[A naive or inexperienced developer might buy into what you're selling]

I said I was shooting for that many hours, not that it would end up being that many. Aim high! However, I don't think that's nearly as hard to tackle as you feel it is.

What is your reasoning based on? You've admitted yourself you have no experience and no track record. By that same logic, I can say it's easy to climb a mountain even though I've never done it before.

Yes, for a puzzle game, any 3D game, etc that would extremely time consuming and difficult. I'm talking about a 2D game, which is a thousand times easier to draw. As for writing, I can easily complete a storyline near that length. This is a large project, but I never said it was small or easy. My plan is to have this made over 9-12 months in our free time.

Let's break down the numbers. Say you and every team member spends a year on the game using free time. Let's say free time means 2 days a week on average (the weekends). That's 104 days, or just over three months. Do you really believe any programmer or artist can deliver the results you are looking for in just 3 months of work? If such people exist, I imagine they're already working at a commercial game company being paid $100,000+ a year.

I'm not asking anyone to quit their job or choose this project over paid projects. I'm looking for people looking for a fun, creative and unique project to add to their portfolio that would likely get them a little money as a perk. If I was aiming specifically for financial success I would be doing fundraising at the moment and paying as we go. As for why someone should join my team and work on this project, it would be the game itself. Yes, I haven't stated much about the game itself, but I'm not comfortable yet posting the game's raw details to the entire forums. However, if anyone sees this thread and is interested in a 2D RPG combining nostalgic style with modern concepts and unique systems, then they would probably talk to me and I would give them more information. Anyone is free to say no. That is up to them. I have to track record or resume.

Which means there are no compelling reason to join your project. You have no demo, no screen shots or concept art, no info, no experience, and no reason for them to join beyond a vague idea. Anyone interested in the project is either inexperienced or simply wants to collaborate and isn't taking it very seriously. It's not possible to run a team of inexperienced people, and if they have some experience but aren't taking it seriously you are just as worse off.

This is my first project, but I've already found a few people interested in my project, so that doesn't seem to matter too much when you have interesting concepts to get their attention.

You may have skipped over this line in my original post:

A naive or inexperienced developer might buy into what you're selling, but any developer of value needs to believe in you if they're going to work with you.

(Also, ~20% wouldn't be a minority share. I myself would only be receiving around 20%, as would the programmer, artist and possibly other team members. As I said it is not a set number, because I am not sure how many team members I will have.)

Have you worked on a team before? What qualifies you to lead a team? What happens if there's a disagreement on the direction of the game halfway through? What if your programmer vanishes after a few months? What if the artist quits the project and takes his work with him? What if you find out your composer actually plagiarised the music tracks for the game? If you think any of these things I've outlined are outlandish, you are in for a surprise.

Yes, game sales are very important to those involved in the project, including myself. At the moment however I'm focusing entirely on building a team and writing the project and designing it's mechanics and features. At the moment however all I know is Steam. I already plan to look further into vendors as the project progresses.

Do you know anything about Steam? Even very talented indies with countless years of experience have difficulty getting on Steam. You are going to have a lot of people pissed off at you if you don't deliver on you end of the bargain. Saying you are focused on building the team is not a good enough answer if a team member was counting on royalties to help pay their rent.

All that aside, I'm confident I can make this game.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to make an RPG, but the scope you've outlined is a lot for even experienced developers. There's nothing wrong with working on a team, but leading a team with no experience and requiring such a large team to make the project work is extremely unrealistic. There's nothing wrong with selling a game, but developers selling their first game is rare because the game is no where near good enough to be sold.

There's really not much more I can say beyond what has been said already. If you feel there is no path for you other than an extremely ambitious RPG requiring several other talented people working in harmony for a year, then you will probably learn about game development the hard way.

Hey.

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but there are severe problems with the plan you've outlined. I don't post very often because I'm busy with my own game work, but understand that I simply wouldn't post at all if I didn't care about you surviving as an indie developer.

Let's start here: Can you name a single Indie RPG that's 18-24 hours? If you can name such a game, was it any good? If it was good, how many people did it take to make? How much time did it take them to make? If you still don't get where I'm going with this line of questioning, I'll spell it out: It's extremely difficult to produce such a game with the resources you are outlining, let alone a first time dev team. It's possible with enough time, experience and qualified people, but you will not get experience without first making other games, and you will not get qualified people unless you are experienced. Time is a whole other problem in itself.

That said, let's put aside the challenges of making such a game, I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt and say you are capable of doing it. So now let's say I'm a programmer or artist. Why should I work on your game? I get a minority share, I will be putting as many if not more work hours into the game, and in return I get to be a part of your team, of which you yourself have no track record. Why shouldn't I work on my own games? What do you bring to the table? A naive or inexperienced developer might buy into what you're selling, but any developer of value needs to believe in you if they're going to work with you. So you need a track record, or at the very least some kind of resume showing you have skills relevant to game design.

Alright, I'll once again give you the benefit of the doubt and say you do have a compelling enough reason to get people to join your project. Tell me then, what exactly is your plan to sell the game? Do you know anything about digital distribution? What vendors / distributors will you target? What kind of marketing strategy do you have in mind? Realize that failure to produce meaningful results means no one gets paid for all their hard work.

If you can sincerely say you can address every single problem I've outlined, then completely ignore what I've just said. If you can't answer even one of those questions, then you absolutely must reconsider what you're proposing here if you want to get any kind of results as an indie developer.

I agree with Bobo's comments ... except didn't find the characters that likable (not that unlikable either I guess ... just a bit boring)

And forcing me to read all the messages while simultaneously guilt tripping about reading the messages was pretty obnoxious

I had a similar experience. To begin with, it was 7 or so characters I didn't know having several conversations at the same time all within 5 minutes of the game starting. After 20 minutes or so I got more used to it, but by then I didn't ever really care to read what they were saying because I didn't care about the issues the characters were dealing with (ie. gossiping, bad relationships).

I'm not sure if reading the messages were mandatory or not, but I read them all in order to get as much as I could out of the story. As you said though, you get criticized for doing it. The only reason I paid any attention to that stuff was because I had assumed some major story stuff would be in there.

I beat the game, but I mostly did so expecting it would get much better and the payoff would be worthwhile. I think the idea is interesting, but there are a lot of issues with the execution.

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Are you 'freeing' the DLL? You kinda have to do that.

if SS_unload isn't what you're talking about, then I have no idea.  I don't recall enslaving the DLL either... I put it into the folder I have my save file in.

EDIT:  I bet it is my computer, I just had another program give the same error message.

-PENCERKOFF

This is a known SuperSound problem that some computers experience. Here is a post the creator of the DLL made in response to this:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=120034&st=340&p=3135513&#entry3135513

Saving and loading is the topic of my question!

It's pretty common knowledge that GM's built-in save/load is awful. Instead, I can write all the relevant variables to a file, perhaps with a check digit to detect tampering. I've got the main mechanics of it down, and successfully saved and loaded data in a dummy project. Now, I don't want to make the file something stupidly easy to tamper with, like

Code:

hasHookshot = true
hasMagicWand = false
maxHP = 100
foundMainMacguffin = false

I was thinking of storing the relevant data in a temporary ds_list, writing the string outputted by ds_list_write() to a file, and appending some kind of check digit just to be on the safe side. Loading goes in the opposite direction: Read the string from the file, check the check digit, if it's bad, nuke the file, otherwise use ds_list_read() and set the variables to the data in the ds_list.

What are your thoughts on this plan? What concerns might I need to address?

This may not be the answer you're looking for, but why do you need to encrypt the file? I've maybe edited a save file once or twice in my life and I'm a game developer. Joe gamer most likely will never mess with the save file if you just name it .sav. The DS List method you put forward will probably do a good enough job to prevent 99% of people from messing around with it. If someone really want to mess with it, they will. They have other tools at their disposal as well (ie. memory editors, bypass the save encoding entirely).

That is unless you are making some kind of online game, but that's a whole different subject altogether.

[Chill Out]

Here is my own game, plus the two SharkArm Studios did:

Chill Out
(by GZStorm)



Download


Mash Man
(by SharkArm Studios)



Download


City Of Doom
(by SharkArm Studios)
(No Gameplay Video available)
Download

I pretty much wrote off GM's future a year after YoYo took over and realized they really only care about the business end of things. So I'm not surprised they have this kind of model for publishing games on other platforms.

If they had a model like Unity does where you buy a license for each platform, that would pretty much solve all of this but I have a feeling YoYo specifically adopted their current model for maximum profit. The big issue with the current system is the control they have over developer IPs, but I think given the way they publish the game, it's impossible for them to take role as publisher without screwing over the developer.

That is, if they give the developer control over the IP, the developer can tell YoYo to pull the game and go with another publisher. If YoYo were to adopt contracts, that introduces paperwork and complicates the process for developers who are typically newer to game development. There's a bunch of other legal stuff too. I'm not defending YoYo, but given they chose this publishing system, I can understand why they are doing it this way.

Until (if ever) they adopt licensing, doing things on your own for non-PC development is the way to go.

Is this timeline actually correct?  I mean, did doodle jump guy tell people not to use 'doodle' before he had actually trademarked it?  If so that's really weird ... Given that doodle jump guy didn't trademark doodle until well after doodle hockey guy, I had assumed that it was more like:

- Doodle Hockey guy trademarks his scribbly "doodle" and "doodle hockey" logos
- Doodle Jump guy realizes months later that "doodle" got trademarked, freaks out and gets a lawyer, decides to trademark the word "doodle" in defense.

The timeline was just my understanding, I'm not sure how correct it is. Doodle Hockey came out June 1st and the trademark application for Doodle Hockey came months before that. So the Doodle Jump guy didn't have a trademark because according to this quote:

Igor (Doodle Jump guy) contacted me prior to release of my game Doodle Hockey & asked me to rename it.

Doodle Jump guy asked him not to use the name before he had any trademark. So I guess the Doodle Hockey guy just happened to trademark his Doodle stuff without really thinking anything of it and the Doodle Jump guy reacted this way.

I'm not familiar with any of these people as well, I'm just trying to make sense of this. As I understand it:

- Doodle Jump guy sees a lot of doodle games, and is afraid of someone ripping off Doodle Jump. He is told by a lawyer he needs to enforce his trademark in order to protect it from direct rip offs.

- Doodle Jump guy tells many people, including the Doodle Hockey guy to not use Doodle because his understanding of trademark law.

- Doodle Hockey guy is afraid Doodle Jump guy will try and use legal muscle to hinder Doodle Hockey, so he trademarks Doodle Hockey.

- Doodle Jump guy sees Doodle Hockey guy trademark "Doodle Hockey", and thinks he will use this to somehow hinder Doodle Jump.

- Doodle Jump guys lawyer tells Doodle Jump guy to issue Apple a notice about Doodle games in order to prevent the imagined motives of Doodle Hockey guy.

- Doodle Jump guy realizes this notice was too broad and instead should have targeted specific games which directly infringed on Doodle Jump. In a more specific sense, games that use "Doodle The Doodler" or the Doodle Jump name itself (do any of these exist?)

This all sounds very reactionary because nothing seemed to be accomplished by this. The broad notice didn't seem to be the correct way to protect his trademark either. The result of this seems to be a lot of confusion when nothing actually changed (since the doodle notice was retracted in a broad sense).

What role does Bryan Duke / Acceleroto have in this? From the article:

We originally named our character The Doodler, but so many people started calling him just simply "Doodle" that we decided to officially name him Doodle the Doodler, or just Doodle for short. We applied for a trademark on the word "Doodle" in part as a defensive maneuver after we learned that Duke has applied for a trademark for the word "Doodle" and were afraid he was going to use that against us.

Duke's application for "Doodle" was made on April 30, 2010.

Lima Sky application for "Doodle" was made on July 8, 2010.

Looking over some articles led to this post by him:

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1532773&postcount=11

Why is he trying to trademark doodle?

I understand the part about needing to enforce your trademark for it to be valid, but where does Duke / Acceleroto figure into all of this?

Just to touch on the gimmick end of things, I think the word choice means a lot. Typically I associate gimmick with something that is shallow or cheap that doesn't do much to enhance the actual product. An example being the Wiimote controller when it was first introduced, many people labeled it as a gimmick and I got the impression based on elaborated reviews it was generally meant in a derogatory sense. Speaking of something like Portal however, reviewers would call the gravity gun / portal mechanic innovative or revolutionary instead.

That's the impression I always got.

I'm late to the party on this, but there's one game I haven't seen mentioned that I believe is one of the best indie games of 2010:

The Room Tribute
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/547307

The gameplay is not strong, so people looking for something super fun shouldn't play this, but I found it very entertaining. I played the game before watching the movie and I didn't believe such things were actually lines in a real movie. A must play for anyone who liked the movie, and I recommend it to anyone who likes story driven games.

Hey I can't find the views in Game Maker 8. Anyone want to help me?

File>Advanced Mode

Make sure it's on, otherwise many things are hidden.

If it works, do you need improvements on it? Basically, do you feel you are being limited by this? What kind of functionality do you need?

I'm not sure how you do things, but all input should be handled by a script, and that's where you can toss all that code. Then use the script to check for key presses. You may be already doing that, but just throwing it out there in case. Also, the only improvements I see are on an array level, but they will make the code harder to read. Example:

pressedKey[0]
pressedKey[1]
etc.

holdKey[0]
holdKey[1]
etc.

releaseKey[0]
releaseKey[1]
etc.

So you can then loop through the array to do functions such as checking the status of a key. Then, your keys would become numbers. So releaseKey[0] would be jump, and releaseKey[1] would be action, and so on.

Also, for the time being you may just want to simply disable the activating and deactivating functions until your bug is ironed out (I still haven't got a chance to check it out thoroughly), usually that function is only necessary for optimizing and given how few objects you have in the game right now you will not see much of a performance benefit from it right now. I'm pretty sure disabling it for the time being will solve some of the issues you are having.

I've never unset a key before, so I don't understand what this is for.  I mentioned using it here because I was thinking it would reset the current input and let it accept a new one, thus solving my problem of key presses not carrying over between rooms.  It seems like the direct method works perfectly well with no problems that I can see, so what would I need to unset for?

If you don't use it in your game, then you can ignore it. Typically keyboard_clear is used for interfaces and sometimes gameplay as a shortcut to allow only one key press, then clearing the key input even though the player still has the key held down. So for instance, say I had an interface where you could use up and down to change the current selection. Using this code:

if (keyboard_check(vk_up)) {
    //move selection
}

Would not be ideal because it would move the selection up every frame (30 times a second at 30 fps). So by doing this:

if (keyboard_check(vk_up)) {
    keyboard_clear(vk_up);
    //move selection
}

It clears the input for the up arrow, even though the player still has it held down. It works much the same way multiple keystrokes on a keyboard works. To test for yourself, simply go to a text editor and hold any key down. Notice how it does one key press, then repeats the key press after 1 second. keyboard_clear() does this behavior.

Here's another one that is hopefully easy and basic.

The player moves using keyboard_check, so as long as the defined button is held down, he moves.  Now I have him moving from room to room as a persistent object, but when he transitions from one room to the next the keyboard state seems to be lost and he won't move again until I release the button and press it again.  I've tried io_clear and/or keyboard_clear in a few different parts of my code and it seems to work sometimes, but not consistently and never smoothly (ie, there's a pause before movement starts again).  I'm sure there's a real specific way to do it.

Use keyboard_check_direct(). It's another method for checking keys, but you need to change the way you use keyboard checks when using this method. Normally when you press a key, you probably use keyboard_clear to unset the key, however, keyboard_check_direct returns if the key is pressed on a hardware level so cannot be unset using that function, instead you need to write your own code to only execute the key code once and set some variable the prevents another execution until the player releases the key.

Hey, I haven't got around to checking out your original problem because I've been busy, but this second error seems like it might be a simple rounding issue. Basically, when you draw that character, make sure you use round() on the x and y values, otherwise you can get an effect like that. Using round() (floor() and ceil() also work) will make sure the position values are integers and ensure they are drawn on the canvas correctly. Typically you would do this in the draw event for that sprite, if you use it in something like the step event and alter the movement values themselves you will encounter problems with your movement code most likely.

Nothing is jumping out at me, so I think it might have to do with other systems in the game. For instance, the deactivate code works based on the collision box of the object, while the code you use to destroy things uses the X coordinate which is not equal to that. Meaning, the origin and collision boxes may be set up in such a way that would cause odd behavior like this.

The answer may be obvious, but I can't see it. So I'd recommend uploading a stripped down GMK so all of the game systems can be checked.

This is a great article. I'm not an artist, but the bad tangent section even applies to level design / placement of objects in games and is something a lot of people (myself included) overlook.

It looks fine for me. That problem usually happens when surfaces aren't supported and the graphics card renders funny like that. If it bugs you, you can try setting the view to .1 or .5 more on both the X and Y plane because it can trick the graphics card into rendering properly. I had this problem on one of my old PCs and setting it +.5 more after all of my view stuff would align it right (although you will want a variable to toggle this, since when you release the game you will want that off).