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[Rory]

Yeah, so as I said in Priorities I'm working on the menu system, and this is what I have so far. Basically, Local play defaults to 2 players, but you can change it in options. The players can choose between Quote and Naija.

Any suggestions, comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated, as this is the first time I have ever touched GML and I have learned a billion years of stuff from this  (props to Nightshade  )

[Soulliard]

I found one little error, where you forgot to include parentheses, but once I fixed that it ran very nicely. It looks like we've got a solid foundation to work with here.

[Rory]

Yeah I did that a couple of times. I thought I'd fixed all of them though.

[Xion]

yeah game_end should be game_end()
When going downwards to try and quit, it skips over quit and goes back to the top. Works cycling back upwards though.

[William Broom]

Not bad work! A bit of feedback:
- I found it kind of confusing what buttons you press to select from each menu though. In the main menu it's enter, then on the character select it's different for each player and then space to confirm them all, and then on the stage select it's only player 1's attack button that does anything. If I were you, I'd make it so that you don't need to press a button to select your character - just move over them and they'll instantly be selected. Then, make it that every menu button can be selected with space and enter.
- You can't select Nikujin! 
- There doesn't seem to be any way to go back to a previous menu. Escape would be the most intuitive button, though I think players would appreciate an on-screen button as well.

The visual design was weirdly appealing though.

[Rory]

Yeah I noticed the quit skipping. Maybe it doesn't want you to leave!

You can't select Nikujin because I don't have him at the moment (will do that now. Actually, will do all this stuff now.)

OT: Aso how do I get an XBox 360 controller to work with a PC? Going to a friend's house tomorrow, gonna be three of us.

Anyways, thanks!

[Rostiger]

Hmm, I'm too stupid to get this to run. When I try to start I get the error

Code:

FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Enter> Key
for object Titleselect:

COMPILATION ERROR in code action
Error in code at line 12:
   }

at position 2: Assignment operator expected.

But when I look into the script file 'action' I can't find any missing parentheses.
Could someone help a coding idiot, please? 

[William Broom]

Probably you need to change game_end to game_end()

[Skofo]

Mind uploading this in a general executable/video format?

[kyn]

Seconded.

[Rory]

Oh yeah sorry.

[Skofo]

Huh. Kinda simplistic..

Would be nice if it were more dynamic and had more stuff going on, it'd reflect more on the supposed action of the gameplay.

P.S. I still don't agree that this should be made in Game Maker, and I don't like the direction (nor the pace; this thing was started in 2007, right? it should have been finished a month later) that some aspects of this are going. Would there be any problems with me branching out and working on a Flash version (Indie Smash or something) and using the same sprites? Or are they only for use in Indie Brawl?

[Rory]

Would be nice if it were more dynamic and had more stuff going on, it'd reflect more on the supposed action of the gameplay.

Well, this is just the system. My idea for the background was four AIs battling, but since we don't have AI yet I can't do that.
The whole point of this thread is that it is about the system, not the visual style. I mean, you're not seriously suggesting we're going to use that title splash thingy, are you?

[Rostiger]

Huh. Kinda simplistic..

Would be nice if it were more dynamic and had more stuff going on, it'd reflect more on the supposed action of the gameplay.

P.S. I still don't agree that this should be made in Game Maker, and I don't like the direction (nor the pace; this thing was started in 2007, right? it should have been finished a month later) that some aspects of this are going. Would there be any problems with me branching out and working on a Flash version (Indie Smash or something) and using the same sprites? Or are they only for use in Indie Brawl?

I have to agree with Rory, first the functionality and THEN the fancy dynamic bling bling stuff...

And yes, this project has been started a while ago, but it kind of died in it's beginning and was revived just a couple of weeks ago. In my opinion the pace is quite fine (the programmers are way ahead of the artists) especially because I don't think we are in much of a hurry here. As long as it gets done it doesn't matter if it takes one month or six.
But I guess, if you want to branch out and show us all how it's do be done, it shall be fine with me... 

[EDIT]Hmm, been thinking about it and have to revert my statement. I mean, this is a community project after all and I think it should also be treated as such...
But that's just my 2 cents...[/EDIT]

[kyn]

Skofo, the idea started in a thread in 2007 but the real work only started in June or July this year when Nightshade started picking up on the project again, so if you ask me, it's going pretty damn good and smooth. If you haven't seen the latest build, you can check it here

[Soulliard]

Would be nice if it were more dynamic and had more stuff going on, it'd reflect more on the supposed action of the gameplay.

Dude. This is just a prototype, not the completed version. We need to make sure it's functional before we add all the bells and whistles.

P.S. I still don't agree that this should be made in Game Maker, and I don't like the direction (nor the pace; this thing was started in 2007, right? it should have been finished a month later) that some aspects of this are going.

It was only started seriously in August of this year. I think we're making great progress.

Would there be any problems with me branching out and working on a Flash version (Indie Smash or something) and using the same sprites? Or are they only for use in Indie Brawl?

This is a community project, and was so from the start. That's the whole point of this project. Stubbornly making your own version to compete with that of the community is just petty.

As for using the sprites, you'd need to ask the artists' permission. And, for that matter, you'd need the permission of the original designers of the games.

[Skofo]

Skofo, the idea started in a thread in 2007 but the real work only started in June or July this year when Nightshade started picking up on the project again, so if you ask me, it's going pretty damn good and smooth. If you haven't seen the latest build, you can check it here

I saw it, and for 4 months of work that's pretty damn disappointing.  You can take Game Maker's platform example, throw in different sprites and a slightly more complex camera system and you would get that.

This is a community project, and was so from the start. That's the whole point of this project. Stubbornly making your own version to compete with that of the community is just petty.

Hey, don't get territorial, now. I don't mean to compete with the community. As a game that's meant to join together the characters and worlds of different games made by people in every corner of the indie game development universe, I don't think that it would be appropriate for anyone other than a community of indie gamers to develop this. What I was suggesting was going another way with things. While you seem to know perfectly where you are and where you're going with this from the way you're talking about it, it would be unwise to think that the direction you are going with the project and the management of it is supremely perfect and could not be better in any different way, even if it is contributed to by a community, at your discretion.

My current main issue with this project is its management. While a forum may suit many people's needs as a project and resource management system, I feel that it is very messy and inefficient. Key points, resources, announcements and general progress on the project are spread around everywhere in forum threads and posts, and confusingly mingled in with other more or less important parts of the project. This is expected, as this is a forum, not something that is built for managing community projects. One fundamental difference between this project and my hypothetical branch of it is that my project would use something more specialized to manage it, perhaps Trac, Project.net or a wiki, provided that it lets the community operate and give input on whatever aspect of the game they please, easily. That way, community members who want to contribute to the project or view its progress could do so via efficient, organized web pages instead of reading through a dozen or couple dozen forum threads and the posts in them.

Also, in the spirit of better management and efficiency, Game Maker would most likely be ditched for a more open, neutral, cross-platform and efficient software development language or software. Efficient community projects are built with extensibility, manageability and adaptability, and Game Maker makes it pretty hard to do all of those things. Game Maker projects are built from one file containing all of the code, art and just about every aspect unless you hack around with it to make it compile from external files in a backwards manner, which is inexcusably inefficient. Game Maker also has a very specialized way of handling resources, which makes it easy for new developers to build what they want, but tends to get in the way of people who know what they're doing. Not to mention that only the part of the community willing to pay $20 for Game Maker would be able to experiment with the project. All of this makes it hard for a team, even more for a community, to organize, add, edit or take away anything from the game. Of course, the programming language, development software and everything else would all in the end be decided by the community. I used the idea of a branched Flash version merely as a hypothetical situation to ask if I would be able to use the brilliant sprites already made for an indie fighter project, as I was not sure how open they are.

The permissions to use resources and designs for the project would be taken care of, naturally.


 

[Rory]

Hey, GM seems to be working fine so far. Why "fix" what isn't broken?

I do have to concede that the management is somewhat messy. However, I believe that the solution is for everyone who is coding, once they have finished coding a character or stage, to upload to, say, willhostforfood.com and PM Nightshade with the URL. Then one person would have all of it to put together incrementally.
Sure, it may not be the most efficient way of doing it, but it would work, and we're hardly in a hurry to complete it.

Also, we are using pixel art, and flash uses vectors and shit. Due to the fact that most of the games we are using are done pixellated, it is truer to their roots. Can anyone imagine a vectorised Cave Story? In my opinion, vector art generally looks amateurish. It would be a lot harder to use pixel art in flash.

[Skofo]

Hey, GM seems to be working fine so far. Why "fix" what isn't broken?

I do have to concede that the management is somewhat messy. However, I believe that the solution is for everyone who is coding, once they have finished coding a character or stage, to upload to, say, willhostforfood.com and PM Nightshade with the URL. Then one person would have all of it to put together incrementally.
Sure, it may not be the most efficient way of doing it, but it would work, and we're hardly in a hurry to complete it.

Also, we are using pixel art, and flash uses vectors and shit. Due to the fact that most of the games we are using are done pixellated, it is truer to their roots. Can anyone imagine a vectorised Cave Story? In my opinion, vector art generally looks amateurish. It would be a lot harder to use pixel art in flash.

I'm not trying to fix anything. I only talked about branching out the project and make a more efficiently managed and community-made version. Leaving Game Maker within it was merely an idea for it. It is not like there is much functionality in the Game Maker version yet. If you were to start this project again from the core, wouldn't you want to choose a platform that was more effective and community-friendly? Also, the longer a project takes to progress, the less morale and energy the community behind it has, so I'd say that removing any blatantly disorganized and detrimental aspects of the project is a pretty good priority.

A big problem with having one person who rules everything and puts everything together is that it isn't very efficient(jeez, I've been saying that word a lot) nor community-friendly. Not only is it complicated and time-consuming for one designated leader to scout everything out in a couple dozen forum threads and put it together, but it is also hard for anyone else working on the project to make something that doesn't conflict with something else someone else has posted somewhere or PM'd to the project leader.

I didn't say that this would be made in Flash, I only suggested it. Flash can blit and use pixel art very effectively. More efficiently than Game Maker, I might add. http://www.8bitrocket.com/newsdisplay.aspx?newspage=8141 On top of that, using Flash's vector movie clips inside the project would require for the artists to buy the proprietary Flash. What I had in mind is using solely the free and open-source Flex SDK to program everything, which compiles into Flash format. As I said, though, Flash is only one of the many examples I could've used. A very useful aspect of Flex, C++, Java, Python and others that's missing in Game Maker is that you can easily make an extensible core skeleton engine, and have all of the add-on scripts, art and other resources in separate, organized files, so it is easy for a team, community, or even a single person to build on top of and experiment with the engine easily. That and several other little inefficient tidbits of Game Maker is why I would prefer straying away from it, but as I have mentioned before, this would all be subject to the community's opinion.

[Gainsworthy]

If it helps, by "smoothly", kYn means it hasn't collapsed under its own weight, chaos and bickering, never to be seen again.


Or chucked a Balding's Quest and vanished into the aether.


We disorganised folks down here, Skofo. In my eyes, this current layout is running smooth. Shifting would create a fair bit of further dis-organisation. Unless, of course, you can provide that nice skeleton you suggested?