Forum:Pikmin Engine by Espyo/Updates

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Birthday update
The engine is one year old today! To celebrate, I have a new update. This update adds a LOT of things. It's not nearing completing yet, but it's a lot of progress. The biggest thing here is the walls. You can now have walls, different textures, and the collisions are fully functional. In addition, Pikmin are a bit smarter, some graphics are different, minor improvements have been made, and a Red Bulborb has been added to the existing stage. If you're dedicated, you can even create your own area and objects now. Please, give it a try and let me know what you think. Oh, and spread the word, as usual; I need feedback in order for us to be able to have the best fan games possible. Download it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47921869/Permanent/PFE/PFE%20alpha%204.zip

The two shoddy things you might notice right away on the engine are the animations being glitched (I'll fix them later, it's just an aesthetic problem) and kind of choppy. The problem with the latter is that I don't have time to make them smoother... Which brings me to a small announcement. I have a job now, and now my time has been cut from ~10 or so free hours a day to ~2. I'll still work on the engine, but progress will be slow from here on out, I'm afraid. We'll see. This also makes me question something else: Are people still waiting for the engine, or is this just a thing that's happening in the background and people are only occasionally following? Because if the fan's motivation is low, my motivation is low. I need to know this. Please post a comment on the main talk page. — {EspyoT} 19:09, 15 August 2014 (EDT)

March 9th Update
The It Lives! update. I've spent a huge time working on the animation editor, and it was really bothersome. A lot of things kept being clunky and glitchy, and it wasn't really an enticing thing to work on. But some days ago, I completed it. The next step was to make some animations for an enemy, to test if everything was working fine. Finally, I worked on scripting the enemy's behavior. That enemy is none other than a. It's a simple enemy, with not that many animations, and with diverse hitboxes (that haven't been written yet). And most importantly, it lives!

It's a fully sleeping, roaming and hunting creature. ...Kinda. Because the hitboxes and Pikmin interactions are missing, he can't really do much in terms of attacking, but at least the animation is there. Anyway, seeing how easy it was to create the creature made me very optimistic and motivated. I can thus say that the development progress is going great. I still have a long road in front of me, but provided there are no detours, it should be a smooth ride.

The playable alpha I bring today comes with a Cloaking Burrow-nit and an improved HUD and cursor. The animation editor is also present in the game, but it's a bit weird to access right now. You must launch the game through the command line and specify any argument alongside the executable. But other than that, it's pretty fun to move around and play with the Cloaking Burrow-Nit. And if you're really interested, you can edit the creature to create one of your own; the script functionality is mostly complete. Drop me a notice somewhere if you're interested on the available events and actions.

After this, I'll work on hitboxes and Pikmin interaction, so hopefully we'll be seeing some Pikmin killing and being killed themselves, in the near future. Download link here. Let me know what you think! — {EspyoT} 16:55, 9 March 2014 (EDT)

Christmas Update
Merry Christmas! I cooked up a build of the latest version as a sort of gift. It's starting to become kinda fun to issue Pikmin to do this and go there. I still have a long way to go, but what's currently done is pretty smooth. Up next, I'll take care of an enemy AI system, and it'll be a while until it's completed, but until then, you can have fun goofing around with the latest version. Download it at the same URL as before: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47921869/Permanent/PFE/PFE%20alpha.zip (No Linux version yet!...) — {EspyoT} 17:56, 24 December 2013 (EST)

October 23 Update
A couple of days ago, I compiled a quick runnable alpha version: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47921869/Permanent/PFE/PFE%20alpha.zip You can't do much right now, but feel free to mess around! One warning though: Don't issue more than 50 Pikmin to carry the cyan object, as the engine will freeze. Also, I've got something that I figured I could ask for help with. A logo! I need something that's quick, simple, small, looks good, and makes it clear that it's an engine for Pikmin games. Maybe some Pikmin carrying some cogs and nuts. I want to hear your suggestions! — {EspyoT} 09:58, 23 October 2013 (EDT)
 * Forgot the controls... Ok, so you can move with WASD, and aim the cursor with the mouse. Left click to punch/throw/pluck/etc., and right click to use the whistle. Tab switches leaders. Left Control dismisses your group. R and F use sprays (think of it like the up and down buttons on the D-Pad in Pikmin 2). C switches between the 3 camera zoom levels, although you can fine-tune the zoom with the mouse wheel. Hold Space to move the group towards the cursor. I should also note that you can also use a gamepad to play, although it's a lot wonkier at the moment. — {EspyoT} 06:53, 24 October 2013 (EDT)

October 14 Update
The engine is now on GitHub! The source code is now available, and safe. Because of the way Git works, you can now check out my changes there, instead of the old changelog file. As for news on the engine itself, it's shaping along nicely. It really looks like something now, and besides stuff like animations and Pikmin actually doing something that isn't weirdly following you, it actually looks like an actual game! Here's a screenshot: Screenshot I won't post a video because there's actually quite a lot that's been done, and a video would just take forever to show it all. I still have a lot to do, but at least it's going well. — {EspyoT} 08:24, 14 October 2013 (EDT)

September 2 update
I have decided to start it, and at the moment, you can already see, move, and switch captains, you can move the cursor, and the captains turn accordingly, Pikmin move around and can be idle and burrowed, you can whistle them, they can (weirdly) follow you, you can kinda throw them, and there's a partial HUD. In terms of looks, it's no Gioconda, but it's perfectly understandable. In terms of progress, it looks like most of the basics are done already, but they really aren't. Even for mechanics and such, I'm only like 1% of the way there. A lot of other things are still needed, like menus and collisions/areas.

Anyway, there's this (slightly) outdated video I recorded to tide you over. I'll also leave a link to the development log.

Now, as I mentioned above, I'll be studying hard for my finals the next weeks, and after that, I'll go on vacation for a week, no Internet (probably). I obviously won't work on this while I'm trying to study, but during my vacation, because hanging around on the beach all day every day becomes boring, I'll probably work a bit on the engine as well. Other than that, remember that you can also use the chatroom (link on the left bar) to talk to me and other Pikmin fans. Every time I do something on the engine, I post it on the chatroom. This ranges from new features to the game exploding in hilarious ways, as it often does during development. And yeah, because the engine was greenlight, you can go tell your friends about it and share the word, about the engine that might revolutionize Pikmin forever (/ambitious). I'm... just kinda skeptical about Nintendo finding this and shutting us down because they're insane... Maybe I'm being too negative. Thoughts? Oh, one last thing. If you can find someone who has time, likes Pikmin, and can draw sprites reasonably well, don't hesitate to tell me about them. I may do the programming side of the engine, but I won't do basic sprites, which will definitely be needed. If anything, basic Bulborb sprites will need to exist so that game creators can change them accordingly. — {EspyoT} 21:28, 1 September 2013 (EDT)