If your interest is piqued, join us over at elementalgame.com!

All right, people, here it is. The current source code to Planitia, along with the cut-down, more retro-styled resources. (The previous animated sprites not only didn’t look that good, but they ballooned the project size to over a hundred megs – what the hell was I thinking?!)

Click here to download the source code and resources necessary to get the project running!

Now, having clicked that link, your work here is not done. You will read to the end of this entry before you start asking questions about how to get this working. Okay?

That zip file is going to extract into two directories – one called “Planitia” and one called “Framework”. That’s right kiddies! As a bonus, you get the framework I use to make all my games nowadays.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to get this project working.

Install Visual C++ Express 2008. Yes, I know, Microsoft just released Visual C++ Express 2010 but I haven’t tested with it yet.

Install FMOD EX.

Install a version of the DirectX 9 SDK.

Alter the include and library paths in both the Framework and Planitia projects to point at the local versions of FMOD and DirectX.

Alter the include paths in Planitia to point to the Framework source.

Check Project Dependencies for Planitia and make sure it’s dependent on Framework.

The working folder for Planitia is “Redist”. You’ll probably have to put your versions of fmod.dll and the directx redistributable in there to get your particular compilation working.

I’m sorry I couldn’t make this any simpler, but it shouldn’t be that hard to get running (under Windows, at least).

If you have any questions (that aren’t covered in the above instructions), please feel free to either leave a comment or email me at anthony.salter@gmail.com.

Good luck with the source! And don’t worry, just because I’m releasing the current source doesn’t mean I’m done with Planitia.

EDIT: It has occurred to me that people may want to play the current version of Planitia without having to compile it. Those people should click here.

EDIT: I have been asked what license this software is being released under. I am releasing it under the Simplified BSD (or FreeBSD License). The upshot is that I retain copyright, but you are free to do anything you wish with this source code (up to and including developing a commercial project with it) as long as you attribute the original source to me. This source is being provided “as-is” and I take no responsibility for any problems you may have with it.

The complete text of the license follows.

Copyright 2010 Anthony Salter. All rights reserved.

The views and conclusions contained in the software and documentation are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing official policies, either expressed or implied, of Anthony Salter.

Then I reinstalled Starcraft, and the same thing happened.

Now, Starcraft is probably the most reliable piece of software ever written, and watching it come up in psychedelia was painful. I knew there had to be a solution. And there is.

In Vista, right-click your desktop and choose “Personalize” from the resulting menu. In Windows 7, right-click your desktop and choose “Screen Resolution”.

Don’t do anything in these screens; just leave them up.

Run your game. Your colors will be fixed.

There’s a lot to like about Hero Core. It may be the most perfect one-man band game I’ve ever played (although technically it’s two men because the music was done by Brother Android). It’s a perfect study in overcoming the limits of your own abilities to produce greatness.

Can’t do great art? Design your game so that you don’t have to. Hero Core runs in 320×240 and is in black and white (not monochrome, mind you – black and white are the only two colors used). Almost everything that moves is a particle of some kind, and they are almost all made of simple geometric shapes. The actual levels are made up of square tiles – no attempt to soften or round them was made. The main character doesn’t even have any frames of animation! While the word “retro” is horribly overworked, this game literally looks like it was made in the mid- to late-Eighties for the ZX Spectrum. Practically anyone can do art at this level, and it’s effective. Contrast this with Daniel’s previous game Iji, where the art is by far the weakest part of the game because Daniel isn’t that great at drawing and animating humanoid figures.

The game’s design strikes a perfect balance between challenge and accessibility. Death has practically no sting – all that happens is get warped back to your last save point. And these save points are everywhere, fully refill your health when you use them and allow you to teleport between them. That last bit is the really brilliant part – Daniel Remar has made a Metroidvania that doesn’t have any tedious backtracking in it.

The end result is that Daniel can make the individual rooms (or a sequence of rooms) difficult without making the game frustrating, since all you have to do is make it to the next save point – or teleport elsewhere if you really think you’re not ready yet. And while it’s not quite NES hard, it gets very challenging towards the end and veers into bullet hell territory on the higher difficulties. But practically anyone can finish the game because you don’t need an impossible level of skill; you just need a moderate level of skill and some perseverance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – allow the player to trade time for skill.

So, to sum up, great design, effective art, excellent music and it didn’t take him four years this time. Bravo, Daniel. Bravo.

It’s done by Daniel Remar of Remar Games, who also did the excellent Iji.

The number of older games that are now available for digital download in one form or another is increasing. Publishers are learning that there is still value in these older games, which makes me happy, as a lot of my discs are getting really, really scratched.

First, while I wouldn’t say we’re in crunch mode on Elemental, we are working very intently. And the interesting thing is that we’re not working intently to make some publisher happy so that they’ll keep the money drip going. We’re working intently to make our beta testers happy. The current beta (1G) actually has the potential to be – wait for it – fun. It’ll be a nice reward to everyone who stuck with us through the first few betas, which were so un-fun that we felt the need to actually put a warning on the splash screen.

Second, I lost my video card. Well, that’s not really true. I know exactly where it is…it’s in my wife’s computer, since hers flaked out thirty minutes before a raid. I could try to get it back, but I’d probably lose a hand in the process.

So I’m stuck on internal video, which is not conducive to video capture and/or…anything really. The best game I’ve been able to get running on it is Morrowind, and even that is pretty choppy. Hopefully our finances will loosen up towards the middle of the month and I’ll be able to return to the land of the 3D-accelerated.

In the meantime, I’ve found something to keep you occupied. First, GetDaved, who not only has a great YouTube handle but is also one of the best LPers out there now that DeceasedCrab is semi-retired, is currently playing through Galactic Civilizations 2. He did an excellent playthrough of Master of Orion and two (count them, two!) playthroughs of Master of Orion 2, but when he was asked to play Master of Orion 3 he refused, saying he didn’t find that game fun. So he’s playing GalCiv2 instead. Good for him!

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon.

I promise.

Again.

Update: Well, it seems the sale expired right around the time I discovered it. Sorry about that. On the upside, you have an excuse again!

Which left me with my laptop. Which, if you’ll recall is really just a netbook (a Gateway LT31, in fact). It’s got two gigs of RAM and a dedicated ATI Radeon X1270 graphics processor, unlike most netbooks which just use an Intel 950 Integrated Graphics Processor, which are cheap and work fine for web browsing but are nigh-unusable for games.

So I hooked my monitor, mouse, keyboard and speakers up to my laptop so I could at least compute in comfort.

Then I got out some games to see how well the rig would run them. The results:

Oblivion: Ran, but was unplayable even on the lowest graphical settings. This wasn’t a big surprise or disappointment. I knew I’d have to drop back a generation or two to get some results.

Morrowind: Ran fine; but I had to turn the graphics detail and the draw distance all the way down to get above 15 FPS outside. So it looks like Vvardenfell is constantly shrouded in fog. Interiors, on the other hand, run great – and dungeons are interiors so dungeon running is fine. Overall, playable.

World of Warcraft: Again, detail at the lowest settings. Large cities with lots of people like Dalaran are complete lag zones, but questing out in the wild greatly improves the frame rate. Overall, playable, if slightly annoying.

Deus Ex: The game defaults to 16-bit color mode, which I haven’t changed. Frame rate is good, if a little choppy in some places. Definitely playable.

Warcraft III: Perfectly playable on medium detail. I can even play on Battle.net and watch replays.

Starcraft: Perfectly playable. Again, playing on Battle.net and watching replays is no problem.

Half Life: Runs great, no changes needed.

System Shock 2: The big surprise of my experiments, this game runs perfectly without any need for tweaks (other than the minor ones necessary to get it running).

Fallout: Runs fine.

Tonight I’ll be trying Baldur’s Gate 2 and I might even be able to get away with Neverwinter Nights.

Oh, and Zeta development works fine, yadda yadda yadda.