New Game WIP: Maxwell Mouse - development blog

[Graham Humphrey]

Hello everyone.

You may (or perhaps, may not) remember the demo of Maxwell Mouse we released last year. It's been very stop/start, but the full version is in progress, although there's a long way to go.

To help people's interest, and to give me an incentive to get a move on, I've started up a blog to track development, and you can find that here:

http://remaindersoftware.wordpress.com/

I'll try and update it as often as I can, maybe two or three times a month, depending on how things go and how much time I have. Hopefully people will enjoy it, and I'll post things on this thread too (and feel free to ask questions, offer ideas, and so on too!).

Thanks

[Gzegzolka]

Thanks It was great game. Bit too short, but with great sense of humor. So it works well as a demo. Hope to see full version one day

[DamienD]

Nice work Graham; I did check out the demo and was pretty cool

...that reminds me; still need to try out "Downfall"

[Amigajay]

Good stuff! I must get around to trying the maxwell demo!

[Adrian Browne]

Physical release? It's all the rage these days. I'll buy.
Bookmarked the blog.

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks guys for the nice comments. I'm quite pleased that this blog has got a lot of attention already.

I have been thinking about a physical release for a while but it looks like Tanks Furry got there first and is going to give me an awful lot to live up to

I was glad people liked the humour in the demo version... I want to keep the same 'tone' in the full game for the most part. The engine will be improved slightly, in that some of the NPCs will hopefully be animated rather than merely exist as static objects, collision detection will be fine-tuned and more efficient speed-wise and we've got a prettier, bigger status-panel (which has decreased the size of the playing area by 16 pixels, but actually makes things a bit easier for me when it comes to drawing the maps).

There will be four levels, and although level one actually has fewer screens than the demo, it's a lot tighter design-wise and will have plenty packed in, because it's been designed from the outset as a 'proper' level map, as opposed to the demo which was meant to be just a test but ended up growing into something you could properly play. I envisage levels two to four will be a little bigger but not too much as to make it manageable to develop

I'm off to do a little more work this morning and hopefully in the next seven or eight days I'll have the second entry in the blog up.

Thanks all!

[Adrian Browne]

Good read. Some if any problems you encounter would be good to hear about too. Also a sneak preview/video of your game/tile editor would be cool too.

Do you have parallax scrolling in the game and how is this implemented in the editor?

[Predseda]

I apologise myself very much as I am one of the main reasons game is not completed yet. My two children just make me busy and I cannot do a graphics job that game depends on as my Dpaint time is more than random. I would do some unimportant graphics that doesn't affect the game itself (between - level pictures, intro screens etc.), but I am not reliable enough for a tileset.

[Lonewolf10]

No problem Predseda, the family always comes first

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Adrian Browne

Good read. Some if any problems you encounter would be good to hear about too. Also a sneak preview/video of your game/tile editor would be cool too.

Do you have parallax scrolling in the game and how is this implemented in the editor?

Thanks for your comments! Yes, as it goes on I do intend to write about any problems that crop up, and the process behind the game design, code structure etc in general as I think that sort of thing will be of interest to those who perhaps don't have any, or perhaps only a little, experience of doing this.

I also intend to do some 'behind the scenes' type stuff with the software I use to help create this game. That's possibly a couple of articles down the line but it is something I very much want to do.

Parallax? No, in fact there's no scrolling whatsoever. It is produced very much as an old-fashioned platform/arcade adventure sort of thing - hopefully that is the sort of feel and atmosphere it will give out but with some humour and fun along the way.

Originally Posted by Predseda

I apologise myself very much as I am one of the main reasons game is not completed yet. My two children just make me busy and I cannot do a graphics job that game depends on as my Dpaint time is more than random. I would do some unimportant graphics that doesn't affect the game itself (between - level pictures, intro screens etc.), but I am not reliable enough for a tileset.

Don't worry about it. Real life gets in the way for us all. I certainly wouldn't even think about saying you were 'one of the main reasons' it's not finished - I'm in charge and haven't done very much and as I'm coding the thing and designing the levels I would say I've done well to slow it down myself There are other people helping me out now anyway so I need to get my finger out and also communicate better with them.

[s2325]

Nice work as always

[saimon69]

i did fluke on providing music for the demo (was uberoptimistic in my skills) but if you need some more music lmk, now am well warmed up

[Graham Humphrey]

Thank you, I will definitely bear it in mind! I will be after MED/OctaMED rather than standard mod files though

[saimon69]

need to find a med compatibile tracker then...

[Graham Humphrey]

The second entry of my blog is now live

[Gzegzolka]

Good to see progress

[Adrian Browne]

Good read.

[Graham Humphrey]

New article now up, this time taking a look at some of the tools used in development in a suitably half-arsed manner (I suspect).

[Predseda]

Damn, I still can't work out how to attach the logo to Remainder Software link in lemonamiga

[Graham Humphrey]

Well if you can work it out, it would be really cool to have it linked to on Lemon! That should generate a bit more interest.