Yeah, the current Aeon version 1: won't let me see the bottom few rows 2: won't let me load user levels so yeah

lol oops. Fixed.

Yeah the dynamite was kinda put in pretty crudely. I need to go back in and polish it up so that it works closer to expected.

I didn't want to put the time into updating that page, so I just made it redirect to this topic instead. The game links everywhere else point to the new demo at least.

Hmm, I've seen similar glitches on other people's computers, but I thought I at least solved them. Kinda wish I could see a screenshot of your screen.

Daily Progress Report

I pretty much finished the Level Properties Screen today. You can now open it up, change your title, dimensions, terrain type, and background image.

I had to modify the level code format a bit in order to track terrain type and background type, but it's still backwards compatible with existing level codes.

Also the editor now shows you a preview of your current background, so that you can get a better sense of the look and feel of your level while you're making it, rather than only when you're testing.

If it still happens next time I get on my computer I'll edit this post with a picture
Edit: everything is normal now.

New version's up.

Daily Progress Report

Today I added a Help screen for the level editor. You can get to it by pressing the last of the placeholder icons, or by going to File > How to Use the Editor. With the addition of this screen, I have removed that "hints" thing that was at the bottom of the editor.

I also polished the design of the File menu by adding dividers to group items by relevancy, and by rounding the corners of the rollover state.

I fixed quite a few glitches with respect to the zooming feature and how the level is displayed.

When you click Play Level on the level editor, you should be able to go back to the editor so that you don't have to reload the page.

You can go back to the editor by pressing Esc to pause the game and then clicking on "Level Editor" in the pause menu.

Can I request that, when you press R on the pause menu, it restarts the level?

New version's up! http://interguild.org/aeon_demo/

Daily Progress Report

Yesterday I redesigned the main menu and the level editor, to use brighter colors. Please tell me what you think of the current design, because I've been looking at it so much during the past 24 hours that I might be losing perspective, haha.

I still haven't changed the colors of the editor's popup windows (level properties, and help screen) so I'll do that later.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a family trip and so I'll be gone for two and a half weeks. I'll still be working on the game whenever I get time, but I won't be making nearly as much progress as I made this week.

Sure, I'll make it so that you can press R anytime while playing, not just in the pause menu.

Can we have something that takes us back to the Main Menu on the Play User Levels page? As of now you can only enter an ID and exit from there, but if you have no ID you gotta refresh the page.

It would be cool if there were two new materials that you could pass through; one would slow time and the other would speed it up. The effect would last only a few seconds.

let's not get into this territory just yet. we've already had a year-long stage where we only suggested things that would be cool - now it'd be nice to allow livio to focus on actually coding things.

I have found a bit of a glitch

Ducking while moving is faster than regular moving

I tried to see if you could move faster somehow but every time I timed it it seemed to come out the same.

It's still nice to hear crazy ideas from time to time, even if the likelihood of them getting put into the game is slim.

Then it must have been some kind of illusion, since you were moving faster than expected, regardless.

There's been a lot of progress since I was last online:

1) I updated the level encoding format to be more compressed. Basically, you no longer need to use the "=", but the game is still backwards compatible with levels that have that in their code.

2) Started implementing many optimizations. Added a framerate counter to the game's debugging mode.

3) You can now restart a level by pressing R.

4) Objects (including the player) are now be killed after falling completely out of the level's dimensions.

5) Polished player controls a bit. Having 100% friction seems to feel pretty nice. Also, you crawl slower than you run now.

6) Fixed the horribly broken hitboxes on arrows.

7) Tried to make object destruction and object falling feel nicer by adding delays on those events.

8) The auto-crawl feature has been brought back and is less buggy (changes to other parts of the game broke this feature earlier).

9) Added Steel Dynamite Crates (no sprites yet, so they look exactly like Wooden Dynamite Crates)

10) Wooden Dynamite Crates now throw projectiles when hit by the player.

11) Added Wooden Platforms (no sprites yet)

12) Added Steel Arrows (no sprites yet, so they look exactly like Wooden Arrows)

13) Added Secret Areas

14) Added Floor Spikes, Ceiling Spikes, Left Wall Spikes, Right Wall Spikes. (no sprites yet)

15) Added boulders (no sprites yet, so they look like the eraser tool). There are also some boulder-falling glitches that need to be fixed.

I've updated the latest version of the game, but it's been compiled in debugging mode so that you can see the objects that don't have sprites yet.

Our artist has been super busy with summer courses, and it looks like it's only going to get worse during the fall semester, so it doesn't look like she has any time to dedicate to the game anymore. I plan to take over all of the art responsibilities, unless someone who's skilled enough (and has enough time) would like to volunteer.

Best grammar ever

Does this mean you can place two spikes in the same space? Like, a Ceiling Spike and a Left Wall Spike? If that's not the case then perhaps there should be a corner spike. Just a thought.

Interesting idea. It would probably be too confusing to be able to set two tiles on the same spot, but I can imagine wanting corner spikes in order to make boxes of spikes look good. I'll add that to "maybe" list of features.

(Yesterday's) Daily Progress Report

Wow I haven't posted on here in three weeks. I've been busy with preparing to move to Seattle, spending time with some family friends who came to visit us, and watching the world cup.

A new version of the demo is up, and it contains my attempts to make art for the game. The hard part about changing artists in the middle of development is that I don't have the experience needed to be able to match Berna's style, which means I had to draw my own wooden and steel crates, just for consistency. Fortunately, I think we can get away with not changing the player's sprites, but we might have difficulty drawing enemies in the future.

One of the toughest design problems that we had was figuring out how arrows should look. We didn't want to just copy HATPC, so we had that weird laser arrow thing that was in the past demos. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to tell which way the arrow was facing, so if you saw a bunch of arrow crates in a room, you wouldn't be able to immediately tell which direction those crates were aimed at. When I was redesigning the arrows, I knew I wanted a clear, distinct "arrow head" along with a distinct "arrow tail" so that you could easily distinguish its direction. If you play the demo now, I make some kind of rocket thing, which I think gets the job done pretty well.

I also made sprites for spikes. And today I'll be working on more sprites. I still need sprites for platforms, boulders, treasures, and doors.

During the last half-month, I've been busy moving to Seattle. I start working at Microsoft on Monday, so hopefully I'll have some more consistency with my schedule now.

Lately I've been working hard to come up with a different kind of sprite to represent Aeon's equivalent to HATPC's treasures. I've tried locks, glowing orbs, giant coins, etc., but nothing really works as well as the simple treasure chest. So I think I'll just make a treasure chest and hope it doesn't look too much like a rip off.

I've also been thinking about how much longer I can afford to keep working on Aeon. I'm kinda running out of time, since I really need to start learning more technologies if I want to keep my career goals on track, and that means starting different side projects. I think I'll just have to set a deadline for this project, and it'll be declared as "finished", regardless of what state it's in. This means that I'll have to focus my current efforts on making the game shippable, rather than just adding everything that I can.

A good deadline would be to get it done before the end of this year, but it would ideally have to be before the holidays, so I'm thinking Sunday, December 14th, 2014. The final version of the game will be uploaded before (or on) that date, regardless of whether or not it does everything that we said we'd do. Basically, I'll focus on wrapping up the project, and focus on polishing things up.

Dunno if I'll be able to get any form of water into the game, though. Right now the biggest roadblock to progress is the fact that I'm making the game's art now, which is super time consuming for me, and not something that I'm very good at either.  

Not sure how many people remember the deadline, aside from Pepperidge Farm - but according to legend tomorrow we're in for something. Not sure if Livio remembers but...

Haha, me and Soccerboy were talking about this on Minecraft last night. Yeah... if Livio swoops in with Aeon finished, good for him, but am I expecting that? Not really

haha I remembered "the end of the year" kinda forgot about "december 14th"

That still gives you little over two weeks. Hype!

Wow Livio I really gotta commend you for your dedication because let's face it most people would have given up a long time ago on a project they started when they were 15 seven years ago....

Okay guys, this will probably be the last Aeon update.

http://interguild.org/aeon

As I said in my "deadline" post, the main goal wasn't necessarily to finish it, but to put it into a polished-enough state to be able to put the project down. That means no more placeholders, no obvious glitches, and finishing some in-progress stuff.

I don't remember what the game looked like last update, but here are some features that I don't think were in the last update:
--undo/redo for the level editor
--platforms (with art work)
--a few more terrains and backgrounds
--a better demo level
--a working "publish level" button
--a working "play user levels" page