New screen:
Added fog effects to obscure my crappy art add atmosphere (no pun intended)

Looks good, but please, no blurry pixels, IT HURTS MY HEAD.

Everything else looks mighty fine.

Excellent game: exciting, addictive and fun.

I have one major gripe with it, which is Bullet Time. I just feel it cheapens the whole experience. I found out I started having more fun without bullet time, when it was a speedy game of fast reflexes, not a game of picking out the other dudes 1 by 1, without them having a chance to fight back, so I switched it to hard mode and was disappointed to find out that there's bullet time in hard mode!

Great game!

[CARRY ON]

Finishing without feature creep is as much a failure as failing to finish because of feature creep. I wouldn't want to play a game which has no depth.

Those are the words great games are made from.
You are an eloquent and wise game developer.

CARRY ON

Well I just read through this whole thread and I must say I feel like an idiot. The scaling tutorial won't work!

This is the error I'm getting:

Code:

___________________________________________
COMPILATION ERROR in Script: screen_init
Error in code at line 9:
   screen = surface_create(screen_w,screen_h);

at position 9: Variable name expected.

  I have no idea what that means... screen is a variable name, isn't it?

I stand by my point that programming is easier than GM.

Where do I do that? In "warrior" or "player"?

Thanks for the fast reply!

edit: Got it working!

"warrior" now has in its Step event, besides the Call Event action:

Code:

if (walking_right)
    sprite_index = warrior_walk_right;

if (walking_left)
    sprite_index = warrior_walk_left;
   
if (!walking_left && !walking_right) {
    if (facing = "left")
        sprite_index = warrior_stand_left;
    if (facing = "right")
        sprite_index = warrior_stand_right;
}

in Create:

Code:

sprite_index = warrior_stand_right;

(and Call Event, as always)

and in Draw:

Code:

draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x, y);

Hope that helps someone!

I am very new to Game Maker and while starting a project this is how I setup things:
I had a "character" object that had no sprite and on Creat defined some variables like:

Code:

walking_speed = 2;
walking_right = false;
walking_left = false;
facing = "left";
//and some more

on the Step event I had:

Code:

if (walking_right) {
    x += walk_speed;
    facing = "right";
}

if (walking_left) {
    x -= walk_speed;
    facing = "left";
}

then I created an object "warrior" whose parent was "character" that had a sprite, and finally an object "player" whose parent was "warrior" and that had

Code:

if (keyboard_check(vk_right))
    walking_right = true;
else
    walking_right = false;

if (keyboard_check(vk_left))
    walking_left = true;
else
    walking_left = false;

and the "Call Event" action, in its Step event.

When I place the player object in a Room, I don't see the warrior sprite and nothing happens. I'm probably doing something fundamentally wrong and warrior's Draw event isn't being called. Can anyone explain to me where I'm messing up?

Sorry for the long post!

Had some fun, but it isn't working on Mac OS X 10.4. After an apparently random number of levels, after starting a new one I just get a black screen, or some irrelevant part of the level. I can hear myself move and shoot, but can't see myself. It's probably the same bug that's hitting Joe.

Hope you sort it out soon!

I think some games actually do have a system like this. I remember a really old interview with Bungie, where they talk about how they paced Halo. The developer established a sort of rhythm to the single-player mode, where they would be shooting for like 10 minutes, then have about five minutes of some other gameplay type (whether it be driving or a turret), then returning to the core shooting mechanics.

In other words, games can use actual gameplay to create the sort of good repetition that you were suggesting. Whether this is as simple as changing the goal or introducing a whole new control system, games do like to occasionally switch things up to keep their core gameplay from getting too stale.

I fully agree with this, whenever you think of any modern shooter all you see is a period of just intense shootan action and then either puzzles, driving, exploring, and right back at shooting.

Also, in order to have the kind of repetition you seek you must first have variety. You couldn't have repetition in shooters without the puzzle/driving/etc parts.

So games need more variety.

I thought about circles but decided against 'cos part of the goal of the project is to have a minimal api. Also I figure it'd look bad in most situations, it'd dilute the aesthetic, and it'd reduce the impact of the creative restrictions.

Hear hear, that's probably for the best.

On a side note, could we get circles?

This is nothing short of absolutely brilliant! I'll post again with some dumb stuff, for great fun.

You are down right amazing, mister Farbs. 

It's a great game and everything about it is nice, but could you move the whole .swf lower on the page? It's kind of awkward having to play that high.

I'm not sure whether this is a feature but I'm able to connect dots diagonally, and connect dots that are 2 dots apart.

Also I don't really get the game mechanics, is using more of the same color in a row penalized?

Anyhow, I really like the graphics, sound and atmosphere in general. You also have a great logo!

edit: Why do little rainbows fly out to other clouds?

Everything looks just great, but I should remind you that because your character is holding his gun in his right hand you need to animate everything he does in both directions, so the gun doesn't switch hands.

  Keep up the outstanding work!

I made this by gradually evolving a picture using only quads, but it doesn't help you at all  :D

In all seriousness though, your problem may be a variation of the packing problem which is, I think, NP-hard.

edit: You should probably just try to implement pixel perfect collisions.

Without wanting to annoy anyone I should say that I too firmly believe that she should be bobbing up and down, even if the top of her head moves only 1-2 pixels per frame.

Great work so far 

Great article.  If it's okay I'd also like to see genericlogin's question answered.

This game is giving me a massive erection.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN 

edit: On a serious note, if you're gonna release a demo release it for everyone. There's no reason for hogging the awesome.

That's fucking amazing, Ishi. Not only the adorable tiles, but the apparently great development tool you got there.

Reviving this topic for the good of mankind.

I would just like to profess my agreement with what venerable Alec is going for. Also, to link to this eye-opening, and very informative article (which was linked in the other thread about this project) prototype modeling. If I'm not mistaken, it's quite similar to what you have in your pseudocode.

Also, I think that it is best that we let one person alone code the very core of the engine. It strikes me as very important that the filling of this engine cake be very purist in terms of the programming philosophy chosen. Later, when writing the limbs of our man-engine, or the frosting of the engine cake, deviations from the base philosophy are A-OK in my book.

Keep being awesome Alec.