TIGSource Forums

*Edit*

Thought I'd put a current screen shot in here...

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TIEyOHHck_I/AAAAAAAAAU4/Hr9qP0ju9yI/s640/Picture%2022.png)


So I'm currently making one of the bigger flash games I've ever tried so I thought I'd make a little devlog.  A summary of the game is this...

You have a stack of monsters you have to fight your way through.  Each has hp and damage they do to you.  You have hp, some items, and an attack rating.  The way it works is you have as many dice as your attack rating is.  You can roll them, any 1's or 2's count as a hit, the rest are missess but certain items can make 3 of a kind etc. do things.  After a roll you can keep any dice you want (a minimum of 1) and roll again.  If you every roll the dice and get no 1's or 2's the monster gets a free hit on you.  If you are happy with the dice you have you can choose to attack in which you attack the monsters hp for however many 1's and 2's you have and the monster attacks you for it's attack.

That probably didn't make much sense but it's pretty simple so here's an example

You: atk: 3 hp: 5
Monster: atk: 2 hp: 6
You roll getting 1,5,6 you keep the 1 and roll the other two dice again getting a 4 and a 2.  Now you have 1,2,4 You choose to attack with this and do 2 damage to the monster.  The monster has an atk of 2 so it does 2 damage to you so now its.

You: atk: 3, hp: 3
Monster atk:2, hp:4
You roll getting a 2,3,4 and choose to roll the 3 and the 4 again.  You get a 5 and a 6 neither of which is a hit so the monster attacks you and gets a free hit on you.

You hp: 1
Monster: hp: 4

This continues until you defeat the monster in which case you move on to the next one or choose to go to the store.  If you die then you are forced to go to the store but only get half as much gold as if you would have retreated.

At the store you can buy items to heal you, give you more die, allow you to retreat in battle etc.

The goal is to fight your way through all 6 or so monsters in 1 go.  Some of the monsters have special powers such as a vampire which gains a life whenever you take damage.

The game can be done with dice and cards but I'm making it as a flash game first.

Progress so far:
A single battle with no items and 6 (probably the maximum number) dice.

Things to do:
items
store
more enemies
gold

Anyway I'd be interested to know what people thought

Potions now work and you can keep going to fight different monsters.  Here is a picture of it's current state...

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/THWx9TQHoXI/AAAAAAAAASs/YpHUFF41bwo/s640/Picture%206.png)

Tomorrow I will get done

The initial monsters power.
Maybe buying potions from the store.

Ok so the first monster now "sucks blood" so he drains your health to add to his.

Also I added notifications that pop up sometimes.

Also you can go to the store now and either have potions or not have potions.

Here is the notifications

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/THbSdWzuRdI/AAAAAAAAAS0/AA3_a0a2_V0/s640/Picture%207.png)


Tomorrow I will get done
new dice system with pictures instead of numbers and a slightly different scoring mechanic.
implement player death and gold.

Changed the dice to have pictures and work a bit differently and added gold. The way the dice now work is this...

Swords = 1 point of damage for you when you attack
Skulls = do nothing for you but can't be rerolled
blanks = you can reroll them if you want

If you ever choose to reroll your remaining dice but get no swords then you are hit by the monster.  When you choose to attack you do damage to the monster equal to your swords and the monster hits you for whatever it's attack is.

New dice look like this...

(http://lh5.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/THgpVfwrBdI/AAAAAAAAAS8/0NPlvPTNw9Q/s640/Picture%208.png)

Probably won't work on it over the weekend at all so for monday the goals are to complete one maybe more of the following.

Add in 3 more items an escape rope, a weapon, and something that lets you reroll all dice even skulls

Add in more monsters.  So far the vampire is to hard to start with so we'll need something simple and easy, a weak goblin and a strong goblin thing, and a spider maybe?

Couldn't you just keep re-rolling a blank until you get a hit?

If you ever choose to reroll your remaining dice but get no swords then you are hit by the monster.

So say you have three dice left.  you can choose to reroll them and maybe get more swords but if you do reroll them and don't get any swords then the monster gets a free hit on you so you have to decide if it's worth it.

Oh, I see. That makes a lot more sense.

Decided to do the items today so I guess that leaves enemies for tomorrow.  I think I will also try to make things look a little better tomorrow as I'm getting somewhat behind in that regard and I'm not really to good at it so yeah...

Here's what it looks like with the items...
(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/THwALFwdOPI/AAAAAAAAATM/VqxreL1SdGQ/s640/Picture%209.png)

All items are single use
The potion heals you
The sword doubles your attack
The skull rerolls all your dice (including skulls and swords)
The rope allows you to escape to the store at any time (so if you think your going to lose you can use it)

Had some more time so I worked on the looks some.  This is easily the most challenging part for me so if anyone has any general tips or specific suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.  Basically I tried to take out gradients and make things look more uniform.

(http://lh4.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/THwlH3SsTeI/AAAAAAAAATU/w_jBCDWKw5Y/s640/Picture%2010.png)

Maybe try a more unified color scheme (that is easier on the eyes), for example:
(http://i51.tinypic.com/b6zk1z.jpg)



You could also try toying with the shapes and arrangements and try giving it a theme rather than just a vanilla set of menu blocks. I made the following example taking inspiration from the HUD and menus of Phantasy Star Zero (http://i54.tinypic.com/34jd3dc.jpg). Look around at different games and you'll see a lot of good ideas for how you could go about it.
(http://i53.tinypic.com/2hi8615.jpg)



I hope that helps.

EDIT: You can also take a look at ColourLovers.com (http://www.colourlovers.com/) for a ton of good color schemes and GameGUI.net (http://gamegui.net/) for a bunch of different GUI/HUD (menu and display) designs from various games.

That is easily one of the best pieces of advice I've seen!

Gameplay-wise you could try and play more on the gambling-like nature of the dice. I once had an idea for an RPG that would use a battle system with Yahtzee-like mechanics, and while I don't exactly remember the specifics any more it went something like:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/nq718l.jpg)
Similar to video poker you'd have the initial roll, choose which dice to hold, and then re-roll to get the final hand. It creates scenarios like "Do I take advantage of this full house to heal up or should I go for a 4 or 5 of a kind and do big damage?"

Wow that helps a ton.  Thank you so much.  I'm excited to try to redo the gui now.  Your mock ups helped a lot thank you very much for spending the time to make them.

As for different game systems.
Yeah i've been thinking of different systems I could use.  This seemed like the simpilist to both understand/play and I think I'll get more complex later.

I was thinking of something similiar to what your talking about in that you could buy equipment which would then have dice values on it(full house, 3 of a kind, etc.) and an ability that activated when you got that dice value.

In trying to keep it simple but still variable I have been wondering about having 4 dice values.

Nothing
Skull
Atk
Magic

Then you might have a big magic attack that uses 4 magic symbols or you might try for a dodge and a small magic attack so 2 atk symbols for the dodge and 2 magic for the small attack.  Anyway that way if you were a fighter so wanted lots of attack symbols but you rolled lots of magic symbols you'd have to decide weather or not to reroll some of the magic symbols in hopes of getting atk ones.  But you might get skulls too so you don't neccesarly want to reroll.

Yeah like jwk5 said, you seem big into designing gameplay systems but your overall presentation is really lacking. I scroll through Dev Logs every day and I have to admit I passed this thread up every day until now as the game just looks flat and boring.

Keep working on the gameplay systems as you do seem to have some really cool ideas but spend just as much if not more time on the visual side. You gotta catch peoples' eyes to gain interest in a project!

Yeah I know what you mean about looking very flat.

Yeah spending time programming/designing always seems so rewarding, I can get things done and at least programming wise I know they are done well.  With the visual aspect it feels like I can spend time on something and it still doesn't look that great so it's hard for me to make myself do it but like you said I need to just spend the time and get some practice in.

For today I coded the special behaviors of 3 more enemies and I have the pictures for them somewhat ready.  Here are the three new enemies...

(http://lh5.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH1vvwyw7GI/AAAAAAAAATc/-_JLx98PjTQ/s720/Picture%2011.png)

After that I tried to work on the design of the thing a lot more.  In my head I think of this as a card and dice game so I tried to work around that theme.  Now you can see the players card and the enemies card, the dice on the bottom, and all the choices you have on the left hand side.  I still need to change the attack and reroll buttons and I'm not really happy with the way the items look either.

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH1x4mhWjXI/AAAAAAAAATo/jguHdFlvGH0/s640/Picture%2013.png)

For tomorrow I plan on doing
adding player death
more design work
working on the flow of the game
multiples of each item

Two major things I recommend changing. The first is use one background (or at least one perspective across the two). See how you've got the lines zooming into the distance on each of the backgrounds of the characters? What is happening is that each is trying to pull your attention out into a different direction at the same time, making it very disorienting.

The second is that your characters are facing the player, not each other, so it doesn't look like they are trying to fight each other (and instead they are just staring down the player lol). Have them look (and preferably face) each other so that you can see where their aggression is really meant to be directed.

I did a super-quick mock-up to show what I mean (and I used Pokemon-style positioning to complement the background perspective and help the player identify with his avatar).
(http://i54.tinypic.com/2pyxpjn.jpg)

Anyways, I hope that helps. Keep up the good work.

Wow that is VERY nice. I really like where this is going. Good job on the new GUI.

Thanks, although I assume your talking about jwk5's stuff regarding the gui.

@jwk5:

OK that makes sense.  The main reason for that is I was having difficulty drawing the charector from an angle like that.  I tried redoing him/the gui though and here's how it looks now.


(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH54mJLfz-I/AAAAAAAAATw/Uk12reneKVM/s640/Picture%2016.png)

Thank you very much for the help on the gui.  I can see the improvements taking shape :) .

You can break up some of the "flatness" of it all by making the buttons 'warmer' in hue and removing altering their black borders to a darker shade of the main button color (black tends to "sink", by removing it from the borders we cause them to "advance" and appear over the top of the background).

You can make it feel more "game-like" by making the text (health, damage, etc.) actually part of the HUD composition and using display means more dynamic that flat black text just floating there all unorganized.

We tend to identify distance through comparison. The larger you make the player character in relation to the enemy character and the lower you place it on the screen the closer it will appear to the viewer. I enlarged the player character here and you can see that it causes an almost "over the shoulder" kind of perspective.

(http://i53.tinypic.com/2i7ljif.jpg)

Designing GUIs and HUDs is one of the hardest parts of a game's graphical design. I have a lot of respect for those people who do the skins for WinAmp and other such apps, it is really a precise art. Anyways, you're making great progress with it, so keep at it.

Yep! Now that YOU did the GUI.. it looks AWESOME. I'm going to keep a tab on this game! :) Keep up the good work!

*subs to this topic*

OK the tip about the black borders really helps.

As for the stuff not being text anymore yeah I need to work on that.  I need to draw the three symbols and also turn them from text into bars hopefully like you're hp bars have. 

Making the main character bigger really helps a lot.  I'm suprised it gives it so much perspective through such a simple change.

i like your idea for a text box saying what's happening I think I'll have to add that in sometime maybe.

Here is my current wip:

(http://lh4.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH7HK3cm36I/AAAAAAAAAT4/ykfvVc0ZDdc/s640/Picture%2017.png)




Thanks, I'm glad other people can see the improvement and not just me :)  It's strange it feels like the more times I do it the better it looks even though I end up just deleting a lot of the stuff I've done.

Sometimes improvement is not what you add but rather what you take away. The important part is that through this constant chain of addition and subtraction you're learning what works and what doesn't and you're narrowing things down to a final vision.

"Perfection is achieved not when there is something left to add but when there's nothing left to take away" ;)

Liking the new bars.But maybe you could size down the HP text? It's overlapping the image of hearts.

Yeah I'll get the hp text working better when I convert it into a status bar type thing.


Just a quick gui update.  Most of the stuff today has been behind the scenes type work.  The number are how many of each item you have.  I'm trying to think of a more elegant way to work it but it's hard.

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH7oZlmRvII/AAAAAAAAAUA/l3eWDRXnymc/s640/Picture%2018.png)

I think placing the number somewhere inside the box would look better; perhaps the lower right corner? I'd also place the enemies stats on the other side of the enemy, on the far right side of the screen so that they don't in between the player and the monster.

It's an 800% improvement from the original HUD though, I look forward to how this turns out :)

Regarding the numbers, something like this could work better:
(http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/b0ffa9ab81566ee1105f7b215aec0fa06g.jpg)

with the 5s up in the corner instead of big like that last example.

I was just about to suggest the same thing... My cursor was literally above the "Post" button. Oh well, lol. Great minds think alike.

Anyways, as mentioned you can put the numbers on the corners of the item boxes but also you can place the numbers for health and damage directly over their icons as well if you scale up the size of the icons a bit.

(http://i56.tinypic.com/n1qr1c.jpg)

"Gain 1 health when damage player" is pretty unnecessary, maybe you could just make the enemy's attack icon look like vampire teeth or something to symbolize the leeching.

One last thing, edit your rope icon a bit. It looks like a straw not a rope (it is very rigid). Try making it a bit more curvy and string-like.

Other than those issues, things are shaping up really nicely. I have a feeling this project will pan out nicely in the end. Keep it up!

Yeah ninjutsu63 has the right idea. Ditch that font you're using now. It's not made for it. Try these fonts: Delicious Heavy, Accidental Presidency, etc.

Here... I spent a good 45 minutes doing this. It's a bunch of fonts that I like coupled into one. I'm pretty sure 99% of these are free to download. If not; I must have bought 'em. Anyway the font you're using is Hobo Std. I've used it. Hehe - for cartoon-y feel.

Here is the fonts used in order (excluding the title of image)

(http://i53.tinypic.com/war2nk.jpg)

1. Accidental Presidency
2. BigNoodleTitling
3. Delicious Heavy
4. Bebas
5. FixedDisplay
6. Huggable
7. Futura LT Bold
8. Headline One
9. Headline Two
10. Homespun TT BRK
11. Kenyan Coffee
12. League Gothic

title font: Fine Line

Personally, I think all of these fonts/logos look great. You just need the right one for the feel/theme to be suitable.



*OK these are all the good fonts that I found going through alphabetaically and some were random. I have more*

*@jwk5: That's EXACTLY what I am talking about. Good job!*

Wow so much feedback/help it's great!


Yeah I put them inside the box now like you and others suggested, it does look better.  I see what you mean about the enemies stats so did that too.

It's fun for me to watch it change too, I don't know how it'll turn out :).


Thanks for the image it totally convinced me that it does look better up there.



Great suggestion about the numbers over the icons, that looks much better and saves space.


OK I removed the gain 1 health thing but I added a text box.  That way when the vamp attacks/other special powers kick in it'll pop up there and notify the player that way so they are not just completly confused.  That text wasn't just for the vamp, I plan on all the bad guys having something unique about them.

Yeah the ropes not so good yet.  I'll try to make it curvier like a rope should be.  Yeah I'm liking the way this is starting to look and I think the first version will be done soon (that being the version with 4 items and 5 or so monster that you fight after that I plan on keeping the combat the same but turning it into more of an adventure with lots of encounters instead of just 1 dungeon dive)


Wow! thanks that is so helpful.  Plus they all look so good with the gradients/shadow etc. you've used.  Something like that would look so good on a title screen.

I choose to use Huggable but I've been switching between that and Declicous Heavy so we'll see what it ends up as.

Also I notice a lot of you used stroked text in your examples, unfortunately cs3 can't do stroked dynamic text so I'm having to use an outer glow of black.  Hopefully it looks ok.

Here is the gui now...
(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH8Q4KaLD4I/AAAAAAAAAUI/RmmzGR1Q1S0/s640/Picture%2019.png)
I was a bit overwhelmed by the orange so I added some purple in.

And here is the store wip...
(http://lh5.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TH8Q4E2JtmI/AAAAAAAAAUM/4Th-wx50p3A/s640/Picture%2020.png)

So in addition to graphics stuff I got nice transition to the store and back.  Frames+gotoAndStop were giving me a huge headache so I transitioned it all over to just movie clips that I show or hide.  Seems to be much better this way.  I also made the buttons a bit more interactive.  They now respond to mouse up/down in addition to over/off.  Also, the multiples of items works now.  I can tell easily when the player looses but I'm not forcing you back to the store yet as it was annoying for play testing reasons.

Thanks so much everyone for the help.  It really is helping a lot and I'm sure I'll use this advice on other games to come.  I do feel a bit bad about how much my current design resembles a bunch of the mock ups done here for me.  Hopefully no one minds.

Tomorrow/Tonight I think I'll get started on

Story
Intro/tutorial type deal

You're welcome! Took a while to do but even I liked it! I think Huggable would be a great choice since it's curvy-feel suits the feel of your game. In the screen of "This is what's happening right now".. I think it would look better if the color was white. More clarity. Try it -- but that's just my opinion.

Other than that, the store GUI looks great! Not to mention those monsters/creatures. Very original.  :epileptic:

Also try making it so the "dobules your damage" text has black border with white colored text. See how that looks.

Yeah I'm liking huggable a lot

I changed both texts to be white with a black border and your right they both look better/more readable that way.

I just whipped up a kind of tutorial for when someone just starts the game.  I haven't worked to much on the wording figuring I'll finalize it when the game is closer to done.  I do want to show people/get suggestions on the style in which the tutorial is done so instead of posting screen shots here is the .swf of the first battle of the game.


http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1283450640 (http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1283450640)

This way people can also see how everything looks in motion.


Thanks! I'm glad you like the creatures.  I have a fun time drawing them.

Yeah that's the word I am looking for: readability.

Yeah! I mean, I could draw those but the thing is -- YOU have the creativity and imagination to draw them. That's what makes them so great!

on you're new swfcabin swf you JUST posted.. what font are you using -- times new roman or Gerogia?

Arg I forgot to embed the font I guess. I meant to reupload it but...

Flash CS3 is being the most annoying thing ever today.  It crashed this morning (which is fine as it had been running for 3 days or so).  Anyway I go to open up my .fla file and it crashes on opening.  I restart my computer and then it works.  I do some work on the tutorial and upload it to swf cabin.  Then I read your comment and try to re export it with embeded fonts.  It now crashes on exporting.  So I spend the rest of the day trying to get it to work again and nope.  It either crashes on opening the .fla or on exporting the movie.  So I think i'm just going to have to completely delete cs3 and install it again from scratch so I guess that's what I'm doing tomorrow...

Anyway I got the tutorial done today and I drew this new monster since I couldn't work on the code at all really.

He hides out in his leaf all day and comes and steals stuff at night I think...
(http://lh4.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TIA3ncFuXiI/AAAAAAAAAUg/6NF7UPWj-o8/Leaf.png)

So I got flash to compile my code.  For some reason huggable must have become currupted and was crashing cs3.  I reinstalled the font from a different source and now it works all right.

So I redid the notification for when you defeat a monster and are given a choice on whether to head back to the store or not.  What do people think of the buttons?

(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TIEyOHHck_I/AAAAAAAAAU4/Hr9qP0ju9yI/s640/Picture%2022.png)

I also added stuff to the store...

(http://lh3.ggpht.com/_m6rDdbPgnSY/TIEyN_Je3QI/AAAAAAAAAU0/k0e--kHCiUI/s640/Picture%2021.png)

Can you tell that the gold next to the items is how much that particular item costs?  I'll probably also put it in the dialogue box at the bottom but it seems a pain to look down there every time.

Looks great! One suggestion. The gold 'how much it costs' coin looks out of place. Try making it SMALLER and put it on the lower right corner of the box it costs. So where it has skull and it says 4 on the top left... well put the coin symbol and the cost of it on the bottom right...

Yep I moved the coins down there and made them a bit smaller and it does fit in much better.  I need some people to test out the game mostly to see if anything doesn't make sense/the instructions are clear etc.  Right now it will only have 4 enemies, so I'll probably add 2 or 4 more by the end of it all but other then that it shouldn't change much.

Please let me know if anyone is interested, to anyone who is I'll either just email you the .swf or email you a link where it can be played.

Thanks!

Oh oh! Me! me!! pick me!!  :biglaff: