Dungeon development diary entry 21

21. 12 November 2007

I made the Prince of Persia spikes I mentioned earlier. Two versions to be exact. It is unsure if I should animate them also, that would be cool. I created more essential tiles in form of signs, but this first version was bad, as it was made of wood. How could there possibly be left anything wooden after people have left the place hundreds of years before? :) Finally, arrows for level makers to give directions were done with ease. They look nice, though.

As I finish poles and signs, I am starting to have all the essential tiles I need. What would I still need? Answer after looking a while at Twilight Park: Looks like I miss some good looking destruct scenery blocks and the vertical chains with a tile that would work with the hook event.

17th April 2008 note: Sorry pals, no picture today! But worry not, there are still like 20 screenshots to show.

Dungeon development diary entry 20

20. 10th November 2007

Today and yesterday the tiles for event 'vine' were created (for some reason I did not make a diary entry yesterday). They are chains and I am thinking of using the same chain theme for a vertical version and to foreground eyecandy as well. I am again pondering the 1010 tile limit I am having with Dungeon. This starts to affect everything I am doing with the source picture (I have always used pcx format (Zsoft Paintbrush) in this phase, by the way). How do I fit all the planned tiles in this small space. The outside areas! Eyecandy! The tileset's going to be stuffed!

Anyway, the vine chains work well. I created also the first iterations of spikes. I feel unsatisfied with them, because they are nowhere near the creativeness of like Twilight Park's spikes (The sharp gardening equipment). These probably will stay the same till the release, but for the wider ground I'll make larger spikes. Maybe swords sticking out of the bricks? Or while I'm at it, I could design some Prince of Persia influenced long, nasty looking spikes. Yeah, that must be the way. I could put a skull hanging in a spike, aloso. Yeah, that sounds cool :)

15th April 2008 note: I feel sorry for not making the hanging skull idea reality. However, in the final release there are no signs of anything that would be like remains of people, and for that reason the lonely skull would not probably have fitted the tileset that greatly.

Dungeon development diary entry 12

12. 18th October 2007

These pillars were created accidentially in Prince of Persia look, and now I suddenly have a PoP prison in my use! More eye candy and this will be just great. I seem to be quite far away from my plannings. Dungeon looks pretty good now but it does not remind me at all about my concept drawings, those papers I started with. This is much more solid, and I think would not prefer it that way. To comfort myself I can say that I believe I could not draw a tileset like that in the papers. They show (at least to me) kind of Agama style approach to the tileset, and I have never done anything like that. Maybe there could be some kind of developments in the drawing style in the 14th tileset? Despite of everything, I do not throw my hope away. Dungeon will get better as soon as I start working with the eye candy, background graphics and the dirt land I have planned.

Fortress of Forgotten Souls (featuring Dungeon development diary entry 11)

Dungeon is finished.

Let's use that Header 2 font for once :) Yes, this is reality. The 1010 tiles tileset is now finished, and it will not see any major changes after this. Quite an intensive time of wrestling with Paint Shop Pro and other devices have led to this point. The first concept drawing done under codename Castle of Cadavers was made in December 2006. That was originally intended to be a picture of an actual coming tileset, as usual when I am working with something, the final result is something else. A long time of nothing happening ensued the conception, but Dungeon finally got into the development phase in August 2007. The base of everything was done during this time and everything else (aka meat on the bones) was done in October 2007 to January 2008. I will get to this as the diary progresses further. At this point I can say, that the Dungeon development diary has a total of 41 entries with the last one being a gigantic entry looking into the year 2007 and making of Dungeon. The diary is accompanied with 37 screenshots, and they will be seen here later, of course.

Now it really is not long time to the release in Jazz2Online. Watch that space :) And oh yes, let me tell you the real name of my 14th tileset. That's The Fortress of Forgotten Souls and the abbreviation being simply "Fortress". See you soon at J2O!

11. 17th October 2007

A long pause! My new school (that actually started only a day after the entry before this) dragged me to the real life for this two months recess. Many, many nice events kept me away from development of Dungeon, but in the end I think I have now refueled my inspiration to craft the tileset further.

I don't have that big updates today. The biggest is that one of the four differently decayed brick sets (the one that was intact) was deleted. This way I save a lot of space and the image of a decaying castle is seen clearer. The walls have now cracks. It is way better this way and I can't believe I didn't come up with this before.

The next step in the process is creating cracks for the walking tiles and making of some kind of pillars. Now Dungeon looks a lot like the original Prince of Persia :D Maybe later this will start to look something I made, not only copied.

Dungeon development diary entry 5

Hello people!

Time for the entry from mid-August, pretty near my birthday ^^. And behold, the first development screenshot from Dungeon there is! There is only one way from all that scarcity - it goes up :)


5. 16th August 2007

The new way I chose didn't prove to be as useful as I first thought. I spent almost an hour drawing the plates that Jazz would walk on. I am getting a bit frustrated, because the similar ones in Twilight Park were finished almost instantly. Defending Dungeon I could say that now I am working on a harder subject. Usually I have plenty of nature in my tilesets and so will be also in Dungeon. It however feels more natural to begin with the man made constructions. Anyway, I have the very basic versions of the bricks, walls and walking plates. I find this state of the tileset amusingly Prince of Persia -looking. I hope that I get to better the tileset graphics as I continue further.

7th December note: I did get better graphics ;)

The curtain unveils...

There has been some nice development in The Castle of Cadavers in the recent days.

This led to the decision to show everybody who's interested how the new tileset looks right now. Remember, work in progress! :)




This screenshot here features the dungeon part of the tileset. It is basically a dark, old and repelling place with spider webs and in the future, more prison stuff to literally make it a dungeon. The most recent additions to the tileset are the pillars and the spider webs. Both will change before the final release, but this screen shows their inputs for the tileset pretty good. This picture also features two kinds of walls and floors for flexibility, and the wall texture with three different variations of cracked bricks. The three versions don't differ dramatically but believe me, only one variation would have looked dull. The three brick textures are, however, only a beginning. Expect to see much more stuff inside the ground/wall in the final release of Castle Of Cadavers! (no buried shovels, though)

So, what next? More dungeon stuff! There are essential tiles to be done, as the dungeon part is the base of this tileset. Essential tiles are not so fun to draw, as variations of everything are always needed and therefore much, much repetition.

The development of Castle of Cadavers seems now to be back on its tracks, and I see no obstacles ahead. But one! I don't have not found any good music tracks that could fit in the atmosphere of the tileset. So, I challenge you, dear readers, to tell me what would you put in the background of that screenshot above. It can be dark, melancholic, angry, eerie or pretty much anything you'd hear when playing a centuries old, abandoned castle level. With rain outside! Write your suggestions in the comments or e-mail me. If I pick your choice for the final release, you get mentioned in the credits! Think about that :)

P.S. The current state of Castle of Cadavers reminds me strongly of the original Prince of Persia.

More Cadaver concepts

Hello once again dear readers.

I now know I have had at least eight readers since I have started writing this blog :) That is a start, yes, but I encourage everybody who visits my blog to comment anything you might come up with concerning this blog, my Jazz Jackrabbit 2 works or something else. What question would you like me to answer you? What would you like to read about in this blog? I am open for suggestions to make this blog more enjoyable!

Today I am back here to tell you more about the Castle of Cadavers project. There are two concept drawings I have made about the subject. I have already introduced the first one (see this post http://blade-of-finland.blogspot.com/2007/04/first-corpse-creation.html), and the second one, the one to your left, will work greatly as source material for the coming tileset drawing process.

It is a full A4-sized drawing with somewhat more mature ideas for the Castle of Cadavers. Like the first Cadaver concept, this one was drawn during my days in the military. In fact, these days were in the last of what spent in that institution. That means that I drew this in the end of March 2007. There are many details to this piece of work, as you can see. It will open best for the Finnish people, as the notes in this drawing are in finnish language. I will translate some of them to non-finnish speaking people.

This drawing shows you kind of an extended version of the tileset than that you saw in the first concept. The platforms divide to more tiles, like in the Holiday Hare '98 tilesets. Not like in Castle, where the main standing platform was one simple tile, if you wanted to. This makes the tileset more challenging to me to create. As you may see, I made a perspective mistake even to this drawing. The part in the upper left, the floor bricks should go diagonal right, but they don't. Otherwise this part shows quite much the feel I would like to have in the tileset. Really abandoned, really old, really decaying. The nature has taken over. Just as in my thoughts. If you have ever played the old game Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and The Flame, I am going for the atmosphere in the centuries old castle which had those detached heads floating all over. At least for the atmosphere I have in my memories about the place; I played that game like ten years ago :)

The other parts of the drawing show a small part of dungeon, and a clear outside area. At first, Castle of Cadavers project started as a dungeon project, but evolved to this current state while I was in the army. The dungeon idea had only inside areas to it. The dungeons in the coming Cadaver tileset will not have much stuff. Heck, it is a prison, who would have all that stuff stored in there? Again the inspiration comes from the old Prince of Persia 1, where the dungeons were very ascetic. As the drawing shows, some of the walls will be covered with darkness. This will make the whole place more ominous. The outside area shows the tileset when there are no layer 4 castles around. It may look like the The Secret Files' Haunted House tileset, but I will make it better. At least to my taste :) No see-through ground in Castle of Cadavers, that would be stupid. The background is a slightly rough terrain with those tree carcesses, rocks and gravestones everywhere. A distant castle could be nice to add. If it had one window with light in it, that would be scary, wouldn't it? :) It's fun to have stuff buried in the ground, The Twilight Park showed that. No one buries shovels this time though.

Now, to the texts. The dungeon part says primarily the following. The ground will be like in Twilight Park. Sometimes with lots of details, but when a level builder wants, it will be one-coloured. The dungeon will have small jail cells, but on the other hand it can have dramatic heights, just like those very unpractical prisons in Prince Of Persia 1. I have mentioned that we will probably see some torturing equipment, heaps of bricks and bones. Most probably full skeletons also. Collapse scenery events will be in frequent use.

A lot more notes on the outside area (finnish: ulkoilma). Outside area consists of grass and bricks, basically. There are plants everywhere, as can be the bricks. Nothing has fully survived the time except for the metal, and you will not see much of it. Lots of sturdy constructions like towers and pillars. The tileset will feature a cemetary with feral vegetation all over. A well will provide an access underground, where ever you like.

There is one part of the tileset not visible in this concept drawing. I haven't drawn it, and I believe I won't. It will be a small part of the tileset, and will work better that way. This part is a inside area, that would include a dining table with full meal served and with candles lit up. The wall clothings and other fabrics are in perfect shape, but there are nobody in sight. Eerie-o-meter goes for the maximum :)

Now you have seen all that there is to this tileset so far. The next picture I show you about Castle of Cadavers will be an actual part of the tileset. Until then... watch this space :P

P.S. A point of interest before the real ending for this post. When I was drawing this draft, I stored it in a public place. Well, in a public place for us military police men in our duty. During the two days storage somebody saw this drawing, and couldn't make any sense of it. Really, how could he? To outsiders it must seem that there is no point in this. So, because of this there is the comment in the middle (not written by me): "Kuka vittu sekoo käsiin?!". This literally means "Who the f*** is going mad?!". Well, I must be mad for doing this tileset stuff for almost ten years now. But what can I do, it's something I like very much.