I was about to say the same thing. People who sit in front of computers all day have a higher chance of being vitamin d deficient.

yomi

Saturation is a real problem as always. PC downloadble and console is probably the lowest levels, but its still increasing. Flash web is unbelievably saturated, and mobile pretty much is now as well.

I'll have you know I made a cool $1.24 making flash games 

If I was going to make a multiplat 2D game without a lot of performance implications I'd write the engine on top of a framework that handles platform specific abstractions like Monogame or Haxe. That was (ideally) I can spend more time focusing on the game itself.

Of course you have to be aware of the possible performance issues (for 2D, in the real world I've encountered none so far on desktop, mobile takes some consideration) as well as the fact in almost every case you will have to write a little bit of platform specific code.

All I've really had time for lately is playing Spelunky on my Vita on the bus to and from school. Possibly with a smattering of Final Fantasy Tactics and Darkstalkers.

I definitely agree there. I love asymmetrical maps. I played in a clan for an old halflife mod with asymmetrical maps and the clan tournament would just have both teams play both sides. I can't remember how we handled ties. I think we added up the total wins across a set of different asymmetrical maps.

Cool to see a genetic algorithm used for world generation.

 

Interesting read. From what you wrote am I correct in assuming you DONT mirror the levels? It's an admirable goal but I think without mirroring you'll always have someone complain about map bias.

romero sucked on his own as well tho

yeah doom wouldnt have been doom if it didnt have the programming skills of John Carmack, the design of romero, the art of Adrian Carmack and the design sensibilities of Sandy Petersen and Tom Hall.

They should have stuck together

 

There's all this stigma around static members and global variables, but I think that's a whole bunch of PhD hoopla.  There are often good reasons to use statics and even globals...if it makes good sense to you and you believe you are competent, then any other competent programmer can pick up your code and maintain it.  I've been working with the Cube 2 engine recently and it uses a ton of globals(it's mostly C code), and I've had no problem learning how to work with it.  Would I have used as many globals as they did? Probably not, but their architecture makes sense, so it really doesn't matter.

It sounds like the static variable system makes sense and will be quite easy for you to work with.

I agree. It's not always 100% a bad thing to do. I'm always skeptical when something is presented as a tautology in the programming world.

C# doesnt have mixins (except maybe with re-mix)

There already are some mobas on console such as that lord of the rings game

Monogame is going to have the exact same drawbacks as Unity though (i.e. it is a GPU accelerated 3d engine as opposed to a blitting engine).

So too with Haxeflixel (at least for C++ targets, I forget how it handles it for AS3 targets).

Those arent the issues I'm referring to. Once you set the filtering and some other rendering setttings correctly that's not a big deal. It's more the issue of dealing with a huge tool meant for 3d, it's not that streamlined relative to other solutions. Purely my opinion of course.

As for level editors. You can always use DAME with whatever framework you use. Writing a custom exporter is trivial.

Of course if you want an integrated solution there's also game maker which is a 2D engine. Or Polycode (if it ever actually gets a v001 release).

Haxe is also I guess another interesting possibility. Although I've heard mixed reviews on its level of support. Also I just don't like AS much.

I tried it a year ago and it was brutal. I gave up.

I just tried it about 2 weeks ago and it was a world of difference, all platforms compiled with little setup required. They have a neat little command line tool for getting libraries you need (similar to the python one).

That said I've only done very small demos to play with it. I havent done a big enough project to get bitten in the ass by anything deeper in the library.

If you already know actionscript then unity will be slower by virtue of the fact you know one technology  and dont know the other.

Also Unity is not an idea option for pixel games. It's a 3d engine. I'd go with Gregg's suggestion to use Monogame if you are dependent on c#.

If you aren't you could look at Haxeflixel.

chhhhhhrono trigger!

Arcanum

FF6

Looking good. I feel like this is a game I would like playing on a portable device like a ds or a Vita. Maybe that's nostalgia's influence.

you can also use the ApplyEffect Method to change the currently active shader. Can't remember if you need to restart the spritebatch or not for it to work. IIRC you don't

I tend to use Boris's method right now as I havent really needed any local changes. So in Monogame you would need to use the RenderTarget2D class to render all your game stuff then before you render the rendertarget execute ApplyEffect with whatever effect you wish to use.

ahahhhahahaha   

I gotta try that

It's possible the filtering is causing that. Do you have your SamplerState set to PointClamp?

EDIT: nanoed :X

Well glad to see those changes coming because lately all I ever get to play is Jungle or Support, I usually say "fill" on randoms

That song for Jynx at the start is really starting to annoy me. I miss the Janna weatherwoman one.

hahahahahaha