Fun With Sound

Well, with all this free time I have recently, I've worked quite a bit more on some Wii stuff. Currently porting Alien Puzzle to the Wii, with a much, much better level editor, better sounds, and more types of in-game objects. On top of that, I've been playing with the Wii Remote's speaker recently, and am currently looking into playing simple little notes. After that I'm hoping to take a crack at how to get actual sounds loaded (which I can do, they just come up with lots of static, and are horrible sounding due to the quality difference probably). Also got my game development library to be able to get the Wii Remote's orientation much more easily with one command.

On the subject of the Wii version of Alien Puzzle, I'm currently in the final parts of it (Wii Remote speaker sound being one of the few things that I'm working on with it) and am currently needing levels for it to include with the game. I am so far lacking creativity for them and would be happy with level donations. The new level format is a bit different, however I find it much easier to create levels with. Here is an example level file:

And here is the outcome:


To create a level, simply create a 20x13 RGBA png, with a transparent background. Then, place a the following pixels where you want your in-game object to appear:

R G B Object
0 255 0 Main Character Starting point
255 255 0 End of level teleporter
255 0 0 A bomb
0 255 255 A gem
0 0 255 A wall

There are other types as well, but I will show those later as they are a bit more complex, and are still being worked on. After creating your level, you can simply post the picture link in a comment below, and I'll run it through my converter (which will be made public with the release) and put it into the game when it's released. All levels will be able to be loaded via a file system, so there shouldn't really be a limit on how many levels you can have :)

Long time no post

So yeah, I've been really busy for quite some time now it seems. Finally got the chance to update this blog again. Recently I've been working on an actual Wii Game Engine (sorta). I'm hoping to have it help me make a ton of Wii games in little time (good ones at that). I have a small tech demo that shows off some of the features of it.

The big one that I want to highlight is the home button menu. In most games, this is done within the actual game function. IE: if your playing a game, it is not only checking for in game things, but it's also waiting for you to press the home button at that same part. I don't know if everyone does it that way, but I changed mine around. Instead, I set it up to run on a separate thread. For me it means I don't have to add in the code to have it wait for the button to be pressed each time, which saves me coding time. For people who play these games, it means that each one of them will have a behind the scenes mp3 player built in! This means that instead of listening to my sometimes awful music skills, you can plug in a flash drive or SD card, and listen to songs off of that. It currently let's you choose a song from a folder titled "mp3" or mp3s" (without the quotes). It will then play it continuously when you press 1 and stop when your go back to the home menu and press 2. On top of that, it will stop all other in game music, but keep the sound effects working. That's the big highlight for noticeable features in the engine.

Among other small things, it has a small physics portion, wifi support, a pretty good font engine, and a nice 2D graphics system featuring sprites, backgrounds, and regular old images :D It also has mp3 support, mod support, and raw support as well. Then you have the fat file system for USB and SD, and I'm pretty sure DVD-R (although I haven't been able to test that out too thoroughly). It also has very basic 3D support, but the only sort of big thing there is md5 model support (with animations :) ).

Feel free to comment about the game below, and also feel free to suggest simplistic game ideas too. I really wanna try and get this engine (?) setup properly. Not really sure what to call it as it's not quite a game engine is it? Anyways XD leave your comments below :D

Snow Day Game Download Link: Download