Planitia? Really?!

Yes, really.

Back when it was current, I routinely checked out the Image of the Day from Flipcode.com. Most of the efforts were amateurish, until I got to this one.

The screenshot doesn’t do it justice. TopcaT (whoever he was) had created a basic RTS game engine with a ton of functionality, including texture blending based on terrain slope, importing of 3D models and procedurally animating them, a particle system for doing combat effects, A* pathfinding for the units, and an impressive LOD system using octrees.

And he was giving the source away. Honestly I couldn’t understand it – that demo could easily have gotten a job in game development; why did he give up on it?

Not only did he give up on it but he soon fell off the internet entirely (seriously, I’ve been looking for him for years). I’m very, very glad that I kept the source to his engine; it would have been horribly wrong for something with such potential to just disappear.

(I still have it, of course, you can download it here.)

But as I untangled the source code in an effort to figure out his tricks and replicate them I finally figured out why he’d given up. Basically the source was so chaotic that he just couldn’t add anything to it any more. He had fought code entropy and lost.

Just like I did with Planitia. To my credit, I got much closer to “game” than he did (even if it didn’t look nearly as technically proficient as his did). But in the end, it got to the point where the code was so awful I didn’t even want to look at it.

But why? Why had this happened? In the end, the terrain is a heightfield and the units are billboards…it’s an inherently simple concept. How had I stuffed it up?

Graphics, of course. For someone in my position, doing the whole game myself, graphics are evil.

Daniel succeeded with Hero Core because he kept the graphics within the realm of what he was capable of; I failed because I did not.

The truth is that I should never have gone down that path. Trying to make Planitia look like a commercial product (which, let’s face it, is what I was doing) was simply outside my capabilities as a programmer and an artist. Using the better-looking terrain tiles drew me into six months of terrain rendering, and while I learned a lot none of it contributed to getting the game done.

Then I didn’t like how the non-animating sprites looked on th nice-looking terrain and so I added the animated sprites I got from Reiner. This was was just a terrible move – animations on the same character had different dimensions for each frame and the “easiest” way to handle the entire procedure was to cut out and load each animation frame individually. The results were pretty impressive…but just not impressive enough, and the amount of work was just stupid for the result. And none of it got the game closer to being finished!

Then I had yet another request for the Planitia source code. I’ve been loathe to give it up, not just because I feel it’s substandard but also because of the hundreds of megs of associated resources currently necessary to get the project to run.

And then I thought about the article I just wrote about Hero Core, and how I praised Daniel Remar for designing the game around the art he could do.

Epiphany.

While I know a lot of people may not like the direction I’m taking Planitia, I feel it’s necessary to actually complete the project. Planitia’s native resolution will drop from 800×600 to 512×384. The pretty tiles will go away, replaced by more retro-styled and functional terrain. Lighting will stay, but alpha-blending and smooth shading will not.

Units will become based on the units from Powermonger. They’re simple, they were made specifically for this kind of game, and they work. But they wouldn’t look right placed on top of a more modern style of terrain, which is why I’m knocking it back (that and it’ll make the terrain so much easier to maintain).

Basically, Planitia is about to start looking a lot more like the games that inspired it, specifically so that I can focus on the gameplay and AI and get the darn game finished.

But I won’t wait until its “done” to start source releases. The first source release should be by the end of this week, as soon as the changes to the units and terrain are finished.

So I’ve updated Planitia. I haven’t added any real gameplay improvements, so the overall experience should still be disappointing – but at least the download is now a third of its previous size and loads much, much faster. I also added left-handed controls! Yay!

You can get it from the usual place.

…A game programmer programs games, even if he’s not being paid to do it.

If you recall, I promised to put Planitia on the shelf a while back and post it and the source. “So where is it?” you may ask. “Why are you breaking your promises to us yet again?”

Well…because I just can’t let it go. I feel that I’m about halfway through the second 90%…and the game has so much potential that I can’t release it in its current state without wasting all that potential. I feel I have an obligation to potential players to make the software worth starting up.

But I’m not going to hold it back until I think it’s “done”, so here’s a new version!

What’s new in this version:

• A tutorial! Everybody complains about the speed of the text; half say it’s too fast and the other half say it’s too slow. I’ll be putting in a “Next” prompt, but at least it exists now and should help people understand what the game is about.

• The Flamestrike god power is now implemented and has an animation.

• Changed the in-world hit marker. It’s still programmer art, but it’s much nicer programmer art.

• Fixed the AI so that it can at least improve its own land again (for some reason, the AI got horribly broken when I put in the multiplayer).

• Optimized my loading code so that the game now loads in about half the time.

What’s left:

• Finish the AI so that there is actually a single-player aspect to the game.

• Do some tweaks to the tutorial.

• Add LOTS more sounds.

• Add a bunch of UI stuff (for instance, right now, if you accidentally click Multiplayer when you didn’t want it, you have to exit the game).

• Allow the player to switch to fullscreen.

I’m hoping to have it all done…soon.

Okay, a minor update to Planitia. Click here to download.

* The game should no longer crash when you try to create a golem.

* “Skirmish Mode” has been renamed “Single Player”

* The second mouse pointer has been eliminated.

* Single player mode now pits you against one enemy AI instead of three. This should make it easier to play as well as help with performance until I can get some optimizations in.

* More logging to help find other crashers.

Again, please feel free to try it out. I’m trying to get the game looking as professional as I can with the resources I’ve got; if you want to make suggestions feel free, either in the comments or by emailing me at anthony.salter@gmail.com.

All right, a new version of Planitia is now available. This version features:

* Images are now front-loaded, eliminating the pause when creating new units.

* Loading screen lets you know that the game has not locked up on startup!

* Icons are now the correct color, have the correct icons, and even have tooltips!

* Walkers now have a “farming” animation.

* The bug where units would occasionally walk backwards has been fixed.

* General and Golem units now have footstep sounds.

* Music! The music is “Overture” by Julia Ecklar, and I got it from Podsafe Audio.

Even if you don’t feel like playing it, if you could just download it and tell me what your initial impression of the game is – especially if you’ve not tried it before – I’d be very grateful.

All right, here it is! The first LAN multiplayer version of Planitia!

Of course, cleaning up the multiplayer wasn’t the only thing I did to it. You may be asking, “What took so long?”

Um…well, this.

That’s right – new units that actually animate! Many, many thanks to my friend Ryan Clark for doing the Photoshop work on these so I could focus on the programming angle and get them in quickly. Right now only movement animations work; I’ll get idle and attack animations in very soon.

Of course, you’re probably wondering where you can get this masterpiece! Well…

Click here to download the most recent version of Planitia! Please read the readme file if you have trouble starting a multiplayer game.

And please either comment on this post or send me email at anthony.salter@gmail.com if you have any suggestions or criticism!

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to have that multiplayer demo for you guys today…you can probably figure out what I’m doing instead. The demo will be ready on Monday, and it’ll be much better than it would have been.