Blog for Timothy C. Pelham at GarageGames.com

Saturday Jul 23 17:56

Timothy C. Pelham — 2005-07-23T17:56:35+00:00

Nitrous Butterfly -- Moving forward after Alien Defense

This has also been posted on our forums, but I figured I would post this here as well to let more people now what we're working on. This is my longest .plan to date, but I wanted to get the community more involved in our productions.

As a foreword we are currently not using the Torque engine. We are building our own internal technologies. There are screencaps for those that like to see pretty pictures...

Carnage .plan
Nitrous Butterfly
July 22, 2005
==============================================================

Off Topic
We have received a lot of feedback on Alien Defense. Some good and some bad, but response of any kind is good in my book. Alien Defense is understandably a simple game and we are currently working on a patch to resolve some of the bugs in the game. We hope to have this out soon.

Carnage
While we were prepping for the release of Alien Defense I started going back over our internal technologies and basically ripping and shredding it and adding all sorts of new functionality to it. Alien Defense was my first attempt at writing a game from scratch in C++ and I learned an extreme amount from it. Looking back on the existing code I found a lot of things I could have done differently. After looking through what we had and analyzing our design process I realized that what we really needed were some better, more integrated tools for designing our environments. Alien Defense didn't require quite a lot so everything level wise was really quite simple.

My first real push for our engine was to have a much more powerful and robust GUI system. I spent quite a bit of time researching and looking into different GUI APIs to see if there was something I could integrate into our current engine. After looking around and not finding anything that quite matched my expectations I decided to write my own. I did some study and some planning and that hit the ground running with some coding. I decided on some things that I wanted from this GUI system:

1. Absolutely has to be skinnable!
2. Once written it needs to be easy to use...get the hard part out of way with the core design so adding on and creating GUIs would be a snap.
3. It needs to be fast and responsive (seen too many that felt like I was dragging a window through mud)

OK...I'm sure I had more, but that's all I can think of at the moment. So because I'm a visual person I started writing the look and feel and basic functionality first. I started with scalable windows that I could drag around the screen and I felt I was getting somewhere. I started building some other controls and then hit a hard wall with buttons. I sat back and realized that I needed some sort callback functionality for my buttons. Of course I wanted something that lived up to expectation #2. It needed to be easy to use when I started implementing GUIs into the game. Well around the same time I was working on a console system for the engine and decided to merge the two projects. I decided to use the console parser as a callback system for my buttons. This way I could use plain text commands for my button callbacks. This worked for regular functions as well as member functions. So this way I could just put together the console commands (which were done through macros) and then call those console functions from the button callbacks. So onclick could run "TileMgr.addTile;" which would find the object called TileMgr and then get a function callback for that object called addTile which was a console function that had already been registered. All was finally looking well. I implemented the whole thing and was good to go. Now onward to all the other controls which went relatively painless.

Early image of GUI System

My main reason for creating the GUI system was so that I could setup an in-game level editor. Carnage (yes the title of this post and the name of our new game) was conceptualized as a top down scrolling shooter. We wanted to get out of these games set in space so this would be an actual character fighting enemies with some decent AI. The game was to remain 2D so I wanted to implement a tiled level area. The screenshot above shows the original tile setup. Using the new GUI system I was able to setup a nice little tile editor for painting tiles with different textures. All looked and felt great. I was happy, but I realized I wanted and could do....more!

The next step was to implement a 3D tiling system. The game itself would still play like a 2D game but the environment could have 3D tiles...so walls would come up towards the camera and give a nice depth effect verses everything just 2D. So the characters and props would remain 2D, but the environment would be 3D. The idea, of course, came from one of the greatest games of all time... GTA2. So I then implemented 3D tiles and a selection method for selecting and adding additional tiles to the game level. I added in a full 3D camera to rotate around the scene for painting the sides of tiles. This was really starting to look cool...

3D Tiles

So as I sat there spinning around my creations I realized that there was one more thing I needed. I needed lighting! Again I wanted something simple and fast, but something that was going to look nice. So I opted for vertex color lighting. I didn't want to use OGLs lighting scheme so I built my own that just painted light values as vertex colors. After a few failed attempts I had something working...

Lights

And then I added in the color element and a light editor....

Colored Lighting

So now I was all set, but I needed to add some more control over the tiles. All I could do was add cubes and paint them in the grid. This was all well and good, but I needed a way of scaling them so that I could create more interesting areas. The next step was creating a tile editor GUI window. Something a bit more detailed the tile painter window. I gave control for scaling on the 3 different axis and then aligning the tile to different sides of it's tile block.

Tile Scaling
Putting it all together

Now during all of this I realized I needed a better way of handling textures than I had in the past. So I went ahead and wrote a resource manager that could package multiple images into one file. I also wrote a package editor for quickly adding textures to a resource file. The engine now used only resource files.

Resource files are also used for animations so that the frames of an animation can be stored in a single resource file. When an texture animation object is created you can tell it to load a resource file for it's animation. The animation object creates a linked list that references that texture information for the animation and plays them back in sequence. Simple and sweet or sweet and simple...either one works. So that is basically where we are at the moment on our next production. There is no current scheduled time for release, but after Alien Defense we wanted something more intense and start showing what we are working on early to get feedback during development.

Alright well that will do it for me folks...until next time.

-Tim Pelham
Creative Director/CEO
Nitrous Butterfly

Sunday Jul 10 0:51

Timothy C. Pelham — 2005-07-10T00:51:04+00:00

Nitrous Butterfly Releases Alien Defense

Nitrous Butterfly is proud to announce that we have released Alien Defense. A 2D top down action shooter. Full press release below:

PRESS CONTACT: Tim Pelham Creative Director/CEO
tpelham@nitrousbutterfly.com

Nitrous Butterfly Announces New Game Launch

Alien Defense dubbed "Classic Arcade Shooter...with a twist!"

WESTPORT, MA(July 7, 2005) Nitrous Butterfly, LLC, an indie developer of innovative electronic games, announced the release of "Alien Defense", its new, highly affordable 2D top down action arcade space shooter. The game utilizes 3D rendered graphics for sprites, and is built on a 2D engine written entirely by Nitrous Butterfly for the purposes of this release.
"It's survival at all cost as you conquer the enemy that has laid waste to your home world," says Nitrous Butterfly Creative Director and CEO Tim Pelham. "Your fingers will go numb in over 40 levels of non-stop action battling over a dozen different enemies."
The game is available immediately for download, and is being distributed through Reflexive Entertainment, Inc. (www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=game_detail&AID=329) which is a download and purchase all-in-one version.

Also, as part of this release, Nitrous Butterfly is also introducing a new method for customers of "try before you buy": a free demo download direct from Nitrous Butterfly (www.nitrousbutterfly.com/games/ad/info.htm) that includes 10 levels, giving customers ample opportunity to sample the game before making a purchase directly from the Nitrous Butterfly website.
In both cases, the full version of this multi-level, classic indie game is available for just $14.95. About Nitrous Butterfly Founded in 2003 by Timothy C. Pelham and Mark Miley, Nitrous Butterfly LLC is an independent Game Company focusing on fun yet simple titles. Alien Defense is the second release by the Company, which released Sole Survivor in March, 2004 (www.nitrousbutterfly.com/games/ss/info.htm). Nitrous Butterfly also serves the gaming community by creating art content packages for other developers to purchase for their own projects. Nitrous Butterfly looks to leverage its creative strengths to bring storytelling to the video gaming medium, and continue to develop content for gamers and developers through its newest website, www.nitrousbutterflygames.com.
###

Tuesday Feb 22 8:01

Timothy C. Pelham — 2005-02-22T08:01:06+00:00

A pseudo vehicle pack

We started working on a vehicle pack last fall and because of other projects
sliding to the top of the to-do list we never got around to finishing the pack.
We've had a few models done and collecting dust since about last October so
we decided that we would share them with the community. We were going to
release a robust pack of vehicles, but this is all that we have that we care to
show.

Both of these models are FREE for use in any way. Feel free to use them in
commercial or non commercial use. The only thing we don't want you doing of
course is including them in another pack and selling them.

Both models were built and currently reside inside of MAX files. The Hover
Speeder is setup for export to torque. The War Car, however, is not.

So feel free to grab these two and do what you please with them. We thought
it was about time we gave back to the community that has helped us so much
in the past.

Nitrous Butterfly

Hover Speeder

War Car

Saturday Oct 16 6:18

Timothy C. Pelham — 2004-10-16T06:18:02+00:00

more Nitrous Butterfly content pack goodness

Hey everyone,

Nitrous Butterfly is working on another content pack. The Sci-Fi Vehicle Pack! The package will include 3 different types of vehicles and all the associated scripts to get them working inside of Torque. We hope to be able to release this pack soon. Here are some screens of two of the vehicles...a wheeled vehicle and a hover vehicle.

Tuesday Sep 28 22:05

Timothy C. Pelham — 2004-09-28T22:05:55+00:00

Sci-Fi Content pack -- Nitrous Butterfly

We have finally finished up the full version of our content pack. We are proud to announce the Sci-Fi Model Pack.

An online catalog of the content pack can be found here

There content pack can be found at www.nitrousbutterfly.com under the products page. We also recently reconstructed our website. Comments welcome.

Saturday Aug 21 20:29

Timothy C. Pelham — 2004-08-21T20:29:19+00:00

Z1: AI War Public Alpha

Alright...was hoping to release this last night, but better late than never. Linked below is an alpha build of Z1: AI War. Please download and check it out. I have set up a feedback form on our site for alpha feedback.

Linked below is also a feedback form...feel free to offer feedback here on GG, but please use the feedback form.

Use new game to start a new game that will go through all 4 levels of the alpha build.

Thanks All!

Download Alpha

Feedback Form

Wednesday Aug 18 22:06

Timothy C. Pelham — 2004-08-18T22:06:09+00:00

Z1: AI War

After doing a bunch of internal play testing and tinkering around we realized the limitations of having the camera only over the player at any given time. The top down view worked, but didn't really help show off our 3D environments. So we went ahead and added a second camera mode that is sorta like a third person cam, but higher and angled down at the player. Here let me illustrate:

The player can toggle back and forth between the two modes during gameplay as both have their advantages during the game. Here is a new trailer showing off the new angle cam and assorted Z1 goodness.

Download Trailer

We are currently trying to wrap up a demo version to submit into the IGF contest. The demo currenlty has 4 levels that we are scrambling to get done. More coffee and back to work for me.

Tuesday Jul 13 19:23

Timothy C. Pelham — 2004-07-13T19:23:40+00:00

first plan, Sole Surviver, Z1 goodness, content pack?

Alright so this is my first .plan written here. I have been in the habit of writing plan files on my forum. www.nitrousbutterfly.com if you wanna check them out. Feel free to drop by and spout a few words.

SOLE SURVIVOR

I posted up a dev shot a while back of a game we had completed called Sole Survivor. We just recently did an update on it. Much of the feedback we got on the game seemed to show that the game was rather difficult. While fun, many people I questioned(interrogated?) said that they couldn't get past level 1. We went ahead and scaled down the difficulty and released a new demo that reflects the new version of the game. The new demo can be downloaded at:

www.nitrousbutterfly.com/ss/download.htm

We are hoping that the new difficulty setting will help stir interest in the full version of the game.

Z1: AI War
Z1 is our current project and is being done in Torque. Yes, I know...I don't have a license. The other member of my team does however and do plan on purchasing a license myself before we release Z1.

We have most of the core components up and running. Been trying to tweak some of the AI stuff as it has been causing some trouble. Been having some weird warping issues when more than one baddy is on screen at a time. Also sometimes our bots have the tendency of playing dumb and not excuting script based behavior. All in all though most of our time is being spent working on art assets and getting the levels built. Here is a new screeny for ya cause I know people like pictures.

That's Z1 on the left.

We are spending allot of time trying to get the gameplay very dynamic and interesting. Players are able to collect resources from destroyed enemies and use them with schematics they have found to build new weapons, armor, health and more. There are seconday and primary weapons. I had to tweak some of the weapon code to get it to fire from two points on one weapon as all the weapons are dual fire. Much of the gameplay is basically taking down enemies, upgrading to new weapons and stuff, finding switching to locked areas/secret areas and learning more about the war you are trying to prevent. All while zipping around as a hovercraft.

Content Pack?

We have been discussing putting together some content packs. Now I know a bunch of people are jumping on this bandwagon, but it seems many people are still wanting more. I would like some feedback on what people would want from a content pack. Models/textures/GUI? Let us know what your looking for and we'll do our best to put together something that people are gonna like.

Again feel free to drop by the forums and check out my other plan files or just spout out some words.

Generic .plan file signing off.

~Tim Pelham
Nitrous Butterfly
www.nitrousbutterfly.com