I have been adding to and refining features in Boxycraft almost non stop since the original version. However, I’ve decided it’s time to declare a few “certainties” that will definitely be in the final release. Here they are:

List – New things in Boxycraft 2

• Level Editor
• Moddable with Lua
• Customizable characters with costumes and attachments
• Community website to share levels and mods
• New gameplay modes
• Multiplayer - Online, local and hotseat
• Tons of new items
• Better art, graphics and sound
• Continuous support, development and updates

To reach these goals and make Boxycraft into a really awesome game I am going to need better art, graphics and sound, not to mention maintaining the website, and I can’t do all this myself. It was a big, difficult decision to make, but I have decided that I am going to sell Boxycraft 2!

If you don’t know what Boxycraft is about, then download the original version and try it out. Boxycraft has come a long way since then and is continually improving, so times how good that was by a million and you will get Boxycraft 2!

I don’t yet have a release date, but as soon as I can I will release the game for preorder, along with the Beta and the Level Editor. In the meantime I will continue working on the game and keeping you up to date on my progress!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been hard at work on a new website for Boxycraft. You can’t see it just yet, but know that it’s gonna be awesome!

Lua

In other news I’m implementing Lua support into the game. I’m starting small with just backgrounds and simple decorations(waving plants, player decorations etc), but I plan to move to customizing in-game objects and creating your own items, attachments and effects.

Cortex Command from Data Realms is a great game that uses Lua scripting very well. Almost every item in the game can be customized or created, from the AI to the characters and weapons, and you can quickly and easily create your own unique items and mods.

Stay tuned, and I’ll have some results pretty soon!

A meat factory with a never ending supply of “required materials”. The “required materials” wander in a never ending stream into the “processing” chambers. Nobody knows where the sheep come from, but who asks questions they don’t want to know the answers to anyway? Besides, the sheep make excellent mutton-burgers.

Heres how it works: A sheep is emitted every few seconds by an emitter. Each sheep has a red color key attached, and motorised wheels that move it towards the slaughter room. When the Color Key gets within range, it activates the Sensor Switches.

The first Sensor Switch closes the door, and the second Sensor Switch activates the Piston with the Spikes.The Piston springs open, the Spikes pierce the Brain and kill the sheep, and the doors open for the next unsuspecting creature.

Auf flash.plasticthinking.org bin ich auf das Flash Game Level Editor aufmerksam geworden und spiele es jetzt schon den ganzen Vormittag mit Begeisterung.

Zugegeben ist die Steuerung etwas “gewöhnungsbedürftig”, aber die Spielidee ist ziemlich cool: Um das jeweilige Level zu beenden, müsst ihr zuerst das Level fertig stellen, damit das Spielmännchen auch zum Ausgang findet. Dazu stehen verschiedene Bausteine zur Verfügung.

Gesteuert wird mit WASD oder mit den Cursortasten.

As promised, heres a quick video showing the shape-editing functionality and some materials from the new Boxycraft Level Editor.

I suggest watching it on Youtube to see it in full HD quality.

I also made some new textures, after getting tired of my old ones. My last attempt at texturing failed because the textures I used were too detailed and realistic, so this time I tried to keep them simple and cartoony. You can see them in the video. What do you think of the result?

Big update today:

• Added vertical and horizontal flipping of tiles
• Preserved flipping across loads and levels
• Preserved tile sets across loads (every tile has its absolute path now)
• Fixed a number of the tiles in my forest set (its almost complete except for trees)
• Learned how to use the bullet point feature in WordPress

ToDo:

• Rotation
• Images on top of Images
• Alpha in images
• Background
• AutoLoading

Honestly, its starting to feel almost “done”

Spent a good 2 hours on this today.

It never ceases to amaze me how much time this kind of thing takes up.

I spent an hour cutting up and making sprites

Changed the standard to 32×32, I feel it gives me more freedom of control.

Spent another hour on handling tilesets so they can be dynamically loaded and what not.

Here is a quick screenshot in action

v0c33

Todo:
Make tilesets associated with each level
Background
tiles on top of tiles

Started putting the level Editor together today.

Built off a previous design using the windows form editor (not cross compatible but it doesn’t matter as it’s just pushed into a database).

I used the dynamic Database Whittaker wrote. It’s actually really helpful.

Currently I support:
Multiple Levels
Arbitrary size (finished today)
Arbitrary tile sets (just toss images into the folder)
64×64 tiles
Attributes: Passable, Start, Exit, Item, Enemy, Damage(float), Name

ToDo:
Background
tiles on top of tiles
multiple size tiles
Autoloading
loading and saving tile sets

Heres a picture of an experimental test level I made. The glowing pink balls are creature brains, which are attatched to the made up creatures and have their action is set to “follow”. There is an emitter at the end of the level that is constantly spawning the creatures.

When you jump on a creature brain the creature falls apart and you bounce happily into the air. If you time it right you can also bounce from one creature brain to the next without touching the ground. Luckily these creatures are harmless, so if you time it wrong you can always try again.

Another thing that I’ve done is written a new graphics structure that gets rid of the ugly lines you can see in the last screenshots when an object has a hole in it.

The editor is also smarter, so that when placing items such as wheels or brains onto an object it automatically clips them to the right position, no more need for fine adjustments or mouse control!

With just a click and a drag, you can now select multiple items and do with them what you want! Batch selection and modification saves a ton of work!

Even though the graphics look the same, I can promise that the level design possibilities have expanded by miles! All the work I’ve done has been on the editor and the code, allowing for more possibilies and adding more features.

Im pretty proud of my work, especially after I put the above level together in less than a minute with the new editor, and actually had loads of fun dodging and popping the creatures while they swarmed endlessly around me!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading about my game as much as I did putting it together.

Do you have any ideas or features you think I should include in my game? Or are there some things you’d like me to write about or post screenshots of?

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for quite a long time, Ive just been really busy, but MAN have I done a lot of work on Boxycraft! Heres a list of things Ive added:

• Shapes
• Creature Brains (creatures can chase/flee player, and die when the player jumps on the brain!)
• Ropes
• Wobble Bolts
• Motor Bolts
• Pistons
• Sensor Switches
• Grab Switches
• Smart Grabbing (instead of grabbing in the  direction of the mouse, like the old version, you just press a key and the closest object is grabbed)
• Eyes that follow the player
• End of level Scoreboard
• Stickers
• Speech Bubbles
• Different Materials
• Checkpoints
• Wheels
• Emitters
• Sounds (attatch a sound to an object and have it play when the object collides or when a player comes in range)

As you can see, Ive been trying to add just about everything in Little Big Planet!

Also, you can see that the graphics style has changed a bit, and Im trying to decide whether I should keep it or go back to the old style.

Ive also got dynamic shape editing in the level-editor, like what Little Big Planet has, so you can cookie-cut and add new objects with different shapes.

Because of this Im looking at changing physics engines from Physics2D.NET to Box2DX, to get rid of grid-spacing problems when creating complicated shapes, but I’ll see how it goes, because thats ganna be a lot of work!

You can also see that Ive got different materials working, like wood, metal, glass etc., which is the main reason the graphics look so different.

Thats about it for now, but hopefully I can put together a cool video soon so you can see all this new stuff in action!

Thanks for reading, Cheers!

As stated, this is a current WIP that I am devoting a large amount of my current time into. Firstly, because I find it greatly entertaining of a premise, and secondly because I don’t have anything else on the go at the moment.

Play With Your Peas was a project idea posted over at Lost Garden around the time of GDC this year. I hadn’t actually heard of Lost Gargen at that time, but I have now, and I would like to say, they are entertaining, to say the least. So if you haven’t, check them out.

Anyways, back to the WIP. The basic idea of PWYP (Play With Your Peas) is a sort of mashup between ‘Lemmings’ and a building game. Simply put, these peas will do anything to jump off ledges. If they jump, and survive, you get points, and they keep on finding places to jump off of. If they die, that’s one less pea to earn you points. Now, that’s not all. The more ‘bounces’ they have on their way down, the more fun they have. So, it’s kind of an obstacle course that you get to build.

With this in mind, I set off to make the level editor for PWYP. Whenever I am making any tile based game, I love to start with a solid level editor to mess around with. Generally speaking, if you can create a good level editor for your game, the pipeline becomes so much nicer to work with later down the line. You don’t have to worry about hard coding garbage into arrays to later be accessed, you don’t have to remember how you organised this or that. Everything is nicely exported to an XML file, and the rest is all handled by the interpreter you make while doing the editor.

Now, with PWYP, the level editor is not only nice, but it is an integral part of the game itself. Which makes it all the more tricky to make well. Not only do I have to be able to use and enjoy it, but users now have to. Luckily, they had the bases covered on that, and had a nice image pack all setup for this. So far, my editor is working well. It establishes locations for shadows on it’s own. Removes those shadows when needed. Places and deletes pieces. Everything the game will need. All that is left will be clauses such as ‘you cannot place two springs on top of each other’ or anything else I see fit once I get to testing.

Now that this is done, next is the AI pathing, which is something I have never really delved into (other than simple chekcers algorithms) so I’m sure this will be an interesting experience… to say the least.

It’s all here, so if you want to check it out, give it a try, go for it. If you find any bugs, please let me know, as I am only one man, and things can slip by.

Download Here (207kb)

Thanks!

-Loftless, out.

Noch ein sehr interessantes Flash Spiel. In Hexiom Connect musst man gleichfarbige “Röhre” miteinander verbinden. Ebenfalls sehr anspruchsvoll und macht ziemlich viel Spaß.

Hexiom Connect spielen

Das Spiel besitzt außerdem noch einen Level Editor, indem ihr eure eigene Rätsel erstellen könnt. Ich würde mich sehr freuen wenn ihr die Codes von euren selbst erstellen Levels in die Kommentare schreiben würdet. Bin schon gespannt über neue Herausforderungen und andere Besucher sicher auch.

Scribblenauts is an upcoming puzzle action video game in development by 5TH Cell and brought to life by game designer Jeremiah Slaczka excusively for the Nintendo DS. The goal in Scribblenauts is to complete puzzles to collect Starites. You can achieve this through summoning a large variety of objects by writing an object’s name on the touchscreen.

Release date: September 15th, 2009
Official site: www.scribblenauts.com

More info, pics and video after the jump.

In Scribblenauts the main character called Maxwell is controlled by tapping the touchscreen, or when you tap an object, Maxwell will pick it up. Also the camera can be adjusted using the d-pad. Maxwells puzzel solving abillity is dependant on your own vocabulary because you have to think of the words al by yourself. 5TH Cell has stated that the limit to what objects may be summoned is up to the your imagination, with the number of words placed in the tens of thousands. For example if there is a Starite up in the air you can write “ladder”, summoning a ladder, which Maxwell may use to climb to the Starite.

There is also the option of chaining objects together, such as chaining a piece of meat to a pole and holding it while riding on a raptor in order to get to the Starite Maxwell needs. You can summon everyday objects, animals, weapons, forces of nature, famous people (both fictional and real), vehicles, household objects, easter eggs of the development team, and even internet memes. However, the game does not include trademarked terms, nor potential profanity.

Scribblenauts contains upto 220 levels, and each level has a time limit. You are also sometimes limited to a certain number of objects that Maxwell may summon in a level, and it is required to complete each level using a different tool than was previously used. Puzzles are given a rating for the number of objects Maxwell can summon, typically being between two and four, though you are free to summon more. If you manage to solve a puzzle with less objects then the level is rated for you get a better score and if you exceed the amount for that specific level your score obviously goes down.

Scribblenauts gameplay has two types of levels. There are puzzle levels that are like real-life situations where the Starite is awarded once the puzzle is solved. And there are action levels that are more like side-scrolling platformers, featuring switches, spike traps, and other similar elements. You are awarded bonusses for completing levels while meeting specific requirements like not summoning any weapon-like object. Levels can be replayed, but you cant use objects that Maxwell summoned previously in that level to get you to explore more possible solutions. After completing a level you are awarded with Ollars, its in-game money, to allow you to purchase different avatars and other visual changes to the game. Scribblenauts will only have a simple storyline because the developers wanted to focus on engaging gameplay.
To make the package complete Scribblenauts even includes a level editor, allowing you to share these levels over the Nintendo Wi-Fi system. You can start with any level that you have already beaten from the main game, and add new objects with new properties that are totally different from the original behavior.

General Features

• Create Your Own Interactive Experience: Objects you write down in the game are only limited by your imagination
• Everyone Can Play: All-ages Pick-up-and-play fun for everyone
• Touch-screen Controls: Easy to pick up and play on Nintendo DS. If you can tap, you can play
• Unlimited Replay Value: Use less objects to increase your score, or experiment with different objects for endless replay value. Write anything; solve everything
• Playground Mode: Play the entire game in a sandbox style right on the title screen
• Multiplayer, Create and Share Levels Online: Share levels you create with the Level Editor via Nintendo DS Wi-Fi Connection
• Innovative New Title from Leading Developer: 5TH Cell, the creator of the Drawn to Life franchise and Lock’s Quest, has experience creating high-quality, innovative DS games

IGN listed Scribblenauts in a preview of Nintendo DS games in 2009, labeling it as one of their top picks for the year. They described it as “quite possibly one of the system’s most ambitious designs yet.” IGN readers ranked the world debut article about Scribblenauts as the eighth best Nintendo DS article of 2008 on their web site. read the full IGN article here…


IGN’s Overall Best of E3 2009 Awards
GameSpy’s Best of E3 2009 Awards
Gamespot’s Editor’s choice 2009 Awards

Hello everyone

Thanks to everyone who tried out Boxycraft, and for the great responses and critisism I got. Theres a lot of things I hope to fix and change soon, and hopefully it can keep getting better!

At the moment though Ive been doing some big work on the Boxycraft Level Editor. Have a look at the video to see it in action.

Ive been looking through tons of Little Big Planet videos to see how their level editor works, and other physics games like Phun. Im trying to make it fun, easy and powerfull enough to build anything you can think of !

Integrating it into the game is a big change from the original form-based editor that Ive been using before, but I think it’ll be worth it, making it easier for people to enjoy the level they’re creating.

As you can see its not finished yet, and Ive still got a ton of work to do, features to include, graphics to improve etc. but its inspiring that its actually working!

And before I go heres 2 awesome physics games for you:

Max and the Magic Marker by Press Play

Hitlers Must Die! by Cryptic Sea

Cheers!

I recorded this sometime in 2004.  I was using an in-house level editor that we named ShnozzED that ultimately was used to develop Raze’s Hell.  After the original Shnozz concept went by the wayside, we kept the name as a reminder to where it started.  I recall using this recorded demo of the level editor in action to demonstrate our work flow to prospective publishers.

This has been sped up of course, and lacks sound.  But, damned if I have come across a level editor that was as easy to work with.  Shortkeys rule!

Was reading one of the feature articles over at Gamasutra Custom Tools: Environment Artists and Game Editors. Was a good read; from my experience I would have to agree with a lot of the article. But I think the author just begins to scratch the surface.

One of the big reasons a level editor takes such a long time to create is the number of things it has to be to so many people. It’s the one of a very few tools you will likely find an artist, designer and programmer all using. Which complicates matters because all 3 groups each look to the tool to solve different problems. Programmers will likely want it to be responsible for baking as much data as it can for the runtime, since it’s generally the last tool in the pipeline for a game, making it naturally well suited for the task.

A designer may look to the tool for it’s data management capabilities; They may need to setup a very complicated quest chain with all sorts of interactions between NPCs, how does the tool provide them with visualizations of interactions and the ability to manage and search a vast database of generated content to find out what they need to know about the world/level.

Artists should be obvious, but in addition to the aesthetic side of things one of the biggest pitfalls you can fall into is their desire to be able to move seamlessly between their DCC tool of choice and your level editor. Which means giving them the ability to make as much of the tool share the same workflow shortcuts they are used to. ex, key binding shortcuts, 3d manipulation gizmos, camera controls…etc.

Tools development is not for the faint of heart

The rumour of EA buying the Worms license got me excited that there might be a new Worms game. So I made a list of what would be really good to see in the next game.

2D and 3D

2D Worms is awesome but 3D worms haven’t been anything special. We all want to play a good version of 3D Worms though. So the next Worms should try and improve the 3D version to make it enjoyable but put in a 2D version of the game just in case the 3D version sucks. Some people may feel ripped off though if they only get a good 2D game which they have played before so lots of new features should be added in to prevent this.

Customisable Worms

In some of the newer games you have been able to customise the colours of your Worms and maybe add a helmet or something but I want complete customisation. I want to be able to make each one of my individual Worms a different colour, cool accessories (Sunglasses are a must), scars, helmets, some form of torso clothing and anything else that would make the Worms look even more badass.

Even wackier weapons

Worms is known for having wacky and wonderful weapons. Everybody loves the Sheep, Skunk, Old Granny, Banana Bomb, Holy Hand Grenade and the rest. We want even wackier weapons though. How about a rocket launcher that shoots flaming dogs with rabies at people or being able to shoot lighting out of your arse or even summoning a horde of birds to fly above the enemy and crap all over them.

The best online multiplayer ever!

Worms is always a blast with a bunch of mates but playing online with Worms would be great fun. I think you can play online in the Xbox Live Arcade version of Worms but I’m not sure. As well as the typical Team Deathmatch there should be loads of other modes. A fee for all Deathmatch would be good or maybe even a mode where each player controls one Worm in a team. Worms: Open Warfare 2 had ninja rope races which would be pretty fun with a bunch of players. I just want to see some crazy, wacky but fun multiplayer modes.

3D Level Editor

The level editor in previous Worms games was really good and allowed you to make some pretty cool levels but only in 2D. A 3D level editor would be great. It should be really in depth and easy to use. Something similar to Far Cry 2 would be good but on a smaller scale. The Far Cry 2 maps are a little too big for Worms.

XNA map editor

The tile map editor is a major part of our game.

One of our programmers was working on the Tile Map Editor for over a month. He went through the online tutorials about tile map and had a look at the videos of the Tile Map Editor on YouTube. The Tile Map Editor was finally ready last week and with some more additions and changes it was complete this week.

The Process

The programmer realized that whole images of maps cannot be fully loaded at the same time and so the game will need a tile map editor. He initiated the work by reading tutorials from Ziggyware.com which helped to decide as how the application will be built. The first and foremost problem he faced was of tackling windows application and XNA together  in same screen.

There were two options for that:

1) Either generate  buttons  of  windows form in XNA  OR

2) Merge windows application in XNA.

He chose the 2nd option  and started working with the help of this project and used those classes  in the project itself.

Initially, there were difficulties in understanding the co-ordinate geometry of XNA screen but this problem was solved.  The next task was to work on grid formation on screen and make the grid dynamic.

One issue which came up was of mouse click to save the entry from the user for drawing the tile map which didn’t work perfectly.  This issue was solved in a few days.

Minor issues related to file I/O also arose and they were solved within 1-2 days and with all this ups and downs and finally a robust and reliable application are ready for tile map editor.

This Tile Map Editor can be used for RPG games as well as platform games. It supports virtually infinite number of layers which is at present very much appropriate for our game.

Team Zatun

Well, not literally. I finally got to run PhysBox since the creator fixed a bug which I ended up reporting. I enjoyed playing the game I must admit. Its very very similar to Garrys Mod, namely the menu and the way when you select a tool in the top left it describes what it does. I guess Garrys Mod was truely an inspiration for him.

Anyway, I was playing the game and comparing it to the unfinished beta of Geplom. And the statistics aren’t good for my sake. PhysBox has really smooth and accurate physics, where Geploms physics are truely messed up. The collision is just crazy despite the physics DLL and all scripts being rock solid. I am pretty sure its something to do with the way I changed and set up the level editor system. To continue, Physbox has a range of amazing tools that Geplom is yet to even consider implementing. But the biggest threat is the space the game provides. For instance, even the ocean map has so much space to build and to freely scroll around that its not funny. Geplom only has a tiny solid view of each map.

After considering this, it looks like Geplom will be knocked back in development, purely because if  Geplom is going to compete with Physbox or even try to get any attention, I am going to have to do a hell of a lot of work.

• Yes, this review is bulleted, but for some reason it’s easier to write blog posts like this. Please, mock me if this makes me look rubbish.
• Atomsphir is a platformer starring Genericguyinagreentshirtwiththegame’sloganonit (oh sorry, ‘Cameron’) with no plot or included levels, instead relying on it’s level editor as it’s draw.
• The level editor is pretty good, luckily. You can build a level quite quickly, if you know what you are doing. My only complaints are that some of the elements are poorly implemented, such as the camera control and the properties selection, which requires you to select the block using a special tool – and if you place the same block afterwards it uses the block’s original setting. This can be a major pain in the bumhole.
• There are 3 themes of blocks – sand, ‘adventure’ (grass and grey buildings), and treehouse. This is not enough.
• There are plenty of  blocks within those packs however – doors and keys, fire breathing chicken statues, falling blocks, diamonds you can collect, and I particularly like the powerups that increasing your jumping and running abilities – it makes for some quite fun levels.
• Once, you have finished your level, you can upload it to their server where everyone can access it – you can ’star’ levels, which pushes it up the Atomsphir food chain.
• My main compliant is that even with a pretty original level it all feels done before – even if you play a fantastic, lovingly created level there’s still that niggling thought that whatever level you play, it’s still going to be a acceptable imitation of Rainbow Ride from Super Mario 64.
• Still, it’s is cool. You should sign up for the beta and check it out.
• Oh, one other thing. Gamepad support. Why have we not got it?