Weekly progress post #49: I keep forgetting to disable the welcome message Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates Image Generation Algorithm Tags: Other, Procedural generation, Small games Procedural generation is dear to me. Tags: Other, Procedural generation More image generation, yay Tags: Games, Other, Plans, Procedural generation Weekly progress post #48: Tutorial Tags: Games, ESA 2, Other, Regular updates, Small games, Streaming Weekly progress post #47: Slime Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates, Procedural generation Weekly progress post #46: Lasers Tags: Games, ESA 2, Regular updates, Streaming Procedural generation, yay!!! Also Ludum Dare results Tags: Games, Ludum Dare, Procedural generation, Other Weekly progress post #45: Drill beetles! Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates Weekly progress post #44: New powerup and lotsa tweaks Tags: Games, ESA 2, Streaming, Regular updates Pages
Posted on 2017-01-26 02:02
In today’s stream I added a new room and a new enemy while tweaking a couple existing levels, fixing some bugs and in general making the new area feel like its own thing. Surprisingly the moving platform bug I started the stream with ended up being fairly trivial to fix! More lurk ahead, though…
Posted on 2017-01-22 18:07
Well then!!
I decided to release the image generation algorithm I’ve been working on. I feel that I went kinda overboard with the legal license stuff but it seems that those are the norm, so hopefully everything is okay there. Please tell me if not! The zip contains an executable, the source file, lua files for the algorithm and a variant with wrapping enabled as well as a readme file.
Again, this algorithm is heavily based on the WaveFunctionCollapse algorithm by mxgmn.
To open the source file, you’ll need two MMF2 extensions:
– Surface by Looki
– Xlua by Justin Aquadro
GET THE ALGORITHM HERE
Posted on 2017-01-20 23:54
After that previous post I decided to finally add a ‘Procedural generation’ tag for my blog, and went through all the posts to tag them if applicable (with games like Excavatorrr I mostly tagged posts with pics!)
It made me very happy to realize that my blog has essentially begun with a procgen project (Excavatorrr) and continued to feature said thing frequently through the years. If I look at the stuff I’ve made, a nice amount of my games incorporate procedural generation in some form (Masjin, CWOUN, Excavatorrr, Paradise Fort, World Generator off the top of my head), and this recent interest in things like the WFC algorithm and Markov chains provide evidence that my interest in procgen hasn’t really waned. Quite the opposite, I guess!
So yeah. Thanks, procedural generation. U the best.
[Addendum from 2024: in hindsight it feels really bizarre why I chose to make procedural generation a 'thing' or a part of my identity in this way; I even updated my Twitter profile to say 'also lots of procedural generation' around this time, I think! I do like procgen a lot and have used it in a lot of projects, but in some way it just feels odd that I needed to make this kind of a statement at this time. Hmm.]
Posted on 2017-01-20 23:28
So! I spent some more time working on my image generator algorithm based on/inspired by the Wave Function Collapse algorithm.
Here’s what I ended up with the last version of my first generator:
At that point it was really really slow even with very small input pics (you’ll notice that the output image is smaller to help; the gifs don’t represent the actual generation speeds!)
I decided to re-do the whole thing, this time trying to implement as much as possible in lua. In the end I got it working much, much faster:
I implemented some more things after taking that gif, but sadly didn’t make any new compilation gifs. I think this next one is done with a later version (tried to make an input that’d generate roguelike-like areas). Fairly sure I kept improving the algorithm after that, too!
Finally, I made some simple roguelike-like map generation using the final iteration of the algorithm! First with a more basic “tunnels, walls (and water for some reason)” pattern:
…And then with a more complicated pattern:
All in all I’m really happy with how this thing turned out, even though it’s not really a match for the WFC algorithm. I think this could be useful when generating levels, although I think it’d have to be comboed with multiple input images to really work. Maybe first an input image that defines various ‘areas’, then separate inputs for all those area types? I’d like to release the source of this but I think I’ll have to ask ExUtumno who made the WFC algorithm first, since my algorithm is very heavily inspired by it.
Posted on 2017-01-20 01:03
Today’s stream was fairly low; a new enemy was added as well as a new room (although said room contains some special features!) I spent a bunch of time on a tutorial for dynamic tiling I had promised previously; at first I intended to make a video tutorial but that didn’t turn out so great so I went with a more basic tutorial instead. The file is for Multimedia Fusion 2, but should work in Clickteam Fusion 2.5 as well.
GET THE TUTORIAL HERE!
I’m pretty happy with the fact that I’m currently working on the penultimate ‘normal’ area of ESA 2; after this and the next one, things are either optional, smaller parts of existing areas or otherwise nonstandard. Gives me hope that this one’ll be actually finished eventually!!!
Posted on 2017-01-12 01:44
Today’s stream saw the return of an old friend, made in the very beginning of the game but taken out due to changes in plans. I’ll have to tweak said entity to make it fit its new home, but I think things’ll be fine. Also spent time on making slime feel more slimy and adjusting the area currently in the works, as seen above! Next week we’ll get into some even more slimy areas, though!
(Aaghh this game has been in development for 2 years soon)
(Also toyed around with the procedural generation algorithm! It’s been a fun little sideproject and I’ll try to utilize the results in a roguelike or something (inspiration from Caves of Qud, which successfully uses the actual WFC algorithm for dungeon generation, as far as I know. I think my homebrew algorithm could manage something similar, even if not equally consistently!)
Posted on 2017-01-05 01:25
I wonder if a progress post is already called that? Whatever. I’ll try to reduce the amount of gifs I post for a bit so that I don’t end up revealing everything about the game before release!!
Today’s stream was fairly laid-back, but I managed to add 2 new enemies, a new trap, a new room, some decoratives and a new platforming element. The aforementioned platforming element is kind of an odd one and it’ll be interesting to see if it’ll be fun to utilize, but at least it shouldn’t be overly frustrating(?) There’s again a bunch of behind-the-scenes work that needs doing and I’m dreading that, but hopefully I’ll manage to muster the motivation to tackle it. Last week I didn’t have time to stream at all, so I’ll try to make up for that sometime in the future with an extra stream.
Posted on 2017-01-04 21:35
After seeing the developer of Caves of Qud utilize the Wave-function collapse generation algorithm successfully for generating roguelike environments, I felt like it’d be fun to try to implement something akin to that in Multimedia Fusion 2. The original algorithm (You can find it here!) was written in C# and after trying to parse the code for a while I gave up and thought up how to approach the algorithm based on the general description of it on the git repository. The result isn’t nearly as nice and tidy, but it was fun to dabble with and it just might be useful for something if I can get it optimized a bit.
First try:
After some tweaks:
Current state:
As you can see, the algorithm suffers from slight misalignments here and there, making the results less neat, as well as small holes that are technically ‘handled’ by the algorithm but for one reason or another don’t get assigned anything. The generation is also very slow, something that can’t be seen in the gifs.
Anyway!! Ludum Dare #37 results arrived! Sadly, Salvage Star didn’t fare very well – it got in the top50 in the Graphics category, but that’s it. Very much understandable since the game ended up being really hard and frustrating + I guess people have kind of seen the ‘singular huge enemy you climb’ -thing already at this point. Still, I of course kinda wish it had fared better! Maybe next time. At least the game gave me some good data on how to get moving platforms to play nice.
Download Salvage Star
Posted on 2016-12-23 02:24
In today’s stream I finished a new trap/hazard, added a new enemy, started working on a new area and drew some new tilesets. Also worked a bit on the space portion of the map, along with implementing some new powerup functionality and fixing a couple bugs. I’m pretty happy with the progress tonight, to be honest, even though it initially felt like I had accomplished relatively little. Still lots to do, of course, but the fact that I’m now actually “surrounding” the various space stations is making everything feel way more ‘final’ in manageable, it’s sweet!
Posted on 2016-12-15 01:02
Today I started of kinda slow due to not feeling too well; however, the pace kinda picked up over time and I ended up implementing some nice little things. Among these were 1 new room, adjusting several others, fixing many bugs, scrapping an old powerup and implementing another, decorating some areas and discussing about certain design things with the chat. The reaper enemies shown here were made earlier, though.
There are multiple large things looming in the future that I’ll have to re-implement; this’ll be fairly annoying but the results will hopefully be worth it! Biggest of these is reverting the collision code back to what it originally was – I already re-implemented it once to allow for better moving platforms, but now that my knowledge of lua is better I can return to the old, simpler system and handle the moving platforms via lua code. As a result, several other things will become easier to implement while the moving platforms will hopefully end up being way less buggy!
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