The Shining Source

A tribute to Shining Force using C++ and SDL. More information at the project’s homepage:

http://spark.the.game.googlepages.com/home

Whoah, what just happened? One day it’s 2007 and I’m working away on my shining forces style project called “Spark” in C++, and the next day it’s 2010!

Seriously though, I kept working on Spark, but it wasn’t going where I wanted it to. So I scrapped it and started over. This time using actionscript. I’m much happier with how it is progressing now and I’m planning to have a playable game out by the end of this year. Maybe a few more game updates as well.

Read more on Time travel…

I just found out about the site freesound. It has many sound effects distributed under a creative commons license. I’ll probably be using some of these in my game, since I don’t think I’ll be able to create the sounds myself.

Read more on freesound…

I’ve just about finished the sprite sheet for the hero character. Here’s part of it below. I’m still working the creating the first village, then I’ll be back into coding. I’ve got to create the collision detection for the hero and all the new buildings in the town next.

Read more on Hero Sprite sheet…

Things seem to be going a bit slow with my project right now because I’m working on two things at once. The ‘young swordsman’ character, and the first village. Neither are quite done yet, but I’d thought I’d post some images of the works in-progress. The young swordsman character will be one of the two main characters you can choose between in the game, and the only main character available for the first demo, which I’ve decided will be a tutorial style demo. So that way I don’t have to worry about the story yet

Read more on Young Swordsman and a village…

I’ve spent the last couple days working on grid-based movement. My character was animated and walking around before, but he wasn’t confined to a grid. If you think of it like chess or checkers, you can only move a piece from one square to another – not half on one and half one another. Which is what my character was originally doing. It looked fine, but I’m sure it would become a problem when I get into developing the battle system.

Read more on Grid based movement…