Posts from year 2014:
Two new paintings! Tags: Art OS X support added along with an update! Environmental Station Alpha on Greenlight – new trailer and demo out! News: ESA news coming Guess I’ve got sound problems …Actual LD30 results Tags: Games, Small games, Ludum Dare LD30 results Tags: Games, Small games, Ludum Dare Ludum Dare #30! Tags: Games, Ludum Dare ESA’s current situation, part 2 Tags: Games, ESA, Plans, Article CRYSTALS
Posted on 2014-10-25 15:40
Posted on 2014-10-11 02:18
Announcement: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/updates/323687528/1412982809
OS X version of the Environmental Station Alpha Demo is now available at http://www.hempuli.com/esa ! The file size is rather large (roughly 140 Mb) because it contains a wrapper made with Wineskin by doh123 (wineskin.urgesoftware.com/). Unfortunately the port wont work with most gamepads.
The Windows version was also updated:
– Made the gamepad control settings properly available
– Credits can be left if viewed from the main menu
– Slight polish here and there
Enormous thanks to Pyry Kontio for handling the wrapping, testing and optimization!
Get the new version or grab the mac version here!
Posted on 2014-10-08 01:11
Yeah, that’s true! The game’s votable on Steam Greenlight!
Please be a kind person and give your vote if you want to see the game on Steam!
Demo and new trailer available here!
Posted on 2014-10-02 15:27
I finished a new trailer and some website stuff yesterday – there’s some finalizing to be done but expect some big updates in a couple of days! I guess I wont say more for now!!!
!!!!!
1!!11!!
!
Posted on 2014-09-18 17:55
To be honest, work on ESA has been really smooth lately! Joonas “Kissa3” Turner joined our team to make sound effects, and against my fears his sounds (which are amazing) work really well with Roope “Noby” Mäkinen‘s musics (which are amazing). Amazing!
Multimedia Fusion can play sounds either “on its own”, shuffling them to empty channels without the user having to worry about it, or on specified channels. I’ve usually played music and looping ambient noises on a specified channel, and other SFX without a specified channel. Usually this works well, since I can adjust the volume levels of the channels to make some fade effects etc, and don’t have to really care about what happens to the “generic” SFX.
However, now I’ve ran into a bit of a problem with this system (although I’ve been aware of it before). I can’t properly alter the volume of the samples not played on a specified channel, and thus the only volumes I can adjust are the Main Volume (affecting both SFX and music) and Music Volume (affecting the channel the musics are played on). In my older games I’ve just ignored this and put only “music” and “general volume” options in the settings menu, but in ESA the sound effects and musics are pretty different in style, and thus need to be balanced more carefully (not to mention that I’d like to do my very best with this game!)
Fortunately I think I’ve found a way to manually work around this, by making a system where every sample is played on a specified channel so that the game is always aware of “free” channels and only plays SFX on those. This is somewhat cumbersome to do and will require some extra attention to stuff like several sound effects playing at the same time, but I think it’ll be worth it.
…So I guess the point of this post is that I’ve got some work to do!!
(Also working on a new trailer)
Posted on 2014-09-17 03:49
The voting phase of Ludum Dare #30 ended last weekend, and my game fared pretty well considering that I entered it in the ‘jam’ category with teams allowed and generally more lax rulings. In the end, I ranked
9th in category “Fun”
11th in category “Mood”
57th in category “Audio” (The song in the game was made by Cotton-in-law, so this is very much his achievement!)
70th in category “humour”
…and 10th overall!
I was really surprised at how much people liked the game! Maybe I should keep working on it…?
Anyway, the download link is in the post below, here’s a timelapse/gameplay video:
Posted on 2014-08-26 10:31
My weekend was pretty busy so I didn’t make it in time for the compo, but I wanted to get out some kind of a version of the game so I made something at the last minute for the Jam (less strict rules, one extra day, teams allowed). I’m pretty happy with the result and will probably combine what I made now with some engine things I’ve experimented with to get a really smooth base game! :) A person called Cotton-in-law was inspired by the game’s visuals and made a song for me. Thanks a lot! Here’s his SoundCloud page: https://soundcloud.com/cotton-in-law
GET THE GAME
Posted on 2014-08-24 05:20
Taking a short break from ESA to work on an LD game. Yay! Theme: Connected Worlds.
Posted on 2014-08-20 21:27
(Trying out new logos for the game)
So, I promised some news to give you early this week. As usual, things weren’t quite as simple and dandy as I thought, so I can’t give as certain updates about the situation as I hoped last weekend. Anyway!
– I’ve discussed the soundwork stuff with Noby, and we’ve agreed on a deadline at the beginning of september! This means that by then the game will be in release state, and in the meantime I’ll keep polishing and adding new optional content.
– Once again I’ve started thinking critically about how to publish the game, and considered some options with my workmates. When I made the release date estimation announcement, I hoped I’d have a definite plan for this by now, but it turns out (unsurprisingly) that before even considering approaching a publisher of any kind, I’ll have to do some (a lot of) extra work. I’m really lost when it comes to who to contact and when, but I’ll try to get this settled down as soon as possible.
I’m terribly sorry about all the missed promises and deadlines, but most of them were made with a freeware game in mind (and without thinking about things other than “how quickly could I theoretically be done with this?”) I really hope I can get over with this post-game stuff fast, because it’s really not my field.
Posted on 2014-08-11 20:26
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