Posted December 28, 2020 by Twarz
#new-game #elemens
Dear Itch readers, I'm very glad to present you Elemens, the 2D plateformer with 4 heroes at once :) In this Post, I explain some history about the game and I tease you some features that I'm really interested in to add to this video game.
Since 2014, from a school project, I couldn't abandon them. I always improved some features for each of them and the initial Elemens game was the most important project of my life. Indeed, I learned how to code and design things through the development of Elemens. Which led me to obtain my engineering degree in robotics and to be a PhD Student today (cancer research).
Even though it's hard to find free time for myself, I've always wanted to tell the story of the Elemens through a 2D living World.
As a group of 3, we had to create a small IT project for the baccalaureate. We decided to create our own video game. We then imagined the gameplay and we created Blizz, Ignis, Sisma, and Zephyr, the 4 Elemens. The project was done using C language and pixel-art style (designed by hand during classes, on 50x50 grid papers). It was clearly one of the best years of my studies. I was finally enjoying "working" and I could then imagine what could I do later...
We all 3 continued our studies in computer science and I was alone to keep developing Elemens during lectures in the amphitheater. I added many features and finally, I could share a playable version of it. It is today available on GameJolt. During my studies, I hear about Oriented Object Programming, which is a much better way to develop than simple C. So I started to recreate the whole game in pure Java. I started to create a whole application that could help to design 2D maps for the game, but it was a bit messy, and I fucked-up a lot with GitHub at the beginning...
I was now a better developer and I started to understand that it was way better to use existing libraries to create things. So I tested many libs to get better performances and to simplify basic stuff. I found LibGDX as the best lib for my need. So again, during my spare time (really rare...), I could design my OOC so it will be easy to finally create the game. I design the architecture that would allow me to create intelligent and living-things. I want each entity in the game to be alive (except objects and minerals...).
In 2018, I could submit the project as a research project, and with 4 other persons, we plugged the current game concept with a Deep Neural Network, so the creatures were now able to make a decision in order to survive. Here is a short demo.
At this stage, physics (player movements, water floating/sinking...), living-things (life, strain, hunger...), decisional processes (State machine, Deep Learning), animations (sprites and spine)... and so on... were ready to be used!
But some friends and I wanted bigger, we wanted to design this living world in 3D, using Unity3D as the engine. But it was too ambitious I guess... Good projects exist like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtrqfbo9rO4.
During 2 years, I didn't achieve anything for the game and I have to focus on my first year of PhD.
Here we are writing the story :)
In the next Post, I would like to detail more some milestones that completely represent the game:
I wish you all the best,
Twarz