Any word on how the end of the competition went for you?

-Brett

This update is a few days late; but, I did not want to skip it. So, here it is.
I actually got everything I wanted to get done. Even if a bit late.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 9 video:

Sprint 9 Accomplished
I did not have a lot of time since last post, so; this is all I have for this week:

• A Title Menu (Basically added some buttons to the title screen. The options button does nothing as of now.)
• Refactored the way I'm handling game states (this is not a visible change, but will make my life easier.)

Goals for Sprint 9
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• Pause Menu
• Background Music

On the Backlog

• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.
• Audio

This update is a few days late; but, I did not want to skip it. So, here it is.
I actually got everything I wanted to get done. Even if a bit late.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 8 video:

Sprint 8 Accomplished

• Fixed some glitches in the fade transition:
  • don't start timer or allow player to start moving till fade is over.
  • fade the HUD as well.
• Start level over if timer runs out.
• Game Over screen if player dies with no more lives.
• Introduced a Title Screen.
• Made level summary screen skip-able.

Goals for Sprint 9
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:
I don't have a lot of time till Monday so I'll just settle for:

• a Title Menu
• refactor the way I'm handling game states (this is not a visible change, but will make my life easier)

On the Backlog

• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.
• Audio

The HUD looks pretty good. Great progress so far. I thought the time spent on the level screen was kind of long. Maybe make it count the score quicker or make it possible to skip the score count.

Did not make an update last week so this is a two-fer.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 7 video:

Sprint 6/7 Accomplished

• Pretty much finished the GameManager with all the needed game states.
• Added a HUD display game timer, lives, crystals collected and score.
• Added fade transition between levels.
• After exiting a level there is now a summary screen that tallies up the stats.
• loose life and level starts over if you die.

Goals for Sprint 8
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• fix some glitches in the fade transition:
  • don't start timer or allow player to start moving till fade is over.
  • fade the HUD as well.
• start level over if timer runs out.
• Game Over screen if player dies with no more lives.
• Introduce Title Screen.
• make level summary screen skip-able.

On the Backlog

• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.

Did some coding this sprint, but; not as much as I would have liked due to celebrating the 4th.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 5 video:

Sprint 5 Accomplished
I had time to Smooth the camera movement when following the player. The camera is also now bound, so that we don't see beyond the edge of the game level.

The Game Manager is now in place, but; right now it doesn't do much except load the next level. It also keeps track of the number of collectibles gathered. Unfortunately; I did not get to the HUD, so I'm not displaying the collectible count.

Goals for Sprint 6
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• Complete game manager. Add timer, lives, and fade transitions between levels.
• HUD to display timer, number of collectibles, score, etc…

On the Backlog

• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.

There are a lot of timings that I need to tweak once I have a complete level and see how everything interacts together. How fast does the player walk, dig, push boulders, and walk though encumbrances etc… Also, how fast do falling objects fall, and how long before they start falling.

For the digging, I want it to take "some" time; that way it's harder to side step falling boulders. But, yes, seems like it's too slow right now.

Nice job on the boulder falling/stacking physics.

Day job got the better of me last sprint. But I think I'm back on track.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 4 video:

Sprint 4 Accomplished
I was able to fix the remaining player/boulder collision handling. Lots of bug fixes.
Added some needed physics behaviors such as pilling of falling tiles, being able to hold up boulder, and being able to push a boulder (unless it's blocked.)
Also, added digging player animation (pickaxe) and added some destruction sprites for the destructible tiles.

Goals for Sprint 5
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• Smooth and bound camera movement.
• Create game manager.
• HUD to display timer, number of collectibles, score, etc…

On the Backlog

• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.

Day job was crazy this week and did not get a heck of a lot done on the game.

Sprint 3
Got most of the refactoring done and some of the troublesome collisions.
However, was not able to get to the digging animation

Goals for Sprint 4
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• fix remaining player/boulder collision handling:
  • fix bug: when player is holding up a boulder he can clip though it if he moves up.
  • fix bug: when player pushes a boulder up against a wall, he can clip though it by not stopping.
  • Player should not be able to push 2 or more boulders, and only horizontally.
  • falling boulder should roll to the side if it lands on another boulder or gem.
• Implement digging and tile destruction animations.

On the Backlog

• Smooth and bound camera movement.
• Death animation.
• Exit animation.
• create different versions of each terrain tile for variety.
• Create game manager.
• HUD to display timer, number of collectibles, score, etc…

I downloaded and played Spicy Meatball with my wife. We enjoyed playing it and thought the idea was really novel.

A couple of things to think about:

• The meatballs get stuck on the side of the screen and there is no way to get them away from the wall.
• You are using HiDef graphics profile within XNA. It doesn't look like you are using any effects that would require HiDef profile, so you could probably drop it to the Reach graphic profile. This would make the game more compatible with older computers. I had to tell the game to use my dedicated graphics card since it was HiDef, but if you mark it as reach, it wouldn't have needed the graphics card. (Of course my dev computer is getting old and perhaps a newer computer wouldn't need a dedicated graphics card to play).
• We thought the goal was to get the meatballs onto to other player's plate, not your own. So we had a surprise ending when the other player won.

I think Spicy Meatball is worth revisiting sometime down the road.

Controls are either 2 XBox controllers.

or Keyboard:

Player 1: A,W,S,D, left [Ctrl], left [Alt]

Player 2: <arrow keys>, right [Ctrl], right [Alt]

The reason I want to go for Unity is take advantage of the colliders and physics. It took me a while to get the physics right with circular objects of different radius, mass, and travelling in different directions and speed. Also, the goal posts have spoon shaped colliders (I did not want to cheat and make them rectangles.) I fond that difficult to do with XNA, and bought in the Farseer library. Spent so much time with that stuff, and didn't get to implement some cool stuff I had in mind. Wanted to have some picnic type stuff like ants that block, condiments stains that would change the friction, etc…

Curious, but why do you want to re-work the game to Unity as opposed to using XNA or maybe porting to MonoGame?

BTW…yes, that is a meat cursor.

If I finish my current game and there's still time in the competition; I might consider re-working this in Unity and legitimizing the Art assets of course.

Took a few dead ends and this Sprint was harder than I anticipated.

Sprint 2
Got all the collision detection done and most of the handling as well.
Some of the interactions between tiles are not 100% as I would have hoped, so; I'll have to push these to the next sprint.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Or here's the Sprint 2 video:

Goals for Sprint 3
The things that I would like to accomplish for next sprint:

• Refactor the existing collision handling to a single class that handles this for all collision pairs.
• fix player/boulder collision handling:
  • If boulder is directly (one tile) above player, it should not kill player. He should be able to hold it up.
  • Player should not be able to push 2 or more boulders, and only horizontally.
  • Falling boulder should fall straight down and not roll. It should roll to the side only if it hits another boulder or gem.
• Implement digging and tile destruction animations.

I don't know much about Unity Physics, so I can't answer on its capabilities or limitations. But if you are pretty sure that Unity Physics will not naturally do what you are looking for, it is probably better in the long run not to use it.

I've had some difficulties with the collision handling which turned out to be harder that I expected.
I was able to work though most of the tile interactions, but; there are still some outstanding issues. These will need to get rolled into the next sprint. I'll be posting a video tonight with my progress.

I'm wondering if my difficulties are mostly due to how I designed the collision handling. Basically, the tiles are doing their own collision handling. Now I'm wondering if I should implement a something more global; like make the collision handling part of my "TileManager". Currently my tile manager just reads reads in the map and places the tiles on the board. This would require some refactoring and I could not easily take advantage of Unity's physics. Any opinions on this?

I did see that there was a utility to import Tiled maps into Unity (I think the name is Tiled2Unity.)
I watched a couple of videos and it seemed like the workflow to get a usable map in my game was kinda complex. I think I'm gonna babystep for this game; and then I'll try to use the more advanced features of Tiled on my next project.

I've used Tiled in a couple of projects in the past and been really impressed with its ease of use, good documentation, and quality features. Hopefully it works well for you. I've always used the TMX map export (basically XML). Some other versions like comma might be simpler to work with, but there are a couple of already written import libraries to bring the TMX files into XNA/MonoGame content pipelines.

I used "Tiled" to layout the level. Not using any of the fancy features, just using it to draw the level and export it to a comma separated text file. Then I just read the file in.

So far, I have not had any bugs related to Physics or Collision….maybe cause I haven't coded that yet. =)
Whatever I run into, hopefully it's something someone has seen before.

What are you using to lay out your levels? A text document, hard-coded, or some sort of 3rd party tile map editor?

I hear you on the feature creep. Keeping a game from getting out of hand is a difficult task!

I found making a nice tile map that interacts real time with the player is actually fairly tough. There are a lot of collision edge cases, odd bugs, unrealistic physics to fix, etc. But maybe it is just my bad design of them that is the problem. :)

You should be able to start posting links once you have enough karma. I believe 1 green bar next to your name is the minimum needed. After about a dozen posts or so, it will let you. I think RB can make them into links for you as well if you ask.

Firstly, thank you for all the encouraging words.

Sprint 1
Had sometime to work on the game and managed to accomplish all the goals for this sprint 1. Almost everything could use some refinement and tweaking, but, they got done….
Player movement, camera tracking, and tile management.

Here is a link to the demo playlist: Boulder Dash-ish (YouTube playlist)

Goals for Sprint 2
I have a few other things I’d like to do; but, must resist the feature creep.If I have extra time I’ll use it to refine last weeks items.

For now I have these things:

• Collision, collision, and more collision detection
• Physics for boulders
  • they should fall if unsupported
  • player should be able to push them

Thank You,
Javier

Great idea to roll all your development clips into a single You Tube playlist.

Boulder Dash looks like a fun game to clone. For being a C64 game, it actually looks pretty complex. I haven't played it much, but it looks like a game I would enjoy a lot.

Looking forward to seeing the progress you make!

-Brett

Game Summary
Boulder Dash-ish will be a 2D semi-clone of the classic '80s game, Boulder Dash, published on the C64.
The goal is to create the game on Unity3D 5 and publish builds for Windows and possibly Android.

Sprint 0
Weekend got away from me, but, I got a chance to gather my art assets, create some preliminary walking animations.
Here is a quick and dirty build that shows the art that will be used in the game:

[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLePVP4pYNm33SJA4uzGh5xGX8kzaCc3YY]

Goals for Sprint 1
Goals for sprint 1 are modest:

• Player grid-based movement with animation
• Tile manager that can layout the level (no collision)
• Camera that follows the player movement

Thank You,
Javier DeJesus