two steps forwards and three steps back, alright
okay so i decided to go back to the MMF2 version of the game. doing the game in C++ was fine, but it was way too time consuming, and i couldn't motivate myself to make any more levels or anything while i was trying to get the engine at least back up to spec with the old MMF2 one.
on the flip side, i THINK i've fixed the vista incomatibilities with the game, which was one of my reasons for switching the game to SDL to begin with. hopefully with this move, i'll be able to get the game done faster, even though it won't be nearly as flexible as it would've been in SDL.
sorry for the disappointment, but at least i'll be finishing the game faster, right? right.
not that much news, but...
school has been hectic as hell so i haven't really been able to work on the underside as much as i would've liked, but today i did something in about 15 minutes that i thought would take a couple of days, and that something is that i've implemented NPCs in the SDL version of the game. you can also talk to them, as i've also reimplemented text boxes, and i've started work on implementing the LUA scripting. so far, it works on a basic level, letting you display messageboxed text and change the character that's shown in the messagebox too.
i'm still fighting the good fight, and once this quarter is over (in 2 weeks), i'll be able to devote more time to the game. i'm excited about this because i've been playing a lot of really good games lately that've been giving me good ideas for the game.
one thing i've been debating is whether to keep the old cavestory-like inventory or to replace it with something more like earthbound. the reasoning behind this is that the coins kind of really don't do anything right now, but i figure that if i were to do an earthbound like inventory, i'd be able to also add small items you can buy, like food to eat out on the road to heal yourself and things like that.
anyways, i'll be glad to hear your thoughts on the idea.
p.s. i'm also thinking about adding ladders to the game. and a world called ladder world. hell yes.
p.p.s. i've been trying my best to keep in touch with you guys in the forums, but i can't exactly keep in touch with you guys if you guys aren't posting! so join the freaking forums already and post post post until your eyeballs fall out.
today's my birthday
give me gifts wahaha. jk. happy birthday to me.
happy birthday to me.
now go finish the underside.
sad birthday indeed.
more updates
ive done a lot more work to the port. i've got working doors (what an achievement) and a fully working version of the "crude oil" enemy. the stungun is in too, and so are all the camera tools. basically it's beginning to look a lot less like nothing and a lot more like something and thats something we can all be happy about.
as an aside, garry (of garrysmod fame) has released the abandoned version of facewound, which i did the animations for. you can check it out there, it's actually pretty cool.
TU SDL updates
some considerable work's been done to the SDL port of the underside engine. so far i've been working my hardest to get it at least as functional as the MMF counterpart, and from there i'll go on to add more features.
as of now, the level format is completely compatible with the old TU level format -- though entities aren't ported over yet, the code to load them from the level files has just been finished.
i've also coded in the pxtone support as well as using fmod for sound effects.
one nice side-effect of redoing the entire game in C++ is that certain (simple) things i wasn't able to do before, like allow people to make their own parallax backgrounds or edit enemy graphics, will be allowed. additionally, i'm gonna try to code the weapons code so that helper NPCs (like buddy) will be able to use any of them.
anyways, that's all for now. i've been busy with school and things but progress is continuing slowly but surely.
also, check out this article on thank you for playing, which names the underside as, basically a game that you've gotta be familiar with if you wanna pretend to be an indie gaming hipster. i'm going to be doing an interview for that site pretty soon too, so look out for that.
not much, but it's a start
The Pit demo released
forums member Newman has released a demo version of his underside mod The Pit. its pretty (really) hard, and the enemy and save placement could be a bit more fair, but the effort that's been put into this mod is astounding, so check it out here
the intro isn't safe for work (why are you playing my game at work anyways) due to the use of a word that starts with an n and rhymes with digger. still, check it out, if you can stand being really frustrated. which i'm sure you can, seeing as you're reading this site.
the underside moving to SDL
as i've mentioned on the forums, i've decided to stop using multimedia fusion for this project, and i'm gonna be porting it over to C++ using SDL. the reason for this is basically multimedia fusion's terrible implementation of "inheritance", and the fact that i'm limited to 26 variables for any object, which wouldn't be a problem if using the "inheritance" would let you rename the variables, which it doesn't, which basically means i have to somehow A) keep track of all the variables in every class i am inheriting from, B) make sure i don't use any of the variables in more than one class (since they're shared), C) do the same with flags D) hope it won't just decide to not work anyways, because multimedia fusion 2 is pretty unreliable.
besides that though, i want to re-establish vista compatibility, and using SDL means that the game could potentially be ported over to other platforms, maybe.
i'm by no means an expert C++ coder, but i'm using this game as a learning experience, and having had experience with coding half-life mods, and taking two years of college-level computer science courses, i think i should be able to hack something together.
anyways, porting the game over should be semi-painless once i get collision detection code down, and it should make the game A) more moddable, and B) more easy to develop (in terms of writing new enemies, etc.) as i'll be able to reuse code instead of having to make 1000 copies of it like I have to do with multimedia fusion.
as of now, i've got the game loading and displaying levels, and i'm working on ip's player movement. not too shabby for two days work, i'd say.
just a quick sketch
99.99% original graphicsheh heh, it turns out that a tile i was using during testing slipped into the main game and that i'd been using it without actually realizing it. the original tile is from cave story (it's the brick tile that looks like a blue brick from mario brothers). i'll be fixing that in future releases, but i just wanted to come clean about it. sorry about any confusion this may've caused and i offer my apologies to pixel. (thanks for sergiocornaga for the heads up.)
January 28th, 2008TU's second bestthe underside has been named 2nd best freeware platformer of 2007 by indiegames.com. you can check out the complete list of 20 here!
TU Preview #1 (slightly updated) + TAP release!
i've finally finished off the modloader and made a couple of tweaks to the almighty paintbrush, and i think (despite the docs not being complete!) that it's worth releasing!
the included "preview" version of the underside contains no more gameplay than the original version of the preview, but the zip file contains two minimods that should take you about 5 minutes each to complete (they're provided only as examples of how to use the editor).
i haven't tested the preview version of the game as i'm pretty sure it's more or less the same as it was before anyways, but if you run into any bugs, feel free to tell me via the comments section or on our forums.
likewise, if you come up with any cool mods or anything, post them on our forums as well!
download it here!
update your bookmarksi've disabled access through www.superfundungeonrun.com/insignificantstudios because it was causing some problems with cookies on the forums, so update all of your bookmarks!
January 12th, 2008insignificantstudios.comyou can now access this page through www.insignificantstudios.com which may or may not be harder to type than www.superfundungeonrun.com/insignificantstudios/
January 09th, 2008the almighty paintbrush is finished
the almighty paintbrush is finally at a point where i can consider it finished -- the testers seem to be able to figure out how to work the thing fairly quickly -- even without any real documentation. the modding components of the underside engine have been rewritten, and now the frequent crashes that had occured a week ago are a thing of the past.
before i can release the thing, there're a couple of points i've gotta finish up:
- write the documentation for the editor itself
- write the documentation for writing your own scripts (for cutscenes, etc.)
- get my testers to finish up their mini-mods. these mods will come with the editor, and will serve as samples.
- finish up the mod loader (which works, but is pretty ugly right now)
future versions of the almighty paintbrush will probably include a more streamlined entity editor and maybe a script-editor (i've had an idea as to how it'd work in my mind for the past few days).
both the underside engine and the almighty paintbrush will be updated semi-frequently as i get more and more of the game done. you'll basically have access to the same tools i'm using to create the game (besides the ability to change the actual game code itself, fffff).
i'm not going to make any promises, but i'm thinking the programs will be released within a week or two. but don't 'quote' me on that (do you get it? it's a cave story joke)
again, visit the new forums if you've got any questions, as it'll basically serve as the main help center once the tools are released. i'm excited to see what you guys'll come up with, and i hope most of you will get your "THE UNDER STORY" mods outta the way early on so you can get to the cool stuff.
attention loversplease take your hatred (and love?) to the new forums
December 29th, 2007mod support
so i've basically finished basic mod support for the underside. you can change a lot of things, including the player's sprite, and a few of the physics values, as well as sound, music, NPCs, dialogue, scripts, etc.
any file that's not found in your mod directory is loaded from the base TU files, which means you can make mini-mods that change just a small portion of the main game, or you could do your own entire game based in the Underside world.
here are some screenshots of a test mod i made, called test_mod.
title:
modified title screen (there's modified music here too, but you can't hear it ffff):
b...buddy?!...?!:
forums link
i've added a link to the old forums on the top of the website, so maybe you can check it out? it's kind of old, but it might be useful once the level editor stuff comes out!
EDIT: just click the link on the top to go to the new forums
fffff might as well
this is your early christmas present okay guys? this is the surprise. the surprise is here... here it is, the surprise:
it's just a work in progress but... i'll probably... release... a version of the game engine that works with it so that you guys can go and make your own games heh heh
surprise coming soonwowowowowow let's all try to guess what it is!!!
December 12th, 2007interviewi gave a short interview with the fellows at indygamer blog. you should read it and support them and care for them with the same kind of care you would give to your grandmother, or a kitten, or a kitten that is also your grandmother through some sort of a strange buddhist reincarnation/time distortion thing.
November 23rd, 2007dear derek yu
dear derek yu, fearless leader of the indie games movement,
thanks for your insightful comment:
Arthur dude, the “general art direction” stems from Cave Story. C’mon, the game looks great, and we all want to play it… just admit the visual style is not original so we can move on with our lives!it has really opened my eyes to the fact that i'm actually a horrible person who steals people's art styles!
before we begin, let's completely ignore the fact that i've never denied my influences from cave story, and that in my interview at planet freeplay i even started my response with the words "the graphical style i use in the underside is [...] influenced by cave story." not ignoring such facts would clearly undermine the fact that my visual style is "unoriginal!"
let's also just disregard any of the games i did before cave story was even released, you know, like:
super fun dungeon run, 2000-2001, which features the same sort of simplistic character designs and four frame running animations i use in the underside. you know, with the same sort of character dimensions and everything.
super fun dungeon run 2, 2004, a similar but more detailed version of the same art style.
operation sitting duck 2, 2003-2004, which featured the liberal use of VERY SUSPICIOUSLY CAVE-STORY-ESQUE DUST-PUFFS. how preposterous of me for future-stealing something.
circy 3, 2004, which featured hmmmm, let's see, the same sort of low resolution pixellated art style that is so distinct and so specific to studio pixel games. and look! the tiles, they're 16x16 blocks, how uncannily cave story of them.
and various other games i don't have on hand as they've been flushed away in the annals of time. let's also disregard the common elements of small characters with stubby limbs, dotted eyes that are offset, etc. you know, the kind of art that's in the underside:
you see, derek yu, it's completely impossible that one of the main reasons i enjoyed cave story was because it resonated a lot with my own art style ("i really liked the graphical style of the game because it reminded me a lot of my own style and it also had a cool retro vibe to it", under the question Do you remember the first time you played Cave Story? What were your first impressions and did you play right through it?). that's just stupid! in fact, i made absolutely sure to use a similar graphical style in the underside not because it was what i was doing anyways, but because i wanted to create controversy, since creating controversy creates publicity, right?
but for us to discuss that in your terms we really have to ignore the aforementioned fact that i never denied my influences from cave story. we also have to ignore the fact that you've made it a point to remind people how terrible of a person i am for stealing from such a seminal part of the indie games community that you've worked so hard to create! nevermind the fact that in some cases there's absolutely no reason for the underside to be mentioned at all! and let's also ignore the fact for the (now almost) two years the game has been in development, i've done a relatively good job of ignoring the unnecessarily harsh comments that are basically thrown my way. otherwise it might seem like i'd been trying to draw attention away from the "cave story debacle" (a term that your site coined) whereas you and your staff have been trying to draw attention towards it (6 of the 8 mentions of the underside on tigsource compare the underside to cave story in some way or another -- the word cave story appears on the underside website all of three times). basically, that just wouldn't work too well with "the truth", which is that i'm a horrible person for stealing cave story art and that i've been doing it to gain a reputation.
so again, thanks for this image, without it, i would have had a hard time figuring out exactly what i meant when i said that "cave story is an obvious influence on the game, [and that the] the general art direction stems from my art style [from] far before that (comment 54)". i should be so lucky to have the concepts of "influence" and "inspiration" explained to me by a fellow game developer whose seminal work "eternal daugther" was "inspired" by castlevania and metroid, and shared the same sort of gameplay/enemy design similarities to its predecessors as the underside does to its predecessors. or "trigger happy 2" to metal gear solid. i mean, besides the art of course, which to my understanding, now becomes the ultimate deciding factor between a "ripoff" and "a game that is inspired by another game."
anyways, derek, i'm glad we've ignored the whole of my interview text, and my past works, and basically anything on this website as well, as they might've perhaps giving us a little too much insight into my decisions in making the game, since that would've been a lot more work than just being an immature five year old and constantly drawing attention to a fact that's been openly stated from the very start. i realize now that i should've just admitted from the start that not all of the ideas in my game are original, and i finally understand why i should admit that my art style is unoriginal based purely on the fact that you choose to ignore my artistic history and rather ignorantly jump to the conclusion that i'm a horrible thief right. but hey if it weren't for ignoring facts i wouldn't be thanking you here so gosh, thanks a lot, man!
- arthur "mr. podunkian" lee November 20th, 2007
some notes regarding what's been changed since the preview
i just now checked the comments on the underside preview download (i totally forgot the download page had a comment link at all), and so i just wanted to let you guys know a bit about the stuff that's been changed since the preview (in terms of the game engine heh heh heh):
probably the most notable difference between the preview and the current work in progress build i've got is that ip's direction is no longer linked to his inertia. a lot of people commented about how it was getting in the way of reflex-based shots (which kind of are important for the boss, i guess), and so i went ahead and made it so that ip will change directions as soon as you press a direction key.
the scripting system has also been moved over to lua -- note that this is ONLY the scripting system, and things like enemies, weapons, and game logic are still handled exclusively by the game engine. this was more of a convenience thing than something i did to add moddability to the game, since it allows me to do things i couldn't do with the old system (such as loops, making macros for things that happen a lot, and being able to dynamic portions to the dialogue, for stuff like "hey, you have (some number) coins").
speaking of dialogue, the text has been changed from a fixed width system to a variable width system, which basically means you'll have to hold onto the Z and X keys for longer periods of time to skip all of the dialogue that you never read on account of you're a gamer and not a big fan of books, or reading.
the game now features pxtone based music, which has dramatically shrunken the filesize of the game: the preview build was like, 14 megs because of music. the current build is like, 3.
in addition, volume controls have been added to the configuration file, so you can turn down all my annoying music. similarly, i've set the default levels a little lower, since i've noticed the game is REALLY LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS (kind of like me). you can set the music and sound effects volumes independently.
enemy code has been optimized a little bit, but you see, when i say optimized i mean that it functions better and more consistently than it did before. in terms of how it'll affect the game's performance, you might see a slight drop (or maybe it'll be massive and you'll cry and cry and cry). it'll probably be barely or unnoticeable
minor bugs have been fixed as well, including that one that you probably noticed seeing as you probably died a million times, which is the bug where the game will run for a single frame right before the game fades out when you die (it was annoying to me, okay?).
and welp, that's about it!
new designi've finished a new design for the underside website because the old one was making me barf. i'll be filling in the other sections soon as well as rewriting the about section just in case you have no idea why you're at this website.
November 16th, 2007music i need it help someone help me
hey guys i need a musician, please email me at thepodunkian atzorz total-klik.net or leave a comment here if you're interested at all and i kind of need you to have heard and be able to generally mimic the style of music i've used in my game so far.
okay cool thanks
underside cameo
silvernova's freeware platform mini-rpg, final vision featured a cameo of the underside's main character, ip.
i'm ... flattered ...
not entirely TU relatedbut the pxtone player extension i wrote for multimedia fusion 2 is available for download here.
October 08th, 2007pxtone
so before i continue, let's get all of the "HEH HEH CAVESTORY" out of us. alright.
so basically i was looking at the underside preview i put out a couple of months ago and i noticed that it was pretty huge in terms of file size for such a short preview, and so i kinda took a peek at the different kinds of files i had in the zip, and basically i found out that the music for the game accounted for like 12.5 megabytes of the 14 megabyte download, and gosh, that's just not cool!
so this past weekend i went and i programmed an extension that plays studio pixel's pxtone file format. this kinda means i'll have to rewrite all of the music in the new format, but so far the results are pretty good: the main theme song went from 508 kb to 18 kb, route 66's music went from 1.3 megabytes to just 35 kb, and the boopee bros battle music went from 1.1 mb to just 11 kb. what took up almost 3 megabytes of space as oggs is only 63.2 kb when it's not zipped up, which means a smaller download for you (and the sound quality isn't bad either!)
whats also really cool about it is that songs don't necessarily have to repeat back to the start of the song, which means i'll be able to write intro parts to songs without having to worry about them being repeated once the song is through.
cool.
wh...wh... thanks...whoa, much love and thanks to steven davies for the donation. i'll give you a little blurb in the game... you know, in the secret developer room or something heh heh.
October 04th, 2007feeeeee foooooooo fffffff
i said i wouldn't but i'm known to lie to little girls
just a quick updatenot that anyone would know what i mean when i say this but ive just now rewritten the enemy movement code and ported all of the scripting system stuff to lua, which means my scripted events and dialogue system will be a lot more flexible now. now that i've confused you with words you can go to sleep assured that i'm still working on this.
August 28th, 2007i'm not dead yet
lively city (rad room version)stop crying
i've started work on the underside again.
i've been busy trying to finish (start?) on the second "dungeon." i'm trying to implement new enemies -- my latest is an unnamed enemy that i haven't made a name for because i haven't made up names in a long time since i haven't worked on the underside in pretty much forever.
its the guy to the left of ip, and all he really does is float around and chase you if you get close enough. he's impervious to bullets, which means you gotta either missile him or avoid him (you can shoot him to push him back though). that and he's allergic to water.
and by allergic i mean he'll explode if he touches it. which is not really like allergies at all.
i've actually gone and counted the number of enemies i've got completed in the underside, and the grand total comes up to around 12 or 13, which is pretty nice, considering i'm not even 10% done with the game.
anyways, thanks for all of the comments -- they've really helped motivate me to continue working on this piece of poop.
progress slowed
so apparently i'm an idiot and've spelled "missile" wrong every single time i mention it in the game. whoops.
anyways, i've been really busy with school and maintaining and enhancing the total-klik, as well as writing a new webpage from scratch for my college TV station, so i really haven't had too much time for myself to dedicate to the underside. the project is by no means cancelled, but any real progress will probably have to wait for at most a month, while i get things sorted out.
yeah, i guess this is the obligatory "real life" point in every big development project's life.
ideas for my next project
i've been thinking about what i could do after i finish the underside, with respect to spinoff games, and i've been playing around with the idea of a tactical RPG, something along the lines of final fantasy tactics, starring the underside safety committee. the idea is still a little fresh in my mind, but an idea i've been playing around with in my mind is the idea of placing signs on the battlefield, that say things like "watch out for falling objects" (which would prevent damage from projectile based attacks in a range of squares around it) or even simple signs like "caution" which would increase a unit's defense.
i'm not sure if i'll pursue the idea completely, since it's kind of an overwhelming task to undertake (especially in MMF2). at any rate, i really want to make a spinoff game starring buddy and bones sometime. maybe it'll just be a straight up platformer, but who knows.
insignificant forums & devblog
i've set up a forum system on total-klik for the underside, and other insignificant studios updates. check it out by clicking here.
also, i've started a devblog for the underside here. most of the posts on that site will be reflected here as well.
if there are any problems registering, leave a comment, please. thanks!
moving platforms
i've recently added moving platforms to TU, which was a lot harder than it should have been because of some choices i made when i was building the engine, but i've finally got them implemented, so now i can go and make some babies cry or something. here's a picture, which really doesn't show much of anything.
interview at planet freeplayyou can read an interview i did at planet freeplay by clicking here
March 30th, 2007text wrapping bug fixed.
i spent all day making it so that the text knows when to start a new line since a lot of you were complaining about that too. it was harder than i thought it'd be because i used variable width font, but it's done and now i can fall in love again
i also made it so that you can play the game in double size mode, for all you people that were complaining about that too
boy you guys sure do complain a lot~!
some stuff i'm playing around with
i've done the first ever implementation of bitmapped variable width fonts in MMF2 to my knowledge. what this pretty much means is that i'll be able to fit more text into the text boxes.
i've also tweaked the direction changing so its independent of the inertia, which a lot of you complained about in the preview.
i'm looking to modify how TU's text engine works, implementing proper text wrapping as well as modifying how the text scrolls. the font i'm using is a modified version of the font found in earthbound, and it makes the text look pretty nice and neat. check it out below (which shows both the before and after):
wallpaper for you loveable cuties~!
if you like the underside so much that you would not mind it tainting your desktop, check out these cute wallpapers!
2048x1024
1024x768
widescreen
and if you like seeing how bad of an artist i really am, you can see my concept image for the wallpaper (i took a photo of it instead of using a scanner because i do not own a scanner):
concept
the underside previewTU preview sooni'll be releasing a preview build of the underside shortly.
January 22nd, 2007the underside website launched
i've decided to launch a website for the underside project.
why?
well, for starters, just so i can have a single place for people to find new information about the game and stuff like that.
also, i feel like i really need to address some things about the game, which i guess this website'll let me do.
and finally, i just want somewhere to be able to write about the development of the game as it happens. right now i'm concerned about getting the parts all working and up, so you probably won't be getting that much new information until i get the rest of the website up.
until then though, feel free to leave comments and look around~