Limit displayed steam names in high score listings.
Fix level achievements.
New Known Issues
You are currently allowed to change the name of player 1 (the player tied to the steam account). Note, that if you do this, then the score will only qualify for the local high scores.
When using the keyboard, adjustments to ship colors and player name indicate left/right arrows, but in fact it is both left/right and up/down that can be used. Note that for colors, this is primary and secondary colors, and for player name this is left/right movement and up/down to cycle the letter.
While developing Solaroids I composed a number of tracks of various styles in my modest home studio. The following are those included with Solaroids: Prologue as the default backing tracks. I hope you enjoy!
Solaroids: Prologue is now available to demo or purchase on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live under the Games/Indie section!! Additional information is also available on the Xbox marketplace at: Solaroids: Prologue @ Xbox.
Local Gamers in Moscow Idaho experienced the release candidate of Solaroids: Prologue first hand at the semi-annual University of Idaho event Vandal Overnight.
As a solo developer, my ultimate vision for Solaroids far outweighed my production capacity. Perhaps to a fault, I have a keen aversion to releasing inferior product, and want everything to be as close to perfect as I can. I have a list a mile long of potential things to include in the game, and they run the gamut from additional power-ups, characters, environments, backstory, engine enhancements, and multiplayer possibilities. Some of them are in the unreleased game waiting idle till I can wrap them up to my satisfaction. I guess you could say that my eyes definitely have been bigger than my belly so to speak. Even the software I used for project management no longer works on modern iOS devices and I have to use my old iPod 4th generation to manage the project!
To focus my efforts on actually completing a version of the project, I decided some time ago to hone in on a much simpler game. Something that is still in the spirit of Solaroids, and still fun to play for Asteroid fans whether it be alone or with friends. I’ve given it the name Solaroids: Prologue, and development has been wrapping up over the summer culminating in a undesired mad rush to iron out any kinks on the Xbox 360 version of the build.
The game is currently being reviewed for inclusion in the Xbox Live Indie Games catalog for the Xbox 360. It may very well be the absolute last game to be published to the service as submissions have been closed. Not exactly the claim to fame I originally intended, more like a booby prize. It will still be an achievement for me personally, as I have slowly inched closer towards a releasable title. Those that keep asking, when is it going to come out, can finally have an answer other than, when it’s done.
So without further ado here is the first and probably only trailer for Solaroids: Prologue:
A while back (was it really over a year ago) I started collecting some real nebula photos to start adding some more variety to my backgrounds. The technique I use is to take a real nebula photo and process the photo, sometimes completely by hand, to extract all the clutter/stars so that I can later re-composite them back into my scenes. I’ve got a technique that works pretty well now for many images. Specifically, so I don’t have to hand edit as much with the clone tool. I do all my bitmap work in GIMP, which is a wonderful open source graphics package.
OK, so the last one isn’t a nebula, but same technique.
It’s getting to the point where I had probably start making some teaser trailers… So here is the first one made in the simple, but seems to work pretty well, Windows Live Movie Maker. The music was made on my 4th Gen iTouch using Music Studio. What a sweet little App. It’s like having Sonar X1 at your fingertips — well not quite, but still pretty cool, and did I say portable!
With spring here, development has slowed down quite a bit. There are just to many yard projects that have to get done!
Recently, I did manage to spend a little time adding a few new features. I adapted the XNA lens flare sample designed for 3D games to add the effect to my sun. It worked out pretty nicely (and cheap to implement). I swapped out the occlusion queries with a simple 2d query to calculate the percentage of the sun that is on screen which then controls the visibility and intensity of the effect. This technique doesn’t allow sprites to block the flare effect though, but it sufficient for what I wanted to achieve.
New lens flare effect
I while back while I was re-drawing my stand in graphics in Inkscape, I drew some pieces to build up a snake like enemy. Combining that with some prototype serpent code I wrote quite a while ago (I can’t believe it was still functioning with all my engine changes) results in the following.
New serpent enemy
Right now each segment can take a hit, and that hit results in a cascading set of mini explosions down to the tail, which then explodes leaving the serpent a little shorter. I plan on changing things around to show the energy being directed down to the tail – maybe the typical arcade shooter flashing sprite effect. Another thought is to have the serpent break into multiple pieces that then form a head and continue to pursue.
Here’s a video showing the two new features. If you watch closely as the serpent ship comes on the screen you can actually see the segments being added which is a current bug. The ship builds itself over time after it has been added to the scene. As I use a queuing mechanism to record the orientation of the segments in the kinematics chain based on time delays. Final code will build the entire chain at construction time.
I’ve been using Inkscape, a freely available open source 2d vector drawing package, to do my 2d art for Solaroids and it has been working out quite nicely. The limitations of vector art have given Solaroids a distinctively smooth style that I kind of like for a game such as this. It has a certain modernized retro-feel to it that fits perfectly considering its graphics originated many many moons ago in a different computer era.
Redux
Original
Here’s a comparison of the original player ship done in Deluxe Paint III on the Commodore Amiga vs. the new version done in Inkscape. Of course the original is being linearly interpolated by the web browser, and actually looked pretty good at it’s designed for resolution of a whopping 320x200x5bit, but the Inkscape version looks crisp and beautiful. Due to the nature of Inkscape and svg, the new version is actually resolution independent, so I can export it at whatever resolution is required. Solaroids supports 1080p and so my graphics are exported large enough to support full detail at 1920×1080.
A couple of tips when using Inkscape for game development. I export my images as png files, and unless you go into the Document Preferences and set the background color to something suitable (black instead of white in my case) you’ll get sub-pixel halos around your images when positioning, scaling, and rotating them in XNA. This appears to be due to the graphics hardware using the neighboring (fully transparent) pixel color during interpolation. It may also have something to do with the sprite sheet content processor I’m using as well.
Another cool thing about Inkscape is it remembers the export filename based on the set of shapes selected, so if you have multiple sprites in your document, you can repeatedly re-select various ones and it will remember your last filename for the selection as well as other export settings such as dpi etc. Very nice.
