The Binary Zoo Bog

[TheKhakinator]

That looks even moar amazing then those little shader pics you posted ages ago.

[fog]

That looks even moar amazing then those little shader pics you posted ages ago.

  Well you have to imagine those little shader effects applied to that image to get an idea of the finished look. 

The different "stencils" I'm using like the concentric circles in that screenie do give rather a nice effect compared with the simple blobs of the old version.  Each level will have a different enemy, different background stencil and different shader effect applied, so I'm hoping to get a bit of variety in there.

Of course that's all window dressing though.  If the different enemy types don't add a bit of gameplay variety then it's all a bit pointless 

[T_M_C]

Looking good. 

Would love to see those shaders in action.

One thing thats been bugging me for ages and it's not game related and i've always forgotton to mention it before, is your news website page.

It's very difficult for me to read.  With the colors used.

The dark blue links are illegible unless i invert the text.  The other text is just about readable, but the whole thing for me is very difficult to read and quite off putting.

And i'm using a bog standard library computer for net access on a tft monitor.

I have no problems with other websites before you ask.

I wonder if anyone else has similar problems as i don't think anyone else has mentioned it.

I would hate to think that other people are put off entering the site if they experience the same difficult to view page as me.   

TMC 

[fog]

I never knew the link colours were a problem, but there are a lot of things I don't like about the website.  It was getting redesigned a couple of times over the last few years, but was never finished.  It's something I plan on doing myself whenever I have some free time. 

As you'll know as a one man operation yourself, there are always more things that need to be done than you can possibly find time for so it's a case of priorities. 

[JDog053]

Well...I love how Mono is looking! I just hope it keeps progressing as well as it is at the moment. Shame that Live can't give us leaderboards although I don't see why they don't...

Atleast Internally I can attempt to be #1 lol. Also, i Echoes going through Peer assesment? or our th esound guys still tinkering?

[fog]

Also, i Echoes going through Peer assesment? or our th esound guys still tinkering?

Nope, I'm still waiting for music.

[fog]

Well I was having major slowdown issues with the routines for painting the background.  They seemed to work ok in isolated tests, yet in game they do create noticeable frame skipping.

I could have rewritten them using a technique I know wouldn't have had the same problems, but the current method has some lovely simple code and I'd rather stick with that if possible, so I employed the little tricks I used in the old PC version and everything now seems to run fine.  I haven't really stress tested it yet, however it's looking good.

Which brings me to a new problem that makes me think mono will take a lot longer to develop than I'd imagined.  I've lost a ridiculous amount of time just mindlessly shooting stuff and colouring in the screen.  I'd forgotten how hypnotic the effect is.  Ever time I test something I end up losing 20 minutes without realising it.  I think I'm going to have to make the dev code time out after a couple of minutes 

Anyway I'm targeting 10 different levels in mono and I want a different theme in each one, so I'm off to make a list of possible ideas 

[JDog053]

Wow now its good to hear that your pretty addicted to playing it! Especially after about a yar development on Echoes+. Seems that this is gonna be a pretty sweet game Getting excited now!

[fog]

Wow now its good to hear that your pretty addicted to playing it! Especially after about a yar development on Echoes+. Seems that this is gonna be a pretty sweet game Getting excited now!

I wouldn't get too excited just yet

And I'm not even saying it's enjoyable.  Hell there's no enemy variety or logic,  scoring or anything yet....just that I've lost a load of time playing it in a "where did that 1/2 hour go" way.  Weird. 

[JDog053]

Yeah, I know what you mean (well sort of). Maybe it would be a good thing adding a timer to your little tests, haha.

[T_M_C]

Which brings me to a new problem that makes me think mono will take a lot longer to develop than I'd imagined.  I've lost a ridiculous amount of time just mindlessly shooting stuff and colouring in the screen.  I'd forgotten how hypnotic the effect is.  Ever time I test something I end up losing 20 minutes without realising it.  I think I'm going to have to make the dev code time out after a couple of minutes

Thats exactly what i experience when playing it.
Just shooting and killing enemies and coloring in the screen is really cool and more importantly ' Fun'.

I always hated the fact that the enemies were shooting back at me, ruining my fun, lol.

Getting loads of power ups too, is really satisfying.
One of the things that makes echoes so great, is that the player is constantly rewarded with power ups, and from an early point in the game too.

I think you may have invented a new Genre of game Fog.  A color em up.   

And i've tossed around aload of game ideas based on that premise.  At one point i thought about an idea that would instead of drawing color to the screen, draw parts of an image.

But never got around to protoyping the idea.

TMC

[fog]

I always hated the fact that the enemies were shooting back at me, ruining my fun, lol.

I have the option to switch that off in chill out mode on the list.

And i've tossed around aload of game ideas based on that premise.  At one point i thought about an idea that would instead of drawing color to the screen, draw parts of an image.

But never got around to protoyping the idea.

I did a demo a couple of years ago which IIRC a couple of people on here played which did just that.  It was essentially mono, but instead of going from black to white, the background transformed from one photo to another.  The demo did a rather neat change from Sara Michelle Geller to a zombie lol

I may return to something similar some time however I want to keep this version of mono purely abstract.

[T_M_C]

Hi Fog.

I had an idea for an extra gameplay option for Mono.

I was thinking along the lines of the classic game Wizball, whereby the player can collect color pickups from killing enemies.

How about for Mono, as well as the normal way of coloring in the screen, to include an added feature that allows for some enemies when shot to release blobs of color, ( color drops ), which when collected by the player, turn the player ship that color ( or add to the players ship color until it turns white, maximum color).

This player ship color can be unloaded to any part of the screen by the player pressing a button.  Which then colors in that section of the screen, just as if an enemy was shot at that location.

This system means the player can store up color, to dump in those awkward to reach areas like the screen corners ect.

One of the mouse buttons for color dumping would be very intuitive for me.

I have the option to switch that off in chill out mode on the list.

The demo did a rather neat change from Sara Michelle Geller to a zombie lol

lol 

TMC

[fog]

I had an idea for an extra gameplay option for Mono.

I was thinking along the lines of the classic game Wizball, whereby the player can collect color pickups from killing enemies.

How about for Mono, as well as the normal way of coloring in the screen, to include an added feature that allows for some enemies when shot to release blobs of color, ( color drops ), which when collected by the player, turn the player ship that color ( or add to the players ship color until it turns white, maximum color).

This player ship color can be unloaded to any part of the screen by the player pressing a button.  Which then colors in that section of the screen, just as if an enemy was shot at that location.

This system means the player can store up color, to dump in those awkward to reach areas like the screen corners ect.

One of the mouse buttons for color dumping would be very intuitive for me.

Great minds and all that...That's exactly how the new "smart bombs" work

I do have a couple of game modes planned where you don't actually shoot, but your suggestion wasn't one of them.  Mind, the modes in Echoes+ changed several times once I got deep into development and realised what worked and what didn't, so I'm not ruling anything out.

The original mono didn't have any smart bombs, but I wrote the code to handle them for Echoes+ so I thought I might as well use it here too.  As a gameplay mechanic it works quite nicely.  It allows you to colour those really awkward bits of the screen like the corners so it should allow players to get nearer that illusive 100%.

[JDog053]

That sounds good, but nearer than 99% on Easy

Sounding good