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[Theophilus]

Mole takes the player to the role of a spy affiliated with a top secret organization. You are sent around the world to complete various objectives in different environments, from rescuing hostages to stealthily stalking your enemy.




Current build: 0.02


Author: Shelby Smith
Development tools: Game Maker 8.1, GIMP, Inkscape


All of the graphics you see are placeholders until I hone my art skills or find an artist interested in working with me.

Everything, including the design, is all work in progress and will likely change.


I'll post daily showing my goals and progress on the game.

[Sakar]

Not a fan of the movement at all. I prefer movement in games with this perspective to be absolute rather than relative to the player.

Looks good so far though

[Theophilus]

Not a fan of the movement at all. I prefer movement in games with this perspective to be absolute rather than relative to the player.

Looks good so far though

I've gotten that before, but he just said he preferred relative. I'm working on a config program so players can adjust movement to their preferences. Thanks for the feedback.

I'm interested in knowing more about the story ;o. I'm guessing it's called 'Mole' for a reason.

Perhaps I'll drop a spoiler or two along the way.

Thanks for posting, you guys.

[Theophilus]

I've gotten that before, but he just said he preferred relative.

Who is "he"? Either way, I strongly recommend using absolute. You are going to alienate close to 99% of players right off the bat with that control scheme.

He, as in, someone else I asked. And I meant to say absolute, not relative.

Anyway, I have added absolute movement. I am making a configuration program so you can choose controls, control scheme, and (eventually) screen size. All I have left to do for the setup program is let the game read the config files and pretty it up.

I thought this was a more common control scheme than that. I've seen it in many games.

[Craig Stern]

Kimblis the Blue uses a control scheme like this. It's very, very hard to adjust to. I agree that you should use absolute directions for character movement. Additionally, I would suggest animating the character's upper and lower body independently: the character's upper body pivots to always face the mouse, and his lower body corresponds to absolute directions, facing cardinally (up, down, left, right) or diagonally (up-right, up-left, down-right, or down-left) based on which direction he's moving in.

[Theophilus]

Kimblis the Blue uses a control scheme like this. It's very, very hard to adjust to. I agree that you should use absolute directions for character movement. Additionally, I would suggest animating the character's upper and lower body independently: the character's upper body pivots to always face the mouse, and his lower body corresponds to absolute directions, facing cardinally (up, down, left, right) or diagonally (up-right, up-left, down-right, or down-left) based on which direction he's moving in.

Thanks for the feedback.

Just so I understand-

Aim in 360 directions
Walk in 8

Upper body faces mouse
Legs/torso faces direction of movement

Am I correct?

[Craig Stern]

Yup--that's how I'd handle it.

[Geeze]

Stealth game... Sweet!
Are you going to make some sort of lighting system and/or dynamic shadows? I made a similar game with game maker in the last ludum dare jam with dynamic shadows, so they are quite easy to implement. You might want to ch)eck that out. (the dark diversion
(eek... Unintended promo threadhijacking. Eh well...)

[Theophilus]

I'm considering it, but I don't want this to be a very effects-heavy game. I'm considering a slight 3D-like effect, and I have those illuminated bullets.

This brings up another point- Illuminated bullets. I tried to make them stand out more on the background and with the atmospheric darkness. Any other ideas? Does it fit?

It's the end of the day, time for an update on my progress.

May 15th, 2011
Day 1

-Added absolute controls. This was very necessary. Thanks for the feedback on this especially, guys. One of my problems is my game not appealing to the audience (One time I made a game with left handed controls, because I am left handed). I need to understand the not everyone plays games the same.

-Added custom controls.

-Created a setup program so users can configure according to their preferences.

-Prototyped a 3D sprite effect, which entails layered drawing, with offsets based on the position from the center of the prorgam's screen. Strongly considering adding it.



I'm launching a build tomorrow with custom controls and the setup program. Hopefully you'll be able to focus less on the controls and more on the other issues at hand.



Thank you so much, guys, for these valuable suggestions. I will take them to heart.

[Theophilus]

Demo has been uploaded. There is a configuration program in there; you must run this before the game to set up custom controls. This will create an ini file, and it must remain in the same folder as the game and the set up program.

In this build:

-Custom controls
-Added Absolute Movement (8 directional with 360 degree aiming)
-Created configuration program so that you all can set up how you like. There may be more options later on.

Enjoy.

[Theophilus]

Forgot to post an update yesterday.

May 16th, 2011.
Day 2

-Released a build
-Decided not to go with the 3D sprite effect.
-Researching pathfinding

Not a lot of progress. :| It was a monday though, maybe I can blame it on that.

[Theophilus]

May 17th, 2011
Day 3

-Made pathfinding example for myself. It went to the path, but only avoiding on it's origin and not it's bounding-box. Meaning this wouldn't work unless I made all enemies 1x1 px flies. I have a few ideas as to how to get it right, involving looping through path points, rotating the instance to check for radial collisions, temporarily marking cells, and creating the path.

Again, not so much progress.

Todo for next build:

-Implement at least 1 basic enemy
-MOAR WEAPONS
-Less brown


Tomorrow's goals:

-Finish pathfinding
-Concept art
-Slight enemy design

Note how none of the goals are closely related so that if I fail on one, I don't fail on subsequent goals. Now it's a learning post!