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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

those cloud sprites are pretty good, though the pipes feel too much like mario (but people said that about flappy bird's pipes too)

[gimymblert]

Still cool!

[TheArtistJiii]

It is a direct rip and reskin of the original pipe after all.

is that legal?

[Bones]

Can't believe I've been at this for 7 years now.  

• 75% done the demo's 50+ levels
• Most graphics are all still place holder... 

Added an aim limiter, you can no longer aim behind yourself.


Updating all the particle effects.

OLD



All still WIP

OLD

[QOG]

Updating all the particle effects.

New fire effect is looking great, seems to have a slightly irregular output direction/speed, which makes it more believable, even aside from the fancy animation. I'm always excited to see updates for this project.

[FK in the Coffee]

Wow, just realized that this project's coming up on its sixth anniversary. Congrats man; seriously admire the dedication.

[Bones]

Hey everybody!

Wow.. I haven't posted in 120 days.
130+ days since I've worked on the game physically.

Never for a second think that this game project is over with, it's one of the only constants in my life.  

Earlier this week I brushed the dust off the Ol' Walled Garden. Started realizing it felt empty.
There wasn't enough variety in the movement from the creatures, there wasn't enough of them.

I had forgotten that the key aspect of TWG was the creatures, and the way they interacted around one other.
This game is obviously heavily inspired by Mario Bros.
So obviously the Turtle is a main creature within my Game.
Turtles all the way down




Every game needs it's basic movers. Each one needs variation to create a good sense of change.
People keep ragging on me about how many things I've taken away from Mario Bros.
Turtles are an important symbol in mythology, it supports the world on it's back.


So you must understand that the three main creatures in my game are Snakes, Turtles and Elephants.

With the introduction of the Frog jumping on the Turtle shells randomly, it really opened up a lot of emergence to occur. Things started happening that I couldn't predict would happen within the game. Sure I set it up to occur, but the game decided when or if it would happen or not.


Realizing I could take this interaction and spread it to different creatures.
I came back to our old friend the DrillPig.
Drill pig is basically a small blind elephant/pig.

It should have a short temper, and be like a bull in a china shop when it's not happy.

• Gave DrillPigs the ability to effect turtles
• Gave Drill Pigs a rage mode
• Rage mode now has a stampede dust effect
• DrillPig is the only thing in-game that can destroy a turtle

My girlfriend suggested yesterday that I make a little mouse.
So that is exactly what I did by reusing the code from the my unused Monopods

(Unsure if monopods will make the final cut)

A quick little creature that doesn't need to have much of an effect to cause some big changes.

For example let's say we make it so the DrillPigs really don't like Mice near them.
Suddenly you're not the only one causing a ruckus.


The Rat/Mouse could also be used for puzzles like in Krusty's Funhouse.
It makes a great little lemming type creature.




Added some basic spiders to add some more basic vertical up and down enemies.

[QOG]

Missed this post due to the holidays, glad to hear progress is still being made. Glad to learn more about the creatures as well. This is a really interesting interaction:

For example let's say we make it so the DrillPigs really don't like Mice near them.
Suddenly you're not the only one causing a ruckus.

That said, I do wonder how much you can actually take from Mario game design wise. Enemy interaction in that game is in large part about positioning and timing. Mario forces you to get up close because (certain powerups aside) you have little/no way to interact with enemies from a distance, but with Walled Garden adding in guns and thus the ability to interact from a distance, most of that goes away. This especially struck me with the spider enemies--unless they are invulnerable to your weapons or drop from off the top of the screen, I don't see how they'd really pose a threat. This image:

Added some basic spiders to add some more basic vertical up and down enemies.

just leaves me with the question "Why not just shoot them?" while interactions like this:

seem like a more natural fit for a ranged player.

Of course, having not played the game, I could be totally off base here. It just seems like a lot of the interactions you've developed recently are ones that happen at close range.

[Bones]

Wow it's been more than 2 years since I've work on this game.  
Spent the passed month or so working on it, re-thinking what to do.

Life happens. At this point, so many amazing games have been released. Doubt very much there is any interest in this project.
At this point I'm probably going to release the game for free. The game is going to put into an arcade cabinet that will travel around the country/world.

But, considering it's 2020 and I started this game project in 2009. Be damned if I'm going to let 11 years of my life be a complete waste.









No more GUN! & Aesthetic Update

Gotta reinstall the program I was using to make gameplay gifs. But these youtube videos should do fine. Two of them are 45 minutes long.

EDIT: OHHH WHAT!? TIG Source you added embedded youtube support? Not even facebook can do that (for some dumb reason)

By the way, I missed you all. <3

[droqen]

Worked on the tongue some more.
It can pull the player back to the mouth and will also stop pulling if a collision with a wall is made.
It also snaps back to the mouth and can grab the player on the way back.

Wow, this animation is brutal

I still remember this project, Bones! Stunned it's still going on! I've always loved all the wild little overlapping natural systems and wondered how it would all come together once done.

So I was watching this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC-bt2ngClg&t=213s%22 - you make a comment about how someone was saying spiders are 'pointless', I assume in reference to QOG's post from 2018? I think it's quite easy to, as a designer/developer, program interactions and think it's enough to present a living world, but the thing I'm learning to live with is just how efficiency-minded players are if they're given a goal.

So shortly after in the video you had a snake eating a spider, but you really had to go out of your way to set up the circumstances for that to happen, and you really didn't get much out of it as a problem-solver. I wanted to say 'as a player', right, but I think there are definitely people who like to play around with systems like this and get enjoyment out of it, so it's more about the specific mode that a player is in.

Someone who's trying to play your game like a problem to solve (which, I posit, is most players of games most of the time, especially before you've won their hearts over) isn't going to put in the work to cause interesting interactions unless you make it some combination of useful and inexpensive.

I think this problem is a lot bigger than the knowledge problem (players also don't know what to try) because if experimentation is seen as some combination of useful and inexpensive, problem-solving players will do it!

You might find this talk useful, because I think you have a lot of really cool interactions. Like a lot of them. Possibly too many to put into a single game at this point, hehe. But you seem to be having trouble stringing them together into one big cool long experience. Here is my favourite game design talk of all time:





edit:: also, i acknowledge that you may be targeting the mode of players that is not the Problem-Solver. i tried that for a while. i found it it pretty brutal, because of how strong the problem-solving drive is; it's hard to induce people to play with systems without some goal, some reason to explore the system. anyway, i called these things 'playables': games designed with no explicit instructions, progression, or goals. i'll link a few:

https://droqen.itch.io/drones-oubliette-4

https://droqen.itch.io/being-jeweled

https://droqen.itch.io/simple-tour

https://droqen.itch.io/weakspot

ultimately i found myself drawn back to designing for problem-solving space. and when you're designing for problem-solving space, all that matters is what helps you solve the problem. "players will optimize the fun out" if you let them, so the cool/fun stuff also needs to be the stuff that helps you solve the problem. it has to be in the player's path.

anyway watch the video, it's good.

[Bones]

*Thanks so much for the reply droqen! I absorbed a lot of that information and am now focused and ready to go again.

Don't ever count me out folks.
I'm back! and this time I have the assistance of artificial intelligence (GPT & Gemini) to help me code more advance functions.
Brace yourself, gonna catch you up to what's going on.

So here's the bad news. We're starting over again. Not from 100% scratch, we still have all our existing code and graphics. However I'm focused on coding a better engine with less bugs, and with a better understanding of how everything works. As the original source code was a Frankenstein of Game Maker Examples found over the course of 10+ years.

With 15+ years of knowledge of strictly Game Maker 8, I am starting fresh in Game Maker Studio.
Consider everything up until now just practice for this new iteration of the game with a strict focus on Economy and Gameplay Loops, with a stronger more robust engine with better detailed comments so I can actually remember what my code does.

But I digress, you came here for progress!
Would also like to announce that I as of today 78 days sober.  

Day 01 (Basic engine - Basic Enemy Logic)
Following Zack Bell's Platformer tutorial from 2024.


Day 02 (Knockback calculation based on weight)


Day 03 (Jump Thru Platforms & Jumping AI)
Courtesy of Zack Bell's Tutorial


Day 04 (Implement UI, Simple Inventory & oParItem + Coins)





[Today] Day 05 (Procedural Trees)



If I can make these from the ground up, I may be able to make them actually functionable as game mechanics and not just aesthetic, I'd like to add apples or fruit growing on them.










Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
That's all for now, it's late almost 2am. Want to thank everyone who's watched this thread for the last 14+ years.

Wasn't going to post any progress in this DevLog as it's so old, but figured why make a new thread for a new version of the game. This isn't the first time I've started over since 2010. Sorry if my old dusty project doesn't interest anyone anymore. As there are so many AMAZING games being made every other day by so many amazing developers.

Time to figure out what worked for some of those ones.    

[Schrompf]

I like the trees

[Bones]

I like the trees

Thanks, I'm quiet happy with how they have turned out.
While they aren't as pretty as


I'm happy to have more understanding of how they work, which allows me to tweak and modify them a lot easier.

I've created a save and load system with a very vanilla start menu.
This saves the gameState of the trees, although for some reason the inventory keeps resetting when I continue... BUT!
Trees are saved and even reload the same after you close the exe and come back. Which is great considering the trees are temporary surfaces/sprites. So closing the game means they no longer exist. So I have to save their variables, and then redraw the trees when the game is reloaded.


This is something the original game engine never had. The trees would disappear when you came back to the level.
I'm considering adding "aging" to the trees, so they can grow and get bigger in scale if watered or when you return to a level, they could increase in size as if time passed while you were gone.

[Ramos]

+ 100 points, your game design definitely looks made with "out of the box" mindset, very original and Has a nice personality


 

[Bones]

+ 100 points, your game design definitely looks made with "out of the box" mindset, very original and Has a nice personality


 

Hey thanks, I'll take all the points I can get.


Long are gone of the old black trees.

[Bones]

Time to do this one right.

CHECKLIST

Core Gameplay Mechanics

• ☑️ Player Movement System (running, jumping, wall sliding, etc.)
• ☑️Basic Combat System (using the Sword)
• ☑️Inventory System (for switching between items and equipment)
• ☑️Procedural Tree and Apple System (for health regeneration)
• ☑️Day and Night Cycle (affects environment and secrets)
• ☑️Colour Changes in Background and Trees (based on time of day)
• ❎Implement Sub-Item System (for using items like Coins with up + attack)
• ❎Cup Mechanics
• ❎Staff/Spell Mechanics

Core Game Objects or Rooms

• ☑️Player Character (Atom)
• ☑️Enemies (basic types implemented, potential for more variety)
• ❎NPC Integration (for quests, lore, and gameplay guidance)
• ❎Hub or Safe Area (central area for the player to manage resources and plan exploration)

Environmental and Level Design

• ☑️Basic Level Design (platforms, obstacles, initial realm layouts)
• ❎Advanced Level Design (incorporating day/night mechanics into level puzzles and enemy behavior)
• ❎Secret Areas and Reverse Card Mechanic (hidden areas and changes that only appear at certain times)

Economy and Resource Management

• ❎Atoms as Experience Points (for leveling up skills and abilities)
• ❎Coins as Tradable Currency (for buying items, upgrading equipment)

Testing and Balancing

• ❎Initial Playtesting (for basic mechanics and first level designs)
• ❎Difficulty Balancing (ensuring a fair but challenging progression)
• ❎Economy Balancing (making sure the resource management is engaging and rewarding)

Art, Music, and Narrative

• ☑️Basic Art Assets (player, enemies, environment)
• ❎Advanced Art Assets (more detailed and varied designs for later levels, NPCs, etc.)
• ☑️Music and Sound Effects
• ❎Story Development (integrating the narrative more deeply with the gameplay)

Trees (3/4 DONE)
                                         
Grass (not started)
Earth (not started)
Water (1/4 DONE)
Fire (empty)
Sun (1/4 DONE)
Stars (not started)
Moon (1/4 DONE)
Clouds (not started)
Air (not started)
Rain (not started)

[Bones]

Water (2/4 DONE)
                               

[Bones]

Clouds (2/4 DONE)  
                                    

[QOG]

I'm glad to see this project back from the dead.

[Bones]

I'm glad to see this project back from the dead.

Good to see you QOG! I noticed TIG is much quieter than it's glory days.
Can't believe you've been following this project for 10+ years now. Thanks for sticking around!  
There are kid's these days that are 10 years old that can program better than I can.




"What were in those brownies?"



Trees (3/4 DONE)                              
Grass (not started)
Earth (not started)
Water (1/4 DONE)
Fire (empty)
Sun (1/4 DONE)
Stars (not started)
Moon (1/4 DONE)
Clouds (1/4 DONE)
                              
Air (not started)
Rain (not started)