Porting Tunnel Lords

Summary:

Finding and implementing a port to a new platform for the completed game Tunnel Lords

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Porting Tunnel Lords (Brett's Entry)

Brett208 30 May 2016 05:27

Overview

My competition entry is porting Tunnel Lords to a new venue. She is an existing game that I started during Competition #4 and completed during Competition #7 (Work occurred outside the competitions as well). Stretching the rules of the competition a little since it isn't a new game, but hopefully no one minds.

• Tunnel Lords on Xbox 360 Indie Games
• Tunnel Lords Trailer (You Tube)
• Tunnel Lords on Steam Greenlight

Background

Tunnel Lords has been available on Xbox 360 Indie Games since 7 January, 2016. I’m very pleased with the results, with a ranking of 4+ out of 5 stars. Tunnel Lords includes a nice demo and costs $1 USD to purchase. She (I guess programs are feminine, similar to sailing vessels or starships) was programmed over the course of 1 full year (Jan 2015 – Jan 2016). I worked part time consistently the entire year except for around when our second child was born in May of 2015. For content, my brother composed the music and half of the sounds. My wife drew about 80% of the graphics. I did all the programming and the remaining sounds and graphics. The game was completed on a shoestring budget (unless you include our time costs, which were very high), with us spending about $200 outside of purchasing the XBOX 360 for testing and deployment. Tunnel Lords was programmed in C# using XNA 4.0.

The Challenge

Unfortunately, the XBOX 360 Indie Games Marketplace will cease to exist in September of 2017 and I would like the game to live on past this. In this pursuit, I’m learning that a quality port is more difficult than it sounds. (Perhaps with more experience and better coding practices on my part it wouldn’t be so bad to port, but it is what it is.)

First Port Solution: Steam via Greenlight

We submitted Tunnel Lords for Greenlight on 22 May. So far, we have received some fairly brutal comments (I think Steam users are known to be tough on developers) and will need a fair amount more time to gain needed support to be Greenlit. I did zero marketing for the Greenlight launch and Tunnel Lords contains simple graphics that are not appreciated by the average Steam user, so I have not prepared the game for an easy Greenlight. Since you cannot share a demo during Greenlight, the viewers only have the screenshots and trailer to go off when voting for the game.

Sprint 2 Goals

• Research and choose an installer for Itch.IO
• Learn how to use installer to check if XNA Redistributable is installed via the installer.
• Learn how to either bundle XNA Redistributable or point to install link with installer.
• Stretch Goal: Improve Fire animation on death by adding a third frame
• Stretch Goal: Make fire animation when Drillship is flying more impressive.

Sprint Backlog

• Change End of Demo Screen to work with Itch.IO.
• Research deployment/install options through Itch.IO.
• Create a separate Tunnel Lords demo installer.
• Add basic keyboard instructions to screen.
• Develop method to switch between game pad and keyboard instructions.
• Research Screen Resolution Best Practices.
• Add Ability to manipulate screen resolution to options screen. (If appropriate)
• Develop PC save/load game function.
• Develop PC delete saved game function.

Pending Steam Greenlight Backlog

• Research how to wrap the Steam C++ API in C#.
• Make fire animation when the drillship is flying more impressive.
• Add Steam in game achievements.

Completed Goals

• Write an overview of my experiences in the first week in Greenlight
• Build a test studio page on Itch.IO.
• Build a test game page on Itch.IO.
• Add a transition animation when drilling into a new tile.

Last edited on 12 Jun 2016 05:31 by Brett208 Show more

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords (Brett's Entry)

rbwhitaker 30 May 2016 22:22

Somehow I missed this post initially. I'm sad to hear how mean commenters are on Steam. Some people there seem to understand the idea of constructive criticism, while others seem to just find joy in being hurtful. It's easy to do that when you're behind a pseudonym on the Internet.

How much does Tunnel Lords sell for on the Xbox 360 right now?

If you're doing your own research into alternatives to Steam, you've probably already seen this. But itch.io seems like it would be a good choice. I've long considered it to be my second choice after Steam for an indie game. It has lots of options in terms of payment, including things like "pay what you want" style pricing. IIRC, neither itch.io nor Steam will prevent you from selling on other platforms, so making a move in that direction (or another similar platform) right away, while you wait for Steam Greenlight to sink or swim, probably doesn't hurt anything.

Also, I don't think you'd have to do much to get it launched on there. They'd probably take your game in exactly its current form without new code changes or integrating into any other API.

You're doing your own research, so you've maybe already encountered itch.io and accepted or rejected it. I just wanted to put it out there as an option in case you hadn't come across it yet.

Hang in there, and don't let Steam Greenlight commenters get you down. Keep in mind that they (and me, too) are all jealous that you have actually published a game, while they haven't.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords (Brett's Entry)

Brett208 31 May 2016 01:41

RB,

Thanks for the reply.

Tunnel Lords costs $1 USD on XBOX 360. In order of popularity, it has sold in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, and Japan. Also downloaded in Italy, but just the demo there. If the game is upgraded and ported, I would consider increasing the cost to $2.99 or $3.99 on the new platform and see what happens.

I didn't know about Itch.IO until Ninjaboi recommended it to me in April. Right now, it is my primary choice for porting, pending Steam Greenlight. It kind of validates that decision to hear you recommend it without knowing my plans. :) I like that porting it for Itch would force me to solve most of the issues the game needs to have resolved before going on Steam like screen resolution changes and robust keyboard support. Itch.IO seems very developer friendly.

It seems pretty common that game distributors for PC and consoles allow producing your Indie game on multiple platforms these days.

I had looked into the Ouya (Android gaming console), but I'm a year too late as Ouya folded into the company Razer, who it appears to me is discontinuing developer support for new games onto the Ouya in June 2016. I tried using Xamarin for Visual Studio/MonoGame to create an Android build of a blank MonoGame project. I spent about 3 days spinning my wheels without success. Getting Visual Studio and Xamarin to work seems fraught with gotchas, although much is probably due to my lack of experience with the process and Android development. It is difficult to find reliable information on Xamarin since Microsoft seems to be in process of fully integrating Xamarin within Visual Studio. Documentation on developing MonoGame build cross platform also seems pretty spotty. Razer's Forge TV seems to be the successor to the Ouya for Android Gaming Consoles, but they have to approve your submission, unlike on the Ouya console that was more like XBOX Indie Games. I would need to get the game ported to MonoGame, and then build it for Android, and then submit it for approval by Razer, which seems like not a great choice right now.

Thanks for the encouragement. I have some more info about Steam and the process that I want to post here in a while, just have to find some time to finish getting it all together.

Last edited on 31 May 2016 17:08 by Brett208 Show more

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 31 May 2016 04:21

Steam Greenlight – First Week Hotwash

Perhaps some of my thoughts and experiences on Steam Greenlight would be helpful to the other developers. Of course I am no expert on the subject.

Create a Separate Studio/Development Steam Account

I submitted Tunnel Lords on my personal Steam account. Greenlight voters immediately started paging through my Steam account since I hadn’t made the account private. This would be fine if I set it up as a studio/developer account and not a personal account.

Not creating a separate developer account was a mistake because:

• I cannot separate Tunnel Lords development correspondence from personal correspondence.
• I miss the opportunity of promoting the game through a “studio” Steam account.

Game graphics matter A LOT

Because you cannot post a demo of the game onto Steam Greenlight, your game’s graphics become really important to reviewers. They cannot judge your gameplay, except through watching the trailer and viewing the screenshots, (and reading your game's description, but I don't think many voters look closely at this). So if they don’t like the graphics, it will likely be a downvote. As a side note, while I put a lot of time into Tunnel Lords’ trailer, I should have spent even more time on it. I didn’t capture enough of the unique gameplay aspects of Tunnel Lords.

Greenlight Reviewer Comments Are Unfiltered and Often Mean

Don't submit your game on Steam unless you have thick skin or are willing to let someone else manage your game's comments. Reviewers are going to say exactly what they think about your game from a customer’s perspective. Oftentimes, the reviewer has zero actual experience making a game and they may be looking for AAA style games in Steam Greenlight instead of your indie game.

That being said, you will get some rewarding comments and some good feedback (and perhaps if Tunnel Lords were a ‘better’ game my ratio of mean comments would have been less). You need to be able to filter the constructive criticism and advice from the “I don’t like your game and am going to crap on it” advice.

The high number of criticism that Tunnel Lords is getting may mean my game isn’t a great fit for Steam, but I don’t have enough experience with Greenlight to really know for sure. I do feel like Tunnel Lords is a niche game that some people like and a lot of others would rather not play.

I received lots of comments saying my game is a rip-off of Motherload/Super Motherload. While I believe this is not the case, perception matters a lot. I'm not really sure how to take these comments. No one on XBOX 360 Indie Games expressed this sentiment.

I’ll leave out the straight negative feedback comments. You can go to the Steam Comments page if you want to review them.

Some Encouraging Feedback:

Looks fun, frustrating and addictive. Definitely worth giving it a go.

although i don't like the visuals, they remind me of an xbox arcade title, i did enjoy motherlode and other games a lot when i was younger. i'd check it out for sure.

Some Constructive Feedback:

Also the (lack of) animation when you drill a tile is really offputting. The character phases halfway into the tile and the it just dissapears? You seriously need to polish that effect if you want anyone to be interested in this.

Looks like a crappier version of motherload. You didn't even bother to make decent animations. For example: instead of a whirligig animation for flight, you have a static drawing of fire. Boring. (Developer Note: It actually is an animation, but apparently too subtle to see in the game's trailer.)

Become very familiar with Steam & Greenlight

I have spent some time on Steam, but am no means an expert. The Steam Greenlight process was not intuitive to me. It helped tremendously to go through and sample Greenlight submissions that both had already been approved and ones that were doing poorly to get a sense of what Steam game players are looking for. On top of the time I spent, I probably would have benefited from spending another couple of hours tooling around Steam Greenlight.

Conclusion

Hopefully Tunnel Lords makes it through Steam Greenlight, but I don’t have a lot to judge this on being my first attempt. I think it will take longer than a game from a larger studio with more refined graphics. If anyone has more questions, feel free to ask.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Marcus42 31 May 2016 15:56

The negativity you've gotten on Steam Greenlight is disappointing - I know that you don't need to make a game yourself to be able to criticize one (as often seems to be a counter-argument against comments like those), but I do have to wonder if they realize the effort and time that it takes to make something like this. I think you've done an admirable job sticking with Tunnel Lords and would love to see it continue!

And thanks for the overview of what you've learned from Greenlight so far. I don't have any immediate plans, but I'd enjoy eventually getting a game on Steam too, and the stuff you've said is definitely worth keeping in mind!

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 07 Jun 2016 06:57

Sprint 1 - Itch.IO Landing Page

I finished a quality draft for the Itch.IO Tunnel Lords landing page and studio page. Itch.IO is flexible and easy to work with. I put a lot of time into developing the graphics and writing a detailed description of Tunnel Lords. Hopefully the work pays off. The only thing I’d like to improve is the game’s banner, which is currently just a blue background with white words and 2 drillships.

I am interested in feedback on the page. The following link is a ‘secret’ link to the page if anyone wants to check it out. (Secret link basically meaning the landing page isn’t live, and you have to use this link to find it.)

Hidden Landing Page Link: https://wooddogstudios.itch.io/tunnel-lords?secret=r1KCQOfnetWxwDkBcLVzOqPl7Yc

Image of Itch.io Landing Page:

Transitions When Digging a Tile

I added digging transitions to tiles. They consist of a series of 5 sprite overlays that serve to animate the amount of tile removed. I think it is a major improvement over my older method of just making the tile disappear once you have dug through it (which was a fine solution as well). Check out the video to see what I mean.

Check out the animation on You Tube video: https://youtu.be/SAbjdkSSH5g

New Smelter

My wife finished up a new smelter graphic with some nice rough adobe style texturing. You can check it out on the top right of the Itch.IO landing page. She is looking at making another pass at some of the other buildings as well since they were some of the less pretty graphics in the game.

Improved Dying Effect (Unplanned Stretch Goal)

When your drillship dies halfway through drilling a tile, it now stops drilling in place and catches fire. Earlier, the drillship would finish drilling the tile even though you were dead and then would die. The code was related to the digging out transitions, so I patched it up at the same time.

Improved Fire Animation on Dead Drillship (Unplanned Stretch Goal)

My wife had made a nice crumpled up dead drillship for when it was dead. Unfortunately, we were covering it with the fire animation. I made the fire animation start very transparent at base and blend to opaque at the top so you could see the drillship underneath. Looks better. I think we will take another pass on the fire animation itself before calling it good though.

Sprint 2 Goals

• Research and choose an installer for Itch.IO
• Learn how to use installer to check if XNA Redistributable is installed via the installer.
• Learn how to either bundle XNA Redistributable or point to install link with installer.
• Stretch Goal: Improve Fire animation on death by adding a third frame
• Stretch Goal: Make fire animation when Drillship is flying more impressive.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

mdjdejesus 07 Jun 2016 15:46

Hi Brett,

I think the landing page looks great; I did not know about Itch.IO before this and am looking forward to exploring it.

Can't wait to play this game when the port is finished as I don't own an XB. On a related note; what are your thoughts on Windows Universal apps? Is it worthwhile to develop/port games to this platform?

Also, thanks for posting video of the digging transition. It game me an idea for my own game (although, I'm not sure I can pull it off.)

---

—Javier DeJesus

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 07 Jun 2016 18:49

Javier,

Thanks for the feedback on the landing page!

I have not delved deeply into Universal Apps, so I cannot speak to its ease of use, but I have done some research.

To my knowledge, Windows Universal Apps only supports Windows 10 devices. So if you use it exclusively, no one on Windows XP, 7, or 8 could use your product. Below is a quote from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get-started/whats-a-uwp.

UWP apps use the Windows Runtime, a native API built into the operating system. This API is implemented in C++ and supported in C#, Visual Basic, C++, and JavaScript in a way that feels natural for each language.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 provides a UWP app template for each language that lets you create a single project for all devices. When your work is finished, you can produce an app package and submit it to the Windows Store from within Visual Studio to get your app out to customers on any Windows 10 device.

I would hate to limit my game to just Windows 10, although this really isn't a show stopper in the long run since over time all Windows equipped PCs will migrate to Windows 10. Targeting only Windows Universal Apps would make it impossible to port your device to iOS and Linux as well. Again though, since Windows is dominant on desktop/laptop computers, you don't need to port to these operating systems to reach a lot of people.

UWP appeals to me because Microsoft is opening XBOX 1 UWP support. This means I could get Tunnel Lords onto Windows and XBOX 1 with a similar install experience and possibly much less effort on my part.

I would try to not limit my development to only UWP. If developing for UWP, I would first port Tunnel Lords from XNA to a generic MonoGame project. I would then add a separate UWP MonoGame project that used the same code base as the generic MonoGame project. This way I could still build Tunnel Lords for Windows 7, Linux, iOS, or whatever else MonoGame allows.

This is of course all theory as I have never done any of it. Also, I'm unsure using Xamarin to build a C# application for Linux/iOS is a good solution. Perhaps I'm missing it, but actually getting MonoGame to run outside of a generic Windows seems poorly documented.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

mdjdejesus 07 Jun 2016 20:11

Thank you for all this information. Overall takeaway is that UWP is a good platform to move to, but; maybe now is not the time to pull the trigger. Let's hope that with Microsoft buying Xamarin things will become easier to port to Linux, iOS, and even Android.

---

—Javier DeJesus

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Marcus42 08 Jun 2016 16:54

Brett, the landing page definitely turned out well! I do agree that the banner could use some improvement, though - maybe everything could just be moved inward a ways, so that you can see more of the buildings and there's less empty, blue space. But otherwise, unless you want some very minor nitpicks that may improve the flow of the game's description, I've got no complaints! The artwork improvements sound good, too. Nice job!

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 11 Jun 2016 17:08

@Marcus,

Thank you for checking it out! The amount of building displayed actually depends on the width of your monitor as the background image is about 2100 pixels wide. The banner is separate from the background image. Itch.io shrinks the height/width of the banner on progressively smaller screens, so if the buildings overlapped from the background image onto the banner, they would look disjointed on a small notebook or tablet as the banner shrunk in size.On a phone, the background isn't displayed at all, but just the banner.

What I want is to get the title words redesigned into something more interesting.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Marcus42 11 Jun 2016 20:58

Oh, I see. In that case, I'm afraid I can't really offer any suggestions - sorry!

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 13 Jun 2016 23:35

Sprint 2 – Draft Installer and Improved Graphics

Sprint 2 went well. I have a solid, working installer. Improved graphics include an updated garage and updated animation for when the drillship 'dies'.

Program Installer

I spent some time researching different installers. I settled on Inno Setup because it is free for commercial use, recommend by RB Whitaker in his tutorials, is customizable, and generally considered easy to use. Below are the different installer choices I considered (some very briefly).

Installer Choices for a Microsoft Windows Program:

• Inno Setup – Free. A lot of people consider it the easiest installer to learn of the choices I looked at.
• NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) – Free. Ended up not actually trying or researching this option, but it seemed viable.
• WiX (Windows Installer XML) – Free. Wix can create a MSI file (Windows Installer), which Inno Setup cannot do. A fair number of people believed it was more difficult to learn than Inno Setup.
• InstallShield (Windows Installer) – Self proclaimed leading Windows installer. Made by Flexera Software. Install Shield 2015 Express (Cheapest Option) $699.00. They also offer Install Anywhere for $2,319.00 (Cheapest Option). Install Anyhere is meant to support cross platform installations, but I didn’t dig into what this meant. The price point was too high for this project.

After playing with Inno Setup, I can say it is easy to get started with. The heart of the process is a .ISS script that when compiled creates your installer. The script is a set of properties that define the installer plus a section for writing Pascal/Delphi style code to customize the installer. Inno Setup includes a built in IDE that provides sytax highlighting, compiler error checking, and debugging support while an installer is running. It feels very comfortable coming from a Visual Studio background.

It did take a lot of research to learn what the different parameters in the script did. There are literally hundreds of settings to modify the installer in different ways and a decent number are deprecated as they applied to installing on much earlier versions of Windows.

Unfortunately, checking if .Net or XNA is already installed on a computer requires writing some custom functions into the script. The scripts are not too bad to write, except I had to muddle through learning some basic Pascal/Delphi, which I had zero experience in. Pascal contains lots of keywords that make the script easier to read almost like English as opposed to reading something like C. So, I guess it makes a good scripting language. Also, there are lots of examples on writing custom scripts for Inno Setup, so I didn’t do any groundwork, it was more modifying example scripts to do exactly what I wanted.

Tunnel Lords requires two prerequisites, .Net framework 4.0 or newer, and XNA 4.0 redistributable. I haven’t learned how to fetch installers from online if required, so I just bundled the prerequisites in the installer. The pro is that you can use the installer offline, but the con is that the installer ballooned to 86 megabytes, while the game itself is only about 45 megabytes.

Installer Code Signing
I looked into providing code signing for the installer. This would prevent the Windows warning message from appearing due to no certificate or invalid certificate attached to the installer. It looks like about $75.00 minimum (trough Tucows) to get one plus time cost of learning how to apply it. I don’t plan pursue this any further. It seems common for smaller scale projects to not worry about code signing anyways.

Current Weak points of Installer
Currently, the installer I designed will not ask permission to install either .Net 4.0 or XNA 4.0 refresh redistributable. I like giving people control over what is installed, so I may revisit this. I think it is possible, but I would have to write some more custom Pascal scripts to do it.

The installer will only install .Net 4.0 Client if no version of .Net 4.0 through 4.6.2 is installed. When future versions of .Net come out, it will not be smart enough to recognize them as valid .Net installs. I’m not sure how to add this functionality, into the installer, or if it is really possible. But, I am happy with leaving this where it is. The downside of not forcing the user to install .Net 4.0 client is the small chance that Tunnel Lords will break using a newer version.

Screen Shots of the Installer

Installer Welcome Screen:

---

Installer Readme:

---

Installer Complete:

New Dying Animation Sequence

We added a new set of fire animations and generally cleaned up the drillship death sequence. My graphic artist isn’t really happy with the results, but they are certainly better than the last iteration.

Updated Garage Graphic

The garage graphic has been improved in game and on Itch.IO landing page.

Conclusion and Sprint 3 Goals

If anyone is really interested in the Inno Setup script, I could clean it up and post it. The script would have to be modified a fair amount to fit someone else’s needs, but does cover a lot of the ground needed to distribute XNA games. I'll still need to clean up the installer a little more before publishing, but it should be a quick process now.

Spring 3 Goals

• Research Screen Resolution Best Practices.
• Redesign Options screen to fit more option entries.
• Add ability to toggle Full Screen/Windowed mode in Options
• Add ability to auto-detect monitor resolution.
• Add ability to manually set screen resolution in options screen.
• Stretch Goal: Make fire animation when Drillship is flying more impressive.

Last edited on 15 Jun 2016 02:55 by Brett208 Show more

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

mdjdejesus 14 Jun 2016 15:52

Hi Brett,

For some reason I am not able to see the screenshots on this post, so I don't have any feedback on these.

Thank You for doing research on installers. Visual Studio 2015 allows you to get a free Install Shield; but not for the "Community" (aka Free) version, which is a bummer. I haven't really considered what to use to package my game, other than just Zip (and possibly Click Once.)

---

—Javier DeJesus

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 15 Jun 2016 03:04

@Javier,

I think there was a permissions issue with the links. See if they display now…

For Install Shield access, does Visual Studio simply require a Professional Subscription?

I would have considered a simpler solution, but since both .Net and XNA require installations of their own, I was stuck with something more complex. Either that or force a player to review a readme explaining the prerequisites that must be downloaded manually, which seemed like a good way to turn them away from the game.

I am curious what Unity's prerequisites are and if they require a separate DLL install or if they can be statically linked to without a separate install. I'm guessing you are using .NET, so you would have to at least check that their computer had a minimum version of .NET installed?

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

mdjdejesus 15 Jun 2016 03:44

Install Shield Limited Edition does not support VS 2015 Community edition.

So, the options are to either pay for VS 2015 Pro+, use VS 2013 Community Edition, or use the old VS installer.
The old VS installer for VS 2015 can be downloaded here

As to whether these solutions support installing .NET or any Unity DLL (if needed)…I confess that I haven't given this much thought as of yet.

---

—Javier DeJesus

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 15 Jun 2016 19:20

@Javier,

Thank you for the info on Install Shield. I don't see any restrictions using Install Shield Limited Edition for commercial use, so it is a viable option. It is unfortunate they discontinued support for it with the community edition of Visual Studio 2015.

Probably early to think too much about prerequisites for your game anyways.

I have had a decent run with the Click Once installer in Visual Studio. I like how easy it is to use and Click Once is how I released all the Tunnel Lords PC demos in the past. I had the problems below that made me search for something more robust.

Click Once Install Directory
You cannot change the directory that your application is installed to, so it ends up sitting in a hidden folder. It is much nicer to place your program in the standard Program Files folder.

Click Once Installer Install Locations:

• Windows Vista and Windows 7: c:\users\username\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\obfuscatedfoldername\obfuscatedfoldername
• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\LocalSettings\Apps\2.0\obfuscatedfoldername\obfuscatedfoldername

Overwriting Previously Installed Versions
I couldn't get the Click Once Installer to work if Tunnel Lords was already installed. I would have to go and manually uninstall the older version first, and then install the newer version. Not the end of the world, but it caused a lot of confusion when people would beta test different versions for me.

Software prerequisites
I had trouble getting Click Once to pick up XNA redistributable as a prerequisite 'out of the box'. I think with more research, I could have gotten this to work though.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 21 Jun 2016 04:18

Sprint 3 – Screen Resolution & Sound Improvements

I had the flu Friday through Sunday, so a fair amount of the screen resolution goals remain incomplete. Fortunately, I am filling better now. I'll plan to continue working on incomplete Sprint 3 goals this week. Also, no pictures since the resolution issues are only partially implemented and wouldn't be too interesting to show off. I managed to knock out a lot of smaller improvements to music and animation sequences that were not in the sprint 3 goals.

Full Screen Mode

You can now toggle between full screen and windowed mode from within the options section.

Changing Screen Resolution

The options menu now supports switching through a fair number of popular screen resolutions. I learned there are a very large number of different monitor resolutions on the market. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution for a list. I decided to just support resolutions that were still in use by at least 1% of users. I also decided to target 800x600 as the smallest supported resolution in case someone wants to play the game windowed smaller than the monitor or something. The game's native resolution is 1280x720, which is not a common resolution anymore. It made since years ago before it was replaced by 1080. The current plan is to scale the resolution, although it is more complicated than that since there is also varying aspect ratios.

Sound & Music Improvements

I reworked my MusicManager to allow playing a music track after a specified delay in seconds. This allows building in some silent transition times without adding dead space to the music track.

I updated the end game sequence. Currently there is a nice audio track that plays before the rocket launches. Unfortunately, there isn’t any associated animation for a fair amount of the audio commentary. Now the game skips the idle time when the audio track would be playing if music is muted. This way, the game will not appear to hang up with music muted. You can now skip the end game audio track and just go straight to launch by pressing the accept command.

I also updated toggling between the game over audio track or winning the game audio track when using the options to mute/unmute music during these sequences. It was possible to get some funny repeats of the tracks if toggling music mute on and off during them.

Sprint 4 Goals

• Set default mode as full screen mode as opposed to window mode.
• Improve resizing of title menus when screen resolution is changed.
• Improve resizing of mine when screen resolution is changed.
• Stretch Goal: Make fire animation when Drillship is flying more impressive.
• Stretch Goal: Implement new End Of Demo Screen that is not XBOX 360 dependent.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 28 Jun 2016 07:29

Sprint 4 - Lost to Other Life Priorities

I was/am in the process of moving my family. This last week ended up being mostly about moving into a new home. Moving will probably take up a fair amount of this week as well. So yeah, not very exciting progress but that is part of a 90 day competition I guess.

I did manage to iron out the bugs in changing screen resolution on the title menu screens. It took some time to learn how XNA handles translating the position where the game starts drawing within the screen. Draw translation calls are contained within the same matrix transformation that handles scaling the entire SpriteBatch call. I want to try clipping width when aspect ratio decreases and see how it looks before moving on. Right now the game uses horizontal black bars and retains all pixels when aspect ratio is reduced below the native 16:9.

I also completed some refactoring, but nothing external to how for it.

My sprint goals for week 5 will remain the same. Although, I may not have time to make much progress.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

mdjdejesus 28 Jun 2016 16:16

Good luck with the move. I know what a pain that can be.
I'm impressed that you were able to get anything done on the port.

---

—Javier DeJesus

Last edited on 28 Jun 2016 16:17 by mdjdejesus Show more

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 06 Jul 2016 02:41

Sprint 5 - No Progress

Hey everyone. I spent last week continuing to move into the new home. There is still probably about a week of work to do on the home, so I'm planning on taking Sprint 6 off as well.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 13 Jul 2016 04:56

Sprint 6 - First User Reported Bug

I hadn't mentioned it before, but I maintain a website for the game at http://tunnellords.com/. It is really minimal, and I would like to theme the site to the game. Back to the point though. Someone who purchased the game on XBOX 360 contacted me through the website and let me know about a blocking bug in the game. Basically a row in the mine that is mostly rock was blocking his progress.

I setup a test scenario to build 1,000 maps in a row. Sure enough about 4-5% of the time, a row of rocks would form that was impenetrable to the player. I guess we got lucky on the play testing and avoided the issue. I have the issue fixed on the development computer, but I'll have to push the game back through peer review to get it on the XBOX. I've also got to clean up all the partially implemented code in the codebase dealing with the PC port before pushing.

So, really cool that someone took the time to play and contact me. Really bad that 5% of the time the game is not beatable. I want to get a lot of other features I've added on the XBOX anyways, but with the sundown of XBOX Live Indie Games, it is a tough process getting games through review and properly posted to the marketplace.

I'm hoping to find some time this week to work on Tunnel Lords now that my family is getting back on a normal-ish routine.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Swatacular 13 Jul 2016 05:02

Sounds Cool, Also cool that some people outside our little community have played and made videos about it (according to your website)
Can I see a picture of this rock glitch?

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Marcus42 13 Jul 2016 18:01

That's pretty awesome to have someone report a subtle but important bug for you! Tunnel Lords sounds like it's getting very nicely polished.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 14 Jul 2016 06:25

@Swatacular & Marcus,

Below is a picture of the bug. Just a solid row of rock impenetrable rock produced by the MapDesigner. I'm excited about the project right now. Just need to carve out time to work on it!

Last edited on 19 Jul 2016 21:31 by Brett208 Show more

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Swatacular 16 Jul 2016 05:52

could i get a link to an external website, your image didnt show up

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 19 Jul 2016 21:33

@Swatacular,

The image should be fixed now. Sorry for the bum link.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 19 Jul 2016 21:46

Sprint 7: Options Menu differentiates between XBOX/PC

Hey everyone, I'm a little late posting, partly because of a pretty busy weekend and partly because I spent less time on the project than planned.

Clipping Aspect Ratio on title/menu screens
I implemented clipping of extra width from the title screen and menus when the aspect ratio becomes more square than 16:9. It keeps from forming black bars on the screen when the non-native resolution is used and there is no content on the left or right edge of the screen that is critical. However, there is a bug in my math (I think?) that is not properly maintaining the aspect ratio of pixels. So on some different resolutions the drillship looks squat. It only occurs on the more square-ish aspect ratios. Since the clipping is working correctly, I'm not sure what the problem is. I also haven't spent time really investigating yet.

Options Screen Differentiates between XBOX & PC
The options screen will now build with different choices based on platform. For example, it will not allow switching controls between a keyboard and controller on the XBOX. I designed it to be modular, so I can add new options and choose which build platforms they associate with.

Sprint 8 Goals

• Make the End of Demo screen differentiate between build platforms (XBOX & PC).
• Fix the bug when aspect ratio is changed that causes drillship & terrain to look squat.
• Test new options menu on the XBOX 360.
• (Stretch Goal) Release patch for Peer Review onto XBOX Live Indie Games fixing map bug & incorporating other changes.

Re: Porting Tunnel Lords

Brett208 26 Jul 2016 00:31

Sprint 8: Version 1.2 submitted for Peer Review (XBOX 360 Patch)

I made a change in plans this week from the original goals. I dropped all the goals for sprint 8 and ran with the stretch goal of getting a patch onto XBOX 360. I submitted the patch yesterday night for peer review. If anyone has a XBLIG membership and can review games, I would appreciate the review. I'm planning to take sprint 9 off for the most part. Work will be busy, so I will have little or no time to work besides maybe cleaning up issues if they are found during peer review. I'll plan to post on how the peer review is going for the patch next week though.

I caught and cleaned up a small pile of bugs. It was good to clean them out and get the game re-polished. See below for the full list.

Version 1.2 Patch Notes

Primary reason for this release is to a patch a blocking bug & a rare crash bug. In current version, about 4-5% of the time a new map is generated, the row at 850 meters is fully rock & impenetrable to the player. See list below for all changes.

• Fixed stop bug allowing maps to be created with a row of impenetrable rocks
• Stopped radiation damage from affecting drillship during game winning sequence
• Fixed crash bug if a new game is started during the game winning sequence
• Fixed bug where game is lost if a new game is started before the death animation is completed
• Added animation of dirt digging out when digging into a new space
• Allow skipping spaceship launch audio
• Automatically skip spaceship launch audio sequence when music muted
• When unmuting the music right after winning or dying, the main menu music track plays properly
• Improved box art, death animation, & town building graphics
• Allowed dying animation to start while partway through digging out a new tile

Sprint 9 Goals

• Fix any issues the come up during peer review.
• (Backlog) Make the End of Demo screen differentiate between build platforms (XBOX & PC).
• (Backlog) Fix the PC bug when aspect ratio is changed that causes drillship & terrain to look squat.

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