Oops! Had the wrong forums open. Posting this in Announcements and locking the topic.

Enlightenment Vision Gameplay Video:



My first iPhone/iPod game.
As Life pursues Understanding, guide Life into destroying the Obstacles in the Void, and escape Death!

Arcade/Physics. Unique gameplay

OpenFeint highscores, stat tracking and 11 achievements to unlock.

http://linktoapp.com/enlightenment_vision - iTunes, 99c

In related news, I was interviewed recently on the Houston Business Makers Entrepreneur show, you can check the interview out here: http://www.thebusinessmakers.com/episodes/shows/2010/january-2010/episode-240/anthony-broussard.html

Thanks to Crackerblocks and ChevyRay for their help with OpenFeint integration. Check their game out here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=3190.180

Tigsource admins: what do you think about storing the Assemblee files in a central, Tigsource-server location instead of links to other sites scattered across threads?
I guess this is pretty moot if everyone maintains their sites, just a thought.

Suggestions? I need to buy one to make gameplay videos 

Depends: if you've got walljumping or other cool movement tricks, it might be inadvertently easy to jump past all the obstacles.. or snag a spare bit of geometry on a wall and reach ground, allowing you to jump again. I think it wouldn't change the basic logic, but it would require more polish / testing.

In Super Metroid, you could already use the walljump to sequence break the game pretty brutally. Technically speaking, a TRUE metroidvania would have to have opportunities for sequence breaking. Metroid Zero Mission on the GBA even went so far as to add opportunities for sequence breaking, and a special ending for breaking the game and getting a really low item collection score.

Do people consider Blaster Master a Metroidvania? The basic gameplay was there: each boss drops an item you need to reach the next world. A procedurally generated version of Blaster Master would probably be pretty easy to make.

-SirNiko

I should play SuperMetroid Zero again.

That's true.. and yeah, sequence breaking is awesome - or at least the possibility for multiple roads leading the same way (like the scattering of missiles in Super Metroid.. not the same as being able to say, get different items in the first Zelda but yeah).

When Metroid Prime was re-released, they took OUT the sequence breaks  
..I think it's bad if you can do ridiculous skips, though. Like maxing out speech and stealth and getting the Power Armor in Fallout 2 .. then massacring the rest of the game world getting the items you need to win. Some kind of checks and balances would be needed.

EDIT: I haven't played Blaster Master. Looking up YT

My game 444, which is kinda a Zelda/Metroid/Shmup mashup, does a few small "procedural" things. I have multiple "versions" of several rooms that get randomly chosen when you start a new game, so the dungeon will be slightly different on each playthrough. The enemies in some rooms are randomized too.
[/shameless self promotion]
I played that! It's cool.

Anyway, I don't have a lot of technical knowledge on this stuff, but I'd say if people manage to write algorithms to generate something as intricate as a good roguelike dungeon or a Dwarf Fortress world, why shouldn't a Metroidvania map be possible? I know about Gregory Weir's game but I haven't heard anything about it since it was announced a few months ago, I also know about Slashie's MetroidRL but I have yet to play it.

Yeah, I think the toughest thing would be making sure you don't run out of room, but I guess you could spawn new "series" from any where if the main hallway's full (because on all its sides are other rooms).

Yoda Stories and Indy's Desktop Adventures sort of worked just like this: each game started you with a single item, and you ran around a randomly generated overworld hunting for the other items. The game just knew to create the puzzles and rewards in such a way that you could always reach the next puzzle, and that all the puzzles had to be solved to beat the game. If you just changed the game into a side-scroller and made the items into weapon power-ups, you'd have a metroidvania.

Crap, I forgot about Yoda Stories and IDA! Those were zelda..rogues? I don't remember specific rooms being randomized but it did have the map layout and puzzle requirements randomized. So.. take that meets Spelunky.

I don't think 2-d or 3-d really changes the basic logic for the procedural generation.
-SirNiko

Depends: if you've got walljumping or other cool movement tricks, it might be inadvertently easy to jump past all the obstacles.. or snag a spare bit of geometry on a wall and reach ground, allowing you to jump again. I think it wouldn't change the basic logic, but it would require more polish / testing.

I like the ones with lots of choices.. 

Very possible. This is the kind of thing I'd like to work on once I've got the  to spare iterating on this, with enough work it could be amazing  . ..but maybe making a regular metroidvania would be a better first step 

A procedural Metroidvania is certainly possible. The article linked in the opening post does admit it is starting with the very basics: designing regions that are entirely locked off by a single chokepoint.

The biggest problem with procedurally designed games is that they lack the charm of intelligently designed regions. Would Super Metroid have been as fun if you didn't have that section of Norfair with the rising acid? Would Symphony of the Night have been as cool if it didn't have the giant waterfall in the caves? I'm not sure it would have. That's not to say procedurally generated games are bad, they're just always going to be stuck at a level below that of non-procedural games.

Also, obligatory link to Slashie's randomly generated Metroid Rogue-like.

http://slashie.net/page.php?24

-SirNiko

Oh, right. I played that a while back, it's cool.
I'm talking about Spelunky style though. Spelunky meets Zelda/Metroid or whatever.

Regarding waterfalls in caves and rising lava: why not have these randomly set? Region 4 is a Cave and the Cave region will always have one big puzzle room with a waterfall.. Lava Region will have 2 rising-lava rooms. Ambitious, but I think it could work.

Re: TannerP:
http://ludusnovus.net/2009/10/12/intruders-detected-in-the-computer-core/
Says early 2010! Hope he gets it done

http://gamesfromwithin.com/break-that-thumb-for-best-iphone-performance

Thanks to

Speaking of performance, have you done the disable thumb generation trick?  Huge floating point speed gains for me.  I wish I had known about it earlier.

in http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8648.0 (Hook Champ)

Speaking of performance, have you done the disable thumb generation trick?  Huge floating point speed gains for me.  I wish I had known about it earlier.

Holy crap, THANK YOU. My lotsa sprites lotsa animation game no longer lags!!

Congrats!
Looking forward to FMSD, too.

This game rocks. Have you thought about porting to iPhone / Android?

Nope, we haven't. But it's made with a stolen version of flash (am I aloud to say that?), so we can't really make any money on it through selling...

It would be cool though, I agree xD

I would just say you used FlashDevelop

So I was replaying Super Metroid again, and was thinking about procedurally generating a Metroidvania

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=4

(and I would link but I don't remember your name / name of game.. a black/white SHMUP adventure with procedurally generated rooms. someone post a link so I can edit this line?)

Anyways, I'd like to discuss designing one of these, how you would do it, anything related to this idea.

Some things I've thought of:

-Generating a "series" of rooms with progressing difficulty. Example: The maze generator wants to place a missile power up in the second world. Variables dictate this should be a series of 3-6 rooms from a main corridor or "easy" (difficulty) branch off (the side rooms) so it starts building a 3-6 room series from one of these, randomly selected. The series grows randomly in whatever directions it can (it might go right, right, down, right, up for example). At the end is a missile power up.
-Shortcuts: I'm not sure about the logic for choosing where these go, but something like a 10 missile door for a shortcut between areas (maybe the worlds should be subdivided into sectors, and these sectors are linked via shortcuts?). So if you have 10 missiles, you can blast your way through the shortcut, otherwise you take the normal route.
-Puzzle generation: see the squiddi link above, but this would be more complicated. Example: From the start, generate mazes to reach 2 PowerUps, A and B. Generate 2 series that requires its related powerup to advance eg you need 5 missiles to get to a missile increase. The second series is longer than the first, and optionally hidden with a "secret"
-Secrets: Hidden ceiling switch that must be shot, hidden floor/wall that needs to be bombed, kill XX enemies to open secret door.
-More on puzzle generation: route to a new sector (where Items C,D,E and F are located) requires Boss1Killed. To reach Boss1, must go through a 10 series room of increasing enemy difficulty that ends with a puzzle room requiring PowerUp A and B to pass (like morphball + bombs).
-Recharge points: if this is a roguelike, then saved games are for bleeders . Place 2 1 time use recharge points in the sector, both covered by a "secret", a series 5-10 long, with 1-2 secrets and a PowerUp A or B puzzle in one of the later halves of the room.
-Puzzle: puzzles can be logic stuff, or just tricky platforming eg a missile door that's covered by a buncha flying enemies, or the use of an item (grappling hook required). Puzzles rated by difficulty (platform design), and difficulty can be added by upgrading the enemies, adding more enemies, or adding an environment obstacle
-Environment: Timed lava rising, falling spikes, endless spawning of enemies who fly at you from unkillable spawn points.
-Enemies: enemy generation could be set up so they're weak vs certain power-ups (or nearly impossible to pass without eg. resistance to normal missiles but not super missiles). Further in the game, enemy difficulty goes up (based on what items/powerups the game thinks you should have gotten by then).

Er, that's my 2c. Discuss? 

I'm hate the QTE-based gameplay just as much as the next guy, but if the game is actually going to be as nonlinear as the devs are touting it to be, then I'm interested.

Non-linear done well in this game would rock. Any word on estimated game length?
(agree re: twin peaks: it's amazing)

http://www.uta.edu/ucomm/mediarelations/press/2010/01/genome-biologist-reports.php

Saw this the other day and thought it was related to the topic - medicable mental disorders like bi-polar and schizophrenia are from genes inserted by viruses.  Pretty interesting to think about how discoveries like this will change conceptions about how we see ourselves.

8%! Very interesting 

GAMMA IV, yo

That should be cool. I don't think I'm gonna go this year.. save mah 

hackthissite.org
They have pretty cool challenges. The stenography ones completely baffle me though.

It is.. working 
Now to find a decent screencast software and make a gameplay video..
Thanks everyone!

 

Yoga can do that? Intriguing. I've been tempted to try it for a couple of years now, actually... probably once I'm out of uni.

To be more precise, it was in a massage therapy session, but instead of the usual "I'm gonna massage your muscles into relaxation and adjust your spine until you feel better" the idea was "I'm gonna massage your muscles so they relax enough that your body will start healing itself".
And then I started moving my limbs around, the masseuse helping guide them where they seemed to want to go (I tested the masseuse several times in earlier sessions by just stopping all movements, and they fluidly stopped guiding my limbs too - so they were just going along with my body, not trying to force a givin position)
at one point the masseuse said "Mate that's an advanced yoga position" (I'd never taken official yoga classes ((this was in australia)) ), and about 20 minutes later I was laughing hysterically, completely unable to hold words in my head, they just vanished into laughter, and I felt really, really good.