So I am trying to address every instance of object oEn in a room, but when i use code like

Code:

point_direction(oPlr.x,oPlr.y,oEn.x,oEn.y)

or

Code:

point_distance(oPlr.x,oPlr.y,oEn.x,oEn.y)

it only addresses the first instance of that object in the room. Where am I going wrong?

Yes. Whenever you pass an object name game maker looks for the first instance of that object in the room and does the appropriate action on it.

There are two solutions:

More understandable:

Code:

for(i=0;i<instance_number(oEn);i+=1)
{
  ii = instance_find(oEn, i);
  // ii has the ID of the instances of oEn.
  ii.direction = point_direction(ii.x,ii.y,mouse_x,mouse_y);
  // each instance of oEn now points towards the mouse
}

More elegant (and exclusive to GM)

Code:

with(oEn)
{
  //All code here is performed from the point of view of the instance.
  // To access the instance which is calling the with statement, use the keyword 'other'.
  direction = point_direction(x,y,mouse_x,mouse_y);
  // direction of each instance now points towards the mouse
}

No offense but your code is very unreadable.

Anyways, you should try and isolate the problem; Are the arguments you're passing to the script correct? Hit F6, go into debug mode, and find out.

[insanely difficult]

This is awesome. It is also insanely difficult. The enemies even compensate for your direction and speed to make sure they hit you. I can't really comment much on the game because I couldn't get past the first level enemy! I'd suggest putting a delay on them between the time you are spotted and the time they react, because like Empyreal said, there really is no difference between ambushing, flanking, and taking them head on.

The Bullet time is good but it takes too long to recharge for an action game, shorten it and I might be able to get off of the first level

you were right it was the creation code. i thought I had moved the code which set the alphas for the sprite, but i did not. so it was setting 3 alphas 24 times basically.

Do you mean the sprite_set_alpha_from_sprite() function?

If you do, it only needs to be called once. Calling it every time you create the object is terribly inefficient.

I think that if you press jump while in the delay after down-z, the character should jump right after the delay.

This is already in the game! right after the attack lands, hit jump. It cancels into the jump which allows you time to perform an aerial combo.

I agree that parrying is far too hard, I think you should reduce the startup of blocking and/or make the window larger also I totally agree with everything Kicks said about parrying.  The handguns seem a bit overpowered, but if enemies would attack from both sides or use projectiles when they see the handgun startup it might be fine. The sword sheathing animations could be a bit faster.

Everything here is either being considered or already implemented

I love this game already, its stylish, the animations are wonderful and it actually feels like you are hitting something with all your strength, many games miss that.

Thanks for the comment that's exactly the feeling I wanted the animations to give.

Also there need to be more indie beat-em-ups, Ragnarok Battle Offline is the only one I know.

Totally agree! it's really lacking - I think the main reason is because it requires heavy animation work. Kicks' Aces wild and Shank look pretty promising though.

Edit: Its much better to use Down C instead of trying to parry. It has really low startup, does nice damage and is much easier to time right - just use it right as the enemies pull back their claws.

Here's the damage each attack does:

Standard Z,Z,Z combo = 10 + 10 + 26
Down + Z = 10
Up + Z = 40
Down + C = 20 + 20
Handguns = 5 per bullet

The enemies in the tech demo have 101HP and 4 Armour. So Just deduct 4 to get the final damage dealt.

Parrying in the next version will have a larger 'window'. If you don't know what that means, it's basically another way of saying the time you have to parry the incoming attack is larger. There is also an option after successfully parrying to do a counter attack which causes a lot of damage (80 damage, to be precise). Hopefully that will make parrying a more viable option in some situations

Oh hey, I didn't realise you made Aces Wild! I appreciate the feedback you gave me on my game even more now

So yeah, my thoughts & suggestions:


Thoughts

- High levels of bad-assery in this game! Love it.

- Coop sounds awesome. What about a versus mode?

- Graphics look great. Did you create the sprites by hand?

- Like everyone else has said, Aces voice is annoying after a while. However, The sound of punches and kicks being thrown sounds awesome.

Suggestions

- Why don't the ninja's have voices? Just a few 'oohs' and 'ahhs' after being hit would suffice.

- Hopefully you've planned this for the full version: a tutorial or training mode where you can just practice your moves and maybe some combos.

- Super moves. Y'know the ones where the world freezes for a few seconds while you do something awesomely cool. I was thinking something along the lines of a doppelganger or Yang from 3S' Raishin-Mahhaken (but without the first hit).

- Block.

- The props which appear in front of the player can be annoying sometimes as you can't see through them. Why not check if there is, so you can set it to be semi-transparent?

- I think using ninjas as the primary foe could get a bit tiresome after a while. Why not introduce different types of enemies? Granted there are different types of ninjas in the demo, but you could mix it up slightly by having something like street thugs which have more health but are slower than the ninjas. Ultimately, fighting the same enemy over and over will eventually become boring.

- Someone else mentioned this: weapons which can be picked up and dropped after extensive use.

- Make the final hit from the ninja cause the player to be hurled into the air and then grounded, it makes it easier to identify whether you've been hit or not.

- Sometimes it's difficult to judge how far away you have to be for some of the attacks to hit (in particular the ones which launch you forward, then attack) Maybe you should introduce collisions with the player and the enemies. This can cause a lot of problems though, as I'm currently experiencing with my game.

Those are my thoughts, best of luck to you in the competition! You got my vote.

In 3S or any fighting game, there's a lot more going on that lets you know what to expect next, so it's not blind anticipation, especially against human opponents. Even then, there are moves you can parry on reaction. Plus in 3S, there's very little risk or even animation involved. This lets you buffer a parry into any attack you do. In your game, and others like Tekken or Soul Calibur, you have to risk going through the whiff animation of the reversal if you guess wrong. That aspect carries over well to single player games... the risk/reward. I mean it's good in single player and competitive, but you couldn't have the low risk 3S parry in a single player game, it would be too broken.
Anyways!
If you implement something, just make sure it's worth it. I'm not saying it should be easy to react to... but there should be some clues/situations where it is more likely to work.
Like in Redemption, if you do Z>Z>Z, the enemy always attacks right afterward with the same timing. There's not enough time to reversal however, you have to cancel that last attack into another attack or block in order to avoid that next attack. If you shortened the lag a bit on that ZZZ combo, there would be time to reversal it. Just make sure the timing isn't perfect so the player just has to hold block to get the reversal. For example, make it so if you don't cancel the last attack and just hold block. You'll get a block with the regular enemy timing. But if you wait a few frames, you can risk doing a reversal, or not blocking in time. Plus they already took a risk by not finishing up the combo to go for the reversal which is hopefully more damage. Changing when the enemy will attack adds more risk. Then if you have enemy blocking and countering then you have yourself a fun game with just the reversal.

Thanks for the advice, but I think I'm gonna stick with my own idea. If you defend at the right time the player is rewarded with a counter attack, however blocking will just absorb a certain amount of damage and push you back.

LazyWaffle, I uploaded the zip version

I think the voices match well enough, I just hate Eddie.
Mist Finer>Leap is pretty satisfying. I liked that a lot.
Found the reversal/instant block when you block right as they attack. Might wanna make the timing a bit different. Something that can be reacted to instead of something that has to be anticipated. I'd also cut the lag on the block if you do that successfully so you can attack right away. Would feel a lot better and look sweeter.

Yeah Eddie is pretty cheap, sometimes impossible to beat against good players because of massive amounts of spam.

Annnnyway, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by changing the timing on the defend move. Parrying in Third strike is always anticipated, because if you can parry within the few frames it takes from when the attack starts and hits, you must be a child prodigy or something.

I might change the defend move into something that offers a counter to each succesful block/parry. Parrying would possibly give out a more lethal attack.

That was pretty fun, what did you use to animate the characters?

That said, I think it lacks depth. It's fun jumping and slashing the persians heads off, but I couldn't see myself playing it for more than 5-10 minutes.

Cool demo, man. You should have put "Ctrl to spawn enemies" at the top or something though.
Your hitsparks are baddass, they give it a great extreme feel. Same with the screen shakes with the pistols.

It's mentioned in the post that ctrl is used to spawn enemies

I'm not sure what you have in mind overall, but taking off the hitstun from the bullets could be a way to balance them as they are way too good right now.

Good point.

Not sure about the HUGE delay on all the move executions, I'd have to see a more fleshed out version. It definitely adds more strategy to each action, but it's not as fast paced.

The first attack when pressing Z will probably have less of a delay in the next version.

My best combo: Z,Z,Z>d+Z>j.Z,j.Z,j.Z>Mist Finer

Try Z,Z,Z>Up+Z>Up+C>Down+Z>Jump>Down+C

I don't know if I can forgive you for mixing Johnny and Eddies voices together.

Haha I see I can't fool some people, I'll try and make them more matching in the next version

the only thing i disliked really was you can run and swing your sword. standing still and shooting is fine though.

You can't run and swing your sword at the same time. When you press Z it causes you to stop, I thought it would be annoying for people to have to stop first, then press Z.

Thanks for the comments and criticism guys, keep em coming.

Links are all fixed, sorry about that but I'm not used to the formatting of this forum (I'm new on here)

I uploaded a new version quickly so you don't need GMFMOD.dll now.

I also renamed the version number since you are entirely right.

Then why have a story at all? No story is preferable to a bad or badly written one, especially if it's a hack and slash game. Think about it.

I shall.

less obvious nods to Devil May Cry  :D

Where on earth did you get that idea from? 


Jumps are intended to have a small delay, just to indicate that he's not massless , as for attack delays I'll look into this, I had an inkling people would get annoyed by it.

[NOTE: Press Ctrl to spawn creatures at fixed places through the level]

Overview
Redemption is a platformer/action game where you play as one of several spiritual assassins - each with their own style of combat - who fight through the hordes of enemies possessed by demonic souls.
Along the way you can collect Sin, the currency used within the game. This can be offered to the atoned in exchange for new combat skills, increased health, items, or upgraded versions of already acquired skills.

Story
The idea is in my head, but at the moment I can't put it on paper (or screen rather) due to my sucky writing skills. Basically you play as one of several assassins from a spiritual organisation known as 'Redemption'.
A guy kidnaps some kids, and attempts to sacrifice them in order to open up the chaos gate (a big portal through which demons and humans mass pass, each leading into their respective world). It just so happens that this chaos gate is buried deep underneath an old medieval fortress.  This is bad, you don't exactly want demons strolling around your neighbourhood killing innocent people. So your job is to go in there, stop the guy from sacrificing the kids and stop him from opening the chaos gate.

Status
This has been in development for about 2-3 months now. I'm deciding to release it at this moment mainly because I want some feedback on how the main character looks and feels, and also to keep me motivated in making it with new ideas and such. Enemy AI isn't particularly bright (basically it just moves towards you and attacks) but this is something that will be worked on. All the sprites are done by me (except for half of the logo) and take bloody ages to animate and get right. So if you're a spriter and you're interested in helping don't hesitate to PM me. I'm also in need of a programmer to work on the level creator.

Demo
The demo is a test for bugs and to get some feedback on how the character (who is called Vlad) behaves. I tried to make him as responsive as possible without making tons of animations. In the end this happened anyway. So in the demo you run around spawning creatures and kick their ass. NOTE: Press Ctrl to spawn creatures at fixed places through the level

Download
(Vista compatible)

V0.1 - .rar | .zip

Screenshots

http://i36.tinypic.com/au6on8.jpg
http://i36.tinypic.com/e04zyc.jpg
http://i36.tinypic.com/vfe3pf.jpg
http://i34.tinypic.com/2089m37.jpg
http://i33.tinypic.com/2zs4cq0.jpg



Controls


(Made using GM7)

Hey

My name is Rhodri, I'm 20 and have been making games using Game maker 5.3 onwards since I was 15. I've started to get into C++/C# recently as I'm doing a Game development course in my University  (2nd year yay!).

After the 3 year course I'm thinking of moving towards mobile gaming (iPhone mainly) though I'm not 100% sure as of yet.

I prefer to make games which have a very emotive main character, I hate it when characters don't respond to what's happening on screen because it looks so unnatural. Granted there are limitations, but this aside there's no harm in making a few extra sprites.

My favourite games have to be the ones where the character(s) has/have a high level of kick-assery.

My style is a mix of several different games: Devil may cry, King of fighters, Street fighter, BlazBlue, and GuiltyGear.

Currently I'm focusing on making 2D games. 3D is something I'm getting into but ATM I know very little on OpenGL and the techniques involved on how to simulate a 3D environment.

So yeah that's me