Aaiko's site

Good Year Already

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:46:24 +0000

A couple hours ago, about 30 minutes after the new year here, I decided to take yet another look at my old corrupted hard drive and attempt to recover the data.

I tossed it in the freezer for an hour or so (fingers still burn from touching it, haha), tried it with an external hard drive cable on multiple computers, tried shaking and banging on it, and much more. Finally I got in and was able to skip a consistency check on the drive and successfully recover my Feval 2.0 work. So 2012 is a great year so far! :)

In other news, I have been doing a lot of work on Teridal's next update. Basically in the process of redoing all the GUI to be quicker, easier to use, look nicer, and work well with BYOND's Flash client (hopefully).

I'll go ahead and post a screenshot showing some of the GUI changes.

The screenshot doesn't show much, but, it's at least something to look at. Hopefully the new update will be ready in a week or two. It's taking much longer than anticipated.

News

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 04:44:04 +0000

Time for another post to let people know what I am up to, even though majority of the current BYOND community doesn't even know who I am.

Couple months ago I lost a lot of work on Feval 2.0 and some work on Teridal. After that, I started working in Java/Flash. I got a Feval port to the point of being a fully playable online game (without all the extras of the DM Feval), but, working on it just isn't as satisfying for some reason.

Online RPGs seem to be what I really enjoy working on. Instead of starting over in Java/Flash and scrapping 8 years of work, I decided to start working on Teridal again. I got most of everything I lost added back in and started redoing things in the game to make it both perform better and work with BYOND's Flash client. It's not a guarantee I will be using the Flash client for Teridal (depends on how they handle things), but at least the performance improvements will be nice.

Once I am finished with said changes, I will be doing a lot of content updates and just general updates.

So that's what I've been up to the last few days (BYOND related). Hopefully I'll be able to post more about a fairly large up and coming Teridal update soon.

BYOND Client: Flash games vs DS games

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:34:37 +0000

Forum_account wrote:

That's better than how it originally sounded, but I still get the impression that DS will never get certain updates because they'd be hard to implement on the flash client.

In my opinion they should just turn BYOND into a "Flash game maker and portal". Basically DM would be a scripting language that compiles into Flash and the site would just be a Flash game portal. Dream Seeker could easily be replaced with a Flash projector exe of the Flash client.

Of course they'd have to add single player support for it to work out and servers would still need to be run through DD because Flash is nowhere near decent for a server. But, from a business perspective, I think it would be the way to go at this point.

Happenings

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:42:34 +0000

Just wanted to let people know what was going on with me and projects I work on.

A couple weeks back my computer crashed and I lost months of work. I lost my latest work on Teridal (but not a whole lot, since I was taking a break from it), and all my Feval 2.0 work. Basically the source I have for Feval is the source from years ago (since I hadn't updated it for a long time before 2.0).

I was pretty upset (and now make backups every night rather than every few months, haha).

Anyway. Sadly, I will not be redoing my Feval 2.0 work in DM. I am now redoing the game in Java/Flash. It's already in a playable state with networking and all, but not quite ready for the public and nowhere near where Feval 2.0 was.

I still plan on having the new version on BYOND (not sure how anybody feels about this), though. There will be a "hollow" DM server that is basically a Dream Seeker window with a browser control that loads the Flash game in it. And of course I'd gladly embed the game into Feval's hub page if BYOND plans on supporting non-DM Flash games (which would be a very smart move) on the hub once BYOND Flash is done. BYOND.com could just be a portal for games, made in DM or not, and DM could just be a nice bonus to help people make games. If not, oh well, but Feval will not be made in DM anymore.

Feval Shop

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:58:04 +0000

Just thought I'd make a quick post about Feval's new shop system.

Acorns are collected in matches and are then used to purchase things in the shop. Currently there is only a select few overlays to purchase, but in the future there will be a lot more to purchase.

The new Feval update is progressing very well! Stay tuned for more information on it.

Feval 2.0

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 03:27:55 +0000

I have started to work on the original Feval again. I still plan to do the Feval fighter game, but, for now I'm going to focus on upgrading the original Feval and going mainstream with it.

I have put up an official shell server for the game once again, with the latest 2.0 beta changes. Not much is done yet, but there is a lot on the todo list.

For the last month or so, I've been conceptualizing and designing a game lobby/matchmaking system. I plan on implementing it into Feval. The game will have a main lobby where you start/find games, chat, and so on. There will be a friends list. You will be able to start a group and invite people into it to play matches with them. There will be clans as well.

The game will have much more customization. You'll be able to play quick matches with random maps and certain game modes, or you can create your own game and pick all the settings, including your own custom maps (which you can already make). The map editor will also be getting a script system which will allow players to sort of make their own mini-games.

Rankings, ladders, tournaments, and many other things will also be included to try and make the game feel like a more commercial competitive PvP game.

The game will be getting a shop where things like overlays and such can be purchased. The game will be the first Iccusion game to use the Iccusion currency, which are purchased points that can be used to buy things ingame across multiple Iccusion games.

To slow the game down a bit for more casual players and allow them to play a calm game with their friends, Feval will be getting special levels players can complete. The levels will be co-op vs AI type events where players will be required to complete certain tasks to beat the level.

And much more.

Just thought I'd let people know about things coming to Feval very soon.

Feval Fighter

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 00:55:55 +0000

Feval Fighter is the code name, but putting the new DM updates to work and trying to regain my previous interests in BYOND, I have started development on a Feval themed side-scroll fighter game.

I've been announcing many projects lately, but this is one I hope to finish. I'll probably end up going solo on the project, but who knows what will come up.

Feval will not be the only fighter to play as, of course. Many new characters will be introduced to the Feval world, all animal-like (turtle, skunk, cat, dog, so on). Each character will have special moves and abilities. Feval himself will revolve around exploding acorns, but wont really relate to the original Feval game.

The fighters will be unlockable/purchasable. How the fighting will work has not been fully established yet, but I plan to put my "lobby system" I've been pecking at here and there lately to work for the game.

Although I'm still on the fence about how the Flash porting for games will work, I will be designing the game in a way to make sure that it is fully and easily playable on a Flash client.

I don't really know why I'm announcing any of this so soon. But I hope to have more information to post soon.

Status Update

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 05:01:21 +0000

Just thought I'd update people on what I am currently doing.

Some of the most major things to recently come to Teridal are classes and new systems/interfaces. The game currently has 13 completed classes with two more on the way. I haven't done much with the game lately, but below is a screenshot of how some of the interface looks nowadays.

The game is far from where I'd like it to be, but hopefully it'll get there eventually.

On a side note, I have decided to focus a lot on casual Flash games. If I can make a bunch of them, I can just put them up on websites and make money with little to no upkeep. Any popular game will be ported to iOS and Android. Once enough money has been made, I can start focusing on bigger projects. What language those bigger projects will be in, I do not know, but hopefully it'll be DM. We'll have to see how things play out.

With that said, I have already started on the first Flash project. Below is a link to it. It's very early on, but it'll give you a general idea of what the first game will be like. Basically right now all you do is click connected balls to "destroy" them.

http://iccusion.com/games/flash

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll have more BYOND-related news next time.

Status

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 01:27:33 +0000

Haven't made a post in awhile, so I thought I'd make one to let the few people still interested in my projects know what is going on.

The last posts I made talked about a tower defense game I was working on, but, I decided to postpone it after learning more about how the upcoming Flash stuff is going to work, and due to lack of an artist.

The last couple of months I have been doing lots of work on Teridal. It's still far from where I want it, but things have progressed greatly lately.

People may have noticed (who am I kidding? lol) that I hid most of the Iccusion games listed on the hub a couple weeks back. They're pretty old and outdated and I'm slightly ashamed of them, so they wont be listed again until I redo them (if I ever do). I've been doing some work with ActionScript 3 (Flash), so I may just remake them in Flash to make a little cash and get the Iccusion name out there.

Normally I'd post such news on the Iccusion blog, but, I'm the only person left on the team and I felt like making a more personal post.

With all that said, I have started work on a new project. Hearing about the upcoming improvements to DM has inspired me to make a new project in DM. The game is a PvP-RTS-RPG sort of thing. Something sort of like DotA, League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth, mixed with something you might find in a MMO PvP battleground/arena.

I've started work on the non-gameplay stuff. Mainly the "lobby", matchmaking, chat, friends list stuff, server communication, and all the pre/post-match related things. Basically stuff any session/match-based game could use.

There will be two servers to start out. The first server will be the lobby/chat/matchmaking server, and the second will be for the matches themselves. More servers will be added as needed and everything will be handled seamlessly by the game. Players will only ever connect to what would appear as a single system.

I probably wont be working on gameplay until some new DM features I'm looking forward to are added and I find an artist. One thing that isn't upcoming as far as I know, but would be nice and help a lot with this project, is map instancing. Map instancing and better overall performance on top of the upcoming collision and pixel movement stuff would make this project a lot easier, but, something is better than nothing. Oh, some type of fog of war system would be great also.

Anyway. Just felt like letting people know that I'm still alive and working on stuff. I'll try to post more information and maybe even screenshots of the little lobby thing I'm working on soon.

Grids, Interfaces, and Multiple Maps

Thu, 05 May 2011 02:55:07 +0000

Wasn't really sure where to post this. It's more of a direct question to Tom and Lummox about inner workings of DM, but I suppose the response could be beneficial to everybody.

I've noticed that as I add more and more grids to a project that the game starts to get laggier. Not sure if it's a coincidence or something else at work.

I know grids auto update. But it seems rather limited. If the object is in a mob's contents, then the grids they are displayed in will update if said object's icon/overlays change.

Now the first question is, do grids auto update in ticks or only when something changes and the grid needs updated? If they only update when the object in the grid changes, that's great, but if not, then it would be good to know, because hundreds of grids constantly updating is a performance issue.

Secondly, I've found that with the implementation of multiple maps, that they would be a more powerful display component to use instead of grids, but if they auto update as much as the default map, then again, there is a problem changing hundreds of grids into maps.

Lastly, when a window is hidden, do the grids and maps on them auto update (if they do in fact update on ticks), or are they disabled until the window is shown again? If they also auto update, even when hidden, then I will seriously have to rethink the way I do things.

Teridal has a massive interface with close to a hundred grids which I would like to change to map displays (and most likely add many more, but probably less maps overall than grids since a map doesn't have to look like a grid).

So answers about the above questions would be much appreciated and help me improve performance on my projects.

Thank you.