What I managed to edit tonight. I started sketching a walk cycle, but I guess it's quite late, as each Trilby I drew kept progressively getting taller (perhaps I am subconsciously reminding myself that the gentleman is a 6' tall hombre that intimidates possibly armed security guards with his mere presence), so I've decided to hit the hay and continue tomorrow.

I noticed that Trilby seems to hold his umbrella with his left hand in the entirety of Trilby: Art of Theft. Hence why I asked that whole question.

There doesn't seem to be any indication that he can't very well switch hands, however.

Edit: Whoa hey there, that flap thing I tried to salvage kind of looks like a bulging love-handle. Whoops. Better fix that in the 'morrow, alongside the lack of depth perception between Trilby's left hand and his head... Oi.

I played a little right now- Mozilla, Adobe, and GameMaker all fighting for RAM isn't a pretty sight (i.e.- Trilby moved super slow and I have NO idea where Naija was), but I saw some of the bounding boxes and will try to work off what I saw. For convenience's sake, I hope that a windowed mode is made sometime soon, so that PrintScreening or utilizing notepad at the same time is possible (unless I'm missing something here).

That aside, it's looking pretty fancy. Me likes.

I've already made a bunch of edits to one of Oracle's poses, but before I do something that I'll go "oh baw", I take it that there's no space for alternate left and right sprites in the code? (i.e.- non-flipped sprites)

I tried to download it earlier (and again a couple of times just now), but I don't seem to be able to! I just get directed to a page that offers uploading through FileDropper.

But, alas, I will try my hand at a few animations and post them up here soon enough, regardless.

So, uh, no more sprites are needed for Trilby?

My apologies, I'm just wandering aimlessly through the Indie Brawl wondering what I should do. Being a fan of the Chzo Mythos, I kind of wanted to try my hand at animating the gentleman thief, but it seems Oracle has a good, firm hold of things.

I'd like to wander over to Lyle from Cube Sector, but that isn't on the priorities list, so oh well. Insert lurking motions here.

With a little sprucing up, we can yet make a wide-headed gentle-man out of WaGomez! 

Wourme, your post just game the oddest idea of a game where, instead of a game over screen fade-out-of-gameplay-type-deal, upon loss you are subjected to watching your character suffer agonizing tortures at the hands of hellish beasts (Pyramid Head rape, for example), instead of simply, you know, falling down and having blood sprawl out of you to spell out "YOU BE DED, SON", or some equivalent.

You wiggle the joystick and press every button available, watching your every press make your character struggle and squirm as he is dissected alive. Your vision distorts when one of your eyes suddenly goes missing, and eventually the game will fade out- but even then it's not over. The game will patiently wait for you to hit start and choose "Retry", or "Load", and until then subject you to the far-away noises of your character's flesh being eaten.

Geez, why hasn't anybody done that yet?

Synnah already did it for you, Kenneth. Scroll up to see Manilla Road.

I wouldn't want to be insulted either, but has it ever actually happened (i.e.- a genuine anti-reward to completionists- other than, well, no reward at all?) is my actual question.

Songs CAN make or break an ending, I agree, but they're often forgotten after the ending proper. Additionally, sometimes they can become tedious to listen to as the credits roll (see Shadow the Hedgehog's numerous ending songs). It can be good the first time, and definitely for a game that is meant to be played a few times (three or four to unlock everything, for example: The Bouncer). When you have branching paths up the wazoo and the same six endings (despite having about 500 ways to achieve them), it can become tedious.

Is there an actual game that will reward you for 100% completion with something like "CONGRATULATIONS! You wasted your life on this!" (or a more offensive equivalent)?
I'm not thinking about South Park, no, sir!

That would case quite a ruckus if the game takes several hours to complete in its entirety, I imagine!

That aside, I enjoy games whose endings seem personalized depending on the player's gameplay style (plus if they carry over to any sequels).

I think there have been large exploration games where death is not really possible- instead- for example, scaling a tower or mountain, and sliding down to the bottom. Despite a lack of death, you are penalized by having to repeat the entire climb (or however much distance you lost before you managed to recover a foothold). I just can't name any off the top of my head.

I'm intrigued at the possibility of making a game without death, but with other penalties for being wounded. Obviously, this would be a very heroic game, but that's the kind of thing I love. Invincibility is a mechanic that I don't think has been fully explored.

That sort of thinking made Fable 2's no-death+scarring mentality, and I think the general opinion of that has already been expressed on this thread.

Verge has two types of deaths, so I'm not sure if that counts into this discussion (one type of death sends you into the 'otherworld', the other sends you to the start of the level, I think).

Baroque has already been mentioned (death reveals plot). I find it partially frustrating, however, as there are some events within the Tower in the game that are randomly placed, and dying just before reaching the characters and seeing the cutscenes/hearing the dialogue is quite annoying for a completionist like me.

There's also 'unwinnable battles' in several Role Playing Games (especially when you fight a Rival or the ultimate antagonist early on in the storyline), which I do not know if they count towards this subject (i.e.- you MUST lose for it to make sense in the story, and even if you are victorious, it doesn't matter). I think a good Indie example of this can be found in Rinkuhero's Immortal Defense.

If I had to pick a way to toy with deaths, I'd probably want to meta-game Game Overs somehow. (i.e.- you die in the game, now you're controlling a player who just lost at the game! What a twist?) There's been a few RPGs (I think SaGa, or Final Fantasy Legend series) where death ends up leading you to a practically unwinnable boss battle (i.e.- Odin). The Chrono Trigger series (including Cross and Radical Dreamers) have played with 'finishing the game early' to mess with the plot/change the endings, but I am also unaware if that counts towards this topic. (I personally enjoy when losing in a game rewards you with a short cinematic of the consequences of your loss, such as the world ending/refusing to change, or your characters getting up to fight again when they offer a "retry" option)

... I should probably go eat dinner.

Oh geez I should go to my Finance class. See ya!

If you mean the lack of perspective on the left arm, then yes! Yes there is. ("Take my strong hand!" ~Scary Movie 2's Butler)

If you meant the sketchy lines around his utility belt looking horribly, horribly improper around his crotch area, then yes, again! But that one's unintentional, I swear. (Perhaps freudian?)

But yeah, I was kind of concentrating more on fitting all of my favorite Link-quipments on Link, and noticed far too late that I had completely foregone any sense of depth on his actual body, making his arms very, very flat (and his right arm far too long, perhaps, to properly use that bow).

But oh well. It's better than my older junk, I hope.

If you don't have too much time to spare, then writing lengthy design docs is definitely not going to help.

Curses! This advice comes to me five (I think) years too late!

Darn my ability to get carried away when typing. Oh well.

But yeah, you're right, I should probably just start tossing something together in my spare time. (It kind of hurts to think of doing it, though, but oh well) Thanks for the advice.

Back to hiding!

Are you working in a bigger team? If you are the only person working on the project, then just screw the whole design doc and use that time to work on the game. You can always make notes in some notebook when/if necessary after all.

This is probably the best thing to do. Unless you are making a huge game, which of course you shouldn't be if it's the first one you're making.

Hrm, yeah. The problem is, I have no idea what differentiates a big game from a small game.

It would help if there was some sort of set way that I could determine that on my own, but as far as I know, there's no way to measure ideas in size due to their complexity. (What for me could be a small game may be a big game to others, and vice versa)

All I know is that with college in the way, every game feels big. Every second I waste not doing college work feels like I just did some huge endeavor and wasted a lot of my time. Doesn't help that I'm learning economy and business (now I call everything an opportunity cost, even typoes! Ahhh!).

I don't think I'd ever want to release a small game with any of the ideas that I've had so far, sadly. I'd feel unfulfilled, I'd think. But I wouldn't know yet.

To avoid making a new topic later on, I'm going to work on a couple of things and just post whatever I end up making here. If I make something finalized/playable, I'll change the topic's title to the game's and add FINISHED/DEMO or whatever up there.

An mock-up for "Not To Be", an AGS project.


Sprites for the main character of "A Terrible Trip", the CommonplaceBookCompo entry that never was.

There's several old concepts on my Photobucket that I don't believe worthy of spamming people with here, but they're all mostly original characters and not really game design ideas, per sé.

Tegaki tag for game ideas. I'm the only one that's used it so far, really, and only one of them has been an actual idea not related to "Not To Be", my AGS project.

Updates later-er.

I'm hoping it's appropriate to ask for help here. I was a little torn between here and tutorials, really.

Anyhow!

I downloaded Celtx from looking through the forums here, and have been messing around with it (accidentally deleting a lot of work and whatnot, whee, organizational experimentation and forgetting to Save every five steps of the way!)...

Anyway, it occurs to me that I have no real idea what a neat way to organize a Game Design Document would be at all! And being a complete amateur (I never finished my CommonplaceBookCompo entry), I have no idea what I'm doing.

So I was wondering if anyone had any advice. I've done a couple of things (Notepad things!) that I guess count as very basic, stripped down design documents, but am unsure if they get the message across to a third party (i.e.- maybe they only work for me and me alone). And with college barking at my heels constantly, I figure that I may not be able to do anything (at all) solo.

Here's an example for anyone to critique:

Game Start //150 - Train, Hill, House

Screen 1 = Front Yard
//You are not allowed to go left yet
"I just left the house, and I have my wallet and keys with me."
//Press up to look at the screen
"It is a nice winter day. Not too cold, not too warm. The ocean breeze feels nice."
//Go right

Screen 2 = Cliff viewing City
//Press up to look at the screen
"It's the town. It looks like the merchants that arrive in the mornings are getting ready to leave."
//155 (Sail putting out to sea, town not dark yet- it is sunset)
//Go right

Screen 3 = River Bridge
//15 + 50 (Not yet)
//Press up to look at the screen
"It's a sturdy bridge. The water from the river flows into the gulf the town is next to."
//Go right

Screen 4 = Staircase to Town viewing Cliff
//185 (Old, damp, mildew covered houses built next to waterfall)
//Press up to look at the screen
"It's the old town. There was an incident, and now the houses are barely jutting out of the cliffside."
//215 (Amnesia sign 1)
//Only add this line of narration once, make a switch for it and set it to 1:
"Why am I still living up there, again?"
//Go right, into town

Screen 5 = Semi-Active Street
//Press up to look at the screen
"The main street of the town is always bustling with activity, but I don't really know anyone well enough to strike up random conversation."
//Go right

Screen 6 = Train Station
//You are not allowed to go right
//Press up to look at the screen
"The train station. I'm taking it to avoid hours upon hours of walking. It's cheap, anyway- the town is near a coal mine."
//Walk up to booth
"One ticket please."
"Here you go, sir! Enjoy your trip." (<- Write in pink or something)
"Thank you."
//Go right

Screen 7 = Train
//You are not allowed to go left, entry doors are closed
//Press up to look at the screen
"It's the passenger cabin I boarded. I tend to enjoy walking to the front cabin, however- it feels that I arrive at my destination that much faster once I do."

Bash/Praise/Comment away, good sirs/sirettes!

It just did it to me today. Nifflas's NanoPack, Treasure Hunter Man and Stargirl and the Thief who Blew Up the Moon, and the CommonplaceBookCompo's From Primordial Egg all got blasted. Lucky that I don't really do anything in MultimediaFusion myself, but it is pretty crazy that AVG all of a sudden started flagging MMF games as, well, infected (indiscriminately).

... Man, I feel dirty posting here after failing to meet the whole deadline for the CommonplaceBookCompo, but I felt I had to peep about this a little bit. School's having me learn .NET, nowadays, and I'm semi-grounded from purchasing games (loophole= Indie Games that are free!) Ah well.

I don't believe the game stuttered.

Man, if only you could turn back and go back to your village! If only you didn't want that whatever it is... I assume some sort of candy?

Oh, sick, twisted, funny fate! Why must you be so?

I have an idea, but I need to be baby sat as I code, I guess. As I keep bumping heads and dropping simple things, effectively making my game look (and act) a lot simpler than it should.

Maybe it's because it's still fresh on my mind, but right off the bat I can't top thinking "What's Mighty Jill doin' here" when I look at the horned one.

But I'm just playing. They all look cool. So the road's gonna be forested, eh?