden stuff.   I love searching for secret doors or areas in games.