So, still no demo yet. For those of you that missed the comment - the work that I get paid for takes priority, sadly. Also, I acquired an ASRock Nettop device - a portable desktop, essentially - and discovered that it runs the game unplayably slowly. And! I’ve realised that only allowing two resolutions is absolutely retarded.

Well, there’s been a little bit of progress tonight; I’ve narrowed the Nettop problem down some. It turns out that it only runs slowly when it’s in a window, so it’s most likely an issue with the NVidia graphics driver. Not a good thing, but not something that makes the game unreleasable. It having precisely one sort-of-working level and only two supported resolutions, that makes it unreleasable…

And the other things that suck? Well, it’s the spam. I’ve never expected loads of comments on here, but I didn’t expect so many spam comments. And pages-long comments, too! Why do spammers think that sort of thing will get through? Ugh.

Fiddling with the health system to make it work properly. Just punched three men into orbit.

Tempted to leave it in.

I’ve had an entire day to myself and put it to good use, so I thought I’d make a post about it to confirm that yes, I’m all set for a demo release on Saturday. Today’s been spent fiddling with a few little presentation issues. Y’see, when you’re making something that’ll be displayed on a television, like a movie or a TV show or a game, you have to make sure that all the important bits (like titles, menus and scores) all fit on the screen. Every television (even modern HD ones, or at least a very large number of them) has a ‘feature’ called overscan, which means that not every bit of the picture makes it to somewhere visible on the screen. For example, when I hook my PC up to my TV and then set the resolution to 1920×1080, all the bits around the edges of the screen (like the taskbar) don’t fit on the screen I can see. So you can imagine how important it is that I try to keep things like your score and your character and the baddies in the safe, visible area.

Target; 2009 is now aimed at a 1280×720 resolution. There was a point when it could handle any arbitrary resolution, but that’s gone now - it’s 1280×720, 640×480 or nothing at all. (Don’t worry if your monitor can’t handle 720p, you’re not really losing anything - the 2xSai antialiasing technique only takes us so far.) Now, you might think that this makes things nice and easy for me - TV or monitor, and don’t worry about safe areas on monitors. Well, it’s not that simple unfortunately - what about the people who’ll be using 640×480 on a TV?

Anyway, it’s all rejigged now, menus and all. The only downside is that I can’t find the cable I need to hook my PC up to my trusty old Standard Def telly to be sure that the text is all readable. I’m hoping that one of you lot will be able to test it for me later.

So I was going to rewrite the game from scratch, remember? Well, that seems like a great idea for somebody with more free time than me. Ah, I remember ten years ago, when I had loads and loads of free time - when I had time to do things like write the most advanced isometric engine in the world and waste it on a remake of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator… But I digress. Here’s a quick recap on what’s happened since last time:

1) I learnt an awful lot about XNA, the XBox 360 and designing for the average player.

Watching other people play your game is a very useful thing. Equally useful is sending your game out to people you’ve never met and finding out what they think of it, especially when you want your game to be easily accessible. Interface design is a very important thing that I’ve always skimped on (because it’s dull to write), but I think I’m over my fear of it now.

There are some things that the 360 does automatically that are very useful. The XBox Live IDs, for example, are brilliant. No more ‘typing’ your name in with a joystick - the machine remembers you and puts you right on the scoreboard with no messing about. That would be an excellent thing to have on the PC, but sadly it won’t be possible for Target; 2009 unless I write it myself. (Games For Windows Live doesn’t support more than one person logging in at a time, and Linux doesn’t support Games For Windows Live, unsurprisingly.) So I’m going to have to write it myself.

Automatic patching is a very useful thing. I actually have a fully-working patch system already, so obviously that’ll be something we can all benefit from when the inevitable bugs emerge.

Online high score tables are also a very cool thing, and are actually quite straightforward to code, given the automatic patching already works - so that’s something that’ll be going in. But the replacement Live ID system will be needed for that to work.

2) I finally got around to playing GTA IV

And it’s dull, dreary and depressing. Realism (not to be confused with consistency) has no place in videogames.

3) I played the hell out of Batman: Arkham Asylum

And that was when I realised that Target; 2009 needs to support combos. So it does. (That’s what I did yesterday.) If you get the chance you should totally play Batman: Arkham Asylum, by the way, it’s the best game I’ve played in years.

4) I played a lot of Spectrum games

I also converted a tiny chunk of Mad Dog McCree to the Spectrum, light gun and all. Assembly language has some strange hold over me - every once in a while I can no longer resist and just have to knock something up in archaic form.

So, where to from here? Well, I’m not going to rewrite anything from scratch when I don’t really have to, and especially not when there’s a perfectly good game sitting right here in front of me. How about this - next Saturday I’m going to post a demo on here. It’ll be at least one fully playable level of Target; 2009. And it’ll include the launcher so that you’ll be able to keep up to date forevermore. And it’ll work on both Linux and Windows.

Stay tuned.

The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me. I spent one whole week taking a multiple book-led crash course in C# and XNA, with the goal being to write a game for the XBox 360. Not this game of course; I don’t think I could make it portable across Linux then (and there are a few of you Linux-users, I know!). The Tenth Crusade, on the other hand, has been entirely rewritten from scratch, and in a different language, and expanded on. (I have a not-inconceivable goal of a January release, with the hope of making enough money to quit my job and write games for a living. If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m a very optimistic person. You should see my design documents.)

Now, Target; 2008 will be serving a slightly different purpose. My coding style is, well… functional is probably the nicest way of putting it. While technically C++, it is more C with classes. Target; 2006 in particular is a horrendous mess, what with its rather convoluted development story. So I’m going to rewrite it from scratch, and do it properly. I really need to up my game when it comes to C++, and this would be an excellent way to do it.

‘Madness!‘ I hear you cry. And you’re probably right. After all, most of the code is done, I just need to, y’know, finish up a few things. So I might just chicken out and rewrite the existing code. On the other hand, there are both bugs and code left from 2004, so I don’t know yet.

On the plus side, while finishing this game by the end of the year is very unlikely, it does give me more time to think up more cool stuff to put in.

So I was rewriting the level logic code (the stuff that handles the unique bits that each level has, like the train, or the unusual design of the car park) last week when I had a sudden flash of inspiration - wouldn’t all this be simpler if I did it in Lua? Lua, that fantastic scripting language that I’m using for AI handling in The Tenth Crusade and Contact Sam Cruise. So on Friday I got cracking.
(Click here to read the rest of this entry)

I don’t know about you, but I get rather irritated by games that don’t use as many of the pixels on my widescreen monitor as possible. Especially games that could really use them, like scrolling beat-’em-ups. And it seems a bit silly to get irritated at something you can fix, so…

(click the picture to view in full)

So there’ll be no more black borders down the sides of the screen (although there’ll still be some at the top and bottom - but where else am I going to put all the health bars, eh?)

Here’s a sneak peek at the first new level, before anything like gameplay has been added to it…

Er, for Target; 2008, I mean. Last seen on the second level of Renegade…

…Bertha’s returned to give everybody another pasting:

EDIT: And boy, does she. Here’s another video, this time of me getting my ass handed to me on level two.

It’s just a bit of the first level, so no surprises that - background aside - it doesn’t look hugely different from Target; 2006. Also it’s just me playing, and the AI is being surprisingly friendly.