Where's the points.ini file?

Right here.
Open up My Computer, make sure you have Show Hidden Files on...

C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming\MMFApplications

Look for points.ini.

Tuesday Progress Update (1/31)

So far, the new Interface is functional. Just need to re-size and move some boxes, and it's done.
Which means today, I'm starting on putting the store in. Here's what it'll feature!

Badge Series: Plenty of Points

• [Back to Square One]: 1,000,000 points.
• [That's it?] 1,500,000 points.
• [You win?] 2,000,000 points.

The cost is so huge for these just to be long term goals, versus the just "collect points" series (Over 9000-My Little Million) since you're spending the points and have to collect it all over again. My goal is for at least a few hours of playtime to get 100% in the game -- all badges, all briefcases.

Items 

• [Quick Heal]: 250,000 points. 1 time use, can hold 5 at once. Press F to fully restore your health.

Equipment / Upgrades

• [Gun Turret]: 500,000 points. Unlocks the Turret ability (same as before, tap X.) permanently.
  I wanted at least one ability unlock... so this is it. You can get this many points in like 2 runs of the East Gate chain.

Now for some stuff about Story Mode:
Scene 2 is awesome. It's very cinematic, compared to all of my previous games. First few seconds are calm, but then you're sent running away, and you have to run fast. You don't have any of your guns here either, but you can pull off Stealth Kills. You'll be running away trying to escape a huge house, and taking down the enemies in your way. There'll also be a badge you can earn in this level from SK'ing enough of the enemies, as well as a hidden briefcase.

Awesome news in 3, 2, 1...

In my last post, the new iteration of the Main Menu was shown off. Well it's evolving forward a bit more, you see...

I got ideas for the Shop!


First of all, the "Badges" tab you see in the picture will be renamed to something more universal, currently I'm thinking "MyLog", "MyPro" or something along those lines. In that tab, you'll be able to go to the Badge Wall, see some stats, and access the ProShop.

Inside the ProShop you'll be able to buy stuff like...

• Buy a new set of Badges (Meant to be earned after My Little Million)
• Buy a new medkit to be placed in Survival Mode.
• My favorite so far... Purchase a Quick Heal, for 500,000 ProPoints you can tap "F" to use it and instantly fill your health, it's a one time use thing, so you should buy one in preparation for a hard level or long Survival run.

With the introduction of the new Quick Heal item, I'm adding tougher death penalties for Legacy Mode (when you tagged a checkpoint), you'll lose 10,000 of your points in that current stage each time you die.

You'll be able to carry multiple Quick Heals. You can track your inventory in "MyLog", and with this new feature introduction, I might go for more Items in the future - I'm even thinking about making it so you have to buy Ammo, or at least ammo boosts.

Another idea I'm thinking of is a "Extended Mag" upgrade. You'll be able to use it to boost your current clip by 15.

With all these upgrades and items though - I'm starting to think about adding an in-game Inventory screen, but this is looking a bit too far ahead.

CSIP: New Menu Interface

Here's a concept of the new interface I'll try to put into Prerelease 2.

Quick note: The right area will be vertically aligned and not low like it is here!

Clicking "Badges" might bring up  new tab, with stats such as how many briefcases you found - and later on, possibly your highest score achieved in any stage - and of course access to the Badge Wall.

It'll work like the current one, just better.

With this, badges are a bit more obvious thanks to the glow, and there's a lot more room for text, stats, and future game modes. Plus, with the black borders it's consistent with the Badge Wall, I'm going to shoot for putting this in-game today so it's ready for PR2.

Progress - and my first deadline.

Okay, deadline for Prerelease 2 is superbowl sunday, Feb 5th. I gotta have a good build ready to show my cousins.

Here's a bit of a checklist of what's been done so far, keep in mind I've had a lot of schoolwork since Thursday! If it's not on the list, it's not in this build.

• Story Mode Scenes 1 and 2 complete (2 is in progress)
• Legacy tweaks.
• More badges, working Legacy Badges
• Fixes from PR1
• Foundations of a storefront for spending points.
• Hubs for Story, Survival, and an improved Legacy hub.
• ProPoint income toned down.

Pre Release 2 and CSI:P Menu UI

First thing: The Live Hub concept I wanted to put in PR2 will not be in that version, the ActiveX Microsoft Web Browser extension is a glitchy P.O.S. so maybe later on.

Now to the real article... I'm not happy with the UI design for CSI:P, it's not at all consistent from menu to the Badge Wall - so I'll be toying around with a redesign to make it fit in with the Badge Wall. I'm not a fan of overzealous hand-holding in games ("You can move with WSAD!") But this game is designed with my younger cousins in mind, so I'll see if I can put a guide similar to Revelations travel guide.

Now, small side projects:
While I don't want to work on lone (too big a project and distraction from CSIP) I do want to toy around with some side projects as a refreshing activity. Both I want to work on are revamps/sequels of old games from my past. Quarantine 2 and Minisports 3.

Points,General CSIP devtalk, and lots of stuff about Nations!

If you're plying the CSI:P Prerelease you probably noticed that... you get a huge mount of points. It's intended, thats for sure. I wanted stuff to feel rewarding, although like this a single point or even 100 points means nothing. Rather than cut point gain (I still like this!) the economy in-game will be inflated, stuff will be priced in the 250k+ range, and into the millions.

The thing is though, in some Legacy maps you can break your points counter by earning more than 100,000 points in a single scene.

Prerelease 2 might see some changes related to the point-conomy, you'll probably earn a bit less.

Now for some bug problems with PR1:
If you click in the middle of the screen on some stages the stage resets, this is due to the "you died bro" dialogue still being there, just invisible, should be easy to fix.

And a bit about Story:
Scene 1 is just about done, Scene 2 will be my first outing into 'cinematics' with taeHD, and it has a lot of them.
I'll probably plug in a way to skip the level, because I know cinematics really can take you out of the game, or stop the pace - but it is Story mode and I want to get my cousins' story into the game.

Lone Outskirts pt2:
LATER. CSI:P is my main priority right now and likely will be for at least a week.

Why I started Prologue instead of went straight to Nations:
I want these two games to be my first real high-quality creations. Revelations didn't feel like enough for me so I revitalized it with Prologue rather than dump the entire project, now it's something I'm proud of already. All of the stuff I'm putting into the game here is stuff I want to use in Nations - plus I have more time to experiment with open world thanks to lone. Nations will pretty much be an open world Prologue, and a way to get me to try something really unique.

And stuff I want to be in Nations - Up to date.

• Open world in the San Andreas fashion - massive countryside, medium cities. Nations will probably have 1 city, but lots of villages.
• Instanced missions and/or "Hideouts" (dungeons): Seperated from the overworld but fitting to the area around it, hopefully repeatable, too.
• Return of the Badge Wall.
• Even more weapons, at least an explosive.
• Destruction opportunities: Ability to destroy buildings with weapons or vehicles.
• Lotsa vehicles, cars with different stats, helicopters, planes, and boats: I'm probably going to have to use premade vehicles that came bundled with Multimedia Fusion 2, my dev program. I can't draw.
• High resolution display, like Lone, but maybe even higher res.
• Better handling of the overworld than lone (better performance)
• "PDA" system - I wanted to do this with Revelations and it's Map but I couldn't, menus would be accessible with it, like a map, or game info, and the Badge Wall. Similar to lone, but with more apps.
• RPG-like feel: Hinted by the Instances/Hideouts I want in the game.

ProPoints, patches, and prerelease 2 stuff

Alright, so we have a primitive save system in place, we have a 'currency' system, and we have some bugfixes from Prerelease 1 prepped for PR2, besides the Maximize/resize crash and graphics bug.

First I want to talk about  use for PP. There will be a shop, but I don't have many ideas for what to put in it.
Idea time!

• [Unlikely] Lock content off so you need to unlock story missions/legacy phases with PP
• [Highly Likely] A badge series that can only be bought through the shop, pretty much harder to get than the pure PP series (Over 9000, ML Million)
• [Maybe] Minor player improvements, like faster running speed. I want to be able to keep the game balanced so this is an issue.
• [Likely] Minor changes to the game itself, like Menu screen backgrounds.

I'm still thinking of ideas and I'm not happy with what's here, expect some more ideas later on.

Next topic: Patching the game.
Big thing I'm going to be working on before I release Prerelease 2 is a patching system, now that the game has save files I don't want people to lose them every update, you can, however - backup your points.ini and it will still read in future versions.

So here's my current set of goals before I release PR2:

• Patch system, game updater.
• Story mode scenes 1 and 2 complete.
• Legacy tweaks.
• More badges, working Legacy badges.
• Fixes from PR1 (no progress on the mximize/resize crash sadly)
• Foundation of a storefront at least, probably no content.
• Hubs for Story and Survival, improved Legacy hub.
• A skip-able opening tutorial.
• "Live Hub", more on it later today.

Celebrate! CSI:P Prerelease 1 day.

Keep an eye on this post later tonight.

UPDATE: Here it is!

Controls:

WSAD: Move

Q: SMG

E: Pistol

2: Rifle

Shift: Sprint

F2: Main Menu

In Legacy Mode...

Tab: Map

Escape: Close map

Also, there are a few issues with badge saving (mainly Legacy badges) but that'll be fixed next build.

This is Prologue.

This is the Prologue menu as of today. Here's what I just spent hours over two days working on.

First of all, here's a walkthrough the menu.

1. In-Game Menu - This is accessible at all times and lets you leave a scene/level and head back to this menu, go to Full Screen, or just turn off sound.

2. PP (ProPoints) count. Shows you your total combined Score across your entire campaign, on the right you can Load your last game saved, or wipe it and start a new one.

3. You'll get notifications for Badge unlocks when you head back to the Main Menu from whatever you were doing. Check your Badge Wall and the notification disappears.

• "ProPoints" consistent data. Every level you complete, every attempt at Horde mode. All of your progress of earning points is saved, and can be accessed the next time you start up. It's going to be usable to unlock some gameplay related things, so I'm going to keep it saved in an open, accessible through notepad ".ini". You can change the score to your liking since it isn't really meant for serious competition.

• The next thing? I call it Badge Wall. Badges you earn will be viewable here, as well as ones you haven't achieved yet, and how to get them. Grey background like the ones you see here mean locked, you haven't gotten them yet. If they're golden, you got it.

The future of points, and more on badges!

So today, I got an idea at school. First, Points will get a real name: ProPoints. Every stage of whatever mode you finish, you'll your score is added to a persistent total, this total is your ProPoint count. You'll be able to use these on small (expensive) purchases like a new main menu background, maybe some improved abilities, or... Badges. But mainly just to save a total amount. Badges will be a big thing, you earn them across all modes, collect them on your "Badge Wall". There'll be general badges, story badges, survvival badges, even legacy badges. They'll also give you a small sum of ProPoints. More info later on.

On save files in future games (Well, CSI P) and badges!

So I tried a bit of file saving yesterday, didn't work out too well. But here's something I'll probably be able to do before a complete version releases: The most recent score.

This  should definitely be possible and doable, but saving Story Mode states is a bit different. I don't want the story to drag on. I want it to be content worth revisiting to explore  level or try for a better score, so saving might not even be necessary for that.

Anyways, each mode in CSI:P will have  "Hub". You choose the mode in the main menu and it brings you to the hub. You'll get information on what is you'll be doing, go back to the main menu, or start the mode.This gives space for at least the most recent score to be displayed.

Remember taeConnect Badges in the attempted Revelations revamp? Well those went away... for now at least. I think I can get them back in to an extent. It should be something I can get done, even with a full badge viewer interface in the menus, imagine stuff like:

[Over 9000]- Get over 9000 points for your first time.
[Treasure Hunter 1] - Find your first hidden case of money.
[Treasure Hunter 2] - Find five hidden cases.
[Treasure Hunter 3] - Find all 10 hidden cases.
[Crazy Points] - Get over 50,000 points.

[Addicted] - Get over 100,000 points in one level.
[Destroyer of Hordes] - Survive wave 10 in Survival
[East Gate Champion] - Complete East Gates in Legacy.
[Back Room Wrecker] - Complete Back Rooms in Legacy.

Of course it all would be persistent, something meta to work on even after beating the main story.

CSI P: New content?

So CSI: Prologue will have two modes of admittedly recycled content, Survival and Legacy modes.

The good thing is that both of these modes have received tweaks (not rehashes) with the Prologue transition. 

Part of this is balance. I 'nerfed' sprint points (I call it "Chaining", because you should sprint between melee kills) to the ground. Tweaked the SMG to be more efficient as a primary weapon.

I am revisiting the old content (Legacy and the main Survival map) with some new stuff, like the Rifle to make aiming more precise. Next up, I'm adding a traverse ability. You'll be able to climb over marked objects.

After Story Mode is done, I really, really want to introduce some more stuff to the game, maybe a second Survival Map, maybe some sort of Multiplayer, or something entirely different. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, I really want to make this game as content packed as possible.

Small Update: Worked on a new mode, Codename: Escape. It's pretty much just time trial. You have to run through a map in as low a time as possible, it doesn't have shooting elements, but it gives you something else to do! So far it is pretty neat. Time records correctly and it even has "3 2 1" sounds.

Happy Tuesday! Lone Outskirts p1 is RELEASED!

The first part of the lone Outskirts expansion will be released today! Most stuff is finished, but some more stuff needs to be added to the map, ePhone, and some of the new buildings.

It's been a long time since a lone update was released, so it's about time this came out.  Check this post later on today for the installer link! Be sure to uninstall your old Nightlife version. Expect patch notes, too.


UPDATE: Download via my Dropbox HERE!

PATCH NOTES

THE OUTSKIRTS EXPANSION: PART 1 UPDATE NOTES:

• INTRODUCING TWO NEW AREAS: East Bay and Bay Street!
• The Outskirts (East Bay) is a massive extension across the beautiful new Bay Bridge, currently it has 1 subway station, a forest with a dirt track, a beach with water you can swim in, a gas station, and a boardwalk.
• Bay Street introduces a waterside pier into the City. In Part 2 this will have a ferry you can take across to East Bay, as well as a new hub for citizens in the city to hang out. In Part 1 the outside is mostly done, but not completely populated or put into peoples schedules.
• The ePhone, with a press of the Tab key your character takes out the ePhone which displays the current time. It also has apps for Current Events in the city Day or Night, and a Speedometer so you can check your current speed while moving in a car/on foot.
• New buildings in the city! Featuring the CineCorp workplace, and a new appartment (meant for the not publicy released, Co-op mode.)
• Tons of new sound effects.

 BUG FIXES / CHANGES

• A few movement fixes and tweaks, slower walking speed, improved collisions.
• New characters and sprite changes.
• Headlights have been removed for now, due to glitches in the East Bay area.
• Changes to subway stations to make them bigger, in Part 2 they will have small businesses/stalls.
• Day and Night now exists in the cinematic intro.

By the way... I'm still working on Lone!

I just added Night to the main menus, sometimes it's the subtle little things. :D

Introducing... the Rifle! (Also: The state of combat)

Just added a new weapon to Prologue! It's also usable in Legacy and Survival Modes.

This is completely different from the SMG or Pistol. It's not aimed with direction, it's aimed with your mouse and this crosshair!

There are now 3 weapons in the game, with different Ammo consumption and utility.

Pistol (E): Uses 1 Ammo unit per bullet

SMG (Q): Uses 3 Ammo units per bullet.

Rifle: (2): Uses 7 Ammo units per bullet.

Stealth Kills also use Ammo Units, 3 of them.

The Pistol is of course your main go-to weapon, since it's so efficient.

The SMG is at first just used for when there is a row of enemies behind each other, but for more experienced players with a fast "R"eload finger, It could be used instead of the Pistol.

The Rifle is great for when you know where an enemy's position is and can shoot from cover.

Some stuff I got done - also, Nations... (Long post!)

So, I'm still working on the first scene of the story mode, but I've gotten a few notable things done.
Remember the Vignette you see around pretty much all taeHD games? (Lone and Revelations)
Now it looks a lot better, giving off a blurring effect. The main reason it's still implemented is to limit your line of sight a little bit more than just being top-down.

"Legacy" and "Survival" modes are available. You can go to Wave 13 in Survival, it might not be a big number but it can be hard.


"Story" mode levels ("Scenes") will work like this:

• Objective 1 
• Exploration opportunities (bonus content)
• Objective 2
• Objective 3
• Scene Complete

It seems very "Main Goal, Main Goal, Secondary Goal", but the Exploration Opportunities are more optional then that. When you are in a part of the level Exploration could lead to something, it'll just say "Explore", rather than "Kill optional guy XYZ". These Opportunities are mainly for Tutorials or chances to boost your score in that level. Depending on how the rest of development goes, it might lead to alternate endings or variations in dialogue.

Imagine having the main goal of catching a crook. You can head straight and do what the main objective says, but it'd end in losing your target. But you had a chance to Explore the area, if you did that you could find a second route to him, and end up catching him. The story would change according to how you performed.

Here's the current rendition of the Main Menu (If you click "PLAY.")

It's very simple, meant to throw you into doing something rather than messing with something else, or going through a sheet of controls.

The Story Mode is the best way to start. The opening teaches you what you need to know by actually doing it. Movement, Weapon Switching, Turret Controls, and how active reloading works.

Of course it leaves some stuff for you to discover on your own, such as maximizing your score through Combo Kills (Having both "Nice Kill" and "Stealth Kill" up at once gives you tons of points per second)

Now to talk a little about Nations.
Nations will be a even bigger project than Prologue, so I want to save it for even later, Revelations and Lone are great practice but this should really get me prepared. I know how to manage a big open world (from Lone) and handle weapons in a way I can be proud of (Revelations and Prologue) and now how to make a good, full game with Prologue.

CSI:P - New Feature: Perspective

Here's a neat little thing that'll be in CSI: Prologue, Prespective zoom. If there is dialogue, most of the time you'll see a shift like this. The game doesn't actually play (mostly) in this view, it stays top-down like Lone or Revelations. It looks a little bit weird with the 2D graphics, but I still like it!

Moving on...

Here's the first status update for CSI: Prologue!

1. The current Revelations levels will survive, and live on in the "Legacy" mode.
2. New menu interface is pretty much complete, it's very simple and works well, screenshots coming.
3. We have progress on the save system! Currently it's just saving and reading a score, not positions and levels yet. More on this after this section.

So this is how saving will hopefully work... In all of the game's modes.

• STORY MODE

You'll be able to save from the menu, you will have to restart whatever scene you are in though if you load. 

• SURVIVAL MODE

Either your top score or most recent score will be saved depending on what I can pull off here, you'll be able to see it before you start Survival.

• LEGACY MODE

There's a chance of saving in this mode not being implemented, since Revelations in it's last update was only around 15 minutes long. We might get score saving per level, so if you're a score fiend, Legacy and Survival modes are for you.

The Return

Back with more news on the restructuring of this series.
So we know CSI: Revelations is getting a big revamp. It's going to be larger than I first thought. Completely redesigned to have my cousins (that created the series) enjoy it more, it'll just be called CSI: Prologue.

Here's the stuff that will survive the restructuring:

• Survival Mode (Hordes)
• Pistol/SMG base weapons, the whole ammo system
• The engine, it won't be updated to the awesome taeHD you see in Lone sadly, but it will play and look the same as Revelations did.
• Scores, although they'll be more balanced than before (no combo running with sprint!)
• Character sprites and interface, expect more detail and cinematic stuff though.

What won't survive:

• taeConnect integration, it'll be focused at being appropriate and enjoyable for my younger cousins.
• The map, gone are the winding corridors.
• The current main story mode. This is completely wiped.

New Stuff:

• A completely new story.
• Completely new map.
• Probably some more weapons.
• A new mode...?
• New menu interface.