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Would this be the place to plug a Gamemaker project I just put up on Itch? Or is there another thread for just hyping your stuff?
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May 6, 2022 19:32
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:46 |
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Gotcha! Sorceress is a top-down action/shooter game for Windows and Mac, a project I've been putting together in Gamemaker over the last couple of years. It's done in a very retro-arcade style, and has you taking control of a wizard as she zaps monsters with lightning bolts and tries to make her way through a ten-level dungeon to destroy a demon. It's short, it's free, and in Beta right now- feature complete but I'm definitely watching for any major bugs, and just welcome any feedback. This was the first non-tutorial project of mine and I'm hoping I can use it as a base to build on for future things, as well as it having been useful for learning GML in general. But I hope you have fun with it.
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May 6, 2022 19:51
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SerthVarnee posted:Free seems to be a bit of a relative term according to the site you linked. If I click the "no thanks just take me to the free download" button, it just reloads the page where it suggests I pay you at least 2$. Ah crap gotta fix that. E: Okay just set it to no payments.
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May 6, 2022 21:19
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SerthVarnee posted:Okay made it through on my first run. That was a very fun little game. Only issues I had was the retro sound effects were apparently scaring my dog a bit (he went hiding under my roommate's feet) the potion was confusing at first because it was the first piece of loot I encountered and I couldn't pick it up since I hadn't taken any damage yet and lastly level 9 was frustrating to navigate due to the lack of a map, very large rooms and teleporters that took you all over the place. Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely think a little on these issues.
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May 7, 2022 00:12
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Lucid Dream posted:The only thing that jumps to mind is that you'd have to make sure that the game doesn't save while entities are moving between chunks. I store my game world in chunks and serialize the creatures at the chunk level and I don't think I've ever run into any crazy edge cases that caused lost creatures due to movement between chunks. One way to do that might be a dynamic variable for where the NPC should be- if you've got a set number of chunks you can enum that- and if the NPC has somehow disappeared just put them right back on that chunk. Which might create some odd effects, like stuttering or jumping around the map, but that would at least help identify any seams where they're getting lost. (Or you could make it more complex, both a variable where they "are" and a variable for where they're going, so again if they blink out they just pop back where they were and keep moving in that direction.) And of course you could just have a variable for "Is NPC still alive/existent?" that only alters if something occurs that should destroy that NPC, if they just disappear then the computer pops them back in. Again, might look weird at first but can identify if NPCs are getting lost. Like I wasn't doing anything this complicated, but for some enemies that were moving in a specific direction (as opposed to chasing the player or wandering randomly) I made sure to have a "mark" variable that's decided by the direction they're moving, so if the player pauses and unpauses they would continue moving in that direction.
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May 7, 2022 20:32
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Turn the ship into a robot and you’ve got a Macross game
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May 9, 2022 19:54
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I've uploaded a 1.1 update for Sorceress based on the feedback I've gotten here and elsewhere. In addition to a few quality of life changes I fixed a major collision bug in level 8. Full notes here: https://evanwaters.itch.io/sorceress/devlog/380094/11-update
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May 12, 2022 03:32
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Would it be possible to train/inform people who don’t have photosensitivity to look for and recognize these conditions? So that the work doesn’t have to be done by someone directly exposing themselves to harm?
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May 13, 2022 01:05
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Definitely needs a very steep staircase like that one in The Exorcist. Possibly with a lot of twists and bends so the goal is to make sure the person is shoved all the way down.
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May 14, 2022 09:14
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Oh wow that's nifty.
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May 18, 2022 00:56
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Some languages/environments do, not sure what you’re using. Also depends on if the code runs things in order, so you could call the Enemy Buff first and then call Vampire Buff and whatever’s different would be overridden but that might cause issues, again depending on how the code works.
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May 26, 2022 23:20
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After a while I finally matched to do Patch 1.2 for Sorceress, which involved implementing a pause menu as well as making a few tweaks to levels- the early game's on the easy side so I focused on making levels 3-5 just a tiny bit more frantic, so there's more of a curve leading up to levels 7-on (where I did start to take the gloves off in the original build.) So I'm declaring the game "Out of Beta" for whatever that's worth, and turning the donation option back on after an apparent problem earlier. If you still can't download without paying that's gotta be on Itch's end, I don't think I have any real control over that system. Not that I'm hoping to make a lot from a game that's had 35 downloads in two months, this was always *meant* to be a small project but also I completely underestimated what defines a small gamedev project. (I.e. if I were doing it over again I'd probably start with a true arcade single-screen affair where you don't have to design individual levels.) But I did get enough feedback to actually make these changes, and thanks to everyone here who said something. I'm clearly still in the shallow end here but I've got some plans for future projects and am happy to let this stand on its own now. Patch notes and download here.
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Jul 19, 2022 19:54
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I definitely feel like if I did it all over again I’d start with a genuinely simple one-screen kinda arcade game, where you clear a screen and the next iteration is faster/has more enemies/etc. As opposed to making something with genuine levels. (I was actually hoping to make 20 levels at first but in retrospect I only had just enough ideas for 10.) The big issue is you’re moving from “does this object/event/etc. work like I want it to?” To “Is this a good experience for the player” which is harder to evaluate if you don’t have people lined up to play test it. It’s using different parts of your brain.
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Aug 15, 2022 00:51
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Starting a new project in Gamemaker. It's a turn-based RPG where you're a spy infiltrating a villain's lair which is located beneath a fabulous casino hotel. Tone is close to The Avengers or the goofier Bonds. I want it to be a rogue-like, which means procedural generation, and that will be The Big Difficulty. I followed a tutorial that just produces random hallways, which helped me learn some concepts, but for this to feel right it'll have to be full rooms strung together by the object that does the generation. The big issue will be keeping that a persistent structure so you can backtrack and navigate between rooms and so on, only reshuffling when you die and go back to the start. I'm not sure how I'll do this yet but I'm thinking that each "room" has to be some kind of data structure (possibly an object) that includes placement of enemies, obstacles, etc., and then another object at the start of each run moves around the level at random placing rooms, and the space between is corridors, or something draws corridors between each door, that'll be another step on the way I think. So while I'm figuring out the best way to do that I'll be focusing on just making the turn structures work, making it so you have a guy who can move and take actions and other characters take actions, etc. It helps that I do plan to have a starting floor where everything's "fixed"- the ground floor where it looks like a normal resort. So I can play around in that while I'm working on how to make the procedural stuff work.
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Sep 11, 2022 09:51
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I still think in that context it makes sense to only show the detailed breakdown for whatever you're currently targeting- you should still be able to cycle between targets and look at their odds in-depth but the player isn't going to need all those numbers at once and that can get overwhelming. Cycling is pretty standard whatever the system complexity.
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Sep 12, 2022 00:24
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I mean all turn-based strategy games are about taking a little time to decide what your move is. This is in pretty much any such game I can name, from the AD&D Gold Box games to modern Fire Emblem and X-Com. I can't think of a game where you don't pick a target and *then* confirm an attack.
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Sep 12, 2022 21:28
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Okay I have now made it so a little dude moves around when you press the keys. I consider this a major step forward.
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Sep 17, 2022 09:04
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Man I spent a considerable amount of time working out an elaborate series of if-else statements for an NPC to decide what direction to move when I checked over a tutorial project I'd done and of course that way is way easier and better what was I thinking.
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Sep 27, 2022 09:37
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In other news- I have achieved a breakthrough in that I can now have an AI-controlled little dude who takes turns with the player and on their turn tries to move towards the player. I may manage to build a functioning tactical RPG framework in this thing.
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Sep 28, 2022 09:09
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Doing adjustments to the UI in Sorceress (including adding a pause menu) took way more work than making levels. There are so many little interactions at that level that you have to adjust.
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Sep 30, 2022 22:35
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My project's probably gonna use procedural generation, and yeah modular's the way to go for things like building interiors. So you do end up designing rooms, just then grouping or breaking them into chunks, and before I even start on the programming of that I have to figure out the mechanics, combat, etc. so that the spaces I plan will make good interiors for the action. Of course those chunks I'll then have to create as data structures that the program can choose from as it goes through a level, so that'll be much of the work. You can also probably alternate between procedural and not-procedural stuff, I'm first going to build what's basically the hub level.
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Oct 15, 2022 01:08
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Nice to see a lot of chat and examples of people doing turn-based things as that's my project as well, there's a lot to think about. (Especially since it's a genre where you need to have some idea of a UI just to test things as you're building it.) Right now I'm at the stage where A) the player can attack and deplete the enemy's HP, and B) the player can not only move on their turn, but there's a reset button before you confirm where you've moved so you can decide "no wait not there". The isometric stuff is interesting too, I've seen one tutorial on how to do it in GMS- it's not on my list for this project but it's a possibility for the future.
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Nov 8, 2022 02:02
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I go by percentages (essentially "roll under or at" on a d100), but it can get tricky. Part of it is working out just how often you want the player character to hit on average, and working backwards. For example, D&D 4e has its math built in such a way that a PC will hit a monster of their level around 55% of the time, i.e. rolling a 10 or better on a d20, and that to-hit chance comes from multiple sources, their primary attribute, weapon proficiency, etc. So the player still feels they're building a character and can in fact improve on that average quite a bit if they optimize their ability scores or take the right feats or whatever. For video game RPGs I find "misses" are rarer than that, people just kinda don't like whiffing and D&D in all its forms usually keeps it as a higher possibility because, well, tradition. In my project I decided to aim for an average to-hit chance of 80%, but that's factoring in both the player's relevant skill and the defender's evasion (and vice versa.) When I get around to actually displaying to-hit chances I'll also make it display lower than reality, which is a thing the X-Com devs among others do- it compensates for people's biases around probability.
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Nov 9, 2022 08:02
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Have reached the stage where the enemy can now do damage to the player, and I've added a graphic that indicates you've been hit. May want to put in something that shows me the numbers so I don't have to run debug mode.
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Nov 9, 2022 09:52
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Shoehead posted:Me: I hate making menus and UI That’s WHY making menus and UI sucks, there’s always more you can do and while feature creep is easy to recognize with UI it’s “well this is quality of life, the game SHOULD have this it’ll be objectively better for it”
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Nov 12, 2022 06:14
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And now the enemy will die (disappear) on taking enough damage. I'm taking this next part slowly because now I have to think about multiple combatants.
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Nov 13, 2022 09:48
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I have now gotten it so multiple enemies can take turns fighting the player. There's probably still some messy code in there and it's not good to have this early but nice to have that step done. Think the next step will be making NPC allies and then I can start actually figuring out how I want combat to actually work.
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Nov 20, 2022 09:33
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On the subject of not being very good at art and trying to make art anyway I decided to share the current character sprites from my project:   And what they currently look like in action:  This is actually my first revision to them, they originally had eyes (one black square with one white square behind) but I feel the only way to make this work is to lean into the abstraction. Of course that does affect how the background tiles should look as well, maybe use different colors. Aiming for something like the SSI Gold Box games, maybe.
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Nov 30, 2022 10:14
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And I'm sure solutions to this exist and have been used but I'm not sure what they'd be. For what I'm doing I actually watched a video on how Spelunky was put together and I'm going that way- instead of designing rooms and corridors I'll design whole modular chunks of a set size. For Spelunky what they do is the level is divided into cells, and the agent stamps an entrance chunk onto one cell on the top row, moves randomly along stamping cells until it gets to the bottom, and stamps an exit cell there. The thing is, all the cells it stamps are "open" to each other, there's a clean path that you don't need to use bombs to get through or anything. It then goes through all the cells that don't have anything in them and stamps chunks in there that aren't necessarily open to the main path, so you may have to do some digging. I have no idea how I'll express this in GML terms when the time comes and right now I'm just trying to get the basic turn-based engine to work.
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Nov 30, 2022 10:43
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Okay the combat "engine" (points to pile of tin cans) is now to the point where it can handle multiple enemies and allies taking turns and punching each other. Ranged work may be next.
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Dec 3, 2022 10:13
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Okay not only do I have the beginnings of ranged combat I've also started work on a weapon table, which is gonna be a persistent object that's a big data structure. It's very crude right now, especially with only the one entry, but it's:quote:weapon[0][1] = "Gun"; And so on.
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Dec 5, 2022 10:12
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KillHour posted:You should not have an anonymous array of element types like that. Instead, you should keep a dictionary / hash map of Weapon objects with well defined properties. xzzy posted:Do future you a favor and come up with an actual object store. If you don't want to run a database (which I am not suggesting you do but it is an option) a json or yaml file is a good choice. This will maximize the ability for future humans to read/modify it. I see, I see. Quick question, how do I even get started on this? So far all I've ever used JSON for is save/load games. Not asking anyone to do my work for me obv. but it's kinda new territory.
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Dec 5, 2022 19:58
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KillHour posted:This is pretty cool Oooh this helps.
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Dec 5, 2022 20:01
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This is all really helpful guys, thanks a lot. I know I'm going to have to dig deeper into structures when I finally get into procedural generation (since I'm doing it in a modular way) so this is also good practice.
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Dec 5, 2022 21:08
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It's completely irrelevant to what I'm working on but I have been thinking lately about how to do something like the physics in one of the 2D Sonic games. I've done basic platformer stuff where there's momentum in the sense that you keep moving a little bit after you stop pressing the button, etc., but the way momentum in those games works you actually build up momentum over time and can use it to traverse uphill slopes and do loop-de-loops, etc. (Heck doing sloping terrain is something I've no experience with.)
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Dec 9, 2022 02:29
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LoboFlex posted:I've done some more work on the landscapegame visuals, and been having a pretty hard time making forests that doesn't look like rear end. Do these look like prickly and leafy forests to you? ...And does does the second image look like a swamp? In addition to what others have said for the swamp I'd want maybe the ground itself to be visibly mushy or uneven somehow- like have fewer of the little plants on top and more indentations and little pools of water. (And while you shouldn't rely on color for accessibility reasons, I'd make it a different shade too.)
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Dec 12, 2022 06:40
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Well I finally managed to integrate a CDB table into my weapon system. The next step will be figuring out a way for the player to swap weapons.
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Dec 12, 2022 10:20
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leper khan posted:Really want to make a pinball game rn ngl One of my ambitions would be a new Pinball Construction Set. It makes no sense to me that nobody's tried that again.
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Dec 17, 2022 10:18
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What are some good resources for sound effects? For my first game I used Bfxr, and it's a nice simple tool but I've been struggling to get a good "gunshot" noise from it. There's also something called LabChirp, which- well it claims it will run on a Mac "through Mono" but I have no idea how to set that up. Also looking for sound libraries, but I'd like to hear some ideas of what people have found good/useful.
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Dec 17, 2022 10:24
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:46 |
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Your Computer posted:it's something i've thought about for sure! the thing is right now i'm just coasting on Godot's UI features like the polygon creation, the rulers, the pixel grid and everything. if i was actually going to make this into a proper tool i'd have to recreate all of that functionality myself and i am not much of a ui/ux designer so although i think it would be absolutely feasible i just don't see myself being able to do it. Yeah I had the same issue with Sorceress, like "this might actually go faster if I just made a level editor and then I could also give people that so they could have fun designing their own", but that's a whole other thing to think about designing.
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Dec 17, 2022 10:50
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