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[Keops]

Hi there!

For the last few weeks I've been studying programming (Java) and while I've been making steady progress I've decided to start making some games at the same time.

So, I was reading some advice blog posts by certain devs, and many a few of them suggested that a good way to improve was making games, lots of them. Some suggested a Game A Week™ as a good exercise to get disciplined and get things done, and that's exactly what I did. Since my Java skills are not yet good enough to tackle a game in a week, I decided to use GameMaker Studio. I don't have any experience with it so I'm now learning both Java and GML at the same time :s hehe

Anyways, here is globby:



I began working on this little game on monday, supposedly to finish it on sunday but I wasted to much time pushing (and tweaking) pixels, and I had to reduce the scope of the game.

The gist of it: globby is a non-violent 2D exploration adventure game (its inspired in games like Seiklus and Knytt). A small critter ventures out of his little cave (now a hollow tree) dwelling and decides to go exploring around, but after a while, the little thing feels very tired and decides to get some rest. The creature finds a neat spot, a small, flat surface, and after a short moment there, it falls asleep. Thing is, this isn't your typical bed at all: As the critter fades to dreamland, the strange "bed" creature wakes up and starts moving! So now, our small creature wakes up and finds itself in an unknown place. Can you guide it back home?

***

I've made three types of tilesets, so the game will feature three different areas/maps.



Area 1 (I call this the home forest) uses blue as main color and is where globby's house is. The motif is like some sort of woods with trees and flowers and HUGE trees (you see only the trunk). This is the last playable area before your reach back your home.



Area 2 (I call this one the mushroom caverns) uses purple as main color and is the first area where you begin the game. It's full of mushrooms and tunnels. I'd like to add like some glowing mushroom effects, but I have to figure how to do that



Area 3 (I call this one the snail cemetery) uses green and it's the area you reach after getting out of the mushroom caverns. It features huge snail-like shels which you can traverse.



And here are some of the sprites. There is a water layer (in Photoshop I mock it up with transparency and shiny specular/caustic highlight things but I have to also figure how to achieve this effect in GameMaker).



And the mockup that started it all, even before I decided to try to flesh it as a Game A Week project.



This is a gif I made of a little demo I made using Game Develop. This tool looks neat, but I decided to switch to GameMaker for the time being. It was kinda easier to implement that using the platform automatisms. For example, doing the jump-through platform was achieved by just using some premade actions. I still have to figure how to implement that in GM.

***



This gif shows the current state of the game in GameMaker. As you can see the jump dust cloud effect sprite doesn't destroy itself after playing the animation. Gotta figure how to correct this. Also horizontal collision is glitchy. I thought it had to do with the collision mask, I made them the same size in all the sprites, but something is not working there. Also the jump/fall frames only show when you jump in a straight direction (up), when you move during the jump it doesn't change, but I think it has to do with the hspeed value. I'll try to fix it soon.

What's done?

- Most graphics.
- Collisions (maybe need to improve the code, horizontal is kinda glitchy atm).
- Animations (some frames don't show properly in-game)
- I have some music tracks I'm working on, but I'm not too fond of them... Maybe I'll post them later.

So, here are the tasks I'm trying to achieve next:

- Implement the double/triple jump mechanic. I have some script but it's buggy: It doesn't allow globby to jump twice or thrice, actually he jumps like half the height of normal jump.
- Fix the animation glitch with the dust clouds.
- Figure how to implement the room to be able to move up and down while keeping the bg static (it doesn't tile vertically, just horizontally).
- Start designing the maps with the graphics I made.

***

I know this is a simple game, with a pretty simple premise, but I hope you guys like it. It's mainly a learning experience, when I take breaks from actual coding in Java and my other daily routines. Hope you guys like it!

I'll update this soon (hopefully).

Peace! (and thanks for reading )

PS: I'm gonna try to fix the GML scripts on my own, but if I get stuck I'll probably look for help. If anyone wants to lend me a hand (and some time) I can upload the project to Dropbox or something so you can see the scripts and aid me in fixing what isn't working properly! I'll keep you all posted.

[mickmaus]

GET GLOBBED ON!

[Keops]

GET GLOBBED ON!

heh I'm GLOBBING the GML Reference Thankfully the syntax of many things looks quite similar to Java, this helps a lot. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some more progress to show!

[Keops]

This horizontal collission thing is driving me insane. I haven't been able to fix the instance_destroy() thing for the little dust cloud animation when jumping 

This will defnitely not be done today at midnight but I will keep at it anyway, gotta finish it.

Also some music:

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/571637
Mushroom Caverns: This theme is for the area with purple mushrooms. I have some water drop soundeffects for additional atmosphere.

I'll keep trying to fix this thing but I think I will need help from someone who knows more about GM

[mickmaus]

destroying those clouds should be a snap:

in create event:

Code:

life = 15; //(however many frames it should last)

in step event:

Code:

if (life >0) {
  life -= 1;
} else {
  instance_destroy();
}

[Keops]

It works!! Thanks a lot mickmaus



I had the instance_create in the step event of the character, inside the if statement that checked for the jump key input. This is much cleaner and it does work. Once again thanks!

[Glyph]

If you still need help with anything GM-related, shoot me a PM. I'd be glad to help

[Keops]

If you still need help with anything GM-related, shoot me a PM. I'd be glad to help

Sure! I'll keep plugging along today to see what else can I improve on my own, but count on me knocking on your door for some advice! Thanks so much for the offer

[Keops]

Finally fixed the jumping code 



If I get that pesky horizontal collision bug out of the way then I can get some work done on the maps and the remaining music!

Also, I haven't the slightest idea on how to do SFX. Any pointers?

[mickmaus]

the absolute standby for easy beep bloop sound effects is SFXR / CFXR http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

[Keops]

the absolute standby for easy beep bloop sound effects is SFXR / CFXR http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html

Oh I think I remember reading about that program like, a few years ago! Had forgotten about its existence! Thanks for pointing it out *downloading*

[ghoulkid86]

Really liking the look of this. Supaa kawaii as kids these days say
Platformers are definitely a good place to start out. Plus, Seiklus is pretty much my favorite indie game ever. Not a bad inspiration is what I'm saying

[Keops]

Really liking the look of this. Supaa kawaii as kids these days say
Platformers are definitely a good place to start out. Plus, Seiklus is pretty much my favorite indie game ever. Not a bad inspiration is what I'm saying

Thanks for the kind words ghoulkid. Yeah, Seiklus is great. This game is somehow inspired by it (mainly aesthetics) but it's also heavily inspired by Knytt/Knytt Stories.

I decided to make this as my first Game A Week project and I've had some problems implementing the collisions. It's starting to come together now and I even made some progress with the music and sound fx I will devote another week to this and see how far I can get!

I hope to have a playable build in the next few days!

[Keops]

Now with 100% more jump thru platforms!



Also fixed horizontal collision! Guess the core stuff is done. Now I'll do the maps, music and  publish this thing

[Rat Casket]

Looks rad dude!

Jump thru platforms hang a lot of people up initially. GOOD JORB.

As for your horizontal collision bug? Post your code that handles collision and lets figure it out.

[Keops]

Looks rad dude!

Jump thru platforms hang a lot of people up initially. GOOD JORB.

As for your horizontal collision bug? Post your code that handles collision and lets figure it out.

I already fixed it I'll probably work some on the maps and music and then put up a test build for peeps to try out. Thanks for the help offer! I'll be sure to let the community know if I get stuck on something

[Keops]

Hey there!

I was tackling the level design aspect of the game but while doing so I decided to revisit the movement scripting of the character (to get the variables tight and feeling perfect) and while doing so I found a few bugs. I managed to fix a couple of 'em but here are the ones I couldn't fix.

I uploaded the project file to my Dropbox public so anyone wishing to take a quick peek to help me figure the code out can do so (see below the bug list for the link).

Bugs:

• Jumping fast lots of times under a solid tile gets the character stuck. I checked collision masks and tightened them but the bug is still there.
• Jump / fall animation frames only play when jumping/falling without any horizontal movement. No idea how to fix this.
• Trying to jump down from a jump-thru platform doesn't work, instead the character seems to be pushed a few pixels in the direction it is facing when pushing the down key.
• Triple jump resets when hitting a horizontal solid tile (horizontal collision) and it shouldn't. Easiest way to try this bug is by colliding with the tall tree in the left part of the test room

I've been messing around with the script for a while but I couldn't fix the bugs listed above, and I need to nail this down perfectly, because an exploration platformer like this one needs to feel tight. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Here's the link to the GMStudio project file for globby. The controls are just the arrow keys: left and right for movement, up for jumping and down to (supposedly) go down on jump-thru platforms. Also pressing R resets the game for debugging.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97061820/globby140401.gmx.7z

See you around guys, and once again, thanks for the support.

PS: Should I cross post this in the technical forum? Or maybe post it only there? I don't think this is a bad use of the DevLog board, but if so, please let me know and I'll move the post.

[Rat Casket]

All of your animation stuff was just in if statements by themselves, so they were just talking over each other. By putting else between them it fixed the animation bug.

Also, I changed the jump animation to sign(vspeed). sign just takes whatever youre feeding it and returns -1 or 1 based on if the value being fed to it is positive (going down) or negative (going up). The hspeed checks in there aren't necessary at all.

As for your collision, its just wonky game maker nonsense because you are using "solid" on your tiles. Solid sucks and its flat out broken. Clearly. So your best bet here is to write your own collision code if you can. This also goes for your jump through platforms. Built in game maker values and functions sorta just suck and don't work all that well.

Code:

// animations
if (vspeed == 0 and hspeed == 0) {                  // idle animation (blink)
    sprite_index = sprGlobbyIdle;
    image_speed = 0.1;
}else

if (sign(vspeed) = -1) {  // jump animation
    sprite_index = sprGlobbyJump;                   // DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY
}else

if (sign(vspeed) = 1) {  // falling animation
    sprite_index = sprGlobbyFall;                   // DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY
}else

if (hspeed != 0) {                                  // walk animation
    sprite_index = sprGlobbyWalk;
    image_speed = 0.2;
}

[bleek]

I am digging the visuals     Also...

GET GLOBBED ON!

heh I'm GLOBBING the GML Reference Thankfully the syntax of many things looks quite similar to Java, this helps a lot. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some more progress to show!

...can this be a word please?

[Keops]

Hey guys!

@Rabbit

As for your collision, its just wonky game maker nonsense because you are using "solid" on your tiles. Solid sucks and its flat out broken. Clearly. So your best bet here is to write your own collision code if you can. This also goes for your jump through platforms. Built in game maker values and functions sorta just suck and don't work all that well.

Thanks a lot for your input, it works beautifully. 

About the getting stuck problem... Hmmm, is that so? Then I'll try to ditch the "Solid" thing altogether. Such a shame since it looked easier to implement, but I guess it's important to fix these issues for a game such as this. I assume this can be achieved by using the if_place_meeting() function and avoiding all uses of move_contact_solid() functions, but I'll have to figure it out.

I am digging the visuals     Also...

GET GLOBBED ON!

heh I'm GLOBBING the GML Reference Thankfully the syntax of many things looks quite similar to Java, this helps a lot. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some more progress to show!

...can this be a word please?

I guess it'd be cool If we keep using it, maybe it will stick around? hehe