Snorms, an isometric shooter (third person shooter in an isometric view), is now available on PC (Windows/Linux) and Mac. Get your mouse ready for hours of gameplay!

Paris, France – May 29, 2012 – Snorms, an isometric shooter (third person shooter in an isometric view), is now available on PC (Windows/Linux) and Mac.

You play a soldier resting on his native island, but it is very quickly overrun by monsters from outer space and no outside help is available. You put on your armor, get into your battle ship and go to find out what happened at the peril of your life.

Features

• Old-school isometric shooter
• 10-15 hours of gameplay
• 3 difficulty settings
• 37 levels + 4 secret levels
• 14 upgradeable weapons
• 22 unique monsters
• Experience and leveling system

History

Snorms was born from the desire to create a shooting game, in an isometric view, based on old Doom games gameplay (labyrinthine levels, enemy infighting, etc.) while adding modern enhancements: experience, upgradeable weapons, leveling, etc.

Pricing and Availability

Snorms is available for 6.99 € on its official website (http://www.snorms.com) and on Desura (a digital distribution service for gamers)

Requirements

OS: Windows XP/Vista/Seven, Linux, Mac OS 10.5+
Processor: 2.4 Ghz or equivalent processor
Memory: 1GB RAM

Links

Official website: http://www.snorms.com
Desura: http://www.desura.com/games/snorms
Press kit: http://www.snorms.com/press/sheet.php?p=snorms
Demo: http://www.snorms.com/?p=download_demo
Dev blog: http://www.microbasic.net/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/haedri

About

Snorms is a one-man team project based in Paris, France, created in august 2011 by Jean-Baptiste Simillon.

Contact

Jean-Baptiste Simillon
haedri@gmail.com

Snorms, un isometric shooter (third person shooter en vue isométrique), est maintenant disponible sur PC (Windows/Linux) et Mac. Préparez votre souris pour des heures de jeu !

Paris, France – 30 mai 2012 – Snorms, un isometric shooter (third person shooter en vue isométrique), est maintenant disponible sur PC (Windows/Linux) et Mac

Vous incarnez un soldat en repos sur son île natale, mais celle-ci se retrouve envahie très rapidement par des monstres venus de l’espace et aucune aide extérieure n’est envisageable. Vous revêtez votre armure, sortez votre vaisseau de combat et partez découvrir ce qui s’est passé au péril de votre vie.

Caractéristiques

• Old-school shooter en vue isométrique
• 10-15 heures de jeu
• 3 niveaux de difficulté
• 37 niveaux + 4 niveaux secrets
• 14 armes améliorables
• 22 monstres
• Experience et leveling

Historique

Snorms est né du désir de créer un jeu de shoot en vue isométrique, basé sur les anciens jeux Doom (niveaux labyrinthiques, enemy infighting, etc…) tout en ajoutant des éléments modernes : expérience, armes améliorables, leveling, etc…

Prix et disponibilités

Snorms est disponible pour 6.99 € sur son site officiel (http://www.snorms.com) et sur Desura (plateforme de distribution de jeux vidéo)

Configuration requise

OS: Windows XP/Vista/Seven, Linux, Mac OS 10.5+
Processeur: 2.4 Ghz ou équivalent
Mémoire: 1Go RAM

Liens

Site officiel : http://www.snorms.com
Desura : http://www.desura.com/games/snorms
Press kit : http://www.snorms.com/press/sheet.php?p=snorms
Demo : http://www.snorms.com/?p=download_demo
Dev blog : http://www.microbasic.net/
Twitter : http://twitter.com/haedri

A propos

Snorms est un projet basé à Paris, France, et créé en août 2011 par Jean-Baptiste Simillon (seule personne sur le projet).

Contact

Jean-Baptiste Simillon
haedri@gmail.com

I’ve updated snorms to version 1.0b421:

• Corrected shadows
• Player will now follow wall if it collides it diagonally
• Updated demo version end screen

I will update Snorms on Desura soon

http://www.snorms.com

Twitter

I began using my twitter account, you can follow me @haedri

Follow me on twitter @Haedri

Facebook

And I’ve also updated the facebook page, that was first used for the online app version, but I’m still not using it that much

http://www.facebook.com/SnormsGame

Hi,

Snorms 1.0 is now available on Desura and snorms.com !

After 3 months of Alpha funding I am pleased to announce immediate availability of the final 1.0 version!

Snorms is a third person shooter (isometric view) available on PC (Windows/Linux) and Mac.

You play a soldier resting on his native island, but it is very quickly overrun by monsters from outer space and no outside help is available. You put on your armor, get into your battle ship and go to find out what happened at the peril of your life.

Snorms was born from the desire to create a shooting game in an isometric view based on old Doom games gameplay (labyrinthine levels, enemy infighting, etc.) while adding modern enhancements: experience, upgradeable weapons, leveling, etc.

Features:

• Old-school isometric shooter
• 10-15 hours of gameplay
• 41 levels
• 14 upgradable weapons
• 22 unique monsters
• Experience and leveling system
• Level editor

Official website : http://www.snorms.com

Have fun!

Haedri

This version should be the final 1.0 release. I am doing a few more tests and I’ll upload it on Desura.

*update* version is now 1.0b418, I’ve corrected a small bug when opening doors that could slow down the game, and the kill percent was not correctly calculated at the end of the level

• Added a “shake” camera effect when losing more than 10% of your life
• Added small text above player/monsters when losing/gaining life with hit points/life gain
• Removed camera scripts (when camera is moving to display an opening door for example) if the level has already been completed

Demo version has also been updated.

• Brightness control
• Made the dark textures a little less dark
• Removed auto jump if block is not in jump range
• Corrected some mistranslations
• Changed a few graphics

I think release will be ready during week, it shouldn’t be too long for me to test these changes.

So I will talk about a replacement for Java 2D graphics I made for my engine: GraphicsRenderer.

Introduction

I made a replacement for Java2D graphics object a while ago as I thought it was missing some functionalities, and I was wondering if I could get something quicker, without using lwjgl.

I did not want to use lwjgl because I wanted my game to work on an applet, without security warnings, so I wanted a pure java solution. Now that Snorms is a downloadable game, I don’t care about that anymore, but I am still using it as it’s working quite well. Maybe I’ll change that in the future, I don’t know…

Some of the things I did not like about Java2D:

• It is quite slow when displaying hundreds of images
• Applying effects is not easy
• I didn’t need the scaling algorithms

So I tried to implement my own Graphics equivalent: GraphicsRenderer, and I was quite surprised by the results.

License

The GraphicsRenderer library is licensed under an Apache 2 license  meaning but you can do almost whatever you want with it (modify/copy/sell/…)

Benchmark

Of course it’s very hard to benchmark something like that, so I’ll just take a small example. But to be honest, you have to try it, I’m pretty sure there are situations where Java2D is quicker, and others where my implementation is quicker.

In Snorms I tested my implementation in a real situation, I did a simple wrapper, and launched lots of tests to see the difference. In snorms my implementation was around 50% quicker than Java2D (for pure graphical operations).

So to make things easier, I will take for example a simple application that displays randomly in its window 100 000 times the same image. And I measure time taken. I’ve tested this under Windows XP, Linux/Oracle JRE and Linux/OpenJDK. The results for Linux/Oracle JRE are:

• GraphicsRenderer: 274 ms
• Java2D: 607 ms

So in this test case my implementation is 2.2 times quicker than Java2D (same results on other platforms), but of course this is a limited test, and as I said before, I did not need the scaling algorithms from Java 2D, so my implementation does not use them.

Of course my implementation does not use hardware acceleration for blit operations (drawing image), still it’s quicker than Java2D, but I wonder if Java2D is really using hardware acceleration on my test platforms…

Usage

GraphicsRenderer was thought to be easily wrapped around Java2D Graphics, so some functions have similar signature, and its primary use is the same.

GraphicsRenderer is a place to draw things in it, you can draw lines, circles,.. and insert images. When creating it you can specify an Java Image as the source, so that when modifying the GraphicsRenderer it will also modify the source image.

BufferedImage image = createCompatibleImage(800, 600, true);
GraphicsRenderer gr = new GraphicsRenderer(image);

You can also create one directly from scratch

GraphicsRenderer gr = new GraphicsRenderer(800,600);

But in this case, in order to display it you will need to transfer it to a compatible display (ie. another GraphicsRenderer)

Then you can play with it:

• Drawing a line: public void drawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2)
• Filling a rectangle: public void fillRect(int x, int y, int width, int height)
• Inserting an image: public void drawImage(Image img, int x, int y, [...])
• …

Functions are mostly documented, just take a look at the source code for more information.

Effects

I don’t like the way Java2D add effects, I thought of another way to do it: before drawing something, you specify which effects you want to be applied on next operations.

This solution is easy to understand, for example if you want to insert an image at 50% opacity, then you specify the opacity (0.5f) and finally you insert the image. The downside is that a single GraphicsRenderer is not multi thread compliant, which is usually not a big deal because you usually deals with more than one GraphicsRenderer.

Effects / Opactiy

public void setOpacity(float opacity)

All operations will be performed using the specified opacity, for example if you want to draw an half-visible line, then you set the opacity to 0.5f and draw the line

Effects / Light

public void setLight(float r, float g, float b)
public void setLight(float darker)
...

At first this effect was used to make things darker, then I added color components for nicer effects.

Effects / Add color

public void setAddColor(Color addColor)
public void setAddColor(int[] addColor)

This function add color components, it works almost like the light effect, except that instead of multiplying color components, it adds them to the image. Mostly used for some special effects, and Font coloring.

Limitations

• Some functions are not completed, for example you can’t fill ellipse, just circles.
• Some functions are not well optimized, I have mainly worked on the blit operation (drawImage), others might be unoptimized yet
• No scaling algorithm at all, I usually create a temporary Java2D graphics to do that
• GraphicsRenderer provides a simple caching system from BufferedImage, but it is best to implement your own as current system involves keeping the BufferedImage and the cache in memory.
• Source images alpha mask is not working (binary opacity is used). It shouldn’t be too hard to implement though.
• I need to change the drawImage, in order to provide more functions according to effects to be applied, at the moment only two are provided, one with all effects, another when no effects are applied. I will update this soon.

Downloads

You can download the source files here: download GraphicsRenderer library

The zip files contains the GraphicsRenderer.java library file, and a small usage example/benchmark.

I didn’t find any bug lately, so I guess Snorms is ready for its first non alpha/beta release.

Sadly Diablo III will be out next week, so I think I will be quite busy

So I will release Snorms by May 21th, or May 28th, this will allow me to do more testing and prepare the update correctly.

Price

I’ve decided to set the final price to 6.99 € (it’s currently still on sale on Desura at 5.94 €). It’s quite hard to set a price, Snorms has old-school graphics/sounds, but it has quite a long lifetime for an indie game and a big content (41 maps, 14 weapons, 22 enemies). So I’ve set an average price for an indie game (block busters are 10-20 €,  others are 5-10 €).

Jeuxvideo.com (french)

jeuxvideo.com, a French video game site, is talking about my game ! It’s really great, as I always loved this site, it was one of the first website I visited when I got internet (hmmm 14k modem)

Steam

I’ve suggested my game on steam, I hope they will accept it, but I heard it could take weeks before they look at it…