Lexaloffle Games Blog

Voxatron 0.1.8

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:44:48 EST

[Note: this is a quick follow-up patch. Check out the changes for 0.1.7 here if you want to see what's new. Also check out the Development Status page for future plans]

How to Update

Use your Humble Store / Humble Voxatron Debut links. Search your email for "Your Humble Bundle order" or "Thanks for purchasing Voxatron". Alternatively you can request a new link here. Lexaloffle accounts still aren't integrated -- I'll post about that separately when it's ready.

Changelog for 0.1.8

Added: turn on splot mode per-room by including _splot in room name
Fixed: Loop of death when selecting joystick control without joystick plugged in
Fixed: BBS LEVELS search string input only active when the search menu item is selected
Fixed: Definable keys don't interfere with search string input

Voxatron 0.1.7

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:59:55 EST

This was the "Bug Fixing Update" listed on the Development Status page. The page is now updated with a few small changes of plan -- moving exporters forward to 0.1.9 and some new features planned for 0.2.0.

To Update: use your Humble Store / Humble Voxatron Debut links. Search your email for "Your Humble Bundle order" or "Thanks for purchasing Voxatron". Alternatively you can request a new link here. Lexaloffle accounts still aren't integrated -- I'll post about that separately when it's ready.

Main changes:

Search

You can now search the bbs level list by author, title, or id. Select VIEW: SEARCH and type something in (e.g. the id number a level you want to play). If you want to search for a specific title or author, you can use "title:something" or "author:something".

Joystick Detection

When you select RESET TO DEFAULTS in the joystick config menu, Voxatron now searches through a database of defaults schemes submitted by users via the Joystick Data thread.

Mac PPC Support

There was 1 show-stopping bug (loading png files) and 2 annoying bugs (glitchy audio, bad preview colours). I'll update other games with the PPC fixes too shortly. Thanks a bunch to Johnathan, Anthony, Joshua for remotely testing ppc code. Unfortunately I gave my PPC laptop away several years ago because I was so confident my endian code would hold up.

Linux-Specific

The only dependency now is SDL, and my fall-back version of the SDL shared object is no longer included (turns out doing things the Wrong Way was the wrong way). opengl is dynamically loaded if you have opengl_blit set to 1 in ~/.lexaloffle/Voxatron/config.txt. There are also a few new options in config.txt that should help multiple monitor setups: frameless, window_position allow you to simulate full-screen behaviour without blocking other monitors.

Internal changes

There's a lot of new and rewritten play code in this version that doesn't do anything yet. I've done my best to keep everything backwards compatible with existing levels. If you notice anything weird happening (especially with older BBS levels), please let me know in the comments (or joseph at lexaloffle dot com)

Splot Mode

This update had a lousy work:fun ratio so I also threw in an experimental splot drawing mode. Instead of drawing the voxels as cubes, each one is drawn as a flat lit circle. You can enable it in VIDEO OPTIONS->STYLE. The sizes of the circles are not resolution independent, so using a lower resolution gives you larger, messier splots.

v0.1.7 Changelog

Added: BBS LEVELS titles scroll if too long to fit
Added: BSS LEVELS search feature
Added: Splot drawing mode (experimental)
Added: (Linux) Dynamic opengl loading to remove opengl as a dependency
Added: Config.txt documentation & new parameters: frameless, window_position
Added: Extra alternative control for each action
Added: Diagonal keypad shooting included in defaults
Added: User-submitted joystick database for sensible default values
Added: Joystick menu control (start button behaves like ESCAPE)
Added: 1024x640 video resolution option, removed quarter-size
Added: Adjusted default tileset. Removed ugly tree
Fixed: Adjusted joystick sensitivity
Fixed: Voxde undo stack corruption after resizing
Fixed: Butamon stuck attacking side of level
Fixed: Player stuck at start of level with zero health
Fixed: Armadillo re-attacking instantly
Fixed: Internal vvmps now show a read-only warning
Fixed: Looping buttons in voxel editor now apply also to selection
Fixed: Character drifting bug
Fixed: (PPC OSX) crash on loading levels
Fixed: (PPC OSX) png preview colours
Fixed: (PPC OSX) distorted music
Fixed: Oversized latin font characters
Fixed: Button index reporting for multiple joysticks

Voxatron Alpha Playthrough

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:21:22 EST

What's that? You're wondering where the next update has gotten to?

Well I'm glad you aske.. LOOK OVER THERE! AN AUTHOR PLAY-THROUGH!
(*sound of footsteps running into distance*)

Today was the first time I played the alpha demo world for a while due to working mostly on non-gameplay related code. I was lucky to keep the sword as far as the lava levels in this one, setting up the scene for my favourite short-cut -- leaping from the top of the pole in the first lava room onto the platform with 3 red grunts and smiting them in one slash. Instead, I slipped and fell in the lava and then lost almost all remaining hearts in the subsequent panicked flailing. For your entertainment.

Joystick Data -- Please Contribute!

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:23:42 EST

In the Voxatron control options menu, it's possible to reset the joystick controls to default. The current default values are simply the first two joystick axes (x, y) and the first 2 buttons. Directional shooting is ignored. This scheme is better than nothing, but it would be nice to automatically detect the type of joystick and set the default controls accordingly. There are many different joystick types and layouts, so it's not possible to do this without a bit more information.

Some of you have already posted your config.txt file for particular joystick configurations that were either a pain or impossible to set up. I'd like to go one step further and build a decent-sized database of good default control schemes for various joysticks. That's where you come in!

Joystick Test

I've made a joystick testing program that asks you to perform various actions with the joystick and records the low level events to a log file (log.txt). You can download it here for Mac, Windows and Linux:

lexaloffle_joystick_test_1.zip

How To Contribute Data:

1. Run the program (after plugging in any joystick(s)) and follow the instructions.

2. Email the resulting log.txt to me at hey@lexaloffle (Subject: Joystick Data).

3. (optional) If you have set up your joystick for use in Voxatron, please also send that config.txt:
Linux: ~/.lexaloffle/Voxatron/config.txt
Windows: [your home]/Roaming/Voxatron/config.txt
OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/Voxatron/config.txt

To avoid confusion, mention which joystick you're using in the config.txt if there is more than one type attached to your machine.

4. (optional) If you've had trouble setting up the joystick in the controls menu, make a note of what goes wrong.

5. (optional) Make a note in the comments of this post which type of joystick and operating system you sent results for. Duplicates don't hurt though -- the more data the better for weeding out errors.

I'll squeeze the first batch of results into 0.1.7, and then add more joystick data as it becomes available.

Later I'll collate the data and post it in a more general form that other developers can use in their games. (Does such a database already exist somewhere?)

Thanks!

Voxatron Development Diary 1

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:59:58 EST

This is the first post in an ongoing series detailing the development of Voxatron. I should probably do a separate entry bringing you all up to speed on the history of the project as it's already over a year into full-time development and the first prototypes were in 2004. But maybe more of you are interested at this point in what's happening with the planned updates. So I'll start with what I've been working on for the last couple of weeks.

Voxel Properties

The current version of Voxatron has just one type of voxel property: colour. Eventually it will be possible to give voxels or objects some other properties. Current candidates include: indestructible, super-crumbly, slippery, floating, bouncy, sticky, non-interactive, negaitve (subtracted from map) and hurts player. Although I'm yet to decide how to build these into the engine at a low level, they won't be too expensive cpu-wise and most of them are fun/useful for making levels so will make it into the final product in one form or another, even if they don't appear in the main game.

:: Read More

New BBS Features & Voxatron Pages

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:29:27 EST

Hey All

I added a few more features to the BBS:

If you click on a user's name to view their profile (here's mine), you can now also use the links at the top to view a summary of their posts, levels and files. There's also a yet-to-be-implemented favourites mode that will allow you to view/play another user's voxatron level favourites.

The posts mode is useful for checking up on your own posts. If you want to see which threads have replies in them, view the posts list on your own profile and look for the speech bubble icons on the right, indicating that there are replies to the thread.

I've also added some links to the Voxatron page:

Wiki

User-made wiki for all things Voxatron. Thanks to everyone who started this off, I think it will become a great resource. It will also become the definitive source on how to use the editor, once I get around to updating it with undocumented details!

FAQ

A list of frequently asked questions and answers for Voxatron. Let me know if you think there are more things that should be addressed here.

Voxatron Development Plan (Development Status)

It's a bit scary itemising all future development plans too early, so I've included things which are quite likely to happen in this order. The first two updates (bug fixing and bbs features) won't take too long, while the second two (adventure, monsters) are much more substantial.

I'm also working with Humble Bundle on updating the My Games page so that it is integrated with games purchased through them. In the meantime, any updates to games purchased from Humble will be available through the games page you received when you first ordered the game. This will still be the case in the future, but the plan is to eventually keep them synchronised so that you can use whichever you prefer. Humble are really going out of their way to support Lexaloffle customers going forward, amidst all of their crazy bundling projects. I hope you can bear with us while we get it sorted out.

:: Blagging

Note that you can use your profile as a kind of micro-blog. Anything you post in the 'blog' category shows up on your profile page in blog format. I set it up like this instead of having a 'General Chat' forum to encourage more thoughtful, focused posts -- but this might be a bit confusing at first. Please feel free to post about anything in the blog section. There are some suggested tags that are listed as categories on the bbs home page:

pixels pixel art and graphics
gamdev anything to do with game development
linksoup interesting things fished out of the internet
tunes any music that floats your boat, especially chip tunes & bgm

14 BBS Levels in 2 Minutes

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:48:00 EST

Voxatron 0.1.6 :: Customisable Characters

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:57:09 EST

v0.1.6 is a quick patch to resolve some show-stopping problems with v0.1.5:

- It's possible to load .vob.png files into separate slots again
- Linux Users: the game now uses your system's version of SDL by default. This should resolve the missing sound & bad performance issues in 0.1.5. If you still have trouble with performance, trying setting "opengl_blit 1" in ~/.lexaloffle/Voxaton/config.txt

The main new features in v0.1.5 are the ability to add new character graphics to a level, and filter/favourite levels in the BBS LEVELS menu.

See the post for v0.1.5 for more details

There are already a couple of levels that show new character graphics. You need to update to the newest version to be able to see them (check your Humble games page).

A New Day In The Voxatron Woods

Voxatron Level #3818

Or my demo level:

Fox Demo

Voxatron Level #3815

Changelog:
v0.1.6

Fixed: vob loading bug
Fixed: UPDATE not showing all new levels

v0.1.5

Added: Customisable per-level character
Added: BBS LEVEL menu categories & favourites
Added: Optional mouse crosshair style
Added: Mouse sensitivity option
Added: Loading BBS vob as a demo level
Added: Auto-pause when game loses focus
Added: Confirm save over existing file
Fixed: More intuitive mouse control
Fixed: F fast forward during gameplay bug
Fixed: Linux Joystick bug
Fixed: Game clobbers mouse when not in focus

Humble Voxatron Debut: Now Has 7 Games

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:58:43 EST

In case you missed it, the Humble Voxatron Debut now has a total of 7 games. 3 of Lexaloffle's earlier titles have been added to the lineup, and 3 guest games: Blocks that Matter, Gish, and The Binding of Isaac. You can download them from your Humble games page, and as usual all updates are free, cross-platform, and DRM-free.

:: Read More

Voxatron 0.1.5 :: Customisable Characters

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 06:44:41 EST

Version 0.1.5 is now available! The most interesting change in this version is that it's now possible to create your own character graphics for a particular level. Once you update, here's a level to try it out on:

Fox Demo

Voxatron Level #3815

(it's also in the BBS LEVELS menu)

I've just discovered that 0.1.5 breaks vob loading. So, if you need to load any vobs in the editor, you might want to wait approximately 6 hours for v0.1.6, which is a quick patch to fix this. So much for my fail-safe testing procedure. [~ _ ~] ROBOT DISAPPROVES.

In the meantime, you could try drawing over the fox in this level (vob number 6). Or there are some notes near the end of vox.txt on how to set up a character from scratch.

UPDATE: This is now fixed in 0.1.6

The other major change is the ability to filter the bbs level list according to 5 categories:

ALL: all levels (just like v0.1.4)
LEVELS/ WIP/ MODELS: show only levels that corresopond to the BBS category they were posted in
FAVOURITES: show just your favourite levels. Press F when you have a level selected to mark it as a favourite.

Favourites are just an off-line thing for now, but sometime I'll see about hooking them up to the BBS so people can share their favourites lists.

Here's the complete changelog:

Added: Customisable per-level character
Added: BBS LEVEL menu categories & favourites
Added: Optional mouse crosshair style
Added: Mouse sensitivity option
Added: Loading BBS vob as a demo level
Added: Auto-pause when game loses focus
Added: Confirm save over existing file
Fixed: More intuitive mouse control
Fixed: F fast forward during gameplay bug
Fixed: Linux Joystick bug
Fixed: Game clobbers mouse when not in focus

EDIT: 64-bit Linux users -- If you find the framerate seems lower in this version (or in general), try setting opengl_blit to 1 in ~/.lexaloffle/Voxatron/config.txt. You can check the framerate in the video options menu.

Voxatron Level & Post Categories

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:42:10 EST

For the first week of Voxatron's release, Lexaloffle has been basically in information processing mode. Not only processing incoming bug reports and feature requests (which I do appreciate, by the way!) but also revising the systems for processing and processing the results of this process. The whole thing is one step away from a giant cluster-fuck, I'm telling you.

But one thing I've just updated which I think will clearly provide a bit of relief is to divide the Voxatron forum into sections, including a support/bug reports forum. I'll get around to actually tackling more of these soon, but at least perhaps people having similar issues can now find each other.

Voxatron Sections

It also provides a mechanism for organising the levels that are being posted. There are now 3 sections just for levels, each with a very distinct function.

Finished Levels: This is for posting levels that are polished, completeable, and unlikely to be updated. (or not until a major version update in the case of WIPs).

W.I.P. / Experimental: Any experiments in gameplay, quirky levels that don't have an end, experiments in scene design, and ongoing projects that would like feedback.

Models: We haven't gone into this much yet. Basically this section is for posting models that other people can grab to use in their levels. You can post levels here too, in order to conveniently showcase the objects. Eventually this forum will also house dynamic objects like monsters when the editor supports them.

The submission page now records which category you'd like your level to be placed in. From v0.1.5 (next update) it will be possible to view levels from each category. So for example, you might only be interested in levels that you know are finished and completable.

I've also added the ability to update threads with new versions of a level instead of creating a new thread each time. Just follow the instructions on the submission page. In short, instead of starting a thread after the upload, you can get a level code to paste into your existing thread that looks like this: [#1234# ] (I put a space in before end so that the tag would display).

You can remove levels / versions from the official BBS LEVELS list by removing the [#1234# ] tag from your post(s). If there are no references to the level in a post, it won't show up in the list.

I've performed a rough sorting of existing posts into these 6 categories. There were a lot of great levels I left out of the finished levels section because they are WIP. I think it should be fine to post WIP levels in the finished section if they are notable milestones in the project.

If there are any levels you'd like to move to finished levels, feel free to make a change request in the comments. It's currently only possible to change the thread category and not the category of the level itself.

Click here to check out the new sections.

Onwards!

Adventure Mode Map File

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:36:26 EDT

Here's the map file for Adventure Mode:

Keep in mind that this level evolved as I was adding stuff to the editor. So it's a bit messy -- not the best example to learn from. There are some weird triggering schemes that were work-arounds for missing features that now exist.

By posting this file on the BBS, it's now creative commons. So feel free to remix it, make a hard or easy version, grab any models you want or sell it on the side of the street.

Respect to oldtopman for managing to pick the map out of vox.dat with a hex editor. You can thank him for prompting me to post it a earlier than I would have otherwise.

Voxatron 0.1.4 Available (Configurable Controls)

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:15:08 EDT

Grab it from your Humble Voxatron Debut download page (the link you received earlier by email still works for all foreseeable updates).

New in 0.1.4:

Added: Configurable controls
Added: Mouse aiming crosshair (well, actually it's a single voxel)
Fixed: Drifting character bug
Fixed: BBS LIST incomplete / crashing on last page
Fixed: Sound switching off permanently after failing once

The controls are now in one of 3 modes:
- keyboard
- keyboard+mouse
- joystick

You can only use one mode at once, and each one can be customised separately.

The default mode is keyboard, so if you like playing with ASDW+mouse or joystick, you'll need to switch it back on in the options->controls menu.

If you're wondering why the game doesn't show up in your 'My Games' page -- Humble Bundle and I don't have a unified system for handling users yet. Sorry about that! We'll sort something out before too long.

Thanks everyone who emailed me with bug reports and feedback. I'm a bit behind in responding, but I'll get to you all eventually..

The next things I'll be working on are:
- Display/Sound bugs (hopefully 0.1.4 will fix some of the no sound problems)
- Improving the BBS (search replied-to posts, sub-categories)
- A way to organise/search the BBS levels list
- Mac PPC support
- Multi-frame model editing (in preparation for character editing, and for fun)

--
EDIT: How to update:

Just copy or install 0.1.4 over the top of 0.1.3 and your existing player data will be picked up and still work. It should be pretty safe, but if you want to back up you can find it here:

Windows: C:/Users/Yourname/AppData/Roaming/Voxatron
OSX: /Users/Yourname/Library/Application Support/Voxatron
Linux: ~/.lexaloffle/Voxatron

The player profile files are called player_1.vop, player_2.vop etc.

Bug Fixin'

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:18:13 EDT

Hey All

So in between checking out some of the splendid user-made levels that are showing up, I'm working on an update that should address a couple of the most pressing problems. If you have any work-arounds for these, or additional issue I've missed please add them in a comment.

Coming in the next update (v.0.1.4):

:: Controls

Does no-one like cursors+ZX anymore? No? ok, so instead of trying to standardise the controls and design around that, I'll instead make them as configurable as possible. There's a new menu in OPTIONS coming in 0.1.4 which lets you assign keys, joystick movements, button presses, mouse clicks and mouse movements to the 10 different actions the player can perform:
move(x4), jump, shoot, directional shoot (x4).

:: Drifting -- character constantly runs up/jumps etc

It seems this is caused for a variety of reasons. Some systems are reading the mouse or the accelerometer as an uncalibrated joystick input, or there is a joystick device present with no physical counterpart, or one of the many keyboard keys assigned to a particular action is incorrectly registered as pressed.

The way I'm doing the new configurable keys will fix the vast majority of this. You have to explicitly enable each device as an input (keys / mouse / joystick), so if there is anything giving off ghost signals it won't affect the game.

:: BBS LEVELS crash on page 2

This was happening because the index file downloaded from the bbs was being cut short, and Voxatron wasn't handling the incomplete data well. If you've had this problem, try choosing UPDATE in the BBS LEVELS menu to download a fresh copy of the index.

There's also a bad ordering bug (page 2 onwards) that will be fixed in 0.1.4

--
Later on, but some possible temporary solutions:

Linux Display Problems // especially on multi-monitor setups / high resolutions.

Although it's slightly slower and less compatible in general, it's possible to run Voxatron in a resizable opengl-rendered window.

- Open ~/.lexaloffle/Voxatron/config.txt
- Change opengl_blit to 1

Note that if you resize the window, the game resolution stays the same and it is stretched to fill the window.
In config.txt you can also set the startup resolution using video_mode

Sound not Playing

If you find that the music works but not the sound, look in config.txt and set sound to 1.
It should never be set to 0 in the first place, but on some systems the sound handler seems to incorrectly report a failure on startup.

PPC woes

The png loader I use appears to crash on ppc systems, and I'm looking at using a replacement just for Mac builds.
Unfortunately there's no work-around for this at the moment -- I'll try to get a fix together as soon as find the time. If you have a PPC machine and are keen to help me test, please send me an email at hey @ lexaloffle.com

Voxatron Alpha Now Available

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:26:08 EDT

Voxatron's out! For the next 2 weeks you can grab the Alpha version exclusively from humblebundle.com. All future updates are available free of charge, and you can pay whatever you like for it. Also in Humble Bundle tradition you can choose how to split your payment between two kick-ass organisations: Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The game consists of a voxel and map editor, along with an arcade mode and a sample world ("Adventure Mode") which shows some of the things you can do with the current editor. In fact, all of the adventure mode was made with the editor (except for the dragon boss, which is a bundle of quick hacks). I've spent most of the development effort so far making sure the editor is powerful and easy to use. After a few hours, there are already some nice custom maps springing up in the BBS, and I can't wait to see what kind of whack things will come out of it.

Where to Now?

I certainly hope you enjoy the Alpha if you decide to grab a copy, but honestly -- this is only the beginning! My general notion of Voxatron is that it should be a playground in which you can experience a variety of styles of gameplay leveraging the voxel-based format. Part of this will happen in the editor -- as I add more features, people can make and share weirder and more interesting things. And part of it will be building out the main game world.

What's the Fork?

In general, I don't think it's a good idea to keep a project in a constantly presentable/releasable state. For technical reasons, it encourages short term hacks and a reluctance to take things apart and design them cleanly. And especially from a creative position, once something is observed by other people it often seems to freeze into an unmoveable state, in the expectations of players and the mind of the designer. It's better to keep everything as fluid as possible, allowing interesting possibilities to reveal themselves and position themselves as provisional assumptions that more interesting things can emerge from.

So, where was I? The Fork! Yes -- so, given the scope of Voxatron it quickly became clear that to make it happen, I'd need to release it early. For such a user-driven game, it also makes sense to let the tools co-evolve the users. But to resolve this with the need to keep a healthy development process, I'll roughly split the development into two streams:

- The editor and engine: These will be updated regularly (at least once a month). For the next couple of weeks, I'll be working mainly just on any technical problems people are having. At the moment there are issues with drifting controls and multi-monitor setups. After that I think the most requested and pressing feature is a monster designer, and the ability to re-skin the player & pickups.

- The game world: This will remain mostly hidden until nearer completion. I'll be working with some very talented designers to build out the main game, and hopefully we can outdo whatever people are making in the editor.

In both cases, all updates will be available for free to registered users (and accessible through the Humble Bundle games page).

So How Does this Game Work?

I'll post some technical notes on Voxatron here at some stage, but in brief:

Voxatron is based on a virtual 128x128x64 display. It's a buffer of 3d video memory that is rendered out to the screen at the end of each frame, much as an old-school 2d display is. You can POKE bytes into the virtual memory, and they come out as voxels. I don't compromise on this -- even the menus are drawn into the voxel display. Hopefully one day I can get hold of a real physical 128x128x64 display and play Voxatron on it with almost no modification.

The renderer is written in software (C + SDL). Each frame, scan through the virtual video memory back to front and look for voxels that have empty neighbours. If they are exposed, I transform the corners of a cube intro screen space and scan-render the polygon. Shadows are done with a traditional shadow-map but sampled with a filter to get the soft shadows.

Fix the Controls!

ok, I realise that it's weird to make a game that looks and sounds like a homage to Robotron without dual-stick control. I'm not going to be a dick about it -- there's a lot of demand for this and I'll add a dual stick option soon. But! There's a reason for it -- there is so much jumping in the game, and it is so central to the gameplay that jumping really needs to feel natural. I don't personally miss having a separate directional control for shooting, and any variation of dual-stick+jump that I tried felt extremely clumsy. Even in levels that are very robotron-esque (the first arena), it's vital to be able to hop over rubble, bullets, and especially into crowds of monsters to swipe a pickup. I think it's worse for the game to feel like "Robotron.. in 3D! With awkward jumping!"

But as I say, although I feel the style of control is integral to the identity of the game, I'm not going to force you to use my ivory tower view of the controls. For now, you can try ASDW+mouse (even more odd), or the numpad for shooting if you have one.

Voxatron doesn't Work!

It seems a good number of players are getting burnt by a sticky key problem (player drifts in one direction), and a couple of multi-monitor and linux dependency issues. I'll do my best to resolve them quickly amongst the sleep deprived chaos that I'm experiencing right now. If you have a problem, and especially if you found a temporary work around to it, please feel free to make a quick post about it on the BBS or in the comments.

Voxatron Alpha Coming Soon

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:13:33 EDT

It has been a while now since the first preview trailer for Voxatron came out. At that time it quickly became apparent that I should recklessly suspend everything in my life to make this game, and apart from a couple of months clambering out of contract work and some other minor distractions, I've been hacking away on it non-stop since then. It started as a cut-down arcade game to alleviate my long-burning desire to make something set in a virtual display cube, but is now growing back into the potentially expansive adventure game it originally came from ("Felix and the Firebird"). It looks like it will grow even larger and absorb much of the design of Felix.

I don't yet have a fixed schedule for the final release as the design is still evolving. But what I do have is a very playable alpha that will be available shortly for anyone who's keen to pre-order the game. The alpha also includes a map and voxel editor with which it is possible to make almost everything you can see in the following trailer:

There's also a bunch of new screenshots up on the game's page.

Lion Updates

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:13:41 EDT

Anyone who upgraded to OSX Lion and plays games made with SDL might have noticed a lot of programs crashing all over the place recently. Including mine. The problem is with SDL's fullscreen support using code that is no longer supported in Lion.

It looks like there's a new stable version release on the horizon to address this, but my solution was just to use an opengl surface instead:
SDL_SetVideoMode(0, 0, 32, SDL_FULLSCREEN | SDL_OPENGL);
And then update a single quad texture using glTexSubImage2D each frame. It seems to be reasonably fast on modern macs.

If you're a registered user, you can get the Lion-compatible versions here:
http://www.lexaloffle.com/games.php?page=my

Another minor feature in these updates is the ability to get a larger window in windowed mode. You'll have to manually change the configuration file to do this though. Look in ~/Library/Application Support/Game Name/config.txt (Mac OS X) or C:\Program Files\Game Name\config.txt (Windows) and change large_window to 1. This will give you a window scaled up to 960x720 for all games.

Funky Worm

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:58:32 EDT

Development Update: Voxatron Editor

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:16:50 EDT

I love writing tools. There's always one more nifty time-saving feature to add and the constant promise of the whack things you're going to make with it. Lately I've completed a fairly intense block of tool development and am reconfiguring my brain to shift back into creative content-manufacturing mode. So now might be a good time to show a few things I've been working on. Also to confirm to RSS subscribers that the feed is actually working (first post!).

Most of my tools are quite hacked together and behind the scenes. Voxatron's sound synth designer, music mixer, BBS code for sharing and previewing levels, and my trusty sprite editor are all gangly monstrosities that noone else should be exposed to. The thing I'm most excited about is the Voxatron editor, which is starting to feel like a user-friendly piece of software. Rather than considering it a peripheral feature that hard-core users can engage with, I'm hoping to make it a central part of enjoying the game. It should be possible for an average player to plonk some monsters, items and blocks into a level and still have fun playing it. Here's an example room that took about a minute to make:

The timeline at the bottom is for choreographing monster entry (and other objects). You can place objects either in xyz space, in time, or both. Any object can alternatively be triggered by a special event such as a monster being killed or an item being collected. Don't worry if this is starting to sound like hard work -- you can just ignore it and make dinky voxel models to shoot at.

The thing on the top left is a console in which you can type commands to access many of the gui-driven operations, if you're a mouse-averse person like me. To test it out I made the little ascii racing game that you can see in the screenshot.

In other news, I modified the BBS recently to improve security. I accidentally made it way too secure -- impossible for anyone to log in and post. Sorry about that! The BBS is still a work in progress, so let me know if you notice anything weird (joseph @ lexaloffle)

Robot Gets a Sword

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:22:37 EDT

None of the pickups in Voxatron are as useless or as fantastic as the sword. Choosing to use one against oncoming hordes is much harder than any of the robot's long range weapons, but at least if you die, you can go down with a bit of honour. It's also good for smashing scenery up, and comes with a two piece set of dandy armour.

The first half of this video shows the voxel editor I'm using to make models for Voxatron. Something similar will ship with the game, but with a nicer interface (at the moment it's like a cross between Blender and Emacs).