Extreme Makeover: Prospectus Edition

Hey guys I am very excited to bring you more news about Prospectus. I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post, but I have been busy making some changes that I hope will benefit more people down the road. Over the past few weeks I have been struggling with developing Prospectus only for .Net capable machines. I feel like I would be able to reach more people with Prospectus if I was not tied down to .Net machines. I have therefore decided to migrate the existing version of Prospectus (as well as continue on from here) to the Java language using Netbeans and the Slick2D Library.

It is my intention that more people will be able to play this game because I'm making it more platform-independent than before. I hope this does not upset too many people who were using this as an Xna-specific learning tool. I will do my best to make any code-related posts as generic as possible in order to continue to be useful and informative for the Xna community.

As always I want to thank everyone who reads this blog as it is a huge motivational tool for me to keep working on Prospectus. I will be bringing you new posts as soon as I finish porting the existing version of the game to Java, but in the meantime I hope you take the time to try out Prospectus for yourself and don't lose faith in me...I'm going to keep building this game into something great.

Until next time!

Thoughts on the Future of Prospectus

Hey guys it's been a few days now since I released the first Alpha of Prospectus and I must say 'Thank You'. I've seen a great response from you, the community, toward my game and I'm very excited about the future of this game. I've been working hard on adding in new features to the game to make it feel more like a game than just a blank sandbox world and I will be posting on here my updates as I make them.

I am also working very hard to come up with an effective way to make the newer versions of Prospectus automatically download and update your installed version, without requiring you to manually install them each time. I really appreciate everyone who has visited the Prospectus website and I would love to hear any feedback you may have at prospectus.game@gmail.com.

Until next time...

Prospectus Alpha 1.0 Is Here

Hello everyone, I am pleased to announce that I have chosen to name my game Prospectus, as it was the most popular in the poll. I appreciate everyone who voted in the poll and am excited about uploading Prospectus for you to download and play!

I have been hard at work creating a basic website for Prospectus for you to get your free copy of the Alpha 1.0 version. It's been a long time coming that I would distribute a game online and I am very excited to get feedback from the community about Prospectus. I have set up an email address as well that I would like you to direct any comments, feedback, bugs, issues, etc. of any kind to so that I can better organize my Prospectus-related traffic.

Again, I really appreciate everyone who reads this blog and look forward to hearing what you think about Prospectus. Please understand that right now, there is only basic mining and inventory in the game and it is very similar to early versions of Terraria and Minecraft, but rest assured I will be adding unique gameplay features very soon.

There will be detailed instructions on how to install Prospectus on the web site, along with a Read Me text file to assist with installation, basic gameplay, and controls.

You can find Prospectus here and feel free to contact me with any comments and feedback here. Thanks again everyone and have fun!

Boring Work Before First Build

Hey guys, I know it's been a couple of days since my last post and I wanted to say that I'm still here and still working on the game, though I'm now in the boring part of cleaning up the code that I have before I make this first version ready for download.

I would like to apologize because I do not like to go this long between posts. I'm making minor tweaks to the code that will hopefully make it less buggy when it's ready for download. I'm getting very excited to see what everyone thinks about it up to this point. I would like to say to everyone who intends on downloading it to keep in mind that at this point it is basically a straight clone of Terraria. My plan is to make this game more of a Zelda-style game than a Terraria/Minecraft-style game before I'm done with it.

What do I mean by Zelda-style? I mean more intricate dungeons with bosses in the dungeons, different levels (as opposed to biomes), more NPC interaction with special items awarded (similar to Zelda games), and many more features to come! I hope that everyone appreciates this game and I would ask that anyone who decides to download it and has any type of comment (positive or negative) about it to let me know in a comment or in an email (I'll have an email address set up just for this game by Friday).

Thank you to everyone who follows this blog and game!

Alpha 1.0 Preview

Hey guys I'm just giving you a quick update about the latest addition to the game...updated, custom sprites for the player! I am very excited about this latest addition, mostly because I am not really an artist, just ask my wife :)

I'm getting even more excited about launch day, which I am glad to announce will be this next Friday, July 15. I will be uploading the first build of the game, mostly bug-free probably after I get back from the midnight showing of Harry Potter.

I will leave you now with a preview of my player:

And don't forget to vote for what the name of the game should be.

Player Animation Is Here

Hey guys it's been a few days since my last post, but I've been busy adding in one of the last things before my very first release of my game, player animation! I've been busy getting the game ready for it's first release and am pleased to announce that I now have a player in the game instead of just a rectangle.

I will say here that the sprite that I currently have in the game is just a dummy sprite I made for an rpg I was making and will definitely not be the final version of what the player will look like. I'm also including a poll on the blog for some names for the game to see what the popular choice will be for a name.

As for what I did to include player animation, I used a modified version of Nick Gravelyn's AnimatedSprite class and FrameAnimation class in his Tile Engine series for my game. I will likely have to modify those classes even further as the game progresses, but for now it works and that's good enough for me.

The features that you have to look forward to in the first build are,

1. Basic mining and placing of blocks
2. Basic inventory that shows the blocks the player has mined (scrollable)
3. Random map and terrain generation with basic caves
4. Player sprite with walking animations
5. Dirt and Rock blocks

I would like to say 'Thank You' to everyone who reads this blog and I hope that you find my game entertaining. I am very excited about where this game can go in the future and look forward to hearing what you guys think of it as well.

Thanks again,

Jeff

Revamping the Terrain and Caves

Hey guys I've been busy reworking the terrain and cave generation code to give smoother and less rigid results. I've also cleaned up the HUD to show less things and not clutter up the screen as much. Enjoy!