Monday, June 28, 2010

The Lost Cave Released!



The Lost Cave Story
The Albian Temple has always been a mystical place, somehow special beyond others, especially to Norns and Ettins. Perhaps it is no wonder that in the eruption following the Lone Shee's departure from Albia, the Temple was saved. Encased in molten lava, the Temple and its surrounds remained untouched as it was flung into space in the explosion. The lava quickly quickly cooled, forming a protective bubble around the Temple. As the Temple travelled through space, the inhabitants began to evolve, forming entirely new species, distinct from those of Albia. Evidence that some other strange race visited the Temple exist in the form of the symbiotic Caveweed and Cavefish, which are totally unlike anything from Albia. Currently, the Lost Cave (as it has come to be called), is in orbit around a sun in some distant part of the universe.

On one of his regular excursions through the Warp, the Lone Shee came across the Lost Cave... and marvelled at the ability of life to exist in almost any circumstance.

History
The room originally began as a project by artist Bifrost, back in 2004. I (Liam) volunteered to code it, as Bifrost was struggling, and coded several objects before Bifrost and I moved onto other things in our lives and in the community. Several attempts were made to restart the project, but it wasn't until I started working on Creatures 2 to Docking Station with Moe that I began to seriously think about finishing it.

With Moe's help, I pulled together what was existing and between us we added several new things to give the room a little more life, and am now proud to present The Lost Cave to the community.

Credits
The Lost Cave and several of the objects were created by Bifrost. Moe worked to create new images for the remaining objects needed, and shared the code-load. Moe made the fantastic c1-style music and added further sound effects and enhancements. A big thank you to our testers pirate-rob and TreeSprite for ensuring everything worked OK, and for pointing out remaining bugs.

Concept and background: Bifrost
Object graphics: Bifrost & Moe
Coding: Liam & Moe
Descriptions: Moe & Liam
Packaging: Liam

Download the Lost Cave here!

Crossposted from the Creatures Development Blog.

5 comments:

  1. Found a rather amusing bug. My Norn used the elevator from the second floor and went up in it. And up...and up...and up...as far as I know the lift may still be rising :P

    On the plus side I was able to export and import him and he doesn't seem too traumatised. Can't get my lift back though...

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  2. heh :D The lifts were not designed for norn use, but I accidentally left the "norn can activate" behaviour in. Whoops.

    A new version will be out asap to correct the lift-going-into-nowhere issue.

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  3. Okay, a new version is up that prevents norns from activating the lift--it wasn't built for that. In the next-next version I'll spend some time recoding it.

    A bit of an explanation for the lift: I had very little time to actually put this together, so I wrote a quick and dirty (if brilliant and efficient) script for the lift. A normal lift would have taken far longer. If someone would like to recode the lift (in fact, if anybody would like to make fixes/changes), please feel free and make it available to everyone--I'll include it in the next version.

    New version from the same download link as above. Changes are: fixed catalogue, fixed lift, fixed mushroom sprites (wrong row order).

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  4. It's a beautiful (and nostalgic) metaroom-the only problem I have with it is that norns tend to fall off the small dock area to the right and fall into the pool with the cavefish, where they eventually drown. Of course, this is quickly fixed with the use of the stopperpot agent. :p

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  5. Holy H. I didn't even know this had been continued. Awesome! Thanks. Sincerely, Bifrost.

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