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[Maxim Schoemaker]

Mario ain't got nuffin' on Björn







Current Build 1.0!!!

Hi there!

MagnoB (lol, I just found out nob is in the abbreviation ) is a game I'm working on. The idea is that Mario doesn't want to come up North so Björn is going to have to clean the sewers himself. Luckily Björn is ten times as awesome as Mario so he has no trouble doing so at all.

In terms of gameplay it's an arena brawler with a neat combo mechanic. Just play it, you'll find out.

There will be three levels, each with a set of 3 different enemies. But at the moment only level 1 is done.

This is a quick project of mine, which I hope to finish in under a month. Wish me luck!

Facts about Björn:

• Björn eats Mario for breakfast. Luckily for Mario Björn's breakfast is only an annual occasion.
• Björn can always see you. In fact, he has never disengaged in any staring competition he has ever started...
  
• It is important to balance your triceps' and biceps' muscle mass. Luckily for Björn ∞/∞ is still 1.
• Björn once played a saxophone duet with the Epic Sax Guy. Sergey Stepanov couldn't keep up...
• Björn lives further up North than Santa Claus does.
• Pokémon can only say their own name. Björn can only hear is own name.
• Lucky Luke can shoot faster than his shadow. Björn doesn't even have a shadow.

please tell me: is it fun to play?, does the tutorial work?, is it too ugly?

Cheers,

Maxim

[dek]

The engine feels nice for what I could experience. However, I was unable to actually play the game due to not having a QWERTY keyboard. In central europe, QWERTZ is used alot. There are many other layouts with Z and Y swapped, so maybe you should try to find a way to ensure maximum user-friendliness Apart from that, it looked very fluid when i pressed Z. I'd be glad to give it another try if you manage to fix it.

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Is there anyone who's keyboard doesn't have A and S next to each other? Cause that's what I'm gonna change it to now

Thank you dek0!

Edit:
Done!

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Björn and Bjørn are BFF Forever. And if you were wondering... Yes, forever forever is indeed quadratically more forever than ordinary forever.

[dek]

Nice. I was able to play it and it was quite fun  I like the dynamic gameplay and the "combo move". If you want some more input from me: Dont seperate movement keys to different hands. Like, in most shooters or arcade games, movement is WASD+Space, CTRL, etc. One hand. I would change the jump key to the UP(arrow) key, so you move with the right hand, and do actions with the left hand.
Apart from that, I experienced some performance drops when ALOT of enemies spawned. By that, I dont mean FPS drops, but input latency. The character would not move instantly anymore, but move quite a bit after I press a movement key, and stop the movement some time after I release the key. I dont think its a big issue, most likely just a minor code flaw that can be fixed by changing something in your main game loop.

[Maxim Schoemaker]

@dek0
Thanks for the feedback! The performance looks like it's going to be a pain in the butt. Flash is all happy and nice, until you put more than 20 object in the scene and than it drops you like a brick... Optimizing the code won't really work. The problem is really that flash says there are too many sprites to draw... I'm looking into decreasing the amount of enemies and finding a different way to increase the difficulty.

About the separation between movement and actions. I fully agree that jump seems more logical as a direction key and initially it was that way. But my plan is to learn Björn 2 additional moves in the coming levels (and up and a down attack). The up attack requires you to hold up + attack. So if I also put jump on up then you'd always need to jump in order to do the attack. It just didn't really work when I tried it back then. But when I finish the second level I'll let you guys try out both control schemes and see which one works best. But that's for later.

Thanks again!

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Update ^^

There are sound effects now!

I decided to go with 8-bit sfxr sound effects, because finding sound effects somewhere else (or even making them myself) is just too much of a hassle... I found these awesome dudes called Arrowhead Audio who make sound effects and I'd love to buy a sound effects pack from them one day, but right now they only have a Squelch, Squish and Splat pack. And I'm looking for more like a Hit, Bash, Smash pack .

I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what kind of music I want, though. I Usually make the music myself. But to be honest, I'm not really that good at it . One of my thought's was to have Björn fight whilst listening to classical music like

but I'm not sure if that's allowed (or fun anyways). While working on this game I often listen to stuff on the 8bc like this chiptune here, which I guess would fit pretty well, except that I don't own the song and then I'll have to pay the dude and I don't really have that much money. In fact I'm making this game to earn money in stead of doing a boring ordinary job. So I guess I'd better find a way of getting music for free I could still try to use my own awesome klezmer chiptune songs but I don't think they fit very well...

What kind of music do you guys think would work well with MagnoB? (don't you just love alliteration?)

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Telomere Research ain't got nuffin' on Björn:

Björn tried to die once. It just didn't work out...True story

[chris_b]

Is there anyone who's keyboard doesn't have A and S next to each other? Cause that's what I'm gonna change it to now

Yes, there's AZERTY keyboards. X and C seems to be the preferred choice that works for everyone.

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Is there anyone who's keyboard doesn't have A and S next to each other? Cause that's what I'm gonna change it to now

Yes, there's AZERTY keyboards. X and C seems to be the preferred choice that works for everyone.

Damn French... Allright, I'll change it to X and C

[oahda]

Is there anyone who's keyboard doesn't have A and S next to each other? Cause that's what I'm gonna change it to now

Yes, there's AZERTY keyboards. X and C seems to be the preferred choice that works for everyone.

Damn French... Allright, I'll change it to X and C

Don't the French have QWERTZ?

Also, don't forget about the DVORAK users, or the users of Greek or Cyrillic, or other non-Latin, keyboards, for that matter. Why not just use 1 and 2 (not the numpad ones, since not everyone has a numpad either)?

[BlueSweatshirt]

Customizable controls ftw.

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Customizable controls ftw.

Ever so right :3

Update :D

I made a small menu so now you can choose your attack and jump key yourself. Standard is Z and X again, because I like those the best myself ^^

Second thing I changed is I took away the possibility for 3 (or 2) enemies to spawn at the same time. It doesn't add any difficulty, cause taking 1 out would mean the other would follow in combo. And 3 enemies at once in stead of 1 does fill up the screen a lot fast and thus screw up the FPS a lot earlier. Also, when the enemies are spread more the game becomes more difficult, because there is less space for you to safely stand. So, the game is a little harder now and it effects the FPS less. Hooray!

Still, I have no idea what to do with the music

[Maxim Schoemaker]

You're gonna love this dude, I'm sure

Introducing you to the first enemy of level 2

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Allright, I'm back again! I just graduated from highschool (do you call that graduating, I dunno...) so I went on a holiday afterwards and then to this awesome music festival were I saw frickin' Deadmau5 and The Bloody Beatroots (omg omg omg ). Anyways, I'm back and I've recommenced working on this project!

Things that are new:

• Start of level 2 -> first enemy is done and so is the room (maybe not the colours )
• New collision system, so I don't need to rely on the flash's crappy collision system (phew)
  
• Some small graphical changes, like a double font for the score and combos, some better particles and some new cloud particles
• General bugfixes (and lot's of it )

I've been putting it off, but now I'm going to concentrate on level 2's second enemy

[oyog]

I noticed that after a short while only left facing enemies spawn in the first level.

[Maxim Schoemaker]

I noticed that after a short while only left facing enemies spawn in the first level.

Thx ^^ it's fixed now :3

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Hi there,

It's time for an:

Update! ^^

I've finished all 3 enemies of level 2, go check em out! They all just spawn at the same time now, but that's just for testing. Now I have to make a tutorial because in level 2 you can use an up attack -> Attack + Up.
Hope you like it


Cheers,

Maxim Schoemaker


Ps. Damnit it! I still have no idea what to do with the music...

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Allright! Level 2 is now an actual level =D it's got a tutorial to show you how to do an uppercut and it's got enemy progression and stuff, like level 1 already had.

<3

Cheers,

Maxim

Edit: I've also just added the Björnipedia, with actual commentary by Björn himself! Go check it out!

[oahda]

Please rename your file bjoern.php...

Anyway. Tried the first level. I didn't beat it. It beat me. Is it possible to beat it if I don't suck, or does it go on for ever? I guess it doesn't, since there is a second level, so for how long does it go on? I need to estimate my chances here.