Scrolly thingy

Nothing special today: just a scrollable list box for selecting types (to place on the level). It has been interesting dabbling in implementing my own UI controls, but I am also happy I will be moving on to actual editor things now!

So apparently Ludum Dare (LD48 for short) is on right now (this weekend). For those not familiar, it is a competition to quickly create games in 48 hours. I have always wanted to participate in one of these, but never seem to be free on the weekends it's on...

Maybe I can show this off at a LD17520. Yep, that's right - according to the revision history, I have been working on Battle Balloons for two years! To be fair, in that time I have also been busy working on releasing BioShock 2 and soon-to-be-released The Darkness II. These commercial titles put the food on the table, so they have always taken priority. :)

Anyway, time to drive to Toronto to visit some buddies for the weekend!

Preliminary level editor work

Decided to do some long-overdue work on Battle Balloons this long weekend. Been beaching it up every single weekend before this, so a weekend indoors is a nice change (along with fattening myself up on the ribfest outside!).

The pieces for the UI toolkit (which run in-game) are beginning to come together. I have a bunch of windows you can drag around and overlap. Font rendering could be better, but this will suffice for now. The editor is going to be super-simple; much like the VVVVVV editor actually (which I have been messing around with). If I ever did want something more, I would probably use a real UI toolkit (maybe QT) rather than write my own.

Anyway, just thought I would report on some Battle Balloony stuff for once, rather than The Darkness II (which is coming along real swell - heaps of polish going in and more to come... it's gonna be awesome!).

One more day to go... let's see what I can cook up!

Basic windows (taken from an OS X build)!

UPDATE: Made a bit more progress today. Mainly just a list box and blinding/folding windows. Video below (from a Windows build this time).

San Diego Comic-Con

If anyone is going to be in San Diego this month for Comic-Con, we have been furiously polishing a playable build of The Darkness II that will be showing there... so please check it out! It will be at booth #2629. There will also be free copies of The Darkness II: Confessions comic and a chance to win a sweet Darkling figurine (pictured above)! Take a look at the 2K blog for more details.

Anyway, hope you enjoy playing our demo! :)

P.S. This was the first weekend in a long time I had to myself. Did a bit more editor work for Battle Balloons. I have the UI framework done and working on the "look" now - aiming for something like that minimalist window manager, Blackbox. Loved using that thing back in my Linux days...

Hard to find an original screenshot, but Blackbox kind of looked like this.