It almost feels like I'm building up a little bit of steam on Moon. The level editor works pretty well and I've been adding lots of new graphics tiles when ever I get the chance on an evening or during a quiet moment or two during a weekend. However, by far the biggest improvement to it all has been the lighting and atmosphere system. I can now give every level a unique tone and feel. Everything from fogging and lighting to full on film-like colour correction.

there's still no sound or music and there's some significantly missing features .. but it's really starting to be fun and feel a bit like a game.

It came to my attention that Efficiency+ was no longer functioning.

It seems that some changes by my web host brought a rather annoying web script bug out of the cupboard. So, I got the old code out of storage put in a fix and along the way updated the installer to include all the required components for it to run on Windows 8. I even managed to reduce the download size by just over 5MB

The download link on the original post now points to the new version; or you can click on the giant link below

Download

This week I was very lucky to find myself in possession of a few good hours of creation time. So, I thought I'd share with you one of the many products of my efforts.

As you may have noticed, project moon has been ticking along for some time. From time to time I've even posted a screen shot or two relating to it; each one looking quite different to the last. Much as it may not be obvious, the fundamental design idea behind it has always been the same, only the presentation has changed.

So here to accompany some nice new screen shots I'll give you a few reasons for all this change instead of giving away any actual juicy details about any of the game itself, because that's the sort of thing indie developers do.

In short there are two main reasons why I've changed from 3d down to 2d; time and Fez.

As a professional game developer (and now a farther too) I have a very limited amount of free time to spend on my own code projects. That sparse development time is usually used to achieve two things: make progress on one of my two personal game projects (iO and Moon) or investigating the sort of subjects and problems many programmer are easily distracted by, (graphics, compression, audio processing, etc.).

For a very long time I laboured under the illusion that I could find the time to make Moon in 3d. I made a simple level editor and quick mesh building tool, I even got a basic level up and running. It took an age. In the end it was pretty clear that I was never going to find the time to make all the models and levels. I eventually accepted that making a 2d puzzle platformer instead was not giving in and taking the cheap over trodden path but the only real way Moon was going to see anything like completion.

Something else that help push this decision was the release of Fez. I was all the things that I'd hoped to do with Moon, but better, more polished and more complete in absolutely every way. So, Moon became a purely 2d game and I went looking for ways to separate it from Fez while keeping the original intention of the game intact.

So why does it have the low-res, saturated, pixel look that every other indie game seems to have these days? well it turns out that when you've got very little time it's quicker and easier to make everything out of small images. and once you've made everything out of small images, they look better if you make them look like sharp pixels

Anyway, enough ramble, on with the screen shots

Even if I pick up my 'iO' project again, these character concepts will probably never be used. So, rather than let them be forgotten I thought I'd upload them on here.

Some are obviously better than others and I do have favourites (depending on the day). It's been pointed out a few times that they've got a little bit of a pokemon feel to them. It wasn't intentional but I wanted fun accessible characters which all look colourful and different. With those criteria pokemon pretty much draw themselves

I guess the trite phase about third time being lucky may be appropriate here

For the Tortuga event in 2009 I wanted to make sure the puzzle was accessible and fun. I wanted as many people as possible to have a go but it be difficult enough to make the real puzzle enthusiasts still enjoy it. I opted for a hunt for buried treasure (of sorts).

The puzzle was given out early as usual but only two weeks before the event. It came in two parts. A reference map of the Caribbean and a letter. The map was painted on a large board so it could be available for people too peruse on the day (It was also little clearer in the flesh too which helped)

This is probably one of my favourite Tortuga puzzles. It had a excellent balance of fun and challenge. Plus, having lots of pirates looking at the map in the middle of a tavern table, tracing out ideas while trying not to give away what they're doing or thinking made for some great moments.

More pirate themed puzzles. this time the puzzle from Tortuga 2008

This time the aim of the puzzle was to extract the order of 7 words that formed the instructions for the next part of the puzzle. Those seven words have now been lost, but this part of the puzzle still works just fine

The puzzle from the previous years had been given out a month before the event, to get people excited and give them a bit of time to mull over various possible answers. In previous years, the puzzle had often fallen in a few days or weeks. So I made this one a little bit harder. turns out I may have made it a little too hard. It was solved, but not by many

Who doesn't love pirates? I imagine the number has dropped a little since they now seem to be everywhere. I liked them before they were cool *put on hipster glasses*

For many years I provided the games and puzzles (and a lot of nonsense) for a pirate themed gathering amongst 40-50 of my friends. I recently rediscovered the lost image files for most of the puzzles that featured in each one and thought it would be fun to share them with the wider world (not that my website readership is all that wide).

First off is thise one from 2007. The aim was to work out the numeric combinations of three tumbler locks that were all attached to a single chest.

This is a reasonably tricky puzzle. Sadly I fell a bit flat when one of the (far too cheap) locks seized up on the day and the hinges of the chest had to be removed for the treasure to finally be won

I still have the chest; and it still has a broken lock attached to it.

To replace the drab colours that I originally did for HippyLizard I created these

Download Desktop Version

as with many of my personal projects, the rest of the work on the site coding itself is 'onging'

Sometime is good to realize that a project idea is so intractable and unwieldy that it's best to just stop before you even really get started. Luckily this was the case with an internet based isometric game I nearly started

It was to be a sort of turn based, fantasy, strategy game. Whether or not it's game play would have worked was heavily reliant on whether I could find the best (and most fun) way of implementing the magic system which was to work very much more like chemistry, and less like dice

Well, it was just too massive a piece of work, so it was dropped. All I have now is a odd tile based board game (a little bit like dominoes) and this image I made of some example world land tiles.

Acrylic on canvas. A desolate view of the windswept forests of limbo.

As ever, updating my website ends up at the bottom of my to-do list for months on end. Well, I've got a pile or stuff sorted and ready to be uploaded, so expect light flurries of random artwork and other nonsense over the next few days and weeks.

The long term forecast is still of significant dry patches, but we'll see I guess. It helps that I know that at least a few people actually look at this rubbish. Here's a sneak peek

It would be easy to think that work on my current personal project 'Moon' has ground to a halt. I can tell you for sure that isn't the case. Though to the casual observer a few hours a month probably looks very much like halted.

A great deal of my time has been spent making bits of engine code that do specific but ultimately non-game things like generate voxel based collision meshes so the character doesn't float about in space, load file from the internet so I can support updates or just a renderer that doesn't crash at random times so I don't get angry emails from players.

As I've now decided to care and worry a little less about the quality of and size of the posts I put on here I thought I'd share something purely experimental. This is the result of some of my research into the perfect choice for natural light colours. Intensity from top to bottom and temperature from left to right.

In the past I'd have worried about my lack of a complete description here and probably not posted this. Times have changed, enjoy the pretty colours.

And so it seem that nearly six months has passed since I last gave any indication of activity. I suspect that finally deciding I needed a change from my old job and going through the process of ending over ten years of employment has taken it's toll on my capacity for concentration outside of work.

Very happily, I now work alongside the highly skilled ninjas at Double Eleven on some really exciting projects. It's great to have my brain worked again, learning lot's of new stuff, getting into a new code base and generally firing on all cylinders. It's also great to be looking forward again.

On the down side this has all meant that I've not really achieved much progress on Project Moon, or anything else for that matter. Hopefully not being out of the house for 12 hours a day anymore will mean I get some serious development time in the not too distant future.