Mattias Gustavsson

TIGJamUK3

Sun, 6 Jun 2010 19:08:04 +0000

This weekend, I spent in Cambridge at TIGJamUK3 an indie game dev get-together of about 30 people, where we came up with weird themes and tried to make games designed around them in only 2-3 hours each!

Lot's of good fun, and I managed the deadline for the three jams I participated in (I tend to have to stay so focused when making a game in such a short time period that my brain gets fried, and then I have to rest for a bit :P)

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Debug Text Render

Mon, 4 Jan 2010 12:49:15 +0000

When working on games, I often find it useful to be able to quickly and easily display text strings on the screen for debugging purposes. A long time ago I wrote a simple little piece of code which could draw text... [ Read more ]

The Jade Figurines

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:55:49 +0000

So, over the weekend (from friday to late sunday), I made a small beginning of a game, as an entry to the RPGDX competition. Now, 48 hours is a very short time for this, so I didn't manage to complete the whole thing, but I did manage a very good start. There's one short level...

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New Characters for Jade Figurines

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:16:53 +0000

I've been making some more... [ Read more ]

Dungeon Master-style game

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:15:13 +0000

The last few days, I've been experimenting a bit with art... [ Read more ]

Video: Jade Figurines

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:08:09 +0000

I've put a video on youtube of the Jade Figurines game I made recently.

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Thieves and Warriors

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:48:56 +0000

Here's a little preview of a game I'm working on, called "Thieves and Warriors". I've mentioned it before.

The game is somewhat inspired by old RPG games like Phantasie 3 (oh, and Pirates! as well, obviously), but even more inspired by oldschool pen and paper RPG's. Ther'll be lots of stats and numbers, none of it hidden away. And not so much animations or effects - more static screens and menus. [ Read more ]

48 hour Sidescrolling RPG Competition

Thu, 6 Aug 2009 14:37:30 +0000

RPGDX is having another one of their friendly mini-competitions, where you're trying to make games (mostly RPGs) in a limited time period. The competitions are just for fun, and you don't win anything besides the bragging rights... and the winner is voted by the participants. [ Read more ]

Font Generation Tool

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:05:02 +0000

As I couldn't find an existing tool which met my requirements, I've written by own utility to generate a bitmap font from a true-type font, which is quite useful for when you want to use a font in a game but don't want to buy the full distribution rights to it... [ Read more ]

Using Strings as IDs

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:06 +0000

Sometimes, it's nice to be able to identify things by name, rather than using a number or an enum. The problem is, that if you're not careful, using strings can take a lot of memory, and LOADS of CPU-power, with all the stricmp's. When I was hired for the Tycoon City project, and assigned the task of... [ Read more ]

Escape from the Dungeon

Sat, 16 May 2009 18:12:05 +0000

Here's a little game I've been working on for a while, on and off.

It's called "Escape from the Dungeon", and the back story is this: three adventurers (a man, a woman and a dwarf) have been split up while exploring a dungeon, and the player controls all... [ Read more ]

Parachute - A Game&Watch Tribute

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 02:19:07 +0000

Do you remember the old Game & Watch games? The little handheld one-game toys with simple and fun games? There was one called Parachute, which was one of my favourites. [ Read more ]

100 Faces

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 00:17:26 +0000

Over the last week, I've been taking a long hard look at all the projects I'm working on. Turns out that it's just over 50 different things I'm working on, and that's too much even for a student with no pressure to finish anything :P So I've stoved away the majority of them for later, and I'm now focusing on a total of 5 projects, which is... [ Read more ]

3D Engine - Animation Basics

Sun, 4 Jan 2009 10:32:43 +0000

I guess by now, some of you are getting a bit impatient to see some actual code put together for this, and it is almost time to get down with the practical side of things, but before we do, there's ome more thing we need to look into: animation. So far, we've got models and lights which can be moved around, and in a way that's all we need for making simple animations through code. However, we have no means of animating characters within a 3D modelling package and have them played back in the engine. This is where morphs and skinning comes... [ Read more ]

Fighting Game - Oldshool Style

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:48:25 +0000

As I've talked about before, I'm a big fan of oldshool fighting games, like Way of the Exploding Fist or International Karate. I've always wanted to make a fighting game, and so I've now added.. [ Read more ]

Using XML for storing game data

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:13:50 +0000

When making games, you find yourself dealing with lots of data of different sorts, everything from the movement speed and jump height of the player to the level layouts or game art, and it can sometimes be of great importance how you deal with it. Some things (especially the smaller, simpler things), you might as well just store in the code itself, while other things might be better to store in external files. This entry will be about storing game data, and more specifically about using XML files for storage... [ Read more ]

Character from my new RPG

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:32:32 +0000

The last couple of weeks (in between studying for my exam :P) I've been working on a new project, a quite hardcore (p&p style heavy number crunching) fantasy RPG. I won't go into much details about it yet, but it's progressing rather well, and I'll keep posting little bits about it here as I go along... [ Read more ]

Duell - A Card Game For Two

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:03:16 +0000

So far, I've mostly been writing about games I like, and unfortunately, Duell is not one of them... [ Read more ]

Terrain Generation and Texturing

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 11:41:40 +0000

When it comes to 3D games, you often find yourself in a position where you need to have a big area where the action takes place - the terrain on which to place your roads, buildings and other things. There's many ways to go about this (ranging from having the artists model everything by hand to having it all procedurally generated), and today I'll be talking about a very simple, straightforward way to generate terrain... [ Read more ]

Oldschool RPG - Phantasie 3

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:23:55 +0000

I've been into RPGs, of the pen & paper variety, since before I got into video games, so I've always had a soft spot for computer RPGs too. The problem is, so many computer RPGs have a tendency to... [ Read more ]

Comment on Escape from the Dungeon by Steve Lillis

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 04:23:16 +0000

Steve Lillis wrote: Hi Mattias, I stumbled upon your game when googling for \"top down rpg\". Have you made any further progress since your last post? I\'m a developer working on a random dungeon diablo meets zelda: a link to the past style top down rpg for XBox Live Indie Games and I love your game\'s look. If you\'d be interested in working together or learning more please drop me a mail. Steve

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by frank

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 11:48:24 +0000

frank wrote: look up a game called stonekeep. That is a great older game.

Comment on 3D Engine - Model File Format by Ahmad

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:10:14 +0000

Ahmad wrote: found this 3D converter, don\'t know how long it will be free: http://www.cadtrans.com/

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by Mattias

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:10:05 +0000

Mattias wrote: Wow, it's really been that long? :-O Well, I've put this project on ice, but I haven't totally abandoned it - I'm sure I'll come back to it one day!

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by Sharpe

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:49:27 +0000

Sharpe wrote: So, it's been about a year since you've posted an update on this -- think it's time for one? ;) Looks cool.

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by solo

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:08:18 +0000

solo wrote: Mattias where did you get your POSER models and textures from?

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by Morgan

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 13:10:15 +0000

Morgan wrote: Some of the above people suggested having only one character but I think that would make a game like this boring. It isn't exactly oblivion where you can travel all over the world and you control your character more freely. In a dungeon-crawler, having some imaginary company is only nice and it adds to the gameplay by giving you more options for the fights.

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by Morgan

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:10:22 +0000

Morgan wrote: Hej förresten! Lycka till med spelet. Det ska bli kul att testa detta när det blir klart.

Comment on Dungeon Master-style game by Morgan

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 11:08:02 +0000

Morgan wrote: Looks good from the picture but what's really important is the feel of the game. You need to create a system and atmosphere that feels solid, like everything you've done belongs together and charm is also important. Look at games like Eye of the Beholder and Lands of Lore for an example. Big dungeons can be fun but you need to feel that it's not randomly generated. Something else that would be nice is to make a party system with classes and unique spells and skills, encounters with npcs or monsters that starts with some dialogue to add to the immersion and finally a good music score!

Comment on Serf City - Simple Is Fun by Shark

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:32:45 +0000

Shark wrote: You can download at www.abandonia.com Great website for old games. And its free! Best game i ever played..