Lords of Midnight – Video Footage

Ok, sorry it’s taken so long… but here is a bit of video showing the app running on an actual device. Some caveats…

1. this was taken by my daughter using my iPhone, therefore the quality is poor. But then it wasn’t about showing you the graphics! 🙂 – I will try and do a proper one later. But it may just be that screencasts from the simulator will be better in the future.

2. none of this is final. Placeholder graphics, placeholder ui, placeholder placeholders…

3. this is the first time I have run in on the hardware for some time. I have been through a number of Marmalade SDK changes in that time. This was one of the reasons why it has taken so long – I couldn’t get the deploy to work!

Subsequently, there are a couple of issues. The main one that dragging the main view around doesn’t work, thus the default to click on the left and right side of the screen.

Also, the character selection screen was mid working. So all that you could see was dragging one lord around, with his grouping circle on!

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Lords of Midnight – Video Footage Follow-up

I spoke with Mike about releasing some video footage, and he’s up for it. I just need to put the process together. I have a few things I want to finish off on the character selection screen and then I’ll do it. I’ve been busy over the last 2 weeks with client work, so progress has been slow. But things should return to normal by then end of this week.

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Lords of Midnight – Video Footage

I’ve been giving some thought to releasing some screenshots of LOM iOS. However, I can’t really see much point. Any screenshots using the current graphics will just show an image of a game running in a development box on my Mac. A game that won’t look to interesting at this stage, because you won’t be able to see any of the intended graphical enhancements. I also have some video footage of the game running that I have used to show some people how the mechanics for the landscaping works. It would also suffer the same issues.

That said, it occurred to me this morning, that maybe what I should do is release some video of me playing the game on my iPad. That would at least show that the game is actually real and not some vaporware concept.

I’m going spend another day thinking about it, and then I might release something over the weekend!

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Lords of Midnight – 1 Year Update

Ok, so I never thought I’d be writing this post. To be honest, I thought I’d be done by now.

It’s 12 months since I first had a discussion about releasing Lords of Midnight for the iPhone and iPad with Mike Singleton. At lot has happened in that year, but unfortunately not a lot on the project.

The delay in what should be a simple project, comes purely down to lack of time. I lost a lot of steam over last year for a number of reasons. There were both technical and personal reasons from my side and Mike had his own health issues that needed dealing with. Between the two of us, the project just fell by the wayside. However, we’ve discussed this at length since the turn of the year, and the next few months should hopefully see a big turn around.

Let me first bring you up to date on what has happened.

The full TME engine was ported to the Airplay ( now Marmalade ) SDK. This allows for the engine to run and target many mobile platforms. Various different libraries were developed to allow much of the UI to happen. And most of the screens that LOM requires have been produced.

The game is fully playable. And I had indeed played much of it on my iPad.

The process now is tying up all the little things required while playing the game, adding a few new features, and then the presentation. The later being no a small issue.

So hopefully, what that means is, there is no reason why the game shouldn’t happen. Everything is in place. It’s just a matter of joining all the dots.

One of the things that I played around a lot with toward the end of last year, was the panoramic view, and scrolling it around with your fingers. Trying to get the process looking and working nice was a challenge. But I think I have a good, if not perfect implementation.

Over the last few nights I’ve been working on the in game map. That should be finished in a functional way by the end of this week. The map auto maps. It works by considering all the locations in your view and then deciding how much you know about that location. So for example, that tower in the distance that you can see, will be added to the map, although you won’t know the name until you are one location away, but that lake sat in the middle of the forest, won’t be. Enemies that you have seen are also placed on the map, for a while. For example, if any one of your lords sees an army in the distance, the army is placed on the map. But they only remain there while one of your lords can see them. After a number of days passing without your lords seeing the army, they are removed from the map.

Currently you can scroll around the map. But I need to put all the niceties that will make the map fully functional.

More soon…

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Lords of Midnight – Update

I thought I’d better post here, because it seems it’s been a while!

I know many people might be thinking that this project is going the way of all the others… vapourware, and to be truthful there is always the chance of that. I do find it very hard to get the work done in the evenings, when I have so much going on. And we’ve had such a good summer, in the scheme of things, that I’ve found it very hard to do any coding in the evenings.

The last few months has seen me going through a merry go round of my work contracts, and in particular I’ve been working silly hours.

I also had a lot of problems with Marmalade, the SDK I’m using to give me the cross platform. They have only recently been resolved.

Anyway, enough of the excuses, other than to say that 6 months has disappeared and the project hasn’t moved on a great deal!

The intention is to fire up the quatro, and make a real push to get work done started again from Jan. I’ll also try and keep the blog up to date.

I noticed that man people have visited and will have seen no movement for a while… 🙁 sorry about that!

So, watch this space…

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