Hey guys, we've just released our first game! Woooo. Gnomes is on the app store here and the website for the game is http://www.gnomesgame.com/

Android version is being uploaded as I write this. For those who have iOS devices, or who have friends that can get the game, enjoy! And let me know what you think. We need some more reviews on the app store :) There's also a demo out which contains the first 10 levels if you're too cheap to support indie game development!

So, we've been working so hard at our game :) Really don't want to bomb another MMORPG aye. Spending around 60 hours a week on it myself doing artwork and code. Leslie is spending around 30+.


The "tree of life" which will be in your home fort (where you spawn). Took me 2 days to draw pixel by pixel! The tree heals you if you stand near it.

The idea in the game is you venture out with a number of others of different races, and go after the evil toad king at the end of the world. You have to kill him to get a special amulet (RIP Rogue). This amulet will actually show you as physically bigger on the screen, depending on how many times you play through the game. The races in the game are Troll, Elf, Gnome, Fairy, and Dwarf. Each have their own abilities, and are designed to complement each other in battle.

I hope to make dungeons which are scattered through the lands accessible only by rare keys obtained from killing bosses around Act 1 and Act 2 (the compo version). You'll have to go through many dungeons to get to the final boss, and stat yourself particularly highly to get really GAR (your main measured stat). You do this by killing monsters and obtaining their essence. When you kill bosses, you also obtain good loot, depending on how hard the boss is.

Since the last update we have random dungeons working, a large map in progress, a bridge, minimap, improved collision, improved graphics, much networking code, monsters shooting, health, mana, stats, persistent player data held by the server, and YOU CAN DIE.

So overall, good progress, here's our plan for the next 2 months for anyone who cares, we're basically on schedule so far for the first 3-4 weeks:


ART development
Month 1 All art assets (without fancy stuff)
WK 1 Planning + pipeline setup + simple GUI
(stats, hp+mp+xp, items, minimap, inventory - like zelda)
2 Basic tileset and map + Players (no animation)
3 Monster (no animation)
4 Bosses (no animation)

Month 2 Animation
WK 1 Map
2 Map + Items
3 Races (animation) + Monster (animation) Bosses (animation)
4 Effects (magic, attack, walk etc)

Month 3 Polish and finish
WK 1 Other artworks (items, GUI, icons, landmarks etc)
2 Sound and music
3 Polish or any other stuff we can add
4 Polish or any other stuff we can add


CODE development
Month 1 Basic networking
WK 1 Moving character across clients + collision + fixed map size
2 More networking, bullets + optimised tiles + corrected shading on layers
3 Glyphs + essence + gar + health + death (loss of gar)
4 Drops + nexus

Month 2 Monsters and bosses
WK 1 Monsters attacking
2 Bosses attacking
3 Animation + hit counter + char stats
4 Items

Month 3 Polish and finish
WK 1 User interface + Chat system
2 Hosting
3 Testing
4 Auto update

Bullets work. Lighting makes a difference.

Since the first blog post we've made good progress, and are on schedule:

- Production pipeline starting to produce original pixel art
- RakNet replication working so that up to 600 players can join the server and walk around, and will be seen by other players. Screenshot showing 3 of us. Huge milestone! Making the game fun already giving friends a tour of the map.
- Light map and collision map produced using separate layers in Tiled, working really well!

Thanks for moral support on IRC, shout out to RC and squeakyreaper. If you're not on, come online, some of us practically live on there, im always available to chat.

<3 Ryan

Hey, this is Ryan from 1013Games a startup indie company from New Zealand. We've got leslie working here on art too (he's just practicing some pixel art at the moment in the other room).

So far for the "competition" we've got C++ engine IndieLib up and running with DirectX9 camera following a character. Our game is totally top-down 2d old school lofi. An, it's going to be an MMORPG. And yeah we're pretty retarded for thinking we can pull this off, but I've been loving playing ROTMG too much.

So I've got RakNet in there for networking with authentication working and very basic communication. Program is client/server based and prediction code will probably be VERY crude. Box2D is coming very shortly for physics/collision.

The tiled map is loaded in 4 layers into the game using zlib and a base64 decoding class, can't be bothered explaining any more details right now though, and you're probably bored already.

So I've got a screenshot to show you, I've hacked some uber-basic radiosity calculations for inside rooms. Cheers for telling me how to put screenshots on! Some things I am a noob at.