The project IS NOT abandoned, or dropped, or otherwise being left in the dust. The whole issue with finding an arist simply halted progress for a bit, which is just in time for me to announce that I’m working on a personal project for the IGF this year, and hope to get it published on steam (or through some other publisher) to sell by the following year (hopefully around Q1 2011).

Progress on BK will resume next year (Maybe by this time, possibly a bit sooner) when this project is all out of the way. I’ll be getting a team together to do some hardcore professional work on BK after I work alone on the engine for a year or so.

I (SunnyKatt) opened a personal website for this new project: sunnykatt.com

Remember to Subscribe to the SunnyKatt site by Email so you can stay in touch without having to remember to check back for news!

Thanks guys for the understanding and support. I love you too. -SunnyKatt

Ed has a nice simplistic style with his sprites, so the game should be easier on the eyes and he should help our work go a lot faster.

He is a hobbyist casual game developer and we’re eager to get Build 2 finished and released so we can start working on Build 3.

We’re starting to approach that point where the game will start to have more replay value and addictive properties. Those will be coming around Build 3 or 4, and so far we are on-track to releasing Build 4 before the IGF deadline!

After we get enough stuff from him that we can render a whole scene using the game engine we will post some screenshots here to show you guy.

Welcome to the team, Ed!

WE MADE A BIG GAME UPDATE TODAY, CHECK OUT THAT POST! http://blearekingdoms.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/big-progress-report-26-2-10/

After talking it over with the other team members, we’ve decided that it would be best to look for a pixel (sprite) artist for Bleare Kingdoms.

A sprite artist would allow us to be much more efficient and save us time as we try to release Build 4 before the IGF 2011 deadline.

Anyone can apply, whether officially or unofficially. So here is a basic description of what is going on:

Job Description:

Team Pixel Artist. You will be making the pixel art for Bleare Kingdoms (and if you hang around long enough, possibly other games of ours).

This is an unpaid (volunteer) position. Because we are not (at least right now) selling any of our games and we are a hobbyist team, you will be a hobbyist pixel artist.

Information, presented in Q&A form:

How much time to I have to devote to my team?

This is a hobbyist position, so you can do this in your free time or whenever. As long as we get the grapihcs we need for the next build, it doesn’t really matter. You won’t have to sacrifice your other hobbies and you won’t have to waste all of your free time working on our team. However, if we need graphics from you badly, we would prefer you didn’t hold us up.

How long will this position last for?

We would like to have you as long as we possibly could, but we understand that things come up in life and you may be forced to leave sometime down the road. We ask that you be sure you can at least be with us for a year or more. You’re joining a team, not taking up some freelance position for a little flash game. ;)

Do I have to be a certain age or have experience?

We don’t care about what age you are, as long as you are mature on the internet you are fine. As for experience, we don’t require any. That doesn’t mean you can’t be good at what you do – you’re applying for an artist position, you had better be an artist. We will be looking through sample work of people that submitted to join so hopefully we can choose the level of skill we are aiming for.

What style will I have to work with and from what viewpoint?

We aren’t going to try and force you to sprite within a pre-destined style entirely. We’re going to be flexible on that, considering you are going to be the game artist. We are, however going to be specific about a few things.

1.) The art is going to be pixel art. Not photoshopped graphics and textures like in other games, this must be actual pixel art. You can use whatever program you want, mspaint works fine. Pillowshading is unacceptable.

2.) We’re going for a simpler approach than what we had last build. If you aren’t sure of what we mean, click on the download link to be taken to the buld 1 page. Notice how the grass has all kinds of weird specks and textures in it. We’re cutting back on the number of decals alot, so we want a simple base color that is easy on the eyes for the grass, and a few grass decals spread out nicely.

3.) The view is overhead, or birds-eye-view, or topdown. Whatever you call it, the camera is directly above the view of everything in the game, so be prepared to draw from that angle. We need all samples of your work in this viewpoint, because some artists can be good at a platform view but really mess up when it comes to topdown.

What benefits will I get from joining you guys?

You are joining  a team of talented people. We are not the team who makes a few games and are forgotten about, and we are not likely to drop a project. Our code is efficient, our organization is thought out, and our commitment and passion are in full force. We plan on entering Bleare Kingdoms into the IGF (Independant Games Festival) for the 2011 festival, and (hopefully) we can go down to GDC 11 to present the game and attend various IGF shows. You are not obligated to come at all, this is an option. We will be asking for blog and magazine reviews and interviews, and hopefully other outside sources will find us as we attract attention. If you are still in school and you do well here, a scholarship could be a possibility for you if you are lucky.

If we do end up deciding to sell BK, you will get a cut of the profits, so don’t worry about that. Basically, popularity and the rewards of working on a prestigious project is what is headed your way. :)

Okay, I’m in. How do I apply?

This is going to be kinda informal. You can post here saying you are interested, Email SunnyKatt at SunnyKatt@live.com, or post in a relevant thread on other websites where we are announcing this. We may request examples from you or have you sprite some stuff for us so we can get a feel for how you work. We all look forward to working with you!

KEEP IN MIND: We may not choose anyone at all in the end. This is an idea we are playing with, and we’re pretty sure we will follow through. If we cannot seem to find the candidate we want, we won’t hire one at all. Just keep this in mind when applying please. :)

-SunnyKatt

Contact Email: SunnyKatt@live.com

NOD TOPIC: http://nationofdesign.7forum.info/general-chat-f3/zekegames-bleare-kingdoms-is-hiring-a-pixel-artist-t1535.htm#34227

JANUARY:

January has been a very unproductive month. Granted, I (the programmer) was able to get some work done, but not near enough as I could have.

What happened? One weekend early in January I decided that I needed a break for a day (which is entirely okay, everyone needs a day off here and there) and so I bought the game Borderlands after seeing much praise from players of the game online. Unfortunately, unlike regular games that I buy for the purpose of letting me relax for a day, this hooked me. Really, really hooked me.

When it was getting towards the end of  January, I could safely say that was out of my system.

Originally I had bought it off of steam with my visa gift card leftover from the holidays, however after I realized the computer version did not have the enticing splitscreen co-op play and that it did have strange lag issues with my anti-virus* that had nothing to do with my computer specs, I dropped by a local store and picked up a copy for the ps3 (the last one on the shelf!).

Later a friend of mine and I played co-op a while. But after all that, I felt good. By the end of January I felt like I normally did after that initial few-days rush of getting a new great game. Except that this one took nearly a month to get out of my system.

Borderlands is a fantastic game. Fantastic. I have not played a game that good for a very long time. The last I remember feeling this way about a new game was back when the PS2 was still pretty new and I had gotten a few new games for it that later became added to my collection of favorites.

That being said, normally when I get a game I will declare within my own head that it is awesome and it is a favorite of mine, only to find out after I had beaten the game or shortly afterward that it is not as much fun anymore and no longer qualifies for such a title. So generally a game will have an “incubation period” where I cannot make judgments about it yet because I am still in that initial thrill. I can only really know how influential a game was upon my gaming life until long after I had dropped play activity for it down to the normal point where I play it on a rare casual basis.

And still, nearly two months later, I stand by the statement that it is one of my favorite games of all time. The incubation period is over, my adrenaline has returned to normal, and I can think clearly. And I remain standing by what I had said.

Being a hobbyist game programmer and designer myself, I had to think to myself and investigate exactly what made the game that fun. Fun enough that you can play through it several times without the fact that you know everything that will happen, who will die, and how many enemies that next room has.

I know that if we are to be successful in making a game that has such high replay value it must have “constant appeal” – A game that someone can play when they are bored without it hardly ever getting old and repetitive enough to turn them down. To cram so much of this renewable, exiting replay value into a game is a challenging aspect for a designer and it is something Gearbox has done very well with Borderlands. Not perfectly, but very well.** To me personally, this game had such appeal for the following main reason (there were other reasons, but this is the one I want people to understand):

Procedural Generation – This is something that, if properly integrated into the game, can create a wealth of replay value for low-cost work on the part of developer. In other words, it’s an extremely efficient method of recycling gameplay by automatically tweaking it where you should. Borderlands has procedural weapon generation and enemy placement. That means that the game generates weapons based off of various parts. The engine names them with prefixes and suffixes that automatically effect the stats of the gun and assigns various elemental effects based on rarity, which is also randomized upon the chests you open.

Another game that was able to do this very very well is Dungeon Siege. Dungeon Siege has been an all-time favorite of mine, and procedural generation is one of the reasons it sits at that position. Dungeon Siege had procedurally generated weapons that added loads of replay value to the game. Many original gameplay plans for Bleare Kingdoms were inspired off of this system from Dungeon Siege.

How we’re incorporating this idea:

While we aren’t procedurally generating entirely new weapons ourselves (for instance, using parts to make all new weapons), we’re having the engine auto-assign weapon quality based on ones you find. So, for example, our content developer makes an axe called “Brutish Cleaver” – it’s just  a regular barbaric-looking axe, there isn’t anything magical about it. When you find one in loot, the engine will automatically make it “Cracked” or “Rusty” or “Dull” or “Shoddy”. It could also improve the function of the weapon with good prefixes such as “Perfect” or “Flawless” or “Sharp” or even ones that tweak specific stats such as “heavy” or “light”.

Aside from the weapon system, the main part of our game we thought procedural generation would be best in is the world map. Every game you start, every character you make, will have their own functional game universe generated for them, from the big continents down to the individual battlefields and villages. This is something I think that will help us shine the most.

*: On my PC I use BitDefender Antivirus. While I think it is the best AntiVirus solution I have used so far, occasionally it has conflicts with some programs, and borderlands was one of them. I would get ~20 FPS max and after 30 minutes of play it would drop down to ~15. Not very fun to deal with.

**: Anothing thing borderlands did very well that I had not mentioned is the level cap. The level cap is so high you can continue to enjoy the game for a long period of time (1.7 playthroughs, it seems). The only thing I do not like about their system is that there actually is a max level. An example of a game that took care of this barrier is another favorite of mine, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Oblivion did not have a max level and actually did what we are planning on doing for Bleare Kingdoms. We’re going to try and introduce a gentle exponential levelling curve that makes getting new levels harder and harder as you level up, but without an increase too steep to see yourself at a “max”. We still want a day of playing the game to be rewarding to your character, no matter what level you are at.

FEBRUARY:

February isn’t over yet, but if you look at the checklist you will notice that we got a bunch of stuff done!

There is nothing to show you yet because the game still looks the same, all of our improvements were with AI and the engine, non-visible stuff unless you were to see a video (and we will make one to introduce Build 2 hopefully). We’ve added tons of weapon flexibility now, so you can attack someone and have them take fire damage over time though several turns, steal health, make them convert teams, and more!

Before we release build 2 we just need to revamp the graphics, re-type the manual and code-documentation, redesign the credits display on the main menu, and add a second level.

The second level that you can choose to play in Build 2 takes place in a dungeon. You have a group of heroes with magical equipment, and you have to survive wave upon wave of randomly generated attack forces including various sorts of monsters and military units. All of this functionality is actually available through the mod system, so a regular mod creator could have made all that too!

As for the graphical revamp, I’ll make a new post about that next. :)

-SunnyKatt, Lead Programmer and Designer

We’re changing up the way we release builds. Instead of builds that take forever to release and are packed with new features and practically feel like a different game, we’re going to release smaller, more frequent builds.

Summarized:

What does this mean?

The Good:

Builds are released more often – no more dealing with the god-awful gaps between releases that end up loosing us popularity and allow time for people to forget to keep looking after this game. With more freuquent builds that seem just-over-the-corner, the game will seem to improve faster (even though that will stay the same) and modders and community members won’t have to deal with nasty slumps in between builds.

The Bad:

Builds are smaller – each one won’t have an absolutely crazy effect on how the game is played, and they won’t add enough new features to make you play hours more over the previous ones. Two to three of these new builds will pack the same features as one of the old ones.

Some of the items on the build 2 list (spells, skills, minimap, ranged weapon revamp) are moved to build 3, which will be the actual finish of the battle system. D:

Okay, so  now that you get that, you may want to head over to the checklist and see what we took off to make build 2 come out sooner. Build 2 is actually going to be a bit bigger than we would like anyway because we already got so much done.

Fake Progress report:

These past couple weekends we’ve been working on revamping the AI and collision system, namely the pathfinding. I’ve managed to port the pathfinding engine to the lovely A* algorithm, which makes our ai never ever get lost when trying to someplace, however it’s slower, so I’ll be implementing it with zoning ai that should make it fast again, but me more prone to a few stupid decisions (none of which will lose the game for them or get them lost, of course).

I just got through a patch of really really irritating code drama though, so soon (ex: after the new year or so) we should see a bunch more stuff turn green on the list. After that, we need to take a few weekends and do the GFX revamp, and then the list should all be green. And you know what happens when they all turn green…

SunnyKatt

If you go check the Checklist, you’ll notice a couple of things have turned a beautiful green.

I managed to show them all off with a single screenshot (yay!)

Notice:

The HUD is gone, excpet for the stats of the unit you selected and the end turn button. The other button you see is a notifier that tells you if you’ll have enough AP to take an action after you move to the cursor.

There’s a horse (yay!) and a guy riding it. Calvary. With working collisions. Oh yes. Notice: I actually took my time spriting the horse – trying to get a style down for the rest of the graphical revamp later. Check it out: 

It’s in widescreen – this isn’t default! It’s a custom resolution! Now anyone can have the game fit their monitor, yay! (Shown at my 1440×900 resolution)

Screenshot: http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/71/horseshudwidescreen.png

(Linked because it’s too big to post here)

Pretty nice, huh? Next up will be speed bonuses, and after that the collision revamp and ai revamp. Good things are in the future.

Also notice: The website’s been cleaned up. Now you can access the latest build AND the latest checklist through the navagation bar at the top of the screen! Classy!

Until next update,

SunnyKatt

http://blearekingdoms.wordpress.com/checklist/

Go there for updates to the checklist!

You can click the link on the navagation bar at the top of the site.

-SunnyKatt

So now’s the time to think about the next build. Here’s a couple of comments that I thought were very relevant and shows us something we had to do.  Feel free to chime in and help us with our brainstorm.

1.) The HUD/GUI – This has been a concern for a couple of people, so it’s our concern now. It’s taking up too much of the screen, and it’s bothersome to click for simple tasks such as moving and attacking. Nailog had already suggested to get rid of it entirely, and I actually may do that, but instead just opening a “mini hud” over the heads of units when you hover over them for a second. This will have thier stats and special abilities, but things like moving and attacking will be done just by clicking on the proper target.

A random comment to back this up (not Nailog, discussed that already):

I can see a lot of work went into this. Presentation is very nice, unfortunately controlling your army is kinda awkward. Having to click each individual soldier and then moving over to click the “move” box is really cumbersome. Why can’t i just select where I want him to move after selecting him by left clicking on the field. And then just right click an enemy to attack him. Great base engine though.

The problem of micro-controlling your army can be fixed as well with multi-selection and temporary ai switching, however I’m not sure if that idea will make build 2 or not.

2.) The Graphics – While at one point during the development process I decided to beef the graphics, I had changed my mind and instead made them not-placeholder. Currently the graphic style is in limbo – Pixelled soldiers but with photoshopped backgrounds and low-res scaled textures? Gross. I figured because we were focusing on the engine, many people would not notice in the first build. Wrong.

Comments used to back this up:

The graphics is very low-def the game would work a lot more better with high resolution textures.

And a bunch of other less-helpful ones like “graphics could use some work” etc.

I think first off, we need to establish a set style for our game. We need to stop being lazy photoshoppers and get down and pixel those huge annoying trees. After I do all then and don’t scale them, it should look nice. However, it will run slower, but I have some optimization ideas in mind. (By the way, we had 0 complaints about the game speed as of now! Great!)

3.) Glitches – So far (and I’m proud of this, mind you), there have only been two detected bugs with the game. I’ll list them here:

Guys getting stuck in stuff/on other people  – This is a collision glitch we are aware about, and we’ll try and re-write the collision system for the next build so this doesn’t happen. It’s recorded in this humorous account from a player (DataRealms forums):

Interesting game.  I always though a movement system like this would be neat.  It does end up being a lot more work to do it this way, however.
Exhibit A:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/2149322/screenshot100.png
Can’t get out of that spot even though there is plenty of room.  Also, there was a crossbowman in there that was stuck and forced to shoot this poor bugger point-blank in the forehead to dislodge himself.
There was only one enemy left, too.  He was a crossbowman as well.  He got stuck in a wall, just like Keith here.  Unfortunately, this made it difficult for everyone to finish the battle and go home for lunch.
All in all, interesting premise for a game.  Good luck.

Yeah, that needs being worked on, I think. It’s on the to do list (by the way, the official checklist won’t come out for a little bit more, so don’t expect this to be it – it isn’t!

Health dropping below 0 for a split second just before death – While I actually never saw this one, apparently a couple of people have. They didn’t give much information other than that, so I’ll have to find it. Shouldn’t be hard, shouldn’t take long. :)

4) Annoying Music Loop – We’re aware of this – our music producers are working on this at the moment and will fix the loop. Also, on a very related complaint, people have said that The menu music didn’t fit the game. That’s ok, considering that it was just temporary all along and it will be replaced soon. ;)

Otherwise, no complaints about the battle music.

And besides all that, there were ALOT of good comments. More than there were bad ones (actually, there were no bad comments. Everyone that had something constructive to say also had good stuff to say and they liked the game.)

That’s all for the first week (almost  a whole week, whatever) of impressions. I’ll post up the checklist next, most likely. :)

Feel free to support Bleare Kingdoms in these topics:

Game Torpedo Forums – http://www.gametorpedo.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=76

Game Torpedo Site – http://www.gametorpedo.com/projects/bleare-kingdoms

NOD – http://nationofdesign.7forum.info/general-chat-f3/bleare-kingdoms-build-1-released-t1248.htm#28123

TGC – http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=158776&b=2

YYG - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/98648#

GMC – http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=449495

GGE – http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/BleareKingdoms

GameJolt - http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/strategy-sim/bleare-kingdoms/884/

GameJolt forums - http://gamejolt.com/community/forums/topics/bleare-kingdoms-strategy-rpg-build-1-released/162/

DA  – http://sunnykatt.deviantart.com/journal/27582752/

DR – http://www.datarealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16751

YYGF – http://87.117.195.66/forums/4/topics/30597

DDNN – http://www.ddnnteam.com/game-wip-s-beta-incomplete-f4/bleare-kingdoms-build-1-released-my-game-t4353.htm#77799

That’s right, baby. After lots of sweat, blood, tears, and other things you don’t want to get on your keyboard,  today we have finally finished Build 1. Weighing in at around 13.0 megs, we’re proud of it. Even though it’s just a battle system. A highly moddable one, that is. My kudos to whoever releases the first zombie-killin’ mod on the forums.

Speaking of the forums, we did a bunch of moving around now that people will actually be going there. Please, register and make mods for everyone to enjoy. You may even get featured in the devlog, or get your mod made into official content, or something. ;)

Here she is – enjoy. (click ye link below)

DOWNLOAD BUILD 1

While you’re downloading, check out these cool screenshots!

A little old, but new enough. :P

A little old, but new enough. :P

I’m so happy! Now time to take a few days off. :P

Remember to report any bugs on the forums and to post your mods there too.

SunnyKatt

• Sound FX
• Music (Just porting it in, really)
• Main Menu
• Tutorial messages
• Mod documentation

And we’re done! But not yet. I don’t have any clue when we will get this done. I’m still very busy, so when I find time I’ll get working on it some more. Sorry for the huge delays.

Just letting you know we’re still working on it,

SunnyKatt