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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsMystery Adventure Fangame (Action-Adventure/Roguelike-likelike) [GM8/Win]
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Author Topic: Mystery Adventure Fangame (Action-Adventure/Roguelike-likelike) [GM8/Win]  (Read 2480 times)
baconman
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« on: June 08, 2013, 02:56:21 PM »

Okay. Getting down as basic as basic action-adventuring can get, with default GM8 sprites/objects, and PGC levels; and two kinds of goals.

My design goal is to tap into as much cool influence and fun factor as I can from my favorite Roguelike-like and Action-Adventure Indie Games, into a bite-size coffebreak action game. Ones that come to mind immediately include Spelunky, La Mulana, The Binding of Issac, "Slot Machine RPG" (wherever that went!), Brogue, Red Rogue, Rogue's Souls, maybe Super Amazing Wagon Adventure.

My programming goal is to get better-acquianted with the intermediate-level programming skills that go into them; as my larger-scale projects will most certainly require these fundamentals to go on. Also still keeping it simple enough to execute, and I hope rather rapidly.

Admittedly, the game is more an exercise in learning mid-level programming than a mastery of design.
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I'm starting it off as a twin-stick shooter, ala TBoI. I'll worry about implementing gravity and platforming physics later, maybe in a second follow-up project to this. The default assets of GM8 are a little bit limiting, but there's something to work with, at least.

I'm still pondering whether to go for TBoI/Zelda-like level generation or Brogue/Gauntlet-style level generation. Both result in meritable action/terrain, and either could fit the logical progression I'm going for. It'll probably be a simple 4-5 stages, due partly to the simplicity of the game so far. There's only a handful of creatures, terrain types, and items to collect so far. I'd like to make each level about 2-3 minutes long, but without forced screen-cleaning.

As the explorer, you can move in 4 directions, and attack independently in, you guessed it, 4 directions. These weapons include 3 levels of sword, 3 levels of bow/guns, a missile launcher, and perhaps a laser-shooting magic staff (undecided on that one, tbh; but I have lasers and a staff, so why not?). You can also acquire and use bombs; and scattered around there are books, scrolls, potions and flasks, and foods of various effects. There's keys and locks, and cash (for shops and scoring) too.

In the enemies department, there's simple scurrying spiders, weapon-wielding (and badly animated) skeletons, shot-spewing ghosts, fireball-like hotheads that bounce off of walls, and alien-looking Squiddlys. Some statues that might shoot at you too, or do other interesting things. No bosses yet, but considering the cheap production values, it's entirely bossible that they may involve double-sized sprites of these basic baddies. Shrug

First floor will probably just obstruct you with rocks. Second introduces waters and (breakable!) bridges. Spiked floors on the third, lava on the fourth.

Come to think of it, an Action-Broguelike would really hit a sweet spot, wouldn't it?
« Last Edit: July 03, 2013, 12:28:47 AM by baconman » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2013, 03:50:14 PM »

sounds like a plan! best of luck getting this off the ground.

Quote
Also still keeping it simple enough to execute, and I hope rather rapidly.
first rule of solo gamedev: your projects will always take at least twice as long you think they do. if you're lucky that is.  Wink

p.s. what would be the mechanical difference between water and lava?
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baconman
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« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2013, 05:40:55 PM »

Devising ways to circumvent them, perhaps?

I might make a Broguelike move and not prevent players from entering them, but incur some kind of consequence for doing so. Or at the very least, maybe make some potion/item effects more specific for being able to safely.

One thing I do want to take of Brogue influence for certain is the key puzzle/treasure room structure; although that can be executed screen-to-screen like TBoI/TLoZ, too.
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baconman
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« Reply #3 on: June 27, 2013, 09:01:38 PM »

Chipping at this one obstacle at a time. Got most of the object creation and design phase done. For the most part, this is going in the very Issac-like direction so far, and for using such limited assets, I seem to have gotten a decent variety of enemy archetypes and concepts, and even a good 9 boss types down so far. (Being able to daisy-chain together and rotate "spider" bodies into worms/centipedes helps.)

I've also made the majority of core items, apart from how I'm going to use the various books, potions, drinks, and food effects, and even their purchasable counterparts. The various food items will recover health of course, but since there's 7 types, I'd like to stick some interesting effects (I didn't say bad!) in there. I suppose that'll all come in time, however...


I'm just going to have the program render one screen at a time, transitioning to itself, then using a "room creation" object to reference a database of screen layouts and contents and process them accordingly. Probably take the LoZ-style 3-5 screens of enemy persistence.

Working on enemy shot-types now; I can get them to aim directly at a cursor that orbits the player, but for some reason, not round that value off to the nearest 45-degree direction. GRR!! And that's pretty key in a few of my directional-sensitive aiming options.

After that, I'll worry about room creation, the GUI, and player/inventory management.


The level structure is also very Issac so far; a "part 1 and part 2" to the 4 different area types, maybe a secret final level. But in that regard, I'd like to make it more Spelunky-like, and have a couple of different finale outcomes depending on conditions you meet along your way. These conditions and how you go about them, I want to make more Brogue-like.
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baconman
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« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2013, 07:40:10 PM »

Okay, so now I've got bushes (that can be slashed/burnt/bombed); a decent array of weapons that are scripted for creating instances of their attacks (although I still have yet to create the inventory management system that delegates them), and most basic enemy aiming/shooting patterns in place.

Hooray for being a few steps closer to a playable prototyping phase today!

Still to come:

Inventory Managment and player attacks!
Room/Dungeon scripting!
Puzzle/Treasure Room design!
Enemy and Boss coding!
Implementing the game's equal of "the Ladder."
Defining the interesting effects that will come with foods (x7), drinks (x6), potions, scrolls, and books (x5 each)!

Okay, for the meantime, I think foods will just recover health; one type (at random) will give you a full 15 HP; one will give you +6, two will give you +1, and the other three will give you a standard +3. Drinks will probably refill your ammo/MP meter the same kind of way.

Potions and Scrolls I'm thinking of making kind of similar to Issac's pills and cards (to be hotkeyed); but maybe some potion effects will be more like Brogue's, instead. Books will give permanent passive abilities... I'm just not sure what. Not planning to "statify" the game yet, outside of shot and sword levels. Still keeping everything kind of basic.
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baconman
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« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2013, 12:32:13 AM »

Got tile-laying scripts and weapons-wielding scripts down. For right now, a script will apply a half-screen of formatted obstacles in a naturally symmetrical format; although I'll probably add a switch later that can vertical-flip the output as well, based on it's location in the room grid.

I'm also working out a list of room types that should be universally featured in each level, with which to add the results of a shufflable array to. It's looking like this'll be in a fully playable state by the end of the month! Grin
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baconman
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« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2013, 01:24:23 PM »

Half-coded engine (Game Maker 8 GMK file) here.

I've got most tiles/objects (except enemy/boss types and their AI) finished, give or take an inventory management system; and even a room-filling tile script that takes a grid (8-across, 9-down) that then takes the output (the left side of the room) and automatically flip-copies it to the right half of the room.

The core dungeon generation will take a list of rooms (and some "nulls"), each with one of these scripts, and build a grid of them. The earlier ones will be 30 screens big (6 x 5), and will grow with progression until they're (10 x 9). Each of the stages will have a different set of these rooms, and I do want to design at least 4-5x the amount of rooms (not counting "nulls") in the layout.

Secondly, I'm going to overwrite some of these screens with a set of essential stuff: a floor begin room, a boss/end room, a quad of rooms surrounding a reward item of the level, and results of another shuffled list - stuff like stores, heart container puzzles, that kind of thing.

The "item quad" will have four rooms that co-generate together. One is the item room itself, enterable from one side and exitable via one-way doors from the other sides. The side it can be entered from will be a "puzzle room" - locked from the outside, and the puzzle protects the entry door to the item room. The next neighbor will be the "hint room," where you can discover (or buy) advice related to the puzzle that generates, and the fourth one will be the "solution room" - a room specifically scripted to drop an item (if necessary) related to the "puzzle room." For example, a maze of locked tiles (requiring keys) will result in the solution room dropping 2-3 keys, and a hint of what part of the room to look at to optimize a path through the maze.

The other functions will result in feedback corridors, rather than leaving a long trail of empty space to retraverse, they will naturally loop back around to themselves with switches or mechanisms that promote proper "flow." The boss will drop a warp item, where you can use it any time to move to the next dungeon. And the heart containers/life-ups? I'm putting them in their own puzzle or exchange rooms, apart from bosses - so they're non-essential, but worth exploring to find!

Finally, there'll be two sets of gameplay mechanics in each progression - one of which will occur naturally every 2 levels. But the other ones have to be manually triggered, by solving the game's mysteries; leading to a gameplay experience that naturally gets harder and more complex as the player gets better. Wink

Blastable walls will not be directly telegraphed, but rather they'll often generate an extra object or two - something will look "off" about the room, which will be the hint to look for. That said, I may add a telegraphed tile, and a passive item that changes the sprite to that instead... so that players can learn and catch on, but it'll be quite rare.


That said, I'm going for a 3-spread endgame. One which is just fun to do/complete, for the "easier win." A valid choice, should you find yourself underpowered, and fun enough in it's execution that even pro-level players can enjoy the experience. The other two are considerably harder - one more for puzzle-resource players (with "punishing detours" if you lack the resourcefulness, to keep you from being stuck), the other for high action/execution players (which I suspect will probably appeal most to the hardcore crowd).

Either way, I do want to capture that feeling that victory is fleeting, evasive. I don't want a win to just feel like "game's over now, start a new one?" - I want winning to MATTER. So that even when you know what you're doing, you're still winning at most one out of twenty games; but not by being cheap.

I'm also gonna add invisible pressure plate traps - but I'm not gonna be some cheap bastard that's all "land mine of instant punishment/damage!" about it. That's completely bad design, and probably the part of PokeMon Mystery Dungeon I hate the most. What I -am- going to do with them, is make them like switches that turn on extra gameplay mechanics in the room - corner traps, bouncing fireballs, shooting statues, spinning firesticks, spawn an extra mob or a miniboss, little things like that. Also, stepping on one will destroy all of them for that room (in the likely case they spawn in symmetrical pairs, via object-setting script).

Finally, unlike TBoI (or it's stepcousin Sushi Castle), I'm usually NOT going to force the player to screen-clean in order to progress. Many screens will reward you if you do, but what's the point of a secret item reward for something you're being made to do anyways?



EDIT: "REALLY?"
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