[Sci-freak]

Guide the protagonist through the dangerous, political world of Victorian London. The tension between technology and the Church is becoming more volatile than the steam engines driving the Industrial Revolution. Pursued by both sides, pacifist Henry Darker is getting out.

Quote

The construction of the difference engine brought about a new age of technology; an information revolution. Technology is pushing forward each day; it has now been fourteen years since British Telemechanics, an exciting new company, released the first Personal Computational Engine (PCE), which offered the purchaser both the power of formatting documents, the print and increased communication through mechanical telegrams! Since the first release, British Telemechanics has become very powerful politically; even Her Majesty's Parliament are using the PCE in contemporary times.

The original brilliant young minds behind British Telemechanics have been replaced by lawyers and businessmen -- thieves in sharp suits. Over the fourteen years since the first PCE was released, society has become over-reliant on technology. British Telemechanics are pushing and pushing for more money, but the communication infrastructure is breaking down and the engineers behind the technology seem to have 'disappeared'; such is the way of business.

London, 1875, two years on. The directors of British Telemechanics have fled. The major cities are descending into dystopia and there is a great struggle for power. The church is claiming precedence; after all, the PCE was against Our Lord and who should better Cleanse the cities than Our Lord's workers?

Game Mechanics

My original thoughts on the game are for an Oddworld-esque side-on platform/puzzler. Imagine Neuromancer meets Abe's Oddysee set 150 years ago. I also really liked the gameplay style in the Booshkies demos. The PCEs should be a good excuse to include some interesting mini-games.

It's worth mentioning that this project is still very much in the ideation and exploration stage, and, as ever, any input is appreciated.


Engines

I've been playing around with a cleaned-up version of the pixel-perfect engine which I wrote for Toggle, which seems to be working smoothly with the 4x2 character sprite which I've drawn up. (N.B. there is no real chance that this will be the end-game representation -- can you imagine animating it?)




Sketches

This post has been edited by Sci-freak: 26 March 2009 - 10:55 PM

[Ryan]

Sketches and sprite look great, and the back story is intriguing. I suppose it's a little hard to tell what the conflict will be or where levels will be set, but I suppose that's your job as a storyteller to reveal bit by bit to keep us interested.

(btw, hadn't heard of Toggle... just checked it out. Awesome job!)

This post has been edited by Ryan: 26 March 2009 - 11:24 PM

[Bramble]

Victorian stuff? Industrial revolution? Sketches? I like your style, Sci-Fi.

[Galladin]

This sounds absolutely great. I don't think animations on a big char are really that complex, I'm using a 3x4 main char in Devil's Mind, also set in a Victorian era London. All in all, great ideas and theme, I'll be sure to visit this journal every once in a while.

Some links to check out:

http://www.victorianlondon.org/

http://www.fashion-e...ian_fashion.htm

http://www.fashion-e.../victorians.htm

http://www.victorian....com/home2.html

[Bramble]

And in case you could stand any more . . .

http://www.victorianweb.org/

. . . is one of the more popular I know.

[Sci-freak]

First of all: hooray, I handed in my final piece of coursework for this year recently. Only two exams to go now.

Secondly: although it's not much, I have spent a little time on Henry Darker recently. I'm quite tempted to add a Circus/Carnival theme to the game, but perhaps this is a whole new boiler of steam in itself?

I've brought the pixel-perfect engine up to a standard that I'm happy with. It's based on the POS from Toggle but now uses sequential characters (e.g. characters 0, 1, 2, 3 for a 2x2 sprite instead of characters 0, 1, 32, 33). The most obvious advantage of this is that it makes animating sprites much easier through the loading of character sets. I've also made some changes to how it's configured and some optimisations. Have a play if you like:

set "commands" to "(99999)"

set "local" to "spr"
inc "spr" by 1
set "player_sprite" to "local"

. "-- BEGIN CONFIGURATION --"

. "(x&local&, y&local&) is the starting position on screen (in pixels)"
set "x&local&" to 0
set "y&local&" to 0
. "width&local& and height&local& are the size of the sprite in characters"
set "width&local&" to 2
set "height&local&" to 4
. "colour&local& can be set with either hex, e.g. (0x0F) or decimal, e.g. 15"
set "colour&local&" to "this_color"
. "ref&local& is the first character to reference from"
set "ref&local&" to 2
. "pos&local& is the first character to draw to"
set "pos&local&" to 10

. "-- END CONFIGURATION --"

. "load the character set with offset here"
load char set "@('ref&local&')henry.chr"

set "ref_x&local&" to "(('ref&local&' * 8) % 256)"
set "ref_y&local&" to "(('ref&local&' * 8) / 256)"

set "pos_x&local&" to "(('pos&local&' * 8) % 256)"
set "pos_y&local&" to "(('pos&local&' * 8) / 256)"

set "spr&local&_vlayer" to 1
set "spr&local&_refx" to 0
set "spr&local&_refy" to 0
set "spr&local&_width" to "('width&local&' + 1)"
set "spr&local&_height" to "('height&local&' + 1)"
set "spr&local&_ccheck" to 1
set "spr&local&_cx" to 0
set "spr&local&_cy" to 0
set "spr&local&_cwidth" to "('width&local&' + 1)"
set "spr&local&_cheight" to "('height&local&' + 1)"

goto "#ref_setup"

: "main"
goto "#clear"
if leftpressed then "#move_left"
if rightpressed then "#move_right"
goto "#blit"
put c?? Sprite "local" at "('x&local&' / 8)" "('y&local&' / 14)"
cycle 1
goto "main"

: "#draw"
set "char_x" to "('cur_x&local&' + ('x&local&' % 8) + ((('cur_y&local&' + ('y&local&' % 14)) / 14) * 'spr&local&_width' * 8) + ('pos&local&' * 8))"
set "char_y" to "(('cur_y&local&' + 'y&local&') % 14)"
set "pixel" to 1
goto "#return"

: "#blit"
set "cur_y&local&" to -1
: "blit_y"
set "cur_x&local&" to -1
inc "cur_y&local&" by 1
: "blit_x"
inc "cur_x&local&" by 1
set "char_x" to "('cur_x&local&' + (('cur_y&local&' / 14) * 'width&local&' * 8) + 'ref_x&local&')"
set "char_y" to "('cur_y&local&' % 14)"
if "pixel" = 1 then "#draw"
if "cur_x&local&" < "(('width&local&' * 8) - 1)" then "blit_x"
if "cur_y&local&" < "(('height&local&' * 14) - 1)" then "blit_y"
goto "#return"

: "#clear"
loop start
char edit "('pos&local&' + 'loopcount')" to 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
loop for "(('spr&local&_width' * 'spr&local&_height') - 1)"
goto "#return"

: "#ref_setup"
loop start
set "vch(('loopcount' % 'spr&local&_width') + 'spr&local&_refx'),(('loopcount' / 'spr&local&_width') + 'spr&local&_refy')" to "('pos&local&' + 'loopcount')"
set "vco(('loopcount' % 'spr&local&_width') + 'spr&local&_refx'),(('loopcount' / 'spr&local&_width') + 'spr&local&_refy')" to "colour&local&"
loop for "(('spr&local&_width' * 'spr&local&_height') - 1)"
goto "#return"

: "#move_left"
dec "x&local&" by 1
goto "#return"

: "#move_right"
inc "x&local&" by 1
goto "#return"

Edit: I guess I should provide instructions. You could either make your own henry.chr partial charset or change the name to load. In addition to this you should also set width&local& and height&local& to the size of the sprite that you wish to make (in characters). The sprite setup (referencing, etc.) is then handled automatically by the engine.

This post has been edited by Sci-freak: 06 May 2009 - 07:25 PM

[Koji]

Bramble, on Mar 27 2009, 12:10 AM, said:

Victorian stuff? Industrial revolution? Sketches? I like your style, Sci-Fi.

Steampunk. <3

[commodorejohn]

This sounds way cool.