[are you going to put and download sprites to and from this database or i'm going to lose my time here?]

I'm thinking about making a database site with free sprites to use in games. Will anyone be interested in submitting stuff? Personally i have made a bunch of sprites i can put (like the graphics from the game Nikwi) but mine alone won't be enough. The database will be tag-based and open to everyone to submit (after approval of course or else it might be infested with mspaint penises).

EDIT: to make it more clear: are you going to put and download sprites to and from this database or i'm going to lose my time here? :-P

- It needs to have the ability to import tilesets from a single image, as that is usually the most common tile format. Something Game Maker-esque would be useful.

I'll do that. The tileset manager needs some more work :-)

- You should let it change the tile size and use any amount of different tile sizes, as not all games are tiled with square blocks. It might arbitrarily be better practice to use the same size blocks to tile games, but nonetheless some people don't, and the ability change the size of tiles in this would be useful.

Well, you can change the tile size. By default it is 24x24 because of a bug :-P. If you press the New button (the empty sheet of paper in the toolbar or File->New) it will ask for tile size. The default is 32x32 (initially the program should have used this instead of 24x24), but you can give any value you want. If you don't like 32x32 as a default value, you can edit .mapasrc in your home directory (in Vista is C:\Users\name and in XP it is somewhere in C:\Documents and stuff - search for .mapasrc) using a text editor. The .mapasrc uses the same format as the .mapas files (not the same entries, but the text format is the same).

A current limitation however is that ALL tiles must be the same size. I know, some people use different shapes. It needs a little work to overcome this limitation because i use project.tileWidth and project.tileHeight everywhere (note that the editor although having a first release here today is more than three years old). What i'll try to do is to allow variable sized images BUT the grid will be the defined value you use.

- I'm not sure what .mapas files or exported map files look like because I had trouble finding a folder of 24x24 tiles, but here is a suggestion for another method of exporting files. You could let it export into XML format. It is standard and it would give more freedom to give more complex functions in your editor.

Mapas uses STTD, a small Java library which is the Java port of another library i wrote, badcfg, that loads and saves files that look like:

Code:

foo
{
    bar = "blah"
    baz = "moo"
    {
        lalala = "32"
    }
}

I prefer this format to XML because is more readable in my opinion and easier to parse, yet it allows the same level of flexibility since -like XML- it provides a tree structure (STTD means Simple Text-based Tree-form Data). But Java has more than adequate XML support and a XML exporter should be trivial to implement if really required. I might write one, but it will be a separate download (its a plugin after all).

Btw, here is the someMaps.mapas file show in the video.

Ok, i mentioned Slashstone Mapas, my 2D tile map editor a bunch of times in threads from those who needed a tile map editor. However in all these cases the common part was: ...but you need to compile it. So i decided that this shouldn't be the case any more and people should get binaries. And as a plus, Slashstone Mapas got a bunch of new features and most holes from previous versions were filled. The binaries can be downloaded from the site above, near the source code from SVN.

Also here is a new screenshot of the program:


And a video showing the editor in a small quick video tutorial (flash): click here to see

Some notable new features are:
* Relations! You can 'draw' relations between tiles and give them a name. How you use them, depends on your engine but imagine drawing an arrow from a monster to a key and naming it 'drop'. Your engine can parse this and make the monster drop the key once killed. Instead of imaging it, just see the editor :-). Use Alt+left-click-drag to make a relation.
* TWO exporter plugins. One exports a simple map format which contains the whole map data using predefined IDs for each image (so you can share it between tools). The other exports a very simplistic format which uses the names of the images. So basically it looks like:

rock rock rock rock grass grass grass rock rock grass gras ..
rock rock gem rock rock grass grass tree grass rock ...
...

I believe this is the easiest to parse. If not, well the exporter's code is documented so it can be used as a base/example for writing your own exporter plugin.
* More precise zooming and now you can zoom out more than 100%. That is you can see the map in 50% zoom, 45% zoom, etc (before you could only zoom in, not zoom 'out').
* Finally bothered to add scrollbars in the tile lists :-P
* Custom flags for each tile. Ctrl+Click shows the flag dialog. A plugin can modify the flag names.
* Popup menu with additional options. Ctrl+Right-click shows the popup menu. One option deletes all relations associated with the tile and another replaces all instances of the tile with random tiles selected from the active tiles box.
* More stuff i don't remember.


Comments? Suggestions? Bugs?

The About page isn't about why FMP is better than 8bitboy mind you. 8bitboy is probably a better choice if you want a player for playing modules in your site and don't mind the clicking and missing effects (8bitboy doesn't support all MOD effects according to their page). Lemonamiga i think uses 8bitboy for previewing game music which in Amiga was usually MOD. FMP wouldn't be a good choice there because of the precalculation time it needs and because previewing music doesn't need to be accurate - the base idea is the same and if you like it, just download it :-).

To recap: 8bitboy is a better choice for a standalone MOD player and was made as such in mind i think, FMP is better as a reusable for games MOD player and was made with this in mind. I don't even plan currently to do something like 8bitboy's interface for example.

I hope, however, to figure out how to use Flash 10 with haXe 2.01 in order to optionally (if FP10 is present) use the new sound API which would eliminate the only limitation of FMP: the precalculation time. However i'm currently busy with other things and FMP 1.1 was released mostly because i needed the updated code for my own game and since i had it handy i decided to make a new release for others to use too :-).

Since my webserver (the one that runs badsectoracula.com and a bunch of other sites) has only 64MB of RAM (VPS restrictions), it uses a very tiny http server which serves only files and runs cgi scripts. All unmodifiable (from the users' point of view - like badsectoracula.com itself) are plain html files which are either hand made (like my Flash MOD Player) or offline generated using a custom program i wrote. For the dynamic parts (like the forum) i use handmade CGI programs (not scripts, so i avoid the interpreter memory overhead) written in FreePascal.

These are simple enough and help me use a VPS that other people dont even dream about adding a single page for a bunch of sites and i never had a problem (if course i don't have a massive amount of visitors).

I made a new version and new site for the player too :-)

New stuff in 1.1:
* Improved MOD playback.
* Expanded the pitch table to include non-standard octaves (some MODs use them).
* Repeating in both ModPlayer and DynSound (thanks to oNyx's patch!)
* A liiitle more "documentation" on the site.
* More stuff i don't remember right now :-P

Very good, me likes :-). I liked the music and the graphics (although a little blurry). My only problem was that i could be sure how "far" the zombies were in relative to my character. Maybe adding a little shadow beneath the sprites (like a circle or just a line)?

Also a bug: the big zombie in level 3 (or 4?) when died did nothing. At some point when the level ended just vanished. Was this intentional (not a bug but a feature) or not?

FGL seems a better solution if, like me, you dont want to spend time running after flash portals and just want to put the game on the internet and get some cash for paying your rent and bills so you can continue with the next one :-)

My generic plugin-able tile editor, which i've used to make games randing from J2ME mobile phone games to Flash-based sidescrolling 2D and 3D raycasting, can be download from http://www.badsectoracula.com/projects/mapas/. In all the above URLs (except the first) you can see different versions of the editor in action (the 3D raycasting shot also shows the RayFaster menu which is made by the plugin that i wrote for my raycasting engine that generates haXe source code with the map data files).

There is a catch however: you need to compile the source by yourself. The file you'll find above is the SVN export from my development version. However having the full source code built means that you can modify the editor or -even better- create a plugin easily to suit your needs.

Well i know about that but its just the whole "i know better than you what you like in formatting" attitude of Emacs :-). If i just could *completely disable* that and leave source code highlighting alone and the rest behaves much like most other editors out there (yes i know Emacs is older but no i dont care), then the experience would be very improved for me. Although i've already replaced Emacs with JOE when it comes to Linux console editing. In Windows and X i use jEdit anyway.

[exactly]

Emacs, which is how old now? 30 something? Got this right so long ago. Hit tab anywhere on a line and it tabs the whole line to the right spot according to the code context. Hit tab again, and it won't just insert a tab cause that would ruin your format.

aaaaand this is exactly the reason i dont like Emacs IDEs :-). I want a code editor, not a code formatting tool. When i press TAB i want to insert the TAB character, much like when i press A i want to insert the A character (and no, when i press LEFT i dont want to insert some LEFT character, sorry :-P).

Of course it boils down to what you're used to. As much infuriating for you is not to have this feature in some modern IDEs is also to me to HAVE this feature in Emacs (but i dont really mind since i dont use Emacs anymore).

Now the build system. Thats something no automated system got well. Plain makefiles are almost always much easier to work with. Thankfully most IDEs (including visual studio) understand the concept of calling 'make' :-).

No, opening up Steam (which is a totally different matter btw) is the worst thing Valve could do because it will become full of crap that the current audience (which, btw, includes me) does NOT like. Steam is good because they DO select what is going in and what not and they DO know what their audience likes (or else Steam wouldnt have that audience and their e-shop wouldnt sell anything else than Half-Life 2 and it would close instead of expanding).

Steam is not the only route on the net you know. If you want to find nice stuff there are many places, including this very site. And if you want to sell your stuff, there are many ways to do it beyond Steam. Besides there is good chance that a game isn't already on Steam because either nobody (including the devs) asked it or because Valve thinks that it wouldn't fit in Steam's audience. And yes its THEIR system and THEY decide what goes in and what not.

If you disagree with this, make your own system. Valve provides Steamworks for this and actually binding the IE engine in a window isnt the hardest thing to do. And besides there is always Stardock.

What Oddbob said, plus: a portal/publisher/etc doesnt usually reply not because they have something against the developer or theyŕe snob, but because even if they dont like your current game, they might like your next and they dont want to lose destroy their bridges with you by saying something negative. I mean, for most people getting a "sod off" response has a greater negative impact in later time than no response at all. In the first case you'll feel like a dumbass if you try to convince them again for your newer game, but in the second case you'll try again because you wont - and shouldnt - be sure about the real reason you never got a reply. It could be a trigger-happy spam filter, your bad grammar misrepresenting the game or that previous game selection prick who got his ass fired last week.

It sucks when you've just made the greatest game ever (by your judgement), but if you think about it a little, its better. You dont want to actually make that uberhit and because of Steam's previously negative response not even consider showing them your game and lose all the potential gamers the platform has.

For a Flash-based FPS-something i'm making. He's already chasing you around :-). I'll probably change a bit his head design because he doesn't look to menacing :-P.

I'm always making my own stuff because i like coding. Also i've finished a bunch of games, although they're much less than those i started :-)

FWIW i also devoted my column in November's issue of the Greek gaming magazine PCMaster in the demake competition where i explained a bit what a demake is and minireviewed the ten first games (i had only four pages). All games are added in the cover DVD though using the compilation in the torrent file found in the demakes page.

You know, some people do have to pay bills and eat food. This needs money. They could earn this money by doing all sorts of jobs, but instead they decided to create games. Good or bad, it doesn't matter because there will be at least a handful of people who will like their games. Those people will be thankful for those who made them for their goo time. And the people who made them will do what they like and live from it.

Because you know, nobody forces anyone to make games. Its something you choose and when you're an indie trying to make a living from creating games, its very hard. Yes those people who say may make a less-than-$1k clone of some other game, but they might just hone their skill while making that clone and at the same moment pay their rent and bills. In many developed countries, including where i live, $1000 is a small amount unless you live alone or with your parents and have practically no life (you dont go out, you dont buy stuff, you just buy enough goods to live).

If Anne Starter just learned Flash and she wants to live from it, her first experiment will be something simple that she sees around. If its something big, since she is not skiller, she will drop it and maybe wont continue thinking that making games is not for her. If its something small which requires no real skills she will finish it and maybe find someone to license it for a few hundred dollars. The next step, like in every other thing, is to improve her last step. She won't suceed if after Pong she tries to make Super Mario 3. She may have difficulties if she tries Arkanoid. So a simple Breakout can be ok. I'm talking about the difficulty level here, not real games ok? :-P. What i mean is that she might need months to reach a level where she will try to make her very own original games that she can finish (she might have original ideas before, but she wont know her limits and her ideas will be left unfinished). In the meanwhile every small improved game she makes, finds its way on the Flash game sites and she gains a little money for her efforts - money that otherwise she had to gain from some othe job that in some cases wouldn't leave her enough time to learn how to make games.

There are many developers in Anne's position because while making games wont make you rich (this is reserved for a handful of people in the whole industry - most of us wont even reach close to that), it is very fun and the people's comments when they like your game are what makes you go forward when your last game didn't brought in enough money to pay everything you had to pay.

Unlike in other professions, most people making games love it, no matter their audience or size.

I use Mapas for Flash too :-).
But i convert the maps to another format (actually i convert them to integer arrays which i include in the source code).

During the last two-or-three-ormaybe-four years, i made Slashstone Mapas a tile editor. Of course it didn't took me FOUR (or three or maybe two) years to make, i just only add functionality now and then (with multimonthly gaps between).

In any case it loads and saves maps in a text based tree format, similar to XML but using curly braces instead of <foo></foo> (its somewhat similar to what the Quake engines use). You'll find loaders in C/C++ and Java for the format in the site (but writing a custom parser is easy too). Personally i never use that format in a game though, i write a tool that parses the file and produces a binary file with the map(s) with only the information i need.

Note that the program is not available in binary form because i'm lazy. You need to build it yourself.

Its not really a complaint, but mostly a "common practice". I haven't seen a popular (in portals) game to put a license somewhere in the game so people prefer to steer clear from it. In practice it adds nothing and helps nowhere.

IMHO credits are different things than license requirements. This is why i used zlib which asks for an optional credit but doesn't demand it.