@Charlie: sorry but I've been very busy lately and I haven't had - and will not have for the next few days - time to put together previews. As vk said, you can still take a look at the original submission, but I'm going to make a couple of previews with new pieces too as soon as I get time.
Uh, I'm a big fan of procedurally generated stuff!
You might come up with a bunch of vectorial stars placed randomly around the background, according to some parameters.
For example, you might keep a list of available stars (meaning their images) together with their probability to come up. Then you generate a list of x and y coordinates and you pick, for each coord pair, a star to place there, chosen randomly according to their probability. The coords are chosen depending on a density parameter - you might of course add more variation and parameters to this.
And you would have to generate new stars while the player explores the round area, to simulate the endless space...
As for the different sized blocks, what I would do is having width and height specified for different blocks. For example, the standard block would be sized 2x2, the small one 1x1, etc. The ship definition could then be a list of blocks associated with their relative coords...
Still I don't know how you could implement this in Python - for I don't know that language - and I guess it would be a big difference from the current engine, so you might come up with some sort of compromise easier to implement... or you might even leave things as they are, maybe enlarging the amount of available blocks.
Oh, and I also noticed something odd - don't know if it is wanted... Seems like the arrows are inverted (right with left) in the fighter ship - which I guess being the default one - and up arrow is connected to the wrong engines (the ones moving backwards)... I changed this modifying the keybindings in the configuration files.
I think the up arrow should make you move forward - thus activating the back engine - and left and right arrows should make you turn respectively left and right... That makes a more intuitive control system in my opinion.
The nosound arg works fine... The game runs properly (the nogldebug seems to affect only fps, game runs even without it)
And I had already installed AVBin - for I got an error the first time I ran the game telling me that AVBin was required.
As for the tiles, I think I can modify them to make them clear when smaller - what size are you thinking of? 32x32, 24x24, 16x16, ...? Currently they're 64x64 (which I see being too big compared to the ones you have in the demo). Still, I might have a try reducing their size directly in Inkscape and posting the resized ones - for AFAIK resizing images programmatically looks worse than doing that in vector graphics.
Finally, adding blinking lights should not be that difficult even with my poor animation skills, so no problem about that... Maybe some on/off status lights? For shields and radars, for example...
By the way, I'm gonna be away from home for 3-4 days (no way to work on this then), so I should come up with something done next week...
Still, here's the latest update (maybe not all the blocks are compatible with your engine...)
I tried the game on windows with all dependencies installed and it runs... for a bunch of seconds - eventually it crashes and the console reports the error
AttributeError: 'StaticSource' object has no attribute '_data'
Crash occurs sooner if I move the ship and crashes immediately when I try to shoot, but it happens after some time (10 seconds more or less) even if I don't press anything...
Oh, and I made some mockup blocks with inkscape (had lots of fun doing these!) - still a WIP, I still need to add the radar, the engine and the damaged blocks, but here's what I've got up to now.
I think some high quality vector art could be pretty nice. Also, the background looks too "noisy" to me - I'd go for something with less stars...
And I also think the whole block-based thing is a good and original idea - have you got anything for us to see/test (some binaries or a repo to download from)?
- a whole new level pack with 16 new levels ready to play
- update manger: quickly download new level packs ready to play
- smoother camera
- translations support
- many bugfixes and minor modifies you probably won't notice
Check out the website to get the latest release! Still looking for level makers - and also for translators now... So drop me a line if you're interested in helping. Thanks in advance!
Please report any bugs you find here in the forum.
Important note about performance: to make graphics look smoother (solve tearing problems basically) I had to turn on double buffering, which might (and probably will) slow down the game a little bit. If you're experiencing lagging, try disabling that through the corresponding option in the settings panel (this will cause little tearing anyway ). If you're still experiencing lagging (hopefully you aren't ) try disabling fullscreen. Sorry men, but SDL doesn't give that much performance on high resolutions...
@Charlie: sorry but I've been very busy lately and I haven't had - and will not have for the next few days - time to put together previews. As vk said, you can still take a look at the original submission, but I'm going to make a couple of previews with new pieces too as soon as I get time.
Uploaded the artwork, together with some little changes.
http://opengameart.org/content/spaceship-construction-blocks
Updated: added some light effects to reactor and shield, as well as some wing variations.
Smoother and smaller...
(I haven't tested this yet in-game for I'm not working from home)
Uh, I'm a big fan of procedurally generated stuff!
You might come up with a bunch of vectorial stars placed randomly around the background, according to some parameters.
For example, you might keep a list of available stars (meaning their images) together with their probability to come up. Then you generate a list of x and y coordinates and you pick, for each coord pair, a star to place there, chosen randomly according to their probability. The coords are chosen depending on a density parameter - you might of course add more variation and parameters to this.
And you would have to generate new stars while the player explores the round area, to simulate the endless space...
As for the different sized blocks, what I would do is having width and height specified for different blocks. For example, the standard block would be sized 2x2, the small one 1x1, etc. The ship definition could then be a list of blocks associated with their relative coords...
Still I don't know how you could implement this in Python - for I don't know that language - and I guess it would be a big difference from the current engine, so you might come up with some sort of compromise easier to implement... or you might even leave things as they are, maybe enlarging the amount of available blocks.
Oh, and I also noticed something odd - don't know if it is wanted... Seems like the arrows are inverted (right with left) in the fighter ship - which I guess being the default one - and up arrow is connected to the wrong engines (the ones moving backwards)... I changed this modifying the keybindings in the configuration files.
I think the up arrow should make you move forward - thus activating the back engine - and left and right arrows should make you turn respectively left and right... That makes a more intuitive control system in my opinion.
The nosound arg works fine... The game runs properly (the nogldebug seems to affect only fps, game runs even without it)
And I had already installed AVBin - for I got an error the first time I ran the game telling me that AVBin was required.
As for the tiles, I think I can modify them to make them clear when smaller - what size are you thinking of? 32x32, 24x24, 16x16, ...? Currently they're 64x64 (which I see being too big compared to the ones you have in the demo). Still, I might have a try reducing their size directly in Inkscape and posting the resized ones - for AFAIK resizing images programmatically looks worse than doing that in vector graphics.
Finally, adding blinking lights should not be that difficult even with my poor animation skills, so no problem about that... Maybe some on/off status lights? For shields and radars, for example...
By the way, I'm gonna be away from home for 3-4 days (no way to work on this then), so I should come up with something done next week...
Still, here's the latest update (maybe not all the blocks are compatible with your engine...)
I tried the game on windows with all dependencies installed and it runs... for a bunch of seconds - eventually it crashes and the console reports the error
AttributeError: 'StaticSource' object has no attribute '_data'Crash occurs sooner if I move the ship and crashes immediately when I try to shoot, but it happens after some time (10 seconds more or less) even if I don't press anything...
Oh, and I made some mockup blocks with inkscape (had lots of fun doing these!) - still a WIP, I still need to add the radar, the engine and the damaged blocks, but here's what I've got up to now.
I think some high quality vector art could be pretty nice. Also, the background looks too "noisy" to me - I'd go for something with less stars...
And I also think the whole block-based thing is a good and original idea - have you got anything for us to see/test (some binaries or a repo to download from)?
(cross posted with FreeGameDev thread)
Physica 2.0 (final) version is out now!
New since 1.2 release:
- antigravity!
- a whole new level pack with 16 new levels ready to play
- update manger: quickly download new level packs ready to play
- smoother camera
- translations support
- many bugfixes and minor modifies you probably won't notice
Check out the website to get the latest release!
Still looking for level makers - and also for translators now... So drop me a line if you're interested in helping. Thanks in advance!
Please report any bugs you find here in the forum.
Important note about performance:
). If you're still experiencing lagging (hopefully you aren't 
) try disabling fullscreen. Sorry men, but SDL doesn't give that much performance on high resolutions...
to make graphics look smoother (solve tearing problems basically) I had to turn on double buffering, which might (and probably will) slow down the game a little bit. If you're experiencing lagging, try disabling that through the corresponding option in the settings panel (this will cause little tearing anyway
Enjoy!
Buch
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