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[DustyDrake]

Original opening post is as follows, preserved in a blue box:

My friend and I enjoy the Legend of Zelda series.
There was just one problem with it, very little multiplayer.
Some of my favorite times were when we were so mad at each other during the Four Sword 25th Anniversary, we'd just end up fighting with each other.

Then we thought: what if there was a game around that?
A Legend of Zelda styled deathmatch game?

Suddenly the ideas started flowing, and I made a small prototype that added levels and used recolored NES Zelda 1 sprites.
That prototype was lost to the void that is a backpack, thankfully.

Cut to a year later, I'm learning XNA.
I'm also adding one of the characters from Last Ascent to a mod for an indie game, and my friend brings it up for consideration.

Now we're working on a GDD, with revised ideas and new custom art, which you can see here

This is one of two games I really want to make.
This is Last Ascent.

[SolarLune]

It's cool that you have a lot of art, though there's something off about the Mage's head. What's the blue parts supposed to be? Floating particles?

Anyway, it's an interesting concept. I partially feel like the reason the Four Swords worked was because of the whole "RPG" part, the ability to go about and find different items and weapons and use them to traverse the dungeon. Without that (if it's just a straight deathmatch), it seems like it might be a bit stale. However, you still have the items that you can equip, so that sounds interesting.

Anyway, hope you get far with this project. It sounds like it could be really fun.

[DustyDrake]

The Mage has 'mana' lines from excess magic usage, like Maze from Fable

And we're working on an idea for how players get the items and characters they use.
Right now it's just you get a random item after every match or so, and then if you have all of a character's preferred items, you unlock that character as well.

[DustyDrake]

God I really want to work on Last Ascent right this instant, but I've got school work to make up, and I'm fairly certain I broke my router considering I forgot to call the server ending script when working on the networking aspect of Last Ascent.

[DustyDrake]

Worked on some art for some tiles today

The Sun and Moon tiles are for special map elements, which I'll explain more in detail when I get a chance.

I'm a little iffy on the pillar's base though.
I can't figure out how I'll shade it to make it look right.

[DustyDrake]

Ugh, if I want to graduate I have to spend most of my time working on making up schoolwork for the next 3 weeks. So what updates that happen during that time will likely only be art based. I promise I'll get to coding eventually!

[DustyDrake]

So, I was taking a break, playing the 25th anniversary edition of one of the Four Sword games (the hero's trial in that can go to hell, by the way), and I had an idea for fans that could be placed in maps. A silver kind, which is bolted to the floor, and a gold kind which can be moved around using grappling hooks, ect. The fan's ability to push players around will be determined by their 'knockback' stat, so players who use the knight with the Jo'la mask will barely be affected at all. Also, as an exception to THAT, if a player is in the air (via jumping or being knocked into the air) they will be pushed by the full force of the fan.

[DustyDrake]

So, Renya and I have been having a slight argument over which way the art should go. He imagined Last Ascent being dark and gloomy, and I imagined it being bright for holy-'aligned' characters and dark for the void/evil-'aligned' characters. Does anyone have any input on this?

[DustyDrake]

So, school is almost over for me, just a few more days.
That means that development for Last Ascent can finally start soon.
It's so close I can almost feel it!

[SolarLune]

Great to see that enthusiasm. Keep it up while you code - it's easy to want to play games instead of make them.

I'm not sure about the graphic style - you would have to develop the world a bit more. Is it supposed to be always dark and gloomy, Gotham City style? Or is it bright and happy? The style of the characters should fit the style of the world.

[DustyDrake]

The normal world is bright and happy and the void is the dark and gloomy area.
Canonically, they do not interact very often, hence the stark contrast.

[mokesmoe]

Worked on some art for some tiles today

The Sun and Moon tiles are for special map elements, which I'll explain more in detail when I get a chance.

I'm a little iffy on the pillar's base though.
I can't figure out how I'll shade it to make it look right.

The outline of the circle on the base shouldn't go straight up at the top, but that probably looks weird since they're the same colour.

[DustyDrake]

Update 0
Just wanted to kinda cut the red ribbon on the devlog.

Working on getting the player moving around and animating, ect.

[DustyDrake]

Bleh, I feel really stupid right now.
I've got a Room class which contains a List<T> of Objects.
My plan was to have the game add objects to that list when needed (like when a bow is shot), however it appears that you can not edit a List<T> while the game is running, which is annoying.

[SolarLune]

C++ and XNA, huh? Not very familiar with either, but can't you just substitute the object list with a modifiable list class?

EDIT: Oh, and keep going - everybody encounters setbacks while programming their game. Some are harder than others, and some things that you think are going to take forever to implement aren't really that difficult. It's the journey of game development that makes you realize just how so many cool things you've seen in games work.

[DustyDrake]

C++ and XNA, huh? Not very familiar with either, but can't you just substitute the object list with a modifiable list class?

Success!
Well, not quite with what you said.
I just made it into an array that can expand itself as needed, and it works quite nicely so far.

[toipot]

I've got a Room class which contains a List<T> of Objects.
My plan was to have the game add objects to that list when needed (like when a bow is shot), however it appears that you can not edit a List<T> while the game is running, which is annoying.

Is this just an stl list? I'm guessing your problem was invalidating your iterator when using something like push_back?
If you want to modify a list while iterating through it, list::insert and list::remove should work fine, they'll return a new iterator.

Otherwise if you're using some XNA container then I have no idea 

[DustyDrake]

It was giving me an error about how I cannot modify a list while the game is running, because it might be unstable.

And I've already found an issue with the code for removing objects from the array! I cannot reliably use the objects ID that it gets assigned because every time I remove an object the entire array beyond it gets new IDs.
Hm, I have an idea on how to fix this though.

[SolarLune]

It was giving me an error about how I cannot modify a list while the game is running, because it might be unstable.

And I've already found an issue with the code for removing objects from the array! I cannot reliably use the objects ID that it gets assigned because every time I remove an object the entire array beyond it gets new IDs.
Hm, I have an idea on how to fix this though.

That sounds like a problem with looping through lists in Python. Basically, when you remove an object from a list in Python, it skips the next object in the list because the next object gets the previous object's index, which is the one that the loop is on. That could probably also cause a crash if you removed the next to last element in the list.

To solve it, you just make a copy of the list and loop through that, removing what you want from the original list.

[toipot]

It was giving me an error about how I cannot modify a list while the game is running, because it might be unstable.

Could you post the error? I modify stl lists while looping through them all the time and have never had a problem. You definitely need to be careful when doing so but it's not impossible.

And I've already found an issue with the code for removing objects from the array! I cannot reliably use the objects ID that it gets assigned because every time I remove an object the entire array beyond it gets new IDs.
Hm, I have an idea on how to fix this though.

I always end up using the pointer value as a key, which is probably a bad idea