Project of the Month - April 2009
The Legend of Zelda: Sword of Divination
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Developer: MG-Zero
Language: C++
First Posted: December 17th, 2006
Last Update: April 14th, 2009
From a quick glance at the WIP section, you should notice that many fan-games are made using Game Maker. Game Maker is the most popular game development tool because of its ease of use and decreased difficulty compared to other languages. Fan-games in other languages are considered rare.
This month's Project of the Month defies conformity because it utilizes C++, and a work-in-progress custom engine called the Harvest Engine that is eventually going to be released as open source. Progress is steady and promising, with a creative storyline and unique controls. That is why MG-Zero's project is April's Project of the Month.
Game Story/Plot
Hyrule, the land of the Gods, home of the Master Sword and the world that the Sacred Realm resides in. It's here that many battles have taken place, where countless times blood has been shed in the name of the Golden Power. It's in this world that the Hero's legacy lives on the breath of the Wind and in the Legends deep within its temples. But this Legend doesn't tell of Hyrule, but a country not far from its borders. A country that's roamed by humans, dragons and other creatures alike called Doragon. But unlike Hyrule, this country cannot defend against evil. It houses no hero to combat the corrupt empire that towers over it. It's the 10th year since the empire grew evil and only now does a hero show, a dormant hero from the land of the Gods.
Recent Screenshots
A peaceful debugging garden.
A preview of the electromagnetic arrow, a unique item.
Developer Q & A
Q. How was it like coding your own engine?A. It's difficult at times and certainly frustrating. Just recently the entire solution for the engine was corrupt for some reason. Luckily I was able to recover all the code and get it into a new solution. It has its' ups and downs but it gives you a sense of pride when you manage to get something like this working. Overall, I enjoy it.
Q. Did you make the engine solely for Zelda games? or is it adaptable?A.Nope, it's completely adaptable. Zelda is just what I decided to use it first for.
Q. Are you planning on releasing the engine for use?A. Absolutely, I'll be open sourcing it when it's more functional. I don't plan on implementing a scripting language however, so you'll have to work directly with the C++ code.
Q. How often do you work on the game?A. Just about every day.
Q. How did the name "Harvest" come to mind?A. Originally I had a game planned called Dark Harvest that I had
wanted to build this for, so the name came from that. However, my programming knowledge at the time was limited and I wasn't
capable of what I wanted to do with the game. You just might see that game happen at some point, though!
Q. When do you expect that you will be finished with the basic engine?A. Soon, I hope. I've already gotten a lot of things done from graphics to sounds to collisions. Building tools and fileformats to
work with the engine may take me some time, though.
Q. Are there any special items that you are planning?A. Oh yea, I've got lots of those. For example, you've all seen the
Forces of Power from the Game Maker demos which allow you to
utilize gravity, electromagnetism and teleportation. Now imagine adding the property of electromagnetism to your arrows. You could, say, put on your iron boots and launch yourself across the room by firing one of these arrows. I have many things like this planned for other items in the game.
Q. Why is it that over the course of development your game has gone through many styles?A. Well, it started in LttP Style, but at this point, that style is really getting old and kind of boring. I switched over to ZFGC style for a time, but it wasn't developed enough for this and I lack the spriting skills to create what I need. So, it looks like from here
on out, it's going to stay in MC style.
Q. Have the computer science classes you've taken at your university helped you with your project?A. In terms of programming, very little. I'm completely self taught when it comes to programming ever since my Game Maker days back some 6 or 7 years ago. I've learned a few new tricks here and there, but nothing mind boggling that I didn't know already. General game development however, I've learned a bunch of for writing up the design doc to keep everything organized.
Q. How difficult has it been to overcome the bugs that emerge as you code your project?A. Hah, it never fails that when I implement something new, I get 50 million errors along with it. There's always that NULL pointer in there that ends up blowing up the whole program. However, the VC++2008 debugger has proved VERY effective in tracking down these problems and has been making them very easy to fix. I've also run into a lot of memory leaks, usually from forgetting to free up memory in functions. In the beginning, the program was a memory time bomb because of this haha. Among other things, I've had graphical bugs, Text box issues, player issues, collision problems, etc. Overall though, there hasn't been anything that I haven't been able to fix.
So no more living under the rules from the bible for me. 
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