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[BMcC]

I started doing some non character animations.  Starting with, what I'm calling, the claw gate.  Open and close animations.

 

I'll get you your magic magenta images shortly.

That rocks!  You gotta be one step ahead of me, eh? 

[Nikica]

Is this game going to be freeware and for PC(Windows)

Fo sho!

What means this???

[BMcC]

Is this game going to be freeware and for PC(Windows)

Fo sho!

What means this???

"Yes!"  Freeware PC, among other things.

[Nikica]

OK thanks!!! This is going to be on of the best games on the world!!!

[Alec]

This is going to be on of the best games on the world!!!

Aww, yeah.

GODSPEED.

[ravuya]

Eh, In my excitement of my last post I forgot to offer a contribution. If BMcC is coding in C/++ and using cross platform libraries I can produce builds for the mac. (I know its probably too early to offer this, just keep it in mind when this awesome game is released. Mac users like to play games too! :D)

Heyyy, I made the same offer. Maybe we can work together. Us OS X users have to stick together.

QUARTZ 4 LIAF.

[BMcC]

Hey, a couple more things that might make this first build even more special:

- A hanging from a ledge animation.  (I forgot about this, but it should be simple enough.  Try to work with Bezzy's climbing up animation.)

- A fake handheld border.  (Derek?  Arne?  )

NOTE:  The game screen is 256x192, offset by 32px X and 24px Y.  Coincidentally (OR IS IT), the same width and height of the game screen in tiles.

- A full song that matches the mockup level.  (Alec & Arne -- We've got to figure out what format we're using.  When I was expecting to do everything on my own, including the music, I thought I'd do something very non game musicy...  But the retro thing does seem to fit this project better.  My vote is for modules or (preferably, just for the indie-ness of it) pxtone.)

OK BACK TO CODE

EDIT:  Hooray for nested parenthetical speech!

[Bezzy]

Hey, a couple more things that might make this first build even more special:

- A hanging from a ledge animation.  (I forgot about this, but it should be simple enough.  Try to work with Bezzy's climbing up animation.)

I worked from the reference picture in the OP, so if you have a GripIdle, just work from that. The position of Guy his hand (4 pixel square) is just above half way up the extreme right). I guess you could just grab the gif to work off for reference. Oh, and the Grip tile overlaps the block you're gripping to by just 1 pixel (so that you can see Guy's fingers overlap the thing he's gripping).

[BMcC]

Oh, and the Grip tile overlaps the block you're gripping to by just 1 pixel (so that you can see Guy's fingers overlap the thing he's gripping).

That reminds me, the main obstacles are actually drawn above the guy for... reasons.

[Arne]

Re: trap door
PoV > Hahah, that was how I imagined they moved. I didn't think that was that obvious from the thing I drew. I didn't want to do a regular sliding door. (It was supposed to be a door/trap linked to a lever, but I didn't think that level design through, I just wanted it to have a complex look).

As for the other doors, I was thinking they could have some moving parts that unlock it, kind of like a vault door. KA-pssshh.Krrr.Wreeee. or something. I'm not that happy with how my 3 cargo bay doors turned out though. The white little things wre supposed to be hole-cards.

BMcC >
Yes, I think that's a special case [Pulling yourself up one tile from the floor rather than jumping], so I drew it. I guess it might need a special animation and code.

And yes, since the action takes place on a static screen, the guy can't jump all over the place. But he's still agile in the sense that he can do plausible stuff, like getting past a box that's in the way. He's a bit of an acrobat, but on a small scale (and he's old and overweight too I guess). On the more action oriented screens the player could have fun improvising maneouvers to dodge stuff (in the cases the solution can be random/improvised).


Hmmm. The ladders now are from the front. I haven't considered wall ladders (side view) (I think Metroid Fusion had some). Or wall jumps (Like Batman for NES)(Might require suction cups). The animation (and maybe mechanic) coming up from a side ladder could be somehow merged with the one climbing up a ledge?  Would it be redundant with side ladders aswell as front ladders? Maybe such considerations is a bit of a feature creep at this point?

I suppose there has to be a pair of jump shoes somewhere too (and tons of other stuff like that), but I'm a bit worried that character boosting items will make it too blatantly obvious that he doesn't keep them for the next screen. Maybe the stuff he picks up shouldn't be too obviously listed in a visual inventory because then it will show when it disappears. If he did keep stuff, it would be a different game type with zillions of repercussions on design. It would be hell to design the puzzles (It'd essentially be a single big one), and I feel the "pick up game and solve a screen" aspect would be lost. I wanted the puzzles to be selfcontained little minigames kept on a single screen without scrolling to provide a cute overview (and make it obvious that they are independent). All the information you need to solve the puzzle is on the screen, nothing is hidden outside.

...

Warning - while you were typing 9 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Re: Music
As for the music and sound, I didn't think much about it when writing that doc (it was 2 years ago). I think it's important that it doesn't clash with the graphics which are kind of retro, and the large pixels means crisp edges and jaggies, so I guess the music will have to reflect that, aswell as the mood of the colors and level theme. Format... hmmm I'm only familiar with .mod (and the zillions of old obscure formats like JasonPage). I'll have to google pxtone.


[Re: me]
This thread is moving rather quickly. If I'm a bit absent here it's because I have a game cover to do (work).

[DrPetter]

For what it's worth, there might be another indie alternative to pxtone. I've got this music editor I've been working on over the last year or so, and it's especially geared towards retro music. It should be pretty easy to compose in, and I'm going to make a playback lib one of these days anyway - might as well make it sooner than later. At the moment it uses portaudio for output, but anything streaming should do fine. An average song uses about 4% cpu on my 1.9 GHz machine during playback. Song files are rather small, say 50k if you don't use samples.

The songs I posted a few pages back were made in it.

Here are some links:
http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/tutorial_musagi1.html
http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/musagi01prebeta.zip
http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/musagi061008.jpg

Possible issues with this are that other music guys would have to learn how to use the app, and that I probably won't be able to produce a working playback lib for a monday release (though you never know, I can work pretty hard when I have a reason to )

Of course the first milestone release could use sampled music for simplicity, replacing that with a proper format later on.

Animations look awesome btw, folks!

[Alec]

OMG I'm learning pxtone. This is really fun...

First try!

Oops, didn't see the post above. 

[Slash - Santiago Zapata]

I dont know why, but this project heavily reminds me on "Monuments of Mars"

[DrPetter]

Alec: Hey, that's awesome, first try or not!

pxtone songs are also way smaller than what they'd be in musagi format. That app is kind of cute, maybe I should try it too... I don't suppose it does arpeggios though?

[BMcC]

QUICK REPLIES

@Arne:  The platforms are drawn in front of the player, but the ladders will be drawn behind.  I've got some sweet layer ideas for the effects and scenery...

Side ladders like in Fusion could be cool, too.  Not necessarily ladders, either -- maybe climbable surfaces (like vines or a rockface) depending on the theme of the map.

@Alec:  Hah hah, Russians. 

I found pxtone easy to figure out coming from an FL background.  Would you mind working with it?  I mean, whatever you think you could do the best work with.

@DrPetter:  The thing about pxtone is it's made by Pixel, creator of Cave Story.  Which makes it, like, super indie.  But that's another alternative, thanks!

EDIT:  I think it does do arpeggios, but I'm not sure.

[Alec]

I think it'd be awesome... can totally match the retro sound, and its a really well designed lil' app.

[PoV]

Magic magenta tall strips.  40x16

   

 

Do you want frame timings as well?  If so, how do you want them?  In frames (of 60 fps) or some other time fraction?

As for the format, I'd appreciate a high color windows bitmap file with the frames aligned in a horizontal row.  So the size of the bitmap should wind up being 16 times X number of frames by 16.

Oh wow, I extra got it wrong. :D.  I used vertical PNG's.

[Edit]
Open Animation Time:
8, 4, 2, 2, 8, 8

Close Animation Time:
8, 4, 2, 2, 4, 8


Though, the outer 8's are also the same frames as being open or being closed.  If you do loop points in your animation system, the last frames would be the ideal ones to loop to.

[BMcC]

I think it'd be awesome... can totally match the retro sound, and its a really well designed lil' app.

Rock, rock on.  Now, er... does anyone know where I can find how to integrate pxtone playback into the game?  I can't read Japanese.

Oh wow, I extra got it wrong. :D.  I used vertical PNG's.

Haha, that's OK, I can figure it out I'm sure.

Yeah, frames at 60 FPS would be swell.

EDIT:  DrPetter!  I forgot to say, your app looks insane (in a good way). 

[Alec]

I'd say start by guessing?

Include the .h file and the .lib...

The .h will tell you what the parameters are. Looks like HMODULE is the handle to the pttune, but I don't think you need to pass it to play...

I'd guess...

HMODULE hthingy;
pxtone_Tune_Load(hthingy, 0, "something.pttune");
pxtone_Tune_Start(0,0);

[BMcC]

D'oh, I just noticed the pxtone_include directory.  Maybe Shih Tzu or someone could translate it's readme?

So yeah, I'll just link it and start fudging around, I guess.