Final Words

if you take independent studies in infotech, and decide to make your own game, here's a bit of advice.

you're going to bite off more than you can chew.

that's fine, have a wide scope, but just keep in mind you don't have as much time as you think you do.

stuff will get cut.

cut your losses when you've been trying to get something working for a week straight and it's just not coming along.

if you're working in a group, everybody needs to know what they're doing.

i sit next to a group who only really implements something new when they see something they can replicate.

they're working without a plan.

another tip for group work, STANDARDIZE NAMING CONVENTIONS.

this will help better impliment files, because you will be working across multiple computers.

something else would be to BLOG EVERY DAY.

not only because this is what you're marked on, but also this helps your group know what you did without loitering next to your desk.

DO SOMETHING EVERY DAY.

just something, just just look at youtube or tumblr of facebook or w/e.

do work.

just do your work.

don't try and cheat the system by doing a little work and milking out 5 blog posts for it.

it's not clever, it's painfully obvious.

while you might not get called out by your teacher for it, you will incur the wrath of your group, and the last thing you need is in-fighting.

cut your losses, standardize names, do your work, blog your work.

it's that simple.

Dev Day Episode 74: Hall and Oates - Maneater

finished couch, made a tv, made a particle effect for the tv.

polished up some of the kitchen sprites too.

link to game as of Jan 22nd.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8tncudbxdgtdiik/Ty%27s%20game%20exe.exe?dl=0

have fun.

this may be the last blog post, even though i'm continuing development on the game on my own time.

i had fun making the game, there where some hardships, but i'm proud of what i've completed.

Dev Day Episode 73: it's cloudy again so guess what? we're naming these things differently now. Now i'm going to put the title of what i'm listening too. Today's song: DeeM - Supremacy And Skyfall (Muse Vs Adele)

wow now that the title's out of the way, here's milk's house.

i'm still working on stuff in here, but it's coming along.

it should be easy to understand, hopefully, but that black rectangle is another door, it doesn't lead anywhere, but it would lead to the bathroom.

didn't learn much, still just drawing things now, it's pretty simple.

all of the stuff is just tiles, the counter has a platform under it so you can be a rude house guest and jump up on it.

tomorrow i'll keep working on it.

woo.

Dev Day Episode 72: i don't know how to describe the weather outside other than cloudy, if it keeps up like this i'm changing my naming convention, again.

i got the thing that wasn't working, working.

you're outside milks house.

now you're inside milk's house.

also look, i redecorated a little bit.











now you're right back outside.

(same screen cap but you get the point,)

when you leave the house you don't teleport back to the spawn point.

i did this by creating global variables relative to the house you go inside.

"prevroom"

this variable is used in arlette's creation code.

those x/y positions are the place i want arelette to spawn when leaving milk's house.

pretty basic stuff.

tomorrow i'll put more work into milk's house.

then i'll work on more houses.

Dev Day Episode 71: it's been soooo grey lately but some of the clouds are a little blue.

so i stuck with this theme.

also, you may notice someone is missing here.

where milk?

renard's back at her house.

check this out.

look at that, making milk's house, the inside of it.

clearly it's bigger on the inside than it is on the out but w/e it doesn't matter.

i need to make textures, tiles and such.

but yea, it's a start.

but when you leave you end up back at the green house, not outside milk's house.

so that needs to be changed, i'll do that tomorrow.

and then i'll be working on tiles.

not sure if i learnt anything, other than maybe when the room changes you have to re-clarify where you want the player to be?

it's tricky coming up with things i leaned.

Dev Day Episode 70: It's cloudy and a little windy, again. It's been cloudy a lot.

alright so i've got two versions of the main theme i'm working on.

1)

2), with swing.

i wouldn't really consider either completed.

they both have three chords, and there's no real melody?

it's pretty boring.

the swing sort of alleviates that.

i just need to put something in the game.

i've learned that music is boring without melodies

tomorrow i'll do what i can but if i make no progress it's going in the game as is.

after that i'll make home interiors.

you know the houses i have around the map?

to show some.

i need more places to explore, and making house interiors would do just that without too much work, i hope.

opus's house will need stairs, howie says he's working on a slope code that i'll be able to use.

that'll be nice.

Dev Day Episode 69: it's sunny again, a cloud or two in the sky.

i made some sound effects for footsteps and landing but they're nothing special.

i did start working on some music for the main menu.

i messed around with some synth samplers.

made some wave forms.

but it's not done.

sound and music take a long time to get right.

i learned that you can make drum beats with this bit here.

the channel rack.

there i can also mess with right/left audio channels.

it's nice.

tomorrow and over the weekend, because it's a long weekend i'll still be working on sound.

Dev Day Episode 68: still grey and cloudy, but it's that bright kind of grey almost?

here's an updated dropbox link because mr bilesky asked me for a new version.

this is apparently version 1.0.0.4.

so just putting that out there before i start doing stuff.

...

i'm not very good at making physical sound effects.

i'm trying to manipulate the drum effects to try and make footsteps and stuff but it doesn't sound great.

i might want want to try and find some way to record some footstep effects.

what i have done today though, was get that sound button working.

100%

80%

0%

and then when you click it again it loops back to 100%

i'm a little proud of how i did this cause i think it's clever.

i've got a global variable of "volume" which i use as a decimal modifier.

so in this code for the sound button:

if (volume==0){
volume=1;
audio_play_sound(sfx_menu_click,10,false);
}
else{
volume=volume-0.2;
audio_play_sound(sfx_windowed_mode,10,false);
}

if the volume is at 0, or 0%, it jumps it up to 1, or 100%.

any other time you click the button, it lowers the modifier by 0.2, or 20%.

and when in use it looks sort of like this;

audio_sound_gain(bgm_hubworld,(0.4*volume),0);

this code sets the audio file to 40% by default, because i made it a bit too loud.

then it's multiplied by the volume modifier, which could be 100% - 0%, with intervals of 20%.

then, back to the sound button.

it changes sprite with this code in the step event.

image_index=volume*5;

so if the volume is 1, image index is 5, with 5 dots filled in.

if volume is 0.4 (40%) image index is 2, with 2 dots filled in.

tomorrow i'll see if i can make some more sfx, either with software or by recording stuff.

Dev Day Episode 67: just a little rain today.

i just need to two more sound effects into the game.

just two more.

footsteps.

and a sound for when the hand thing hits soil.

but in both cases i'm running into the issue where game maker hates me and will repeatedly play the noise each step.

every step.

...

okay i've got the sound for the hand.

...

and i've got footsteps.

with this momentum i should add jump effects, and make the hand sound different from the footstep.

and maybe a sound for the mana bar recharge.

either way today i did what i set out to do.

i fixed my sound effects.

i'll make more tomorrow.

today though, i had some help fixing them.

i learned that if you use the little add on;

if !sound_isplaying(sfx_footstep){

which checks to see if the sound is already playing, to keep the sound from piling up like it used to.

Dev Day Episode 66: It's rainy out, and i say star wars yesterday, it was hype.

i made sound effect and i can easily enough get the menu buttons to play them properly, but sound effects for things like footsteps is proving difficulty.

i'll be able to get the timing down once i figure out how to make the sounds play only once, because right now the sound will play every step since it's in the step event.

this needs to change.

tomorrow i'll get on that.

here's the link to the sfx i've made.

it's not much because it takes a bit of messing around to get it right.

i learned i need to plan better and look at the clock because it's after school rn because i didn't make a post ealier.

Dev Day Episode 65: cloudy but not grey, there's also a slight breeze.

i've got lines of dialog now.

i've also made myself a sprite so i can just give a little greeting.

yea.

so anytime a thing is drawn it's drawn on the same depth level as the thing that draws it, so i had my ground tiles pretty far in front of most things.

so it was awkward when renard's speech went behind the ground.

that was fixed quickly by adjusting the tile's depth.

tomorrow i think i'll start working of sound effects, like running and jumping.

maybe a main menu theme will come shortly.

Dev Day Episode 64: it was real foggy earlier but that's been clearing up steadily, other than that it's sort of cloudy, sort of sunny, i think there's still ice on the ground. oh, it's getting foggier, cool.

i've got no dialog of substance but i do have a proof of concept.

you'll notice a couple of things.

there's now a notice for when you stand in front of individual characters, not just their houses.

this notice will tell you when you can interact with them.

interacting with opus here will trigger him to draw this dialog.

it will also make the game go into a psuedo-paused state.

i do that by having a global variable that when marked as true will disable the players functions, which will be useful for dialog sections, depending on how i want to do them.

i remember doing something similar for a game i helped make last year, but i can't quite remember how i did that, so i made this system from scratch.

tomorrow i'll be writing.

Dev Day Episode 63: still cloudy but there's some blue in the sky.

i feel so creatively bankrupt right now.

i can't for the life of me come up with good art for this.

my grappling hook is giving me so many issues too.

i want to make more mechanics right now, maybe that'll help me get into the groove of things.

putting a hold on level 1.

going to make that mana bar, maybe make some magic too.

i also want to make dialog boxes.

...

i'm really feeling the time pressure.

this semester ends soon and after that i'll hardly be able to work on this.

...

i've made the mana bar.

it's pretty much the same thing as the healthbar but with different colours, and some of the variables changed around.

since i don't have any magic abilities, yet, the mana is tied to the grappling hook.

tomorrow i'll be working on dialog.

and i'm learning once again that games take time.

time is something i don't have a lot of.

i need to re-think my plans while i have time so i don't waste it.

i'll finish this semester with a fleshed out hub world.

this hubworld will have a vertical slice of everything i've accomplished.

if i don't get combat working, than the hubworld won't have combat.

if i manage to make sound effect, the hubworld will have sound effects.

Dev Day Episode 62: cloudy and grey, very cold, just a little windy.

this level design stuff is hard, i didn't like the old level so i started over from scratch.

i want a solid level before i make the art assets.

i need assets that complement the level.

my idea here is i'm going to go for like a cityscape building top sort of thing.

i want this level to sort of imply arlette's past as a refugee.

i'm pretty happy with this, so i'll start working on the art assets.

but i am worried it's a bit, short.

...

art is hard, so this will take awhile to get this art, even though the level is small.

it took me so long to be happy with my other tiles.

tomorrow i'll be working on art.

...

design involves a lot of trial and error, that's something i'm finding out.

i'm throwing ideas at a wall finding out what sticks and building off of that.

Dev Day Episode 61: it's cloudy but pretty bright out, there's snow on the ground but not a lot.

putting together the building blocks for level 1.

also slapping some tiles on there so i can see where i'm going.

this is what it looks like.

i've gone through the trouble to leave some highlights.

that first red area will teach jumping.

that height difference is just high enough that it's possible.

to make the next gap you'll need to use the grappling hook.

to get onto those stairs you'll need to use the hook because it's just a little too high.

the next pit won't kill you if you fall down, necessarily but you can get over it by hooking onto the ceiling. the bits highlighted in yellow is where i'll put enemies.

and lastly in the bit i've done there's a tricky precision test for the hook, with a big drop.

...

so one of the design philosophies of metroidvania and other classic games is that they let you see a challenge before you have to face it.

i've taken this philosophy and made it so that at the bottom of the roofed pit there's an enemy that you can see long before you face it.

you'll see the enemy when you make that first jump.

only a glimpse though.

maybe i'll lower that pit so the enemy will be more visible.

tomorrow, more level.

Dev Day Episode 60: pitch black out, it's midnight.

it's the day before, or i guess technically the day i go back to school.

i didn't get as much work done on my game as i thought i would, which is as dissapointing to me as anyone else.

i did do a couple of things however.

i found and fixed a glitch with the particles.

the glitch being that after death, another particle emitter would spawn, and the effect would increase.

it didn't look very good.

i also think justin was having a similar problem with his particles.

this was solved by writing this code into the destroy: event.

///refreshed room cleanup
part_system_clear(part_light_sys);
part_type_destroy(part_light);
part_emitter_destroy(part_light_sys, part_light_emit);
part_system_destroy(part_light_sys);

part_system_clear(part1_sys);
part_type_destroy(part1); 
part_emitter_destroy(part1_sys, part1_emit);
part_system_destroy(part1_sys); 

this clears everything.

i attempted to pass of a prototype to some testers via a burnt disk, however they report that the disk isn't working.

i'm not in immediate contact to them so i don't have specifics.

so i'll send them a link to download the game via dropbox, through my third party contact.

other than that i messed around with the grappling hooks speed settings.

i might have to tinker around with its collision.

this grappling hook is proving to be a real pain.

seriously considering just cutting it out of the game.

but it's a bit late to do that.

...

i also did some research, by that i mean i played a lot of dark souls, and my that i mean i looked at the gameplay and analyzed the level design.

i realize dark souls shares so much in common with a metroidvania game, especially in terms of level design.

one of the most noticeable tricks is that it favors short cuts as opposed to a strictly checkpoint based level design.

i'll want to use this to my advantage as i'm designing future levels.

but as i focus on level 1, i need to think of how the level can teach new players.

level 1 should be linear and teach basic movement, as well as combat, and introduce the theme of the story in about 5 minutes.

and then art assets will be made.

and then enemies will be made.

and then combat will be made.

these three tasks may take 2 weeks at least.

it is my goal to have them done before this semester ends.