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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogs#3 - Arcade Maze Driving Game
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SolarLune
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« Reply #20 on: January 16, 2015, 10:32:09 PM »

ALAS

I wasn't able to get the previous game (Lodemen) done in under a week, and I found it rather difficult to continue. Newer game engines nowadays aren't really made for tile-based gameplay, and Lode Runner's physics system is rather finicky and kind of requires such a tile-based approach. Excuses, excuses. Bottom line, it proved difficult to reproduce for me, so alas (again with the alas) I decided to break it off. I've started on another Shakecan Game that I aim to finish in a week. I'm attempting for this to be much simpler - it's going to be an "Adventures of Lolo"-style puzzle game.

In Adventures of Lolo for the NES, you controlled Lolo as you cleared a series of single-screen rooms. Each room would have a puzzle, usually, and you'd have to figure out how to move blocks, avoid enemies, or traverse the landscape in order to leave.

This game, Kyro, will be similar, but in my game you'll control a monster woman named Maxelena who has the ability to teleport by throwing a device. The game will revolve around using this mechanic to traverse and clear the puzzles in a similar manner as the Lolo games. The game is, again, being created in the (still in an incomplete, pre-alpha status) BDX game engine.



While I do think I should be able to handle the gameplay fairly successfully, I'm not sure how many rooms and puzzles I'll be able to make before the week ends. Given that puzzle games require, well, puzzles to work, I might not be able to get very far with this one. Guess I'll see. :1
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SolarLune
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« Reply #21 on: January 19, 2015, 09:16:34 PM »

X-Post time!

Hey, there. So, I'm a ways into Kyro, the second ShakeCan Game I've been working on for a few days. If you don't already know, my ShakeCan Games label applies to games I'm making with a goal of finishing in a very short period of time - generally just 1 week.



So far, I have a couple of the basics of the game down - you move around and can trigger switches. Each switch can trigger any number of other "switchable" objects. Your goal in each level is to get to the stair-set, as that will allow you to move on to the next room.

(I think) I've yet to show or explain the "gimmick" behind this game to not make it a pure "Adventures of Lolo"-like production, but it's turning out well nonetheless. Now, "gimmick" can kind of sound like a bad term, but I think it can just describe a trick or additional ability to traverse a puzzle that isn't present in other titles. I think many good puzzle games employ gimmicks, especially ones on PC after the popularity of Portal 1 and 2. Those were two good games that really developed and expanded upon the portal-hopping gimmick to be interesting and engaging. It wasn't too difficult to grasp or work with, and even relatively simple puzzles required a good amount of thought to work through. So in other words, I hope the gimmick in Kyro will be simple, interesting, and fun to work with for players in the end. Anyway, I hope I can keep up the pressure! Thanks for reading / watching!
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« Reply #22 on: January 20, 2015, 05:47:35 PM »

As I said on twitter, I really like the idea behind shakecan. We're looking to do cycles of a similar thing in between "bigger" games. This one looks interesting so far, keen to see how you go with it - not much to talk about yet though Smiley will there be any combat in between pressing switches? Is there anything to collect/trade/whatever?
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SolarLune
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« Reply #23 on: January 21, 2015, 02:18:47 AM »

@Geti - Hey, I'm glad you like the idea of it. I hope to finish stuff quickly and keep things going. Thanks.

Nope, no combat or trading; only one thing you'll be able to collect, which is the tool that the puzzling's gonna kinda revolve around. It's a technologically enhanced jewel that will allow the player to teleport. The puzzles will take that and run with it (hopefully).

Anyway, today I implemented transitions into the next room:



And restarting after you screw up something royal.



I also got the teleportation mechanic working OK; it just needs to be polished and refined.
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Geti
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« Reply #24 on: January 21, 2015, 03:17:39 AM »

Looks good, though the transition is a bit lacklustre imo - could use a quick fade and drop down from above or something instead, but that's just preference probably. Love the addition of resetting, be sure to have a little sign in that pit about resetting as a "tutorial".
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SolarLune
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« Reply #25 on: January 24, 2015, 08:49:09 AM »

^ Did! The transition's just slow because I was going to add some sort of point total scoring thing, but that's probably not going to happen; it's pretty unnecessary. I might add a little celebratory sprite, though.

Really short post, but I got the teleportation mechanic working, which is good. You press a key to throw a teleportation gem (a dimensional quartz enhanced by a lost technology), and can press the key again to teleport to the position the quartz hits. You can recall the quartz as well, in case you screw up a throw.

The game's shaping up, though I've, again, already passed my mark for a week. Still have a ton of stuff to do, but it seems like it's not that much since most of it is just placing stuff I've made already. Shocked



I'll continue as best as I can until it's done, though! ≖‿≖
« Last Edit: January 25, 2015, 07:47:57 PM by SolarLune » Logged

Geti
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« Reply #26 on: January 25, 2015, 05:58:18 PM »

Yeah looks like it's worth pursuing Smiley keen to play it once it's done.
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SolarLune
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« Reply #27 on: January 27, 2015, 02:21:48 AM »

@Geti - Thanks! Hope it will be.

X-Post from my blog:

Yo! Soooo I missed the week deadline that I was aiming for, unfortunately (I should have been done around Friday the 24th). Oh, well; I think I've learned to adjust my expectations according to how much I (by now) know I'll work on my projects. So, I think I'll just try to make something every two weeks or so, since it seems like I can hit that pretty reliably. I will finish Kyro, though; I hope to have it done by the end of this week (at the LATEST before the end of January).

As far as development actually goes, it's going well. I do some additions and work on the engine I'm building Kyro on (BDX) while I'm working on Kyro itself as well, so it's kinda slow in some respects. However, it means that I have pretty good control over how things work and have a goodly amount of knowledge of how the engine works, which is cool.



I've gotten teleportation done and looking pretty spiffy with some particle effects, along with an enemy that just kinda waltzes around. Touch it, and you die, though in the tradition of Lolo games, it's not particularly dangerous looking. I plan (planned) to have multiple enemies, but I'm not sure, as I don't want this to grow into a full-blown game that takes a lot of time to create. I actually also planned to have simple combat, but wisely slashed that outta hand to focus on the puzzle gameplay. I already have five levels done, and making more shouldn't be difficult at all, so I should be able to hit my target time. There's not too many game elements that I've implemented yet that really "change" the gameplay, but it's already looking and feeling like a cool little puzzle game. Although, I'm already looking forward to the next game, haha. :d



EDIT: Huh, these GIFs cut off. Oh, well.

Anyway, thanks for reading! See ya!
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BomberTREE
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« Reply #28 on: January 31, 2015, 03:20:29 PM »

Heck yes, keep it up man  Smiley I'll be playing it when you finish
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shpen
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« Reply #29 on: January 31, 2015, 09:07:19 PM »

Visually it feels like a DS Pokemon/Zelda game. Looks cool!
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SolarLune
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« Reply #30 on: February 01, 2015, 02:09:30 AM »

Thanks, guys!

X-Post from my blog:

So Kyro's coming along nicely; not completely done, but not far away. I'm sitting on around 13 levels (screens) so far; I'd like to break the 20-puzzle-mark, I think, considering there are some "introductory / tutorial" rooms that just introduce mechanics over actually being puzzles.

Hopefully I'll finish it soon (I wanted to get it done before a certain date a few times, but kept passing it up). The game should turn out pretty fun, though.

Anyway, (in addition to other things and working on the engine the game's based on), I got swapping in. You can swap locations with certain objects (usually ones that can move on their own) by throwing your gem next to that object.



Fans are also implemented - they can be triggered with a button press (if they're not on already) and can lift lighter objects (not the main character, haha).



Also, "switchable" objects turn green when they're triggered, which is helpful when you're looking to see what a button does.

Anyway, thanks for reading!
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SolarLune
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« Reply #31 on: February 03, 2015, 02:34:27 AM »

Input mapping's done, and I designed it in such a way that it should be no problem to re-use, along with the options screen, for new BDX projects. That's great, because it was a

h
u
g
e

pain to implement. I spent hours trying to save and load JSON in Java before finally giving up and just going with plain text. Glad to be pretty much done with it. Got a couple of more levels done, and I finished the title screen, as well. Check out this video I did on the process of pixelling the main sprite:

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SolarLune
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« Reply #32 on: February 09, 2015, 02:30:37 AM »

YOOOOOOO

Kyro's done!

Get it here!



a video for ya!

Thanks for watching development!
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SolarLune
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« Reply #33 on: February 14, 2015, 12:39:42 AM »

X-Post of sorts from IndieDB:

Hey, there.

So the next game that I'm working on is going to be a Famicom Detective-like game, where you have to solve a murder that takes place in a school (so far, that's the plan). The "codename" for the game is "Famidet" for that reason; I'll probably change it soon once I get an idea of the plot. The idea at this point is that you're a teacher at the school, but that definitely doesn't make a lot of sense. Then again, it doesn't really have to, haha. It just has to be fun and engaging.



As usual (kinda), I'm making this game with Java in the pre-alpha LibGDX-based game engine, BDX. It's going okay so far; I've got a couple of the commands working. You can talk with the person about different topics that they know about, and I built it to be easy to change that depending on the state of the game. This should allow you to learn more about the crime at hand, gradually growing in understanding what the situation is by talking to different people and taking what you learn to others still.

Speaking of flags, the game state (what you've done) is comprised almost entirely of string pairs; one for the flag name, and one for the flag state (i.e. "talkedToGymTeacher", "true"). This should mean that it was trivial to set up saving game data (just save the name of the flag and the value to a text file), and it should be easy to handle the game state as well (no need to transfer save data to the game and back; the save data is the game data, in a sense). This would make it easy to edit the save data to cheat at the game, but this is a game made in a couple of weeks - I've gotta cut myself a little slack, at least, haha.

Much like the Ace Attorney games, I've built the underlying framework in such a way that the character you're talking to can emote heavily depending on what they're saying. Rather than simply setting dialog, each character has a behavior list that they step through when talked to, which means that they should be able to support a lot of different actions (saying something, setting their emotion, spawning an object or flashing the screen, disappearing, slowing down the message speed, etc). This'll make it a lot more interesting to talk to the characters, hopefully.




Above is an example character "idling" and talking in both normal and sad states.

The "Think" command will be used to process what you learn and continue the plot, if you reach a point where you have gathered all available information. At least, that's what I think it'd be used for. You can also use it to be reminded of what, in general, you should do next. I might trim this feature down (or even cut it out) in the future depending on if I want to press on with it or not - limited time, and all that.

This indeed is looking to be quite the challenge; I'll see if I can succeed in just another week or two!

Anyway, thanks for watching and reading!
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SolarLune
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« Reply #34 on: February 21, 2015, 02:31:02 AM »

Yo!

So I've made some progress over the past few days.

The game is going to be built on a series of if-statements. I'm going to directly wire the gameplay of what happens directly to the save game data flags, which is a hashmap (dictionary) of strings (flag names) to strings (values). So, for example, your inventory starts off as a blank string (""), and adding something to it is just adding whatever the object's name is to the save data's "inventory" key ("pieceofchalk"). When I want to save, I just need to save each flag and its corresponding value out to a file. It's trivial for a player to cheat and change the game, but I don't really mind about that; this game is being made over a couple of weeks, after all!

Anyway, I haven't been doing too much with the actual game development, as some things have come up that could be good for me that I'm working on. Most of the game is writing, though, so just thinking about it is making progress. I've been drawing different scenes and characters as well; the top-right scene isn't finished.



The characters have gotten a bump from 64x64 to 96x96 in their sprite sheet size, and I'm using perspective grids to draw the scenes, rather than going freehand. They're really, really useful to map out and plan the shape of a room. I'd be having a lot more trouble without it, for sure.

Anyway, thanks for watching. Hope the game'll be fun to play!
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SolarLune
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« Reply #35 on: March 13, 2015, 06:52:19 AM »

IndieGames.com wrote about Kyro!

WTF

EDIT: Oh, I should probably write a bit.

Well, I dunno if I'm gonna continue with the Famicom Detective-like; I'm having some trouble writing it, and people don't seem as hyped about it as other stuff, so I'll work on something simpler, I think.
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« Reply #36 on: March 13, 2015, 07:38:25 AM »

Oh, that's too bad :C I really like these kinds of games. Hopefully you will return to it some day.
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Superb Joe
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« Reply #37 on: March 13, 2015, 10:30:55 AM »

in the vein of the "hard boiled" detective tradition, please name the lead detective: Dick Liquor
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kraed
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« Reply #38 on: March 29, 2015, 05:21:54 AM »

I facking love this thread, man! How's progress?
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Superb Joe
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« Reply #39 on: March 29, 2015, 10:57:24 AM »

he saw my insanely good suggestion and has been too inspired to post updates because he's working so fast and brilliantly
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