Marker World Forum

January 12th, 2008

I have finally found some free time for creating a discussion forum section for my website. You can discuss the Marker World concept demo, upload your custom levels, download other peoples’ custom levels, or just discuss anything you want. Here’s the link:

http://www.hatsformypencil.com/forum/

Marker World Editor

December 28th, 2007

I have finished working on the Marker World Editor. A basic tutorial for the editor can be found here. In addition to the editor functionality, completing a level now displays your finish time as well as the number of objects drawn. I also added a counter for the number of stars remaining in a level to the overview/menu screen. Enjoy!

Download the 1.95 MB demo here.

[update: 12/29/07 - There are reported problems running this version on Windows Vista. A temporary fix may be to run Marker World in Windows ME/98 Compatibility mode. Hopefully that will fix the problem until I get a copy of Vista to properly test it on.]

Marker World Editor - Coming soon!

December 19th, 2007

 

I’ve been working on an editor for the Marker World concept demo which hopefully should be finished very soon.  It is a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor and should be very easy to use.  Levels are created in real-time - you draw your entire level using your brush.  Save your levels and distribute them anyway you like.  In addition, you can draw dynamic physics objects just like in the game for you to play around with inside the editor.

The editor will be integrated into Marker World, which is still just a concept demo and not a full game by any means.  I decided to create a level editor for it due to popular demand :).  The screenshot above is just a preview, the layout may still change.

Marker World feedback

December 5th, 2007

I have been receiving mostly positive feedback from Marker World in the four days it has been out - thanks to everyone who provided comments, criticism, and new ideas.  The top requests so far have been more levels (of course!) and a level editor.  The concept demo seems to be getting the most attention through gamedev.net and fun-motion.com so I try and check the threads over there more often than other sites.  However if there are any other comments/questions/ideas you would like me to see, the Comments section of this blog would be the best place to put it.

I’m actually rather new to this whole blogging thing as you probably can tell so I’m interested in hearing anything you have to say about Marker World.  If you simply like it and would like to see a more complete version of the game in the future (this was just a concept demo after all), please let me know!  Oh and if you know of any music that would fit the game (avoiding copyright issues), definitely let me know…

Marker World

December 1st, 2007

A video of Marker World, a concept demo that I created which was inspired by many games - the most notable being Crayon Physics. The demo could really use some music. Actually it can use a lot of things but music would be the easiest to put in :).

Marker World is a physics based game where all you need to play is the creativity of your mind and the stroke of your mouse! It is a puzzle game where the goal is to control your ball, draw your way through obstacles, and collect stars. There is much lacking from the demo but I welcome any feedback.

[edit: 12/02/07 - demo version updated to version 1.0d, fixes the “NonPow2Conditional” message]

[edit: 12/21/07 - there seems to be some rendering bugs with running Marker World 1.0d on an ATI x1300/x1400. I don’t have a fix yet but I’ll be sure to post an update when the issue has been addressed. If you don’t have problems running Marker World on an x1300/x1400 (mobility or not), please let me know which driver version you are using.]

You can download the 2.25 MB demo here: MarkerWorld_concept_demo_v1_0d.zip
[edit: 12/28/07 - please download the latest version here]

Marker World uses Erin Catto’s Box2D Physics Engine.

3D Engine

November 26th, 2007

A video of a 3D engine I developed back in early 2006.  The design of the level was influenced from a portion of Humus’ GameEngine Demo.  The main goal of writing the engine was to learn more about 3D programming.  The engine features per-pixel phong/specular lighting, normal mapping, and heavy use of shadow volumes.