Making a quick game to have a bit of a break from my current game. Should have something up in a few days.



I need a lot of Items to add at the moment.

The few things I would have like to have known starting out are just how hard it is to make a game. I think tons of people always start making a game that is way to complicated. Also I would do a section on prototyping. Showing how to throw together quick stuff for testing and even paper prototyping since its so fast. Those are the two real things I would say helped me the most with making games. Also you could probably dissect some board games in class. They would probably be easier to talk about then video games. Depending on how many people are in the class.

Are you still planning mobile releases? I think you mentioned something before about it?

Finished up tutorial stuff

Wasn't there a game called mercury or something that did this? I have not actually played the game but I think I heard if you beat it you got to make a monster or item. This was good because it worked as A a reward and B it was limited to people who understood the game. I also heard their was a reset  after so many days, so it was impossible for the community to break the game completely.

Well the timer has no real world counterpart. I tried to think of something that world force the player to run as fast as possible and not waste time, but I could not think of anything specific. The above picture shows one room. When the player reaches the door he goes to the next room. There are 8 rooms per level.

 I thought about something chasing the player, but they warp back to the bottom on death. I also thought about the water slowly moving up, but that causes the same problem. I also thought about doing a coin based timer. With the character carrying a bag of treasure losing coins as he ran, but this also didn't work out to well. The only other idea I had was doing giving each room a jewel at some place. After a certain period the jewel would vanish. Similar tithe stars in cut the rope. And then the player s ranked on jewels grabbed.

I will try adding a link later fr a web version of the game. It might help with some ideas.

I fixed the first picture. didnt realize it was the same picture twice. that shows the Bar a little bit better and the tiny clock icon next to it. do you think maybe its just the layers that have been causing the problem?

Yeah but when having the bar peoplenstillmdid not get it. They noticed the bar but didn't think about it. I was hoping to avoid the whole " this bar is your time" moment where I have to explain it. By doing a straight timer people already know the format of time so that would help.

Yeah I am thinking about just putting a timer minutes and seconds and when you finish it gives you the medal. The only thing I wonder is should people be able to tell their rating by looking at the timer or should it only be when finishing.

[Edit: Fixed Picture]

Hey guys. working on  a ranking system for an iOS game. Basically the player needs to get through a series of rooms as fast as possbile.

Edit: Fixed Picture


I have a Bar at the top that ticks down when a Bar is empty the next bar is underneath it.  it goes from Gold, to Silver, to Copper, to Lead.



then each area is given an idol in the level select screen based on your ranking.

The main problem I have is nobody understands the current system. Any suggestions on ways I can maybe tweak this. I know a few goals I want:

1. Each level to have a simple ranking. whether its the gold, silver, copper or perhaps maybe a 3 star system.
2. The in level system to be easily understandable as "Faster = better score"

Just read through the thread and some good ideas. One thing I would say would it be better to force character development or allow the player to choose that. For an example. Mike from penny arcade is working on an RPG based around a character deck. You do actions by playing cards from a hand. But severe injuries from fights are added in as scar cards and if drawn negate your last action. If you draw the scarred eye card when going to attack an Orc you miss because of your poor vision. Alternatively mouse guard RPG has character traits that can help or hinder you. You might go to attack and use your long tail to help and gain a bonus. But you can also say you trip on your tail and suffer a penalty. It adds a bit of flair and gives you a bonus point to be used later. But it allows more characterization.

I think sticking to a character mindset is good, but also remembering about the change in character from when you started. Maybe you had to fight 100 giant spiders and barely escaped alive, now your player is terrified of spiders. Or perhaps you were killed in a cave you are not dead like with permadeath but maybe you have stat changes now. a injured leg has reduced your movement speed by one. this would help to give that character that lived in feel. "remember when i fought the griffin and I lost my right eye". The idea with the goblin killer bonus earlier I think does this well, almost like your character starts as a lump of clay and is then smoothed and refined as you play. Fallout did fun stuff like this with mutations and addictions. It also might give the player a better connection with their character. Like people who play WoW and can tell you what happened on the adventure they found the really epic sword they wield.

Thanks! I appreciate the welcome, and I'm excited to be a part of this forum. Also, here is a wolf concept I've drawn up, hopefully more stuff tomorrow!

I like it, One thing I would be careful about is the legs though. at first glance I noticed that the front right leg looked backwards and that made me think the character was perhaps wounded. on a second look I realized that was not the intent, but you want to be careful with first impressions.

hey guys working on an Instruction page.



I think I am going to make the page larger vertically to get more space. but what do you think of it so far? which hand is better? The thing will be animated with the Player Running and then stopping depending on the finger tapping or not tapping.

Hey guy.s Making some faces to be on a Stone wall in my game. Wondering what you think works best.



so you think the shape could change at all?

[@Fallsburg:]

@Fallsburg: I think they said the just banked it to fund their next project, using it to sustain the company. I actually think that's a good idea. I am sure some people will complain that the money should have been dumped back into the game, but I think that might be people looking at the money as a whole and the idea of stretch goals (Which i dont think they ever offered). if the game had made 200,000 after launch people would not complain that they didn't add enough stuff and if that money had come from some single investor they would not complain. I think this could be a bad trend as people might start associating Money = good. which we can all agree that's false seeing some of the stuff being pumped out.

[@DinofarmGames:]

thanks for the Feedback guys.

i didn't really want stats I was just trying to think of a word for "The shape the player can move in". I was thinking that as the player goes they get more movement options. thinking going from rook to queen. so I did an example like this



so the top one might be where the player starts and the last one is the player at the end.

I guess the biggest worry I have is making the gameplay feel different, but giving the player one or two special skills from a very long list of skills could do this as long as the skills are different.

@DinofarmGames: not sure what you mean by "directly" effective special abilities.

@Graham: the entire game is all about context I have noticed, which has made the task of trying to figure out a challenge curve almost impossible. The game curve entirely depends on how the enemies are combined and placed. I think I need to go back and work on a much better AI system then the game currently have which is just move closer. I am sure I will have a post for the enemy AI once I get these skills finished.

Edit: As for skills. I have been thinking about skills that affect your movement and position. so maybe every move would put you into a different position. I will ahve to test some stuff out.

Wasnt sure where to post this, but has anyone tried the new version of the Ogmo Editor. None of my tiles line up now in the selector. I need to find an older version to revert too.

[Spells:]

Okay so its not really a chess game, but I am getting back into the design for Microgue. Basically it a dungeon crawler where you kill monsters by moving into their square similar to chess. right now you can move 2 steps in any of the 4 cardinal directions.

so I started back on the design of this and I started thinking about what I want in this game and what I like in other games. so two things I have been thinking about are specials like skills or magic spells and some type of player progression or gear.

Spells:
I am thinking of giving the player like 1 or 2 magic skills to use. some examples might be
- Charge: rush ahead 3 spaces killing any monster in your path.
- Swap: switch two monsters places
- Freeze: freeze all monsters on screen for 3 turns.

does this sound pretty good? any suggestions? any ideas?

Player Progression:
So I want the player to feel like they are getting stronger, but I also want the player to feel different each time and have some form of choice. So I thought about maybe giving them 1 or 2 slots for gear. maybe like sword and shield, or hat, or gem, or something. Gear would have two purposes. Gear will either grant a Spell like a helmet that grants charge or an item could affect your "stats" now the player doesn't actually have stats, but I am thinking that maybe they could count their movement area as stats. so perhaps they find a Helm that grants +1 to North movement. so now they can move 2 spaces east,south,west but 3 spaces up. there could also be debuff items to. so maybe you find a helm that gives +2 east but -1 west.

does this sound pretty good? any suggestions? any ideas?

I did not know this existed. so here are 2 suggestions that have helped me greatly with all my 3D and 2D animations they are not really reference but should help with all the above stuff.

1. Learn to use reference video. Take videos of yourself walking, running, jumping anything. and try and use a program that lets you go frame by frame. Quicktime is a great example. you can even switch the timer to a frame count to see how many frames it takes to get from pose to pose and what the body is doing at every key pose.

2. If you use Chrome download this. Its a Youtube downloader. I use it to grab reference of Youtube videos in a format you can open in quicktime to thumb through frame by frame. It has been a tremendous help.

are you using Flashpunk for this? I was wondering How you accomplish the texture overlay?