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Arne
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« on: September 23, 2010, 11:13:29 PM »

So, I was working on my Dragon Slayer 1 project, then BAM, I decided to draw SMB1 sprites.



Then it escalated.

Pixelation thread

I'm not going to repeat what's in that thread.  There's a playable build in the directory below. You can run around and edit the level a little if you hover the mouse over to the right. The Editor is very primitive still. There are no enemies as I haven't yet instantiated the Actor/Player.

http://androidarts.com/smb/

The game will be some kind of exploration deal. I want the world to feel less like an obstacle course and more like a REAL FANTASY PLACE. Yeah!

I'm letting this thing develop organically. I enter ideas in the comment section (TODO) of my  main/header file. Then every day I move 2-3 minor things down to a TODAY section and code them. I has worked pretty well so far because I feel like I've finished stuff every day, instead of feeling how much I have left.

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« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2010, 11:30:50 PM »

Glad to see you working on something. Those sprites look awesome.  Eager to see what comes out of it.
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« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2010, 11:31:13 PM »

nice, really nice!
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« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2010, 12:04:02 AM »

Mmmm I've already seen this somewhere... Big Laff
It's very, very nice!!
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« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2010, 08:29:45 AM »

Epic? I hope this sees the day. Exploration would be a nice change over the usual linear bullcrap.
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« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2010, 09:01:49 AM »

Good engine so far, although the inertia on the character is maybe a little too much even for a Mario game...? Maybe not, it's been a while since I played SMB, and 2D Mario was always too floaty for me. I think all blocks being bouncy is great personally. Love the idea of turning it into a flipscreener. Great pixels.
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Arne
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« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2010, 12:05:42 AM »

The movement speeds and such will be upgraded in an RPGesque manner as the game progresses. I was thinking of having pretty low initial values. In the direction of the early DK/DKjr games.


 Hand Thumbs Up Left Today I rewrote my Actor class so it uses instances as it should. I also made a player profile class which will store meta things like treasures, stats etc. Surprisingly, despite a larger rewrite it worked on the first compile. Third time this has happened during this project.

Since the actors are now instances, and they already use a virtual joypad, I didn't hesitate to throw 105 of them into a level. I gave them a sloppy 'button mashing' 'AI'.



I still have to write partitioning for the actors though (collisions and drawing), and figure out where I want to take the actor class in terms of inheritance. Right now everyone is stickman Mario.


I'm a but unsure how to bring the world to life:

Destructible blocks and water flow is already in. I can also do rain and evaporation easily. It's 90% there already. This stuff is fun, but meaningless unless coupled with other mechanics.

Flora. I want to use the SMB2 plants, and do things with the vines. Using lists which are updated less frequently is good for ecology stuff. The SMB2 plants are great because they are interactive. I'm not sure what Mario would do with them though. Use as weapons, and/or cook? Recipes?

I already have backgrounds which could bring some atmosphere to the game. In some games I don't even see or care about the backgrounds because they have no interactive value. They're just something which I rush past. Maybe my BGs can be looted or read, like the Impossible Mission game where you turn towards the background to search. The backgrounds should hint at what a place has been or is being used for. However, if I have destructible terrain to some degree, I can't put things in the background which the player would want to destroy. Another dilemma is that I'd rather put things like pots and treasure chests in the foreground and make them truly interactive objects. Maybe the BG should only be searchable. "It's a statue of a Koopa soldier. A sign at the base reads: All Glory to Bowser!".

I'd like to make everything in the world meaningful in terms of game mechanics. A threat, resource or opportunity. DF is an easy example of a game which does this. I think a crafting system would be wrong for this game though, since Mario isn't a tool user. He's more of a transformer. So, I don't really know where to go here. It would also be wrong to use enemy corpses as a resource which can be butchered (even though Mario already does use things like shells as weapons.)

The biggest problem is that the enemies, which I'm afraid will be retarded. If they are retarded, then they won't be of much use to Bowser, and interacting with them will feel meaningless. It's unlikely that I can code a warzone (Toad army vs Bowser army) because pathfinding in an environment with gravity is tricky for me. A lot of the enemies are not anthropological enough too. A Goomba isn't of much use to Bowser as a labor or army unit.

Ideally, the enemies should have a localized goal. They've already taken care of the Toads on the map. So, maybe Bowser is guarding against reinforcements and surviving resistant cells. I was thinking that Bowser invaded because he found an artifact which will make him more powerful. It is buried near a Toad town. So, Bowser destroys the town with a medusa beam (turning Toadies into statues/blocks), and begins an effort to excavate the artifact he's after. The artifact is found in an ancient city deep below. This setup could allow me to use my destructible terrain and flooding system.

(Outdated map concept. I might move the locations around a bit. Maybe Mario could flood Bowser's drilling site, or it already is flooded under a lake, forcing Bowser to use a big mining laser. A laser is not ideal though, because I want to have his minions do things of importance.


The ancient civilization is responsible for the artifact also left a few robots behind. These guys are basically the Chozo or whatever. They are cloaked and only Mario can see them because he has been chosen to defend the artifact in some spooky vision, perhaps. If the bad guys could see them, they would've been looted already.


I'm thinking of using a troop distribution artifact (spawn chalice thing?) which keeps enemies unstuck and on the move. This way I don't have to code a nasty pathfinding system

Maybe Mario can use the same network to teleport later, so there's less of a need for an  explanation of enemies just appearing/disappearing. However, it would be better if enemies had to run errands physically, because then there would be a reason for them walking about.

Lakitu is great because he's flying. He could be used to do more complex things (flying movement is easier to code AI for). I'm thinking Lakitu is just a regular Koopa on a cloud (vehicle). The Koopas are quite humanoid so I could make those more diverse in terms of what tasks they can perform and how much animation frames they have. Maybe they mirror Mario, so they can climb and stuff.

A local goal for the enemies would be great. Enemies on one region might be digging. In another they are... I don't know. Producing? Hatching? Mining? Terraforming? Erecting nasty structures? I don't know how complicated I can/should make this, but I don't want enemies walking back and forth on platforms unless they're guards, and not all can be guards.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2010, 12:13:03 AM by Arne » Logged
Xion
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« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2010, 01:49:55 AM »

it seems like you're trying to find a way to shoehorn destructible terrain and flowing water into the game design where neither is really needed? Rather than letting the design lead you to a point where you can definitively say "oh my shit this would be perfect here", you made the thing and now you're like "now how the hell can I use this?" I dunno, that's just what it seems like to me. Mebbe I wrong.

As for the whole "pathfinding is hard but retards are a no no" - as with anything difficult enough to be discouraging; fake it? Pretty much no one will notice if you fake it convincingly.

Quote
A lot of the enemies are not anthropological enough too. A Goomba isn't of much use to Bowser as a labor or army unit.

I always imagined goombas would make good materials carriers - just strap stuff to their heads and they're good to go. Maybe they're actually really dense so they're heavy enough not to be put off balance by carrying tall or heavy things?

Many other enemies I thought were just natural life - the beetles and moles and wigglers and stuff. Maybe even piranha plants were just natural flora that Bowsy (I call him that, we tight like that) cultivated for his own use...?

Shy Guys have always been my favorite mario enemies...That doesn't really have anything to do with anything though.
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« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2010, 02:33:09 AM »

For the first couple of times, i thought the thread title was "Adventure Marine Bros." Grin

I'd like to make everything in the world meaningful in terms of game mechanics. A threat, resource or opportunity. DF is an easy example of a game which does this. I think a crafting system would be wrong for this game though, since Mario isn't a tool user. He's more of a transformer. So, I don't really know where to go here. It would also be wrong to use enemy corpses as a resource which can be butchered (even though Mario already does use things like shells as weapons.)
What if you have to run around collecting blueprints and materials to build ancient robot designs? That way you can make certain zones need certain robots, and basically make the environment usable to build whatever kind of 'bot you want to lumber around in.

If you want the environment to be useful, you'll have to make a few compromises Tongue
« Last Edit: September 25, 2010, 02:39:05 AM by RCIX » Logged
Xion
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« Reply #9 on: September 25, 2010, 03:06:02 AM »

what if you could carry things to places to get them turned into other things?

Like, you flip a goomba upside down and then pick it up and take it to the shoesmith or some parallel of such and toss it to him and a short humorous animation later you have a pair of goomba-skin shoes. The quality of the resulting items would correlate fairly closely with the difficulty of obtaining and transporting the item to the proper location - if you want to make a POW Hammer, but the nearest pow block is several screens away from the hammersmith, it will be quite a feat not only to bring the block all the way to the hammersmith with minimal damage, but to do so without making it go POW! and losing the block entirely. Certain enemies would have to be fought periodically on your journey to the making-place, as they'll wake up while you carry them and you'll have to carefully defeat them again, but not so thoroughly that they die. These creations could translate to the different suits mario has obtained throughout the series - you want Hammer Mario armor? Bring a Hammer Brother to the armorsmith. It'll protect you from damage or something. You want Shy Guy disguise? Bring him a shy guy. It'll let you shoot pellets and maybe get you clearance to certain areas without having to be hassled by Bowsy's goons.

Honestly this was all just a way for me to suggest having goomba-skin shoes.
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« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2010, 03:17:18 AM »

excellent work. as has been mentioned, non-linear level design would be great here, or at least levels that make greater use of the vertical dimension. the tileset youre working out would shine more in that sort of application, i think.
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Arne
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« Reply #11 on: September 25, 2010, 04:21:35 AM »

Xion> Oh man, if you like Shyguys (I do too) then check out Doki Doki Panic, the original non-smb game. It has the cutest death sound effect.

Yeah, I do intend to shoe horn water and destructible terrain into the game, primarily because I think a regular SMB platform game is pretty boring and those games have been done to death. I want the player to jump into a lake, thinking it's just a regular lake, then some wall breaks and the water flows out, spilling into some dungeon, drowning goombas, leaving fishes on dry land. Laser Squad (C64) gave me a WTF feeling like that a few years ago. I had gotten so used to non-destructible walls in FPS games and such, so when a rocket destroyed a bunch of walls I was like WHhooa for a moment, then I remembered being a kid thinking that games would do awesome stuff like that in the FUTURE. Instead many games just got more static, for a while at least.

Maybe Goombas can balance little pots and stuff on their heads, like... african women.

The idea that some enemies are natural wildlife doesn't sit well with me. I guess I want the enemies to be guilty and a single coherent faction, so I can... bring justice down upon them.


RCIX> Vehicles are tricky. I like the plane, flying cloud, sub. At the same time I don't want to do the flying stuff because it can fly and that would make regular Mario obsolete. Fuel perhaps. A Mobile suit Mario... would make upgrading regular Mario less meaningful, but perhaps the suit is the upgrade. However, it's not really a Mario thing, visually, to have him stomp around in a clunky suit. Perhaps vehicles could be clumsy in some way too.

I could also go for the Cortex Command approach where Mario sits in his home, and builds robots which go out and collect materials for factories and new robots.

Alomard> Right now I'm supporting/doing a somewhat typical semi flipscreener like seen in Super Metroid and such. There's one big map but there can be restrictions on scrolling for some regions. I want to make a nod to the Brinstar layout at some point, with the vertical shafts. I even thought about using the SMB2 bird face doors as Metroid-type doors.

Xion again> If I do allow resource collection, I'm thinking of doing a system where loosened blocks can be picked up like the mushroom blocks or root fruits in SMB2, maybe even placed in an inventory, in case a one-at-a-time hauling mechanic proves too laborsome. This would allow fortress building and entrenchment, but it would also make it possible to cheaply exploit the retard enemy movement AI I'm likely to have. Again, it's a bit of a problem for me that Mario isn't really a physical tool user.  I guess he could be building.. fireball ammo, and suits/armour out of various materials... but he's only one guy, so the needs are small. He kind of needs an army of Toads for this to work. I can imagine them using tools, armour, weapons, vehicles.

I don't think that I want Mario to to butcher enemies as if they were living creatures. Perhaps enemies are made out of whimsical life energy /'spirit' which was stolen by Bowser. Then Mario is simply returning balance. I think a GBA Castlevania had a soul system. Goomba skin shoes gives me creepy vibes.
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« Reply #12 on: September 25, 2010, 11:59:00 AM »

maybe training the humanoid koopas is expensive and lengthy. Turtles have long lifespans so losing a koopa maybe isnt trivial. On the other hand goombas maybe are easy and fast to "grow" and bowsers uses them as meat to throw at mario. thats why goombas might be used by bowser in less important areas. Or goombas can be commanded by koopas. Maybe there are different koopa soldiers, for example red ones can be special soldiers that work alone or in commandos while green ones command goombas (maybe thats part of their training). Or goombas grow ultra fast and koopas can spawn them using some seeds.

goombas can be stupid and still be useful because they are cheap and fast to produce. Also bowser is a a turtle monster himself, he's just the leader of the turtle kind, so koopas are actually people and goombas are just things, weapons.
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« Reply #13 on: September 26, 2010, 08:04:48 AM »

mario butchering goombas and other creatures still mess up when you take all the other games that came out and spin offs which give them more personality. though one could say there are civilian goombas and koopas and then those are some that recruit them selves into bowsers army or force.
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Arne
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« Reply #14 on: September 26, 2010, 08:39:37 AM »

edh>I can agree with that. Goombas should probably be some kind of mass produced / grown sentinel unit, while the Koopas are more like people. I had the idea of augmenting the Gombas at one point, putting them in mechs/turrets, just to make them a bit more diverse, but I dunno.

Rumrusher> It's a problem for sure. I can see four ways to approach the problem. 1: Make it cute and abstract and don't explain anything. 2: Make sure the enemies are described as soulless simple machines / vegetables. 3: Make them blatantly evil. 4: Actually play up the moral dilemma, or perhaps 'lampshade' it.



Progress today:

 Hand Thumbs Up Left Light map which is precalculated. Can also be recalculated for given spots.

 Hand Thumbs Up Left Sky is drawn with 4*4 blocks big rectangles, or not at all if fully obscured by the 4*4 FG or BG blocks. Precalculated. Can also be recalculated for given spots. I think drawing one larger rect is faster than drawing 16 images or 16 smaller rectangles, but I don't know. Premature optimization. I had another idea where the sky color is stored in a screen sized array and I use clear screen (cls) to set the BG color. Then I would need to draw up to half a screen sized rects to cover up the cls color switch. I plant to use my current 4*4 block partitioning for other things though, such as actor listing.

 Hand Thumbs Up Left Changed the palette a bit and reverted to my old system with BG tiles system (two sets, sky color and night/dungeon color).

 Hand Thumbs Up Left The water no longer changes the BG tile rendering, instead it just draws on top with 70% opacity.
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« Reply #15 on: September 26, 2010, 09:08:53 AM »

4 seems best even when one throws in a silly code that makes all enemies passive until you kill one which then every one flips out on you.
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« Reply #16 on: September 26, 2010, 03:06:50 PM »

1 or 4 seems best to me.
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« Reply #17 on: September 26, 2010, 06:17:24 PM »

If this game is canon, then option 4 doesn't seem viable, as it takes place in a universe where all goombas are fully aware that they must destroy any and all mustachioed plumbers. Paper Mario NPC/teammate goombas don't count.
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« Reply #18 on: September 26, 2010, 06:20:15 PM »

I like 1. It fits with Mario.
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Arne
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« Reply #19 on: September 27, 2010, 02:30:32 AM »

I might go for 1 + lampshade.


 Hand Thumbs Up Left This look minutes to implement:


I played around with the underground pal yesterday and brought it closer to the source. I thought the overground BG fog was too wimpy so I tried a (relative to blue) warm (gray) light and purple shadow (I don't think it's working though).


 Hand Thumbs Down Left Enemy-enemy, player-player, player-enemy collisions is a can of worms. It would be neat if I could make a simple actor-actor AABB system in proximity to my actor-tile system. This way I could do stuff like platforms, mushroom blocks (smb2), enemy head riding (smb2), coop head riding. But... there are a lot of tricky special cases, like being squished, inheriting velocities, etc. Might go for a blink and take damage system first. However, at some point I need to solve trampolines and moving platforms.

I'm also not sure if I want to give the enemies some kind of weapons and make side-bump damage mutual (a height advantage like in Joust would make you safe). I dunno. 
« Last Edit: September 27, 2010, 02:45:18 AM by Arne » Logged
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