Here I am with a fully playable version of Sheeplings: 16 levels, you can upgrade the dog’s attributes, there are wolves and eagles and lots of fluffy sheep… Hey, I even added some tutorial-like popups yesterday. But I still can’t let people get the demo, ’cause I don’t have the map art. Now I’m considering increasing the demo stages to 20 while I’m waiting – the more the merrier after all. And it’s about time that I did something about the website as well.

Anyway, what’s this bit about the movie in the title? Well, I’m really dying to know if people like the Sheeplings concept, so I put together a 30 second clip with me playing one of the stages. Or levels. I really need to decide what word to use!

Feel free to download it here (mpeg1, 2.7 MB):
http://www.sheeplings.com/sheeplings_1.mpg
or here:
http://www.cynicalstuff.com/files/sheeplings_1.mpg

And please comment! I’d love to hear some opinions; so far I’ve gotten the valuable hint that the dog’s bark is too harsh, and that I should find more pleasant ones – preferably multiple ones for variation. Any other spontaneous things that spring to mind? It’s hard to tell a lot from just a 30 second clip, but who knows.

Another comment I received was that the colours are very nice. I couldn’t agree more with that, ’cause I really really like the soft and cheery feeling that the artist conjured up. However, I’ve learned one thing these last months: quality and price isn’t enough when choosing an artist to work with; I need to have the art assets within a reasonable amount of time as well. Granted, the artist has run into personal issues that affects his work, but if I’m going to attempt to work in a professional manner with my hobby projects I can’t have delays like this.

On the other hand, he’s done such excellent work – including speed – on some art pieces, so it’d be a shame to not ask if he wants to do more work. Maybe the best solution would be to find another artist with a similar style, and divide the work between them? I could look for someone else who might draw title screens and map screens a bit faster, for example.

Maybe it’s time to browse deviantART again, in the vague hope of finding someone good in my price range. I’ve already started toying with the idea of firing up my pen and tablet and draw some maps myself, but that’s not a good idea. Here’s a quick (unshaded) concept sketch I put together which illustrates that point:

If I put more time into it, I might find my way around simple drawing and basic colour composition and such, but I’d better leave the art to the ones who have more skill and time to devote.

At the end of 2005 I bought myself a used PlayStation 2, complete with some nice games like Dark Cloud and Gran Turismo 3. I played around with the games, decently amused for a while, until something struck me: I was getting entirely addicted to Gran Turismo 3. This was highly unexpected. I suck at driving games; I’ve never cared about cars; I don’t own a car – and so on. The only racing games I’ve liked are abstract or arcadey ones like Pro AM Racing, Death Rally, Rock ‘n Roll Racing and Need for Speed 2. Still, I found myself spending more and more time with GT3: I had a craving for the game. For a week or two I sat at work yearning to play more every day. I even decided to get myself a Mazda MX-5 soonish, just from playing this game.

This isn’t that weird in itself; I get addicted to interesting things pretty easily. But I decided to investigate it further this time. I started writing some notes on why I found GT3 so addictive, and what aspects of the game appealed to me. These are some of the things I came up with:

At first glance:

• Main map
  Complex menus exist, but the first thing a user meets is a map, clearly showing the various options in an abstract manner. The user understands the concept of selecting a geographical place in which to perform an action better than if the various options were available from a menu.
• Complete control
  Despite the simple map, there are detailed information and options available, as sub-options. The user’s starting situation also hints at control: a sum of money is placed in his hands, and it is up to the user himself to select a starting car. (This can also cause confusion. In a simulation game, focus is put on control; in a casual game, more focus ought to be put on ease of use. I.e., give a solid start position from which to jump into the game immediately.)
• Several gameplay variants
  At the beginning, the user can select several things: buy a car and go race with it, finetune details about the car, change the looks of the car, study the cars which will be available later, examine the racing stages, undertake driving license tests, etc.

Main game:

• Adrenaline
  The game is action-packed, and steadily increases in difficulty with faster car models available later. The computer-controlled cars ensures that the user always has a chance to not come last in the race; if the user falls behind, some of the trailing cars seem to slow down to give the user a chance. There is always a challenge, though: the leading cars do not seem to follow this rule.
• Rewards
  Instant gratification is delivered. Winning a race results in money and/or bonuses. Completing a single driving license event results in a time to compete against and a trophy. Performing anything positive at all results in an added percentage of game completion. Interesting to note is that all races result in a monetary reward, even if the user comes last. It is always worthwhile to compete.

At this time I had gotten bored with taking notes; and my addiction was probably slowly fading away as well. I think I forgot to bring up the most important aspect that made the game so interesting to me: collecting stuff. I don’t think there’s anything that appeals more to me in a game than upgrading and collecting more stuff. How many times didn’t I go for 99 lives in Super Mario Bros. 3 just in order to have the maximum? How many times haven’t I played a dull game to the finish just in order to get the feeling that I have collected everything?

This extends to other areas as well, of course. Some years ago I made fan sites for Might and Magic 8 and 9 when they were released; I was extremely nitpicky, since I wanted my maps to show every little secret and every little feature. I also collect things in real life: old Swedish computer magazines, old games in general, music and so on. Before I had a hard disk crash I had an almost-complete mp3 collection of every NOFX song ever recorded (shh, don’t tell the RIAA; and I do own many CD’s with ‘em as well).

Anyway, there’s a reason for all this ranting about collecting things. I’m working on Sheeplings, trying to get a 16 level demo finished as soon as possible. I had planned to get it done in August, but Life(TM) got in the way for me and the artist. Now that work is on the way again, I’m looking over some design choices. There are lots of stages, and clearing a stage grants you a rank between 1 and 5. Previously I had implemented a level locking feature: in order to play level 10 you must have collected 10 rank points, for example.

Yeah, still just a sketch of the map, unfortunately.

Now I ask myself: why did I limit myself to that mechanism? Given my obvious tendency to collect and upgrade, there’s not a single reason why I don’t extend this a bit further, and let the player spend his points on unlocking levels and upgrading the dog!

I’ll have to think about a suitable interface for selecting upgrades, but the demo really ought to feature the possibility to unlock half the levels and upgrade the dog’s speed as well as his range.

Lately I’ve let my professional life get in the way of my personal projects, and the art guy has let his personal life get in the way of his work, so things have been quiet for some weeks. But finally there’s some progress:

What do you think? Eh? Eh? Okay, it’s not finished at all, but I really like the playful stillness of the map this time. And it has depth, as opposed to previously. It’s starting to look pretty decent, in my – for once - very humble opinion! Disregard the flag placements and stuff like that, by the way - I just switched the old map for the new sketch. And the stars are just tacky placeholders I drew; they’ll form the currency of the game.

Now I’d better get my thumb out of the stereotypical where-no-man-has-gone-before-place and get working on the playable demo which was supposed to be finished a month ago. After I’ve heard reactions to the gameplay of 12 levels or so, I can start thinking whether or not it’s worth getting art assets for completing the whole game; I would need a few new characters and some gameplay backgrounds for that - at the very least.

I started up this blog in order to have some place to rant about my pet project, Sheeplings; instead I seem to be using it for everything from nudity to nerdy programming stuff. It’s quite about time to talk about the sheep game for once!

So, I found this excellent artist who’s done marvellous things with sheep. Get your mind out of the gutter – I’m talking about this:

After the extremely cute sheep and the lovely background I was a bit disappointed at the map art I received: (Ignore the mad flag placement – those are just levels I use for testing.)

I guess I really shouldn’t complain as long as people do stuff better than I can myself *, but the map didn’t look as good as I’d hoped. It got a bit better when flowing clouds and GUI items and particles were added, but I was still not a happy cynic.

That’s when something funny happened: the map above was an example 600×480 image that I stretched to fit 800×600. After discussing the art a bit, the artist suddenly noticed that  – gasp – there is no 800×600 version! The map was made in a low resolution, and a stretched image isn’t really an option for the game’s map screen. So, it’s back to the drawing board (literally), and I’ll get another version of the map.

Okay, that’s not really funny at all. I meant funny as in “it’s funny how things turn out sometimes.”

——–

* Footnote: Of course I believe that I have the right to complain even if I can’t do better myself. It was one of my first rants here, after all.

For years I’ve only used complete content management systems, such as Drupal or WordPress. When the time came to design a Sheeplings website I decided to examine exactly what I need: a few simple pages and some php magic to track the downloads and page views and whatnot. In other words, I need specialized features, but not a big system. In these cases it’s easier to re-invent the wheel.

So, I took the plunge into HTML 4.01 and CSS 2 and all that jazz, and came up with a basic design for the site. Take a look, and if you find that it doesn’t look okay, please let me know!

Sheeplings Website

I showed the Sheeplings site to a friend yesterday, and after looking at the screenshots on the page, his immediate response was along the lines of: ”I suppose this is a sheep-herding game with force-repulsion? I have an excellent algorithm for the sheep movement!”

The algorithm in question is a very simple subsumption one, consisting mostly of vector additions. It’s basically what I’m already doing, with two exceptions: the algorithm uses fixed destinations instead of – as I do it – define a vector and a duration to follow this vector. With all the acceleration and decceleration going on it’s easier to do it like this.

The other difference is of great consequence. So far I’ve been doing basic collision detection, and the sheep AI has decided whether or not to take a new action when it has collided with something. Instead, the new algorithm suggests that inverted vectors to objects surrounding it are added, in order to make the sheep avoid collisions. Elegance! Brilliance! I’m so ashamed of myself that I didn’t think of this.

A similar thing happened when I was making Mega Brain Splashing 4: I had implemented A* pathfinding for the robot movements, but noted that it took way too much time when dozens and dozens of them were present. I thought of sub-dividing the map and make layers to the pathfinding – first get to the correct area and then search for the player inside the area, and so on. I guess this would have worked, but the same friend of mine came up with an alternative solution: potential fields. Easier, faster, and performs almost as good as proper pathfinding. Dammit!

Speaking of subsumption algorithms, I looked up the subsumption architecture. It seems to be a layered AI architecture in which complex behaviour is achieved from the emergent combination of different asonchrynous layers. Each layer is pre-wired, but due to their interaction interesting behaviours can apparently be achieved. Read more about it here!

Speaking of layers, I might mention the simple Sheeplings AI. There are priority layers for actions that the different characters can perform; for example:

• High priority: running away, jumping (and being carried off, but this is a special case)
• Medium priority: walking someplace
• Low priority: eating grass, looking around, wiggling the ears

In order to quit doing an action, it must be exchanged for an action of higher priority. Otherwise, the character continues until the current action is done, and then decides what to do next.

It’s interesting to speculate how the sheep in my game would behave with a sumbsumption architecture, but I really don’t think it’s worth the effort for this game.

For years and years I have been writing small games and programs as a hobby. It all started when I received a C64; after a few weeks of playing games, my perceptive family got me a book on graphics and game programming. I was instantly hooked. The Amiga soon followed, and when I attended high scool I saved up to buy my neighbour’s 486 PC. Granted, I was mostly interested in using it for making music (can you imagine the possibilities when you go from 1MB RAM to 4MB?), but assembly programming was also a great treat. In 1998 I finally got myself a decent PC, and that’s when my Windows adventures started.

I could go on with my nostalgia, and mention old game projects: Time Fighters, the Wolverine game, Shit Invaders, Mega Brain Splashing 1 to 4, the Star Wars game, my GBA emulator, Satan Claus, Spank da Virgin – and so on. But that’s a story for another day. Instead, I’m going to mention my latest game project: Sheeplings.

Last year, I was interested in making a game engine, and posted a question about that project on the Indiegamer forums. Mildly heated discussions emerged, and I felt that many didn’t understand that I didn’t care about the faulty logic of developing a new engine when there are many others already available; I simply wanted a hobby project to waste my time on. But something good came from that discussion: I got inspired by their professional view, and started wondering what it would be like to produce something of interest to the general public – not just a game for my own amusement.

I abandoned my self-made OpenGL-powered engine, and started experimenting with BlitzMax for productivity reasons. I decided to outsource the graphics as much as possible. And I decided to make a game with ultra-cute and fluffy sheep. Enter Sheeplings.

If you feel inclined, click on any of these images to see screenshots of the development version of the game:

The premise is extremely simple: you play the part of the sheepdog, and you have the awesome power of…barking. You can bark to scare sheep, in order to get them where you want; that is the main idea of the gameplay.

The screenshots above show only extremely simple guide-the-sheep-to-some-area levels, intended as introduction for the fresh would-be-shepherd. Later on, eagles will soar menacingly overhead, and you have to make sure that your sheep stay alive. Wolves will of course also make an entrance, as well as other adversaries. I hope to put together a complete demo of the game as soon as possible, but until then I just might rant about all my fluffy sheep here instead.

Sheeplings status:

• Finished levels: 12 out of an unknown amount
• Main gameplay: 80%
• Graphical effects: 60% (More sparkling thingies are needed)
• Title screen: 30% (No-one gets to see the current one; it needs to be re-done)
• Map screen: 50% (But no graphics for it yet)
• Music: 30% (Songs are present but I need to work more on them)
• Sound effects: 10% (Mostly place-holder effects are present now)