the world (of goo) wasn’t built in a day — part 7 of 7
the final installment in this series is world of goo at 8 months old (april 2, 2007).
it’s now almost 4 months after we thought we were 3 months away from finishing the game. we continue to fool ourselves and think we’ve got another 3 months left to go. the delusion doesn’t stop there. as you can see in the “world menu” (which would eventually become the main menu) we thought we would have 7 chapters in the game. riiiight.
probably the biggest change in this revision is the new physics engine. we scrapped our home grown physics engine in favor of ODE, which gave us a lot more flexibility with the kind of puzzles we could construct. it stung to toss that code away, but it was the right thing to do. it allowed us to create a much wider variety of puzzles.
when you play this version, check out the first level (Going Up). it has been set up as a kind of physics playground to test out different ways to have balls physically interacting with the environment. you can get it here, and once again, if you played a previous build don’t forget to delete \HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\2dboy from your registry before running this version.
there’s also more experimentation around showing progress to the player and the end of level sequence.
and that’s about it! we’ll stop here because the rest of the game’s evolution was much slower. it happened in baby steps with new levels, new ball types, lots more playtesting and gameplay tweaks, and within 4 months would become the chapter 1 demo we submitted to the IGF and made available to people who pre-ordered the game.
we hope this made for interesting reading!
THE END
May 25th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Thanks guys, the journey was enlightening! The game could have gone in so many directions, I think I speak for everyone when I say that ultimately it went down the ‘perfect’ route!
May 25th, 2009 at 11:24 am
It was a very fun reading, very educational, really.
hint: any chance to divulge any source code, even if not of a fully functional game?
and thanks for sharing :)
May 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I’m continually getting an ODE INTERNAL ERROR 2 which is interesting to say the least :D
May 25th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Sorry for the double post, but I’ve noticed that pressing the ‘e’ key on the keyboard creates an earthquake, which is fairly amusing
May 25th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Very interesting and really enlightening. As an amateur game developer who never ever complete a game, seeing the process by example has been revealing in certain aspects. And funny ;-)
May 25th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Thanks, guys. That definitely did make for interesting reading. I liked seeing how the game progressed. I like when other games show little bits of how beta worked, but this gave a real step by step. That was great.
May 26th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Thanks – definitely an interesting series. Was playing WoG again at the weekend, and an hour went by without even noticing. Thanks for stealing my time! ;-) Look forward to seeing what 2DBoy do next!
May 26th, 2009 at 5:28 am
And the goo balls lived happily ever after… ;)
May 26th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Thank you for wonderful Linux game! Do you guys need Russian translation for your game? I can do it. For free.
May 27th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Thanks for sharing this. It’s really cool to see the development of WoG.
I hope to see some new games from you guys soon :)
May 27th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Guys, thanks for the time you spent revealing the long path from original concept to an excellent game. It’s great fun…challenging…interesting to explore. Y’done good!
May 27th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
What was the inspiration for MOM?
May 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Im am new here how can i make this thing work cuz….when i try to get over the 4th or 3rd level doesnt work like sais fatal error…i saw i need to run regedit but wheres that thing?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Well i found that local machine thing but still cant get pass the 4th level…i mean same noob error…sum1 can help me?
May 30th, 2009 at 1:53 am
Guys you really know how to satisfy customers… loved the game, loved the linux port, loved the soundtrack release, loved this series and alpha versions!
May 31st, 2009 at 11:40 am
“yeah, bitch!!!”
That has to be the most rewarding Level Completed text I have ever heard.
June 6th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Very nice, i love 2DBOY!
We all need WORLD OF GOO 2!!!
Does 2DBOY have plans for it?
June 6th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
i dont think the bridge level is possible. there are not any balls to make it to the pipe. when i edited it to have more ivy balls, when i click continue it comes up with an error.
Exception: Access Violation (code 0xc0000005) at address 00431197 in thread 898
Module: tog_release.exe
Logical Address: 0001:00030197
083022D8 00431197 0001:00030197 tog_release.exe
Params: 00000000 00000000 0828C9C0 00000001
StackWalk failed (error 299)
EAX:00000000 EBX:08308040 ECX:00000000 EDX:007F007F ESI:08301F10 EDI:08308040
EIP:00431197 ESP:0012F3D4 EBP:083022D8
CS:001B SS:0023 DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003B GS:0000
Flags:00010202
Windows Ver: NT 6.0 Service Pack 1 Build 6001
DDraw Ver: 6.0.6000.16386
DSound Ver: 6.0.6000.16386
Product: goo
Version: 0.1
Time Loaded: 00:00:28
Fullscreen: No
Primary ThreadId: 898
and it seems to me that you can only go up to that level, is this correct?
its easier to make levels for these earlier versions by just editing text. but wogedit is easier then editing text.
June 8th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Yeah i get the same problem and i asked someone for help but nothing…i deleted that 2dboy thingy from LOCALMACHINE and still didnt worked and im confused cuz at some people it worked with no problem…Dont know waht to say…If anyone can help me please contact me at horia_strugariu@yahoo.com ,Thanks for readin this
June 8th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
i even made it so it was beatible… the tower falls by its self, i dont even need tonock it over. ill try to find a way to scip that level. does anyone know what the save file location is?( withen the download)
June 11th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Thank you for wonderful game!
July 1st, 2009 at 11:03 am
I get an error on that jaw bridge level after i beat it everytime i play it, does anyone know how to fix this?
July 4th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Hey guys
i’ve just figured out how to skip a level. Here is what u do.
1. Notice the name of the level u want to skip. (eg. JawBridge)
2. Go to the downloaded folder
3. Go to the folder “res”, then go to the folder “levels”
4. Open the folder of the level you want to skip. (eg. JawBridge)
5. There would be a file named leveltoskip.xml (eg. JawBridge.xml)
6. Right click this xml file and open it with Notepad
7. Scroll down to the end of the page in Notepad.
8. There you will find a line saying ” balls required=6″
9. Change this value to “0″ and then press Ctrl+S to save this change.
10. Now start the level u want to skip. There you will find that the level has already been completed.
Well this is the trick to skip levels, but the Part 7 of 7 has a lot of levels that encouonter an erro as soon as you build up the Goo balls upto the pipe. Well u could try this trick just to see how the levels look like and what music is playing in the background. ;-)
August 14th, 2009 at 2:36 am
I really enjoyed reading this entire development log. Thanks 2D boy!
October 18th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I really enjoy how full this game feels from every angle. The dark theme, the music, playability, concept, etc.. You really created a unique niche, polished your vision and came up w/something really special in my opinion.
I bought a copy for myself and another for my nephews (both the Linux version – thanks for thinking of the little people!).
Eric
November 19th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Hi
how are you?
i would like to know that if there is world of goo 2 or no?
and thanks
November 28th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Thank you very much for the game! World of Goo is a very interesting and exciting game of logic, plus a funny story. End of a very touching! Waiting when will the second part!
December 21st, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Thanks for putting this up! It was very interesting to see the development process, and I found it neat every time I noticed something that looked similar to something in the final release.
February 21st, 2010 at 7:11 am
I have an old mac and nothing would work is that normal?
O_o
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
help me!!!
the game quit if i complete hungry hungry hills
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:26 pm
now i need help when open a level after fly away little ones (because i have error when opening that level). this is the error:
Exception: Stack Overflow (code 0xc00000fd) at address 0059AE77 in thread 111C
Module: tog_release.exe
Logical Address: 0001:00199E77
00054A74 0059AE77 0001:00199E77 tog_release.exe
Params: 000001C3 000564B0 000551C0 000558E0
StackWalk failed (error 299)
EAX:00032000 EBX:0012C5BC ECX:00000000 EDX:00000000 ESI:00031C4C EDI:000001C3
EIP:0059AE77 ESP:00054A18 EBP:00054A74
CS:001B SS:0023 DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003B GS:0000
Flags:00010206
Windows Ver: NT 6.1 Build 7600
DDraw Ver: 6.1.7600.16385
DSound Ver: 6.1.7600.16385
Product: goo
Version: 0.1
Time Loaded: 00:00:19
Fullscreen: Yes
Primary ThreadId: 111C
June 10th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I don’t get this:
if you played a previous build don’t forget to delete \HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\2dboy from your registry before running this version.
and that must be why it crashes, but where is that file?
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I can’t find the file! (\HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\2dboy) Could you be a bit more specififc? :(