Hydro | blueapple's Devlog

Update July 3, 2008

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Hey again!

I’ve reached 20% mark on Project Euler, or at least I had before they released the 200:th problem. Now I’m back at 19% again with 39 problems solved. And I must say that I have learned a lot about Haskell, but I am now starting to run out of problems which can be solved in ten minutes.

Worth noting is that I have not solved them in order. The most difficult one according to the websites ranking system is 120 and the one with the highest ID being 145.

Also, I am preparing to release a small demo of Hydro. I just need to sort out a few bugs and maybe create a fun map or two. The ones I’ve got now aren’t that fun to play, as they were just made to test things out.

Yellow Flowerpot June 1, 2008

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Hey all, sorry for the recent lack of posts. But here is something to show you that I’m not dead (yet):

I decided to keep the yellow rectangle (but I’ll probably change its color) as a “virtual” flowerpot. It’s much easier to guide water into it rather than into a one-pixel thin tree.

Hide! It’s a Tree! May 6, 2008

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Hey all.

I have been thinking of new things to implement into Hydro. A few of the ideas are: new particle kinds, eye candy, a cool interface or multiplayer support. I went for the eye-candy this time.

What I wanted to do was to get rid of the ugly goal (the yellow rectangle), and put something that actually “needs” water.

Trees.

One of the thing I wanted my trees to do was to scale and “evolve” once they got water. Sprites would mean a lot of work and wouldn’t quite blend to the “artistic style” of this projects (i.e. pixels), but a “pixel-tree” would and that’s what I chose. I started to read about fractals and especially the type called L-Systems, which basically are objects generated by pre-defined rules. For example:

split
turn 40 degrees
move x pixels
decrease x

As a branch of a tree in most aspects looks lite the tree itself, just scaled down, it can be modeled by a recursive function, such as the one above.

Now, I haven’t implemented it into Hydro just yet, but here are some screenshots and a clip of what I’ve come up with this far.

And a short clip of it in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNTUKq0Hwf4

I believe this will look quite good when it’s “in the game”, we’ll see about that in a few days.

Steam Movie May 4, 2008

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Here’s something to eat some popcorn to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02JHEVUSma0

YouTube did once again ruin the quality of the video, this time with a quite devastating effect: You can hardly see the steam particles, which is a shame, because they are what I was trying to show in the video.

But check it out and try to mentally mix it with the screenshots.

Hydro Update 1 May 3, 2008

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I present to you…steam!

The red line you can see is the “thing” that makes water boil.

This feature will allow more complex and fun levels to be built.

I’m quite satisfied by the visual appearance of the steam (atleast in motion, the stills doesn’t quite capture the charm of it). At this moment, I do not have any video available for you, but be sure that one will come.

Thoughts on maps May 3, 2008

Posted by blueapple in Hydro, Programming.
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When coding something like this (Hydro), early in development I’m not really interested in developing tools. I want to get the “thing” done (or atleast close too), not waste time making leveleditors and such. Therefore, I looked around for alternatives this time.

(more…)

Movie Time April 27, 2008

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After some minor problems with youtube refusing my video and therefore not being able to upload it, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itu5qLiXTMc

It’s sad to see that youtube totally ruined the video quality. I’ll have to look around for somewhere to host the original .avi file.

New backgrounds April 27, 2008

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I decided to make a new background for the game, one that would scroll along with the viewport. While doing this I decided to make a new menu background as well.

And here’s from the menu:

I think they turned out quite well. The game background has a clean and warm feeling to it, so I’m using it as wallpaper on my computer. Here it is if anyone want to use it aswell:

I could make a bigger resolution image and/or one of the night scene if anyone wants me too.

Introduction to Hydro April 26, 2008

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Hydro (as it is called atm) is a water simulation game.

It’s inspired by all the Falling Sand games, but not based upon. These “games” are fun, but there’s no goal in them. All you do is waste hours watching reactions and big explosions. So I thought, how could I make this into a game?

One idea was to make a “tetris meets water” (2D Wetrix) game. Wetrix has always been one of my favorite puzzle games with which I’ve spent many hours trying to set a new highscore. And seeing that there are no clones nor remakes made this a quite viable option.

But then, somewhat inspired by Water Shifter I started coding what would become Hydro.

The goal is to get x amount of water from A to B. This is done by “painting” dirt which the water will flow upon. And that’s about it.

Fancy, eh?

Same goes as for most games, it looks better in motion. I will post a video in a later post.

Seen on the screenshot is level 5. The orange-green rectangle at the bottom is “point B” or the goal. The blue substance is supposed to be water and the gray and brown are walls respectively dirt.

Here are a few more shots: