Level 2’s redesign is almost complete. Thought you might like to have a look at it. Check it out full-screened in high quality!

The new level code allows me to create MUCH longer levels. They’re friggin’ huge now! You can see for yourself in the following image.

The top level is the new level 3 stage 1, the bottom is the old. As you can see, the new design is 4 times longer, with no serious hit to the CPU. I’m really excited to see how the new level redesigns go. Level 2 still needs some soft shadowing, as well as animated props and checkpoint events, but it’s coming along.

So you can see why it’s been a while since y’all saw an update. There are other reasons, some of which I’m not too fond of. On the lighter side, Southern California has been suffering through a bit of a heat wave lately, and my non-air-conditioned office must have cardboard for insulation because it gets downright miserable from 2 PM – 10 PM. I also helped a friend with another game project which I hope you’ll get to see soon. But, on a more serious note, I’m turning 30 in a couple of weeks, and for some reason I’m not taking it very well. It’s been hard to keep focus and stay motivated, but I do what I can. I should be back on track now. Progress like this is always inspirational.

P.S. I HATE Flash CS4. If I didn’t need native support for Flash 10, I would have never upgraded. The bones tool is a useless joke, my sessions crash repeatedly, despite the fact that I fixed a common corrupted font problem. Some filter effects turn off completely when you zoom in to certain levels. The deco tool is another useless toy. And the UI has so many glitches and bugs it’s nothing short of aggravating. And to top it all off, there is STILL a laundry list of bugs carried over from previous versions of Flash that they STILL HAVEN’T FIXED! Worst… upgrade… EVAR!

Just working on the color scheme for the first part of the new Level 2 redesign. What do you think? Now on to shading and highlights.

***[edit]***

Shadows and highlights are done.

Here are the rough layouts for the new level 2 design. My buddy Ryan and I have altered its original layout it to give it more of a purpose, starting from the outside road, showing off the remnants of a good city sacking, into the city, and finally finishing off in an arena.

Now on to deeper, darker, spiderier ice caves in level 3. Yay, I made up a word.

My buddy Ryan and I are adding a new level to the game. It will be an initial stage for learning the controls and setting up the backstory. I figured out how to add some soft highlights and shading, which makes the background look more like it came out of Photoshop instead of Flash. I’ve also shrunk the size of all the characters to get some more action on screen.

I finally bought Flash CS4, which gives me a good reason rework a lot of Conjurer’s code. Why is this a good idea? Now stages are no longer limited by a 2880×2880 bitmap. Flash 10 is faster than Flash 9. I may even be able to use some of Flash 10’s 3D capabilities.

More level artwork later. Now that the size limit is broken, we’re doing a lot of redesign for all the levels in the game.

What do you think of all the new updates Ogre General?

*** Edit ***

Some people were interested in seeing what the image looks like without the soft highlights and shading. As you can see, it really makes a big difference.

Big update!

Here’s a video of an alpha test of Conjurer: Wrath of the Arcane. All the levels have been constructed! You get to see what a few stages look like in each level. I’m especially proud of the lava and ice levels. It’ll get even better once I add things like bubbling magma, stormy clouds, and sandy gusts of desert wind.

Next up is developing enemies, attacks, and bosses!

In other news… all the noise I’ve been rattling on about making my Actionscript engine a blit-based engine has proven to be a big waste of time. Shock and dismay! I was really looking forward to seeing a marked improvement in CPU performance by keeping all assets as BitmapData and drawing whatever I need onto a big Bitmap canvas. Turns out it gives the same kind of performance (or less!) as using standard MovieClips. Bummer!

Ah well, that’s how it goes I guess. Now I get to have fun developing the game’s enemies and bosses. This project is really coming together! Let’s hope I can get most of this project wrapped before Fall quarter starts up at UC Irvine.