TIGSource Forums

Ahoy there Tiggers.

I've been lurking around here from time to time, watching things unfold. When the new competition hit it suddenly occured to me how I could make a simple procedural engine, so I did a bit of a spur-of-the-moment thing and put together a bunch of random stuff. Not the most glorious game (had to keep it simple since I can't program to save my life,) but I figured I'd share since it was meant to go with this competition anyway. Anywhoo, here's what I cooked together:

The Adventures of Charles Dumbbell

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Charles5.png)
Charles Dumbbell: A Strongman at the local circuis, part time pilot and adventurer. During one of his many travels, he finds himself lost in the Witch cave (somewhere west of Bloksberg,) a cave that never looks the same twise. Armed only with his jetpack, fists of steel and earth shattering mustache, he must find the witches causing the shifts and put a stop to it once and for all. Will he make it out alive?!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Charles1.png) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Charles2.png)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Charles3.png) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Charles4.png)

Features:
 - Exploring: Using your bare fists and jetpack, punch your way through the caves to find hidden items and areas.

 - Hexing: On every stage is a witch that will put you under a spell. You will change into a random form, say... a flying dinosaur head, or get set on fire. To break the spell, you are given a random task to complete. Escape the giant Drillshark. Kill your enemies. Dance for the squid monster.

I won't make the deadline with this in time, but if I manage to solve a bug by tomorrow, I will be posting a demo. I've found better ways to make the game, so we'll see if will stay in it's present form.

Edit:

Download demo here:
Demo (http://www.projectrhapsody.com/uploads/CharlesDemoV2.rar)

Small update. Minor errors fixed.

Wow, this looks fantastic :o How did you keep this quiet for so long? ;D

Sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun, too. Looking forward to the demo!

Awesome pixel art, and nice random crazy ideas :D

Dance for the squid monster indeed :D

Holy shit, this looks amazing. Can't wait to dance for the squid monster... :D

Holy shit.

snake? Snake! SNAAAAKE!!!

Looks awsesomelicious.

Wuh... wait a minute...

(http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1798/owlsqs6.jpg)

All hail the mighty Owl!

Bug fixed. Hopefully, I can improve the gameplay by tomorrow.


No squid dancing in the demo so far. Making squids happy is a pretty complex procedure...


(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Owlstatue.gif)

I love you.

Wow that looks great,nice use of colours.

Man...

Either this or Ciellus will win the prize for most gorgeous pixel art.

Indeed: both are very impressive.

Oh my god, man.

Welcome to the TIGS forums.  Enjoy your stay.

WHO ARE YOU? And where have you been all this time?

Oh crap, it's Snake (http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/17123.htm). :o

This sounds like the burliest game ever made.

THAT WAS YOUR DOING?

Oh Dear. Oh DEAR.

WELP... WE'RE BONED.

...

Well crappit.

100 points! This looks amazing! "!".

Why does everything always link back to Colossal Katamari?

In any case, the game is progressing smoothly so far. I had someone test a build yesterday and I realised I had to make the tasks a bit more obvious. Now that I've fixed that, it's on to making the exploring worth it.


You know that guy you sometimes see on the bus? The guy that looks like he might kill you in a dark ally? Yeah. Sorry about that.

Because it's an awesome picture and it's fan-service. You should expect it. :P

Ok... So my dyslexia has played it's usual tricks on me. It appears the deadline is *monday* night and not today.

I'm nearly done with the demo, but this extra time means I can compose some music for it. Time to whip out the NES tracker!

Oh yeah. And you can burn things now.

Does that dyslexia also give you massive art powers?

I think it was a trade. Art skillz for the ability to read it right the first time.

Oh, that's you! I was wondering about that. Phew, that's a relief. Although, come to think of it, you neither confirmed nor denied your intent to murder me in a dark alley. Though with said murderer's ability to produce Giant Circus Jetpack Mans (who can now burn things!), does it really matter?

Ok. So I've managed to put in all the sound-effects, added energy items, an item to increase max health if you can find it and fixed a bunch of bugs.

It's midnight, but I'm going to pull an all-nighter to get this done in time. By US time, I should have an extra six hours. Right now I'm starting on the intro, and we'll see how far I get from there. The game has crashed on me twise without warning, so this is beginning to look troublesome. If I manage to piece together the intro and handle the few remaining bugs I might have time to compose the music after that. Won't hold my breath though.

Here goes!

Good luck, looking forward to this. Would love to see how the mission generation has turned out.

Going to have to dissapoint you there I'm afraid.

There's only one mission open in the demo. Since each one is unique, it takes a while to put together. Randomly lighting heroes on fire is serious buisness. Hopefully, the demo will give a taste of what it might become.

(On a sidenote. Halfway done with the intro)

Because it contains volatile amounts of awesome, and was done in MSPaint. WITH A LAPTOP MOUSE.


Oh, the game is definitely on my radar now, by the way. Even moreso than before.

Demo is finally up.

The whole thing is very WIP at the moment. The intro is mostly sketches and there's a  few bugs I didn't have the time to handle. I'd really love to add music since I've already composed the whole soundtrack, but I guess that's just how it is sometimes.

I'll fix things up at a later time. Right now I just need to make the deadline. Hopefully you'll enjoy it regardless.

Controlls are the arrowkeys, Shift and Ctrl. I think you can figure it out from there.

I'm off to bed. Hell it's nearly 6 am. I'll be back to check on things once I wake up sometime during the next few days.

What a trooper. ;D Downloading now.

Okay, I love the pixel art so much. It just oozes awesome and the animation is so fluid.

I like the destructable tilebased levels too.

I did run into a bug. At one point when the witch was talking to me The game experienced MASSIVE lag and would only go forward if I kept the attack key pressed. The lag continued until I finally quit.

Please please finish this past the compo. :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*

Oh lawds, issat some MMF1.5? :D

The pixels are delicious... but I'm sure you get that a lot.

Shite!

I just had a playthrough of the demo this morning and I realised my Quick-win toggle key is left in the game. Must have been left in when I loaded some backup data. I'll upload a new version to fix it.


I know about that one. It's actually one I still haven't figured out. I suspect it's MMF choking because too many samples are played at the same time, but I honestly don't understand why it would do this. I've tested other games on several computers with the same issue, so it's a constant problem.


It is. I actually have MMF2. Plan was to use it to fix the bug Melly mentioned, but the first engine was created in 1.5, and porting it didn't work at all. Appairantly, MMF2 uses a different object hirarchy, so you couldn't break any blocks. Was more or less forced to finish it in 1.5 unless I wanted to remake the whole game. Trust me though, I'm ready for something less buggy...

Very cool, I love how the guy twirls his moustache.

I love the art and the controls/physics but I can't figure out how to consistently find the witch, so far i have only found her once. (But I died soon after).

Me thinks this needs to be in windowed mode. I can still see how good the pixel art is but the pixels are too big.

But big pixels are neato!

Thanks for the feedback people.

Actually, I think the forced fullscreen might be the cause of the slowdown. Some computers don't handle the streching as well as others, so making it an option might solve the problem.


The witch is at a random spot each time, so there's no way of knowing where she is. I'm planning to make the witch fly vauely the direction where she spawns after the generating sequence. I used an arrow to find her during my testing, but it's a little too easy I think.

I've also come across a pretty serious bug. I've used timed events in some places, like when to stop the generating. The problem is that this might trigger differently depending on the computer running it. The whole intro scene with Charles entering the cave is time based (I should never have done that, but you try comming up with clever ideas at six in the morning...) On some computers, the timing will miss and Charles never reaches the bottom of the screen.

Fixing the intro is simple enough (it was a WIP anyway,) but the generating might go ballistic. So far, the people that had the timing problem never reached the room in the first place, so I don't know the sate of things. If anyone is experiencing problems getting platforms to appear, please let me know. I would really like to avoid replacing the whole process...

I'll upload a new version with some fixes soon. Right now I'm putting in some music.

I love the art and general gameplay.  I couldn't tell exactly where I was supposed to go, though, and the levels were pretty huge.  I also kept experiencing pretty severe stuttering after playing for a couple minutes.  The audio would start to get stuck in a loop and the whole thing would stutter (frames dropped to single digits if not fractions, then back to normal, then more stuttering a few seconds later).  Definitely shows some promise, though!  I think an indicator as to where the witch is located might help (a compass?).  Or a smaller environment perhaps?
Keep up the good work!
--Zack

I had the problem with the stuttering with a few other games, a princess one I seem to recall. The levels are huge, but it would be nice to have some clue where the witch was. I just got so lost at first, ended up dying in a stutter storm.

A subtle clue might be to change the types of tiles as you get closer to the witch. That way, you know by the appearance of the tiles.

Yeah, timing is hard.

Gorgeous tiles and creatures. I love the big pixels so much and I had a lot of fun with it. Interface felt a bit off for me, but that was because I wasn't used to it. It would also be nice if I could figure out how to break up or down.

I finally finished the demo, it was really enjoyable. I really want to see this finished post-compotition. Good Luck.

First of all Awesome art :-*
I love the painted in-your-face intro.
The game itself, right now it looks like a big mess, but it's not really a bad thing. It could make a great exploration/metroidvania game with larger caves and many many different objectives.
I met some sort of evil looking glowing black stone that did nothing and a chest that i couldn't open, then a slimy creature died and gave me a golden potion (that did nothing).
How awesome is that ?:gentleman:
Too bad the game still needs too much work before it's interesting.
Oh and unskippable cutscenes = fail.

Very promising indeed!  :gentleman:
I like the left-right punching action a lot.

I hope you get to finish it, because I've got a fever.
And the only cure... is more Dumbbell!

You had me at (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/SnakemanEXE/Owlstatue.gif)


Too bad the bug comes up here even before i get to the witch

I know people are having problems with the slowdown bug. Fact is, I've fixed it long ago. The probelm was the fullscreen mode.

However, I can'd do anything about it.

Right now, my computer is at a repearshop after a series of crashes. I was really hoping to replace the buggy version with something that works by the time the voting started, but no such luck. I might be getting it back tomorrow, maybe in the next few days. When I do, I'l upload a new version with some fixes and some new music. To be honest though, I'm fairly tempted to redo the whole engine, but we'll see. I don't want to take too much time away from my main project.


The... chest didn't open? You're kidding me. Is that damn thing bugging up again? There's no reason it shouldn't open, but I guess it's ignoring my scripts... I'll look into it.

As for the other things, the black block is for the mission (did that work out?) The frogs get bruned by your jetpack or by the fireballs from the eye-blocks. The potion is only supposed to spawn at random when you're damaged to replentish it. I haven't seen it pop up when you're at max health. (Was that what happined?)

The cutscene was really just something I whipped together so it wouldn't just be a pure gameplay demo, I just didn't have time to add a skip button. When you beat the level, you're supposed to get a cutscene and score, but I didn't manage to put it in in time. I should probably have redirected the player to the cutscene instead of ending the application when you die though.


I adressed the witch thing before, but... what was that about the interface? As for breaking upwards, you can't do that. I considered it at one point, but then, it would just be flying around. The blocks wouldn't really matter much.

Really sorry about the problems you guys experiencing. I'll get round to fixing things up once I get my box back.

Well, if it's fullscreen that's causing the slowdown you could always offer the stopgap solution until you get it fixed:  Create a shortcut to the game in the same folder (alt+drag), then open up the shortcut's properties and add /nofs to the end of the target.


Anyway, the graphics are really exceptional.  Moving or still, I really admire the quality of everything.  I also love the old style that the sounds and music (well, the bit of it that there was) helped create.
I'm looking forward to seeing this when there's more variety to the situations and objectives.

Oh, and this happened once:
(http://www.geocities.com/f4fth/charles_x2.gif)
I'm the one on the bottom.  The one on the top appeared when and where I stopped jet-boosting in the air.