Unfortunately me and the guys weren't able to have a game development get-together this Saturday, regardless some new stuff was added:

• Stephen added Snoopy-esque flying goggles (only when operating a vehicle) as well as drawing an animated caged Kiwi (Bottom right of the image - the really subtle tears are a nice touch).
• Bitmap font functionality added.
• Triple parallax (Could be quad layer if you consider the foreground as part of it) replacing the single layed parrallax. I'm hoping to get a pseudo-3D effect similar to that of the early Sonic games.
• Basic NZ Map screens added
• Unlike the original game, the vehicles now have momentum. Dodgem style collisions with enemy vehicles should be fun
• Configuration of enemies and levels has been seperated out from the code base into a config file.

For the past week I've been focusing almost exclusively on the engine rather then any new content - my goal is to get the game engine fundamentally complete by the end of Labour weekend. It might be difficult squeezing development time in between Auckland Congress Hall (Salvation Army) 125th anniversary celebrations and Armageddon, but I will make sure I set aside some time each and every day to focus on making the game. Less a month and a half of the competition to go and still mountains of work to be done. It's scary, but I'm confident we'll pull it off somehow.

It's about time I finally laid this one to rest.

Traffic Department 2192 (Remake)

In-game screenshot. The buildings are 3D, the draw distance is longer, and some of the textures have been converted to hi-res.

The original Traffic Department 2192 was one of my favourite games back in the early 1990s. After the invasion of the Desert planet Seche

by the Vulture cult army, the former Traffic Control division becomes a guerilla fighting force for the people. While the gameplay was merely average, what made the game truly special to me was its expansive and interesting Science Fiction storyline. Each of the 60 levels in the game was bookended by a decent length dialogue sequence that was more entertaining then levels themselves were.

I have attempted and failed to remake the game no less then three times! The first time was back in the early 00's using The Games Factory, replacing the freeroaming gameplay with something closer to Spy Hunter but staying true to the original story. That was doomed to fail, it's difficult enough making something in TGF that has the scope of Super Mario Bros, let alone a game that featured more dialogue then the average novel. In 2006 (and again in 2007) I had another go at remaking the game, this time in Blitz Basic 3D.

Development

An example dialogue sequence. The main enhancement over the original is the background watermarking of the current scene.

When I first attempted to remake the game in Blitz Basic 3D, I had actually managed to hack the graphics and level data from the original game, allowing me to transfer it to my project verbatim without needing to take an excessive amount of screengrabs. I succeeded in getting a 3D version of one of the cities from the game running (as reported here) but didn't get any further. I hadn't even attempted to bring the dialogue sequences across. I guess, because I was working on the project alone, there was no one following the project, and because a massive amount of work had to be done before the game became good, I just left it to collect dust.

That was until about half a year later when I was contacted by "Commander Stab", a fellow TD2192 fan who also had ambitions to remake the game. He had a strong desire to actually have every line in the game recorded by a voice actor. So we got to work on the project, my domain was working on the programming and gameplay side of things, his was to work on bringing the story across and collect auditions and lines from voice actors. Things went pretty well for awhile, but ultimately the project collapsed again.

What went wrong

Illustrations like this helped tell the epic story.

Commander Stab eventually became extremely busy with his real life (University, moving etc) and we fell out of contact. He had worked incredibly hard on the project seeking out voice actors and writing a program converting the original dialogue files into a format we could use in the remake, but since he stopped contributing to the game I lost motivation and stopped working on the game entirely soon after.

The Moral of the Story

Actually there's two this time. The first is that working on a game with a friend who is equally enthusiastic about it is a massive motivation boost. The second is that, a large game project requires commitment.

Afterwards

I dabbled in several different game projects before getting started on Derelict. Traffic Department 2192 is still a game I care about a lot, so maybe, just maybe, a TD2192 remake will actually see the light of day.

An early working version of the Larnach Castle level. Stephen has done an amazing job with converting real life New Zealand locations into platforming levels. I haven't been working on the game nearly as much as I have wanted to, since I was away in Wellington for most of last week, plus I had a pretty full on (and awesome weekend) but I'm back into it now.

Collision detection has been a real nightmare due to the peculiar workings of the collision detection of the original (which allowed you to jump -upwards- through most blocks). I think, honestly, 2D collision detection in the New Zealand Story remake has eaten up far more of my time then 3D collision detection in Derelict ever did.

So, for now, I'm going to stick with the somewhat flawed collision detection I've put together, and work on other elements of the game while I leave my subconscious to think of a better solution. If someone else wants to volunteer to fix it, please be my guest! Sorry, not much else to report! Hopefully my next post will be more cheerful.

I'll confess and admit I haven't been working on the game as much as I should have been. I was in Dunedin between Tuesday and Friday on a Conference and over the weekend I've been really ill (Still not 100%). Regardless, some major progress has been made on the game. Firstly, Stephen came up with the list of objects we're going to have in the game and integrated them into the tileset. That allowed me to program the engine to load objects into the correct positions, such as the placeholder Balloon pictured and the letter bubbles (Yes we know 'EXTEND' has no A or O, but now the bonus word is 'AOTEAROA') Secondly, coding for the vehicles has started to be developed. Collision-detection is a bit glitchy (due to the weird-as collision mechanics of the original), but it's functional and we're getting there. The new Kiwi (cheers Stephen) is still an early work-in-progress but it resembles the concept we're after, which is a grown up version of 'Tiki' from the original (who now looks more like a Kiwi then a Chicken). Oh, and that cartoony background was my (lame) attempt to rotoscope some NZ Scenery. Over the next couple of weeks I'll add basic enemies and other bits-and-pieces, we may even be able to churn out a bare bones alpha demo in a fortnight.