That's certainly Rio's at 1:05, and yellow, not orange shoulder pads. Strangely enough they are round and not triangular, as they maybe should be if it's the first suit.

The models don't look too hot.

I think the morther brain blasting thing might be a flashback.

Also, Other M might refer to the ending of Metroid 1? "BUT,IT MAY BE INVADED BY THE OTHER METROID."

I wouldn't mind Samus being an 80's animé chick, like something in the Gunbuster or Gall Force style. She's also Ripley, of course.

I was just looking at that. The concept art looks nice, the 3D looks a bit more stale with the light-shadow shading gradients being quite boring. Hard to say anything about the animation, unless there's a video somewhere...

http://www.adventuregamers.com/screenshot.php?id=10140

To be honest, it looks bad (I'm watching the GameSpot video). The movement (turning) feels snappy and flippy because of the higher resolution, while the walking looks very glidey and artificial. The heads are smaller, but I'm not sure what this attempt at more realistic proportions is supposed to accomplish.

Overall, reminds me of the other remakes I've seen on the Xbox. What they've added is just stale, superfluous and low quality. It also reminds me of the 16bit era remakes where the graphic artist went "Gosh, look at all these new colors! Let's pillow shade everything with gradients without hue shifts."


I suppose the new speech + the old gfx can be nice though. Day of the Tentacle is probably the best looking adventure game by Lucas Arts, so it would've been nice to see something of that quality.

I don't abandon any of my projects. I work on all of them intermittently. Some of my projects are on their 5th iteration or so.

Slow progress. Preemptive multitasking.

Today I found my Starflight folder and realized that I haven't compiled a project page for it yet. Then I ended up exercising all day. And eating lots cake. Actually, first I ate the cake, then I exercised. No, that's not true either. I exercised, ate cake, exercised, ate cake. Yeah, that's what really happened. Busy day, but not terribly productive as the exercise and cake cancels out.

This thread is 2-3 projects ago. I think Haowan worked on some engine stuff though, but I think he stopped. He had some quad tree slope stuff going on.

The cave I did looks quite different with gamma 1.8 (mac) and gamma 2.2 (pc). Especially the darks.

I'm working on (reworking) my MoO1 project now, but I've grown tired of it.

I block js/java/flash, but naturally I allow scripts and flash on websites which I trust. I don't think I'm blocking ads atm. I rarely 'see' them. I've *chan'ed enough to have developed a Sturgeon's filter so to speak.

Sometimes if an ad starts talking or flashing, I would kill it with this handy delete HTML tag add-on which I had. But, I forgot what it was called. It would change the HTML to exclude the offending code. Often the text would reflow where the ad had been. It was useful for more things than deleting ads too. Anyone remember what this add-on was called?

I've even clicked a few ads to amazon (books, figs), or game ads which I know will take me to the official site (I use them as links). If an ad is somehow intriguing I might click it too (even if the product doesn't interest me), but it rarely happens.

Chevy> I have an older version of that sheet, and I may have shown it before. I updated it yesterday.

Sparky> I found my A4 with unintelligible notes and scribbles on. I think I can reconstruct my old ideas though. If I do, I'll post later. I have a lot of ideas for the 'life' of the environment, not just ecosystem, but also, commerce and history. History is interesting because you can suggest so much with so little. Like, placing an old skeleton and a mining robot/scaffold in a cave, then bam, it's an old mining colony. Poor guy died there... who was he, who killed him? Lot's of gain from very little.

Caliber> Yes, I'll simulate the entire world. IMO, It's actually easier than zoning and controlling player flow. Too bad no one really does it. Some designers are obsessed by forcing the player to have fun their way. I guess I am too, with my way being... letting the player do whatever he wants, like drowning the boss in lava by digging a long canal or whatever.

Yeah, destroying the enemies would be meaningful, but I've planned in some things which will allow the player/s to guard multiple areas.

Krumbs> Thanks for the love, but I've already derailed I'll see if I can pick myself up and at least post the sketches and remaining ideas, because I need to at least wrap up a design doc for this game.

[A few of the birds:]

I just remembered the idea for the space barnacles. I think it's important to kill many birds with one stone when it comes to making a plausible mechanic and game environment.

A few of the birds:
  The Space Barnacles needs to be destroyed, why?
  Some enemies respawn.
  I want an ecology and global persistence because it's fun and gives replay value.

So, the space barnacles are like plants, they grow on the walls and send out spores which grow into more barnacles. They have 4 stages: Spore, Bud, Reproductive, Cocoon, Metamorphosis. I'm thinking that instead of dying of age they cocoon, then metamorph into an enemy, with the type depending on which environment the barnacle grew up in*. It's a bit like in Alien, but quite different 

This solves the respawning problem, I don't need to create a superfluous factory mechanic with complex supply lines, mining, etc. It explains why the enemy types are localized. It explains why the space barnacles are a threat. It justifies the title of the game.

* Some space barnacles could even become stationary turrets. Even enemies could die of old age. This may be necessary to prevent tons of enemies getting stuck in some stupid place.

There can be a Queen space barnacle too. I think I marked it on my map.


Edit:

[Rough graphics from a while ago]

I'm not I've never seen it before. Yeah, sqr is mighty slow.


Rough graphics from a while ago

Golds made a game called Space Barnacle, and I liked the character and title. Unfortunately I never wrote up the ideas I had for my remake, but it might come back to me. It would be the usual persistent world sim + ecology stuff I always do. I actually had some code working for the platform jumping (walljumps, wall grabbing, walking, running) but it was crummy. Instancing players is kind of trivial so it could be a 4 player split screen thing. I'm not touching network code with a 10 foot pole. I have some pencil sketches I need to scan.

Yes, I don't want to code slopes, but to prevent a blocky feel, there could be sloped background tiles. I could save my map as a 256 color raw thing in Photoshop. Then I could load that into my map array. This way I could use PS for some or all of the map editing.

I'm just trying out ideas here, so the graphics are kind of rough and all over the place.



---

Experiments with fluids

The basic idea was to have particles which repelled and attracted. I think lava would be easier to simulate than water, because it's kind of slimy and sluggish. Unfortunately here it seems like the attraction force of groups overcomes the repelling force. It gave me these little multicellular organisms which moved about, eating cells and each other to change shape, move faster. Kind of weird getting that kind of emergence out of simple distance checks.


After tweaking the code I got something fluid'ish, but it's probably too jittery.


This is what would be the fastest. A simple tile based Boulder Dash -like routine. I just shake things a bit to make it flatten out. Perhaps buckets or RLE can be used to speed things up. Just having the game verb of lava in at all could add a lot of gameplay (along with destructible terrain). For example, in Mario you don't have destructible terrain on a pixel level, you can just smash big blocks. Imagine the game without it. I could make rounded corners for the lava blocks (and sparks), which would just be computed for drawing on screen.

I don't understand that code... where does slope and b come from?

Here's my clunky code. It works, but I think it's dirty.

Code:

'// Add Velocities (XVel, YVel) to Positions (XPos, YPos)
'// Also do tile collision checks.
Function FAddVel()

'// No movement, so let's jump out.
'// I'm not sure if moving platform quirks, wall stuck tests should be done here later.
If XVel = 0 And YVel = 0 Then Return

'// These probably do not need to be Long, cuz of short distances.
'// Although, maybe the math stuff is quicker if all variables are of the same type?
Local xstep:Int, ystep:Int, dist:Int, stepdist:Int

'// Basic Pythagoras for the length of the movement.
dist = Sqr(XVel^2 + YVel^2)
'// Step using pixel size
stepdist = 1 + dist Shr PIXEL_SHIFT

'// No division by zero.
If stepdist = 0 Then End

'// 'Normalize'.
xstep = XVel / stepdist
ystep = YVel / stepdist

'// Todo: Optimize: If stepdist = 1 we've got a really short step. No need for a loop.
'// The new coordinates as stepping runs, needs to be Long.
Local xahead:Long, yahead:Long
'// Just a counter for the loop. Won't be larger than stepdist.
Local trace:Int = 0

Repeat
'// Trace starts at 1.
trace:+1

'// Let's not calculate these several times later in the code.
xahead = (XPos + xstep)
yahead = (YPos + ystep)

'// Vertical test to determine if we'll hit bottom or top of a tile.
'// Is the tile free at Old X, New Y?
If TMap.FValue(XPos Shr TILE_SHIFT, yahead Shr TILE_SHIFT) = 0
'// Make the move.
YPos = yahead
Else '// Not free - collision!
'// Should any course changes be done here, like bounce and friction?
'// Doing so produces a strange delayed bounce.
YVel = 0 '//-YVel
yahead = 0 '//-yahead

EndIf

'// Horizontal test to determine if we'llhit the sides of a tile.
'// New X, Old, no, actually New Y too, because of above.
If TMap.FValue(xahead Shr TILE_SHIFT, YPos Shr TILE_SHIFT) = 0
XPos = xahead
Else
XVel = 0 '//-XVel
xahead = 0 '//-xahead
EndIf

'// Are we done steppin'?
Until trace = stepdist

End Function

I think it does this atm.



And no, BMX is more of a programming language than a game maker / rpg maker thing. I guess it's a bit like BASIC meets some OOP language. It does do double buffering easily though, but I always get frame tearing in windowed mode, regardless of whether I wait for the vblank or whatever. Might be an LCD refresh thing.

Well, I got the trace ahead character to tile collision code working somewhat, but it's a rather clunky piece of code with Pythagoras and a bunch of stepping variables.

The question is if I should do bounce physics stuff inside the stepping loop, or if I should wait until after. E.g. if the player hits a wall on step 1/3, should I bounce him then, or just glide him against the wall and bounce once I've finished the stepping?

I get some kind of delayed bounce bug if I bounce inside the stepping loop.

[Inquiry:]

Here's something else I won't finish, but hopefully it'll leave me with some useful code or programmer experience points. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm thinking a side-scroller exploration game.

I'm using BlitzMax and I'm writing things from scratch. I can't understand other people's code. The code I have now does basic map (array) drawing, and there's a camera which can be focused on stuff, like my test entity. If the camera tries to look outsize the map it will be nudged. The entity is existing on the playfield and has nothing to do with the camera, other than when the engine needs to figure out where to draw the entity in relation to the camera's top left corner.

Floating point is not accurate in BlitzMax and it can create problems with characters bobbing in and out of blocks. My coordinate system uses a 'Long' for the game units, which means fixed point and I'm using bit shift l/r instead of multiplication or division. At the moment a pixel is 1 shl 16 (65536 units). I hope that is enough for slow analog movement.

A Long is a signed 64 bit integer, but I'm only using the positive values (63 bit) atm, so that gives me... 9223372036854775807 / 1 << 16 = a replicable MacOS calculator crash. Quite many pixels for the playfield. *300 that's a 469 billion screens high playfield, yes, thank you Wolfram. Of course, I'm using a tile map here so I'll be limited in size, but I wouldn't be if I made a space game or something where I could use the coordinates and stuff to generate the local environment (or I could just spread out stuff).

Anyways, I've been trying to keep the code clean, using descriptive variable names, constants, classes, and all that jazz.

300+ lines of code so far.


Left side: absolute map. Right side: relative scroll stuff

Next: Instanced entities, buckets for camera and collision purposes, some kind of movement code.

So, the buckets are not very difficult to write. Just another Shr to figure out which bucket something is in, then do the bucket change check yadda yadda. Then some update lists. Perhaps immobile objects are only checked against, and can be put in a less active update list.


Inquiry:

The platform collision code is always a bitch. This time I'm gonna try moving the stuff in steps then abort when a tile collision occurs. This will prevent tunneling and nasty move-back code. I assume that I need to... figure out how many steps the movement is. This is not trivial though, or is it? If I need to move say 2 units to the side and 4 up... should I use a Pythagoras and normalize here, or is there some easier way to find the x,y step distances? It seems bad to move 2 to the side then 4 up, or 1 to the side, one up, one to the side, one up, one up, one up. Maybe I'm confusing myself here.

With my taste for persistent and global world simulation, I want the movement code (used by all enemies) to be fast.

Also, I've never bothered with delta time. Should I?

The aiming issue reminds me of Pen and Paper RPGs (and tabletop games) where both the attacker and defender gets to throw a dice each. If you only let the attacker throw the dice the defender may feel that the game is unfair (even though it's just dice in this case, not skill).

I don't think weapons like rail guns, lasers and modern machine guns are very fun in games. Tactical movement, cover, target priority, etc aside... seen as a game verb, moving the cursor over a bunch of pixels quickly feels a bit too shallow. If a person is really good at it, the targeted players will not have fun.

The Disc launcher in Tribes is fun because it engages both players more. Since the projectile is slow, you have to predict where the other guy is going to land or fly next, and as a target you need to predict what the other guy is predicting. You can also deal indirect damage in clever ways. Shooting and dodging discs can be fun for both players. And if someone midair discs you from 80 meters you're more likely to go "Great shot!" rather than "Sniperfag! *ragequit*"

You can add #t=02m20s to the end of a YouTube url.

This video has been circulating for some time (on some art forums) as inspirational material. I'm not sure what to think. Working at a big company on the same boring project for years seems like a waste of time. an the other hand, working freelance (or indie) is a bit of a hassle... you need to be so active and it's not very secure. Also, paperwork. I spend weeks on it and it's not fun at all.

One other thing which annoys me is when a game discloses a long list of things which I need to do. One minor example is New Super Mario Bros where you can see most of the levels which you have ahead of you, and it's pretty easy to tell where the secret levels are. This makes me feel like there's pressure on me to reveal what I know is there. This turns into labor, and that's not fun to me. It's better to keep the secrets obscure so I don't know that I'm missing them.

Another example is marking bomb-able walls/tiles marked with cracks/icons. These kind of obvious "lol, you're missing something, come back later" things repeatedly tells me that my character is impotent. I think the solution which I like is to have more ingame physics based puzzles. For example, the high jump boots might allow me to reach someplace which I just assumed was inaccessible before. Perhaps there's a lava pit which I can actually dive into if I find a suit of some sort. What these two examples have in common is that the 'door' isn't clearly marked, so you don't necessarily assume that there is a 'key' which you are missing. The keys in these cases also have a use aside from being keys.

---

Edit: Another one which I really loathe: Rubber banding! It's when the opposition cheats or artificially adapts to keep up with your character, effectively negating your extra efforts.

Examples:

Mario Kart (GBA at least). You can drive like a snail around the track and still not lose. If you drive like a god, the opposition is still just right behind you. I suppose the designer's excuse was to make the game more exciting, but that doesn't work if you are aware of the rubber banding.

MoonStone (Amiga) - If you upgraded your knight's equipment then the opposition became intolerable with enemies gang banging you. It was better to keep a low profile.

---

Gains> 8::::e

...

Cleaning up Exile doc now. Maybe.

I would actually be in favor of pixel perfect jumps and sneaking if it meant that I was somehow breaking the game (not part of the mandatory path). Then it feels like I'm being rewarded for putting some extra effort in.

I'm not too familiar with the book, so I can't comment on the faithfulness. I can imagine that some people feel like I most likely will when the new Kid Icarus game comes out.

I did like some of the mist effect in the trailer. I think it would be an interesting challenge to create surreal visuals. It could be distortion of geometry that is so subtle that it just creates an uneasy feeling. A floor which starts leaning. Some NPC who turns around, and when he turns back to face you it's a different person (like persons tend to swap in dreams). You walk through a door and suddenly are in a very different place. There's a hot chick standing there but then her leg morphs into some... nasty meat shape.

Oh, man, Rise of the Robots looked awesome on screenshots. I remember playing the demo, and being quite unimpressed.

Ghost and Goblins for the NES had terrible scrolling but I had spent my allowance on it and I'd be damned if I let that go to waste.

Halo 1 PC didn't have any bots and I was more of a Quake guy, wanting fast movement, not death from a 2 meter drop.

Ground Control didn't let me build stuff. I guess I should've read the back of the box.

Zelda Phantom Hourglass had a few things which I loathe:

• Having to run through the same dungeon several times.
• Time limits.
• Introduction of keys and doors (which felt forced) to make the player go a certain way. One example (iirc) is a tornado or something which appears out of the blue if you want to sail north early. It teleports you back a bit. Perhaps it will magically disappear later when you've done something irrelevant like talked to some NPC or gotten a dungeon key.
• Change of rules: suddenly one hit 'kills' you. And why are the Darknuts suddenly psychologically inclined to play tag with me? Edit: Hide and seek, whatever. That's sneaking, another thing which I don't like if it's mandatory.
• Exceptions to rules: like the pirate ship in the mist not responding to being fired upon. At least give me some kind of indication that my bullets hit but were ineffective.
• Linear 'exploration' game.
• Minigames with Ranks/Grades/Rewards. I don't like them because they create pressure to repeat something which actually isn't very fun.