Nat – very cool idea! I’m really concerned about my time, I’d love to help but I’m afraid I’ve got way too many irons in the fire now. I’m going to think about it though…

I do have a question; what will happen to the source code? E.g. it will be available to all (purchasers), all participants of the project, etc.

Thanks
Greg

I’m kind of like CyberGreg, working furiously on my own thing. But working on this would help learn to develop things like shooting and other enemies staying dead when you come back to a screen.

I don’t see it on there, but I could do some music. Maybe it would be cool to have a kind of Black Sabbath like ominous heavy metal groove when you’re fighting a boss. Or some acoustic balalaïka in the background for some more Slavic/Norse adventuring. I would definitely be up for composing/recording some music.

@CyberGreg: if you’re strapped for time, you can always do a level or spritesheet. That way you at least get your name in the credits. :) And, yes, the codebase will be shared with all purchasers of the Kit.

@pbacchi: designing a level or making a spritesheet doesn’t require any coding. You might consider that. The book goes over how to make levels and spritesheets in detail.

@Stahlman: same thing as above, and, yes music and/or ambiances would also be really cool!

Wouldn’t this type of game be a good fit for an Achievement System either the one Apple has with Game Center or 3rd party?

Philip M. Bacchi

I have the rat sprite sheets done and tested assuming it is just Standing(stopped), Walking, Attacking, Die(tipping over) actions.
I wound up with 5 sprite sheets and 6 plists. How do I get it to you?

@pbacchi: way to go creating a spritesheet already! That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Easy, huh? Let me get things a bit clearer in the game design document about 1) which art files to use for the spritesheets, 2) which animations the character requires in the spritesheet, and 3) how to submit your completed spritesheets, levels, etc..

Also, I will probably release an updated art download (before Dec 1st) so you can get all the updated art files with the brown background removed. With this brown color removed prior to creating the spritesheet, Zwoptex can optimize the sheet based on the transparent areas around the sprite, thus creating much more efficient spritesheets. The rat sheet, for example, will probably fit into one 1024×1024 texture.

Oh yeah, good idea about the achievement system. However, we will save this for after the project has been completed.

@Stahlman: I’m so glad you said that! Yes, it can seem overwhelming when you scan the document, but each individual element (especially the levels and spritesheets) are easy to accomplish and fun. :) Anything that is too time-consuming or difficult (like, perhaps, the enemy AIs) will get done by yours truly.

When I revise the design document, I will include a list of the ambiances/music and their details as well.

One more thing, feel free to create expressively and boldly. We can take a step back and look at the appropriateness/aesthetics at the end of the project.

How are you doing the batch changes to the artwork and is it something I might be able to do or does it involve some expensive software I don’t have (Photoshop) ?

I signed up for
Red Dragon Nain spritesheet
Red Dragon Nain AI
Level 3 forsest
Level 1 caverens
Rat AI
I’m kind of worried about the AI
But this is going to be great
high five!
:)

Hey everybody, thank you so much for signing up to participate in the Quexlor: Lands of Fate community project! :)

Just to let you know, we have revised the timeline. Instead of officially starting phase 1 in December when everybody is really busy with holiday stuff, we have decided to start in January when everyone has more free time. We will be releasing the 3.1 version of the Kit, which includes the codebase preparations and Art directory improvements necessary for the first phase by Dec 15th. Feel free to start designing or creating your levels, spritesheets, or AI in the meantime! Yes, the new Art directory will help you draw levels better and make spritesheets, but you can always dream/design/sketch until then.

We will be officially announcing the revised timeline and even creating a special page for the community project today…

By Dec 15th and it will be compatible with 0.99.5 if the final version comes out by then (not a release candidate).

Eagerly awaiting Dec 15th.

I am currently working on my Story of a Frame idea and I have already found some interesting results.

The Story of a Frame idea is my attempt to completely understand what happens in a “typical” frame from highest level game objects thru cocos2d down to OpenGL ES.

Here is a quick summary of what I am looking at using Xcode 4 Instruments OpenGL ES Analyzer Frame Statistics tool

Frame # 1075 (just a random frame from level 1 around where the sword is at)
# Triangles Rendered 2770
# Batches 46
GL & Platform Calls 616
# Redundant State Changes 38

This is the OpenGL ES Analyzer Expert tool

Severity Total Occurrences Unique Category Summary
5 16077 2 No Early Z Testing Disqualified early Z testing
3 87234 5 Recommend Using VBO Vertex array not contained in buffer object
3 29137 2 Recommend Indexed Rendering Recommend indexed primitives for lines and triangles
3 28520 13 Redundant Call Redundant state call
3 34108 3 Recommend Using VAO Lack of vertex array objects
3 728 1 GPU Wait on Buffer CPU wait for GPU on Buffer Upload
2 21 3 Mipmapping Usage Possible mipmapping usage scenario
2 706 2 Many Small Batch Draw Calls Numerous small batch draw calls
2 35116 2 Recommend Compact Texture Coordinates Data Possibly sub-optimal per-vertex texture coordinates
2 56 4 Recommend glTexParameter Setup Before Upload glTexParameter called after uploading texture data

I have also collected the results from the OpenGL ES Performance Detective and the full trace output for the frame in question .. all 616 lines of it :) Plus I have started modifying Cocos2d itself to do some trace type logging every 60th frame (so it doesn’t crush performance AND to reduce output. This is mostly to understand how the high level objects map to OpenGL ES Batches.

I am going to start looking at cocos2d 0.99.5-rc1 as there are supposedly performance improvements in it and see if I can get Quexlor going on it to see how it performs.

Im using a combination of Xcode 3.2.5 and Xcode 4 dp5 and eagerly awaiting Xcode 4 dp 6 so the damn debugger will work right again with the 4.2.1 iOS.

P.S. I apologize for any formatting issues this post might have as I tried to space it all nice and neat but I have no idea how it is going to look when I hit send post :(
P.P.S ACK .. the expert tool section looks horrible :( any forum post “education” yall want to provide would be much appreciated

I want in. I want to do some coding and put it on my resume :)