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[mirrorfish]

This looks cool dude! +100 points for grappling hook

[Octopus Tophat]

Thanks!
Grappling hooks sure are fun, aren't they? 

[aamatniekss]

Looks brilliant! Really love the ideas you got going on.
 Following to check the progress!

[Octopus Tophat]

Thank you very much, sir
The amount of positivity for this game is really making me happy. 
I love you guys, lol.  It's really helping me push through my ambitiousness, if that makes any sense... I'm bad with words 
I might be pushing it here, but does anyone think it could be ready for greenlight/kickstarter?  Everything is super basic, but it seems like the ideas of what the game will be when it's done are coming across well.
If not, that's fine, I'll obviously keep working on it.  I just hope I can start a greenlight page before valve takes away greenlighting.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm getting a lot of positive feedback outside of the forum, too.  Overall, more than I expected to have at this point. It's awesome XD

[aamatniekss]

I doubt about kickstarter, I think you'd need to show atleast some better art and not only placeholders, if you want it to be successful. But for greenlight, in my opinion, you could already put it up there.

[Octopus Tophat]

Huh really? I would think just the opposite.
It seems like kickstarter is more about the ideas, and getting the funding to make those ideas a reality, and greenlight is more about deciding if the game looks good enough to be on steam.  Like, people would see it on greenlight and say "What is this blue square about?  Looks like more indie garbage on greenlight to me".
I don't really know though... that's just how I see it.  But if it's something you'd vote yes to on greenlight, I'll think about doing that soon. 

[aamatniekss]

Well, ideally it would be better if for both you had better art already. But yes, on paper, kickstarter should be just that, but in reality it's not.. If you enter something with placeholder graphics and just a general idea, without anything visual, on how the game will look in the end, you can't expect your campaign to go very well.. You can try though, but I don't see how that would work out. Just take a look at the projects on kickstarter right now. Most of them already got a clear idea, and almost all of the visuals are already in place. Basically almost a complete game, just needing some more content. And see that even a lot of those aren't doing terribly well.
It's just that people really want to see how the final product will look like, and if it's even worth paying for it. Without something to catch the eye, people will probably ignore it.

[Octopus Tophat]

Ok I see. I'll probably still wait until the game is "game-like" enough to produce a trailer and start a greenlight page. But thanks for the help 

[Sebastian Brandt]

Those are some shiny gifs! :D

As for kickstarter/Greenlight then i would follow what Greenlight write sin their guidelines, you need a gameplay video showing gameplay, and a few screenshots.
I would suggest something that lasts 30-60 seconds , and then 4 screenshots.

Also afaik, it is better to go greenlight/kickstarter, when you also set time aside to do a bunch of marketing, which means you need to be a fair distance into development.
People look at graphics, so i highly suggest having atleast one enviroment and some characters designs implemented to near completion.

Gameplay appears solid tho, just keep doing what you are doing and i think this will turn out as a great game!

[Octopus Tophat]

I know I said I'd work on the inventory, and give the physics a break.  But I couldn't help myself.  I've optimized the entity physics to a ridiculous degree and I had to show off the gorgeous results. 
I never mentioned this, but my game supports slow motion. Slow-mo will chime in when you go to the equip screen and when using some items. The sound also changes in speed/pitch, and it sounds awesome.  I'll post some videos eventually 
So here's me spawning lots of gold and altering the timescale.


Also, I've got these nice outlines on entities

I just realized how much smoother the gifs are when I make them small, so I'll be doing that from now on.
The game was running at 60 fps for most of this, but I was watching game grumps in the background... and the game will never even come close to having this many entities moving around at once.  The physics also turns off when the object is stationary. So basically, physics should pretty much never slow down the game.
Ok... NOW I can work on the inventory 

[Sebastian Brandt]

Soo much loot, the slow motion loot spawnage looks epic! :D

[Octopus Tophat]

I've been pretty busy with my personal life lately, but I've been working on text boxes here and there when I can. I need to get text boxes working before I start on the inventory!

Here's the font. These are all the characters supported for now. I can easily add more if I need to, but I don't think I'll need any characters other than these.  Maybe parenthesis.... we'll see.  Oh btw, that last character is a dollar sign $.


I made a little command system inside of text boxes, so I can dynamically change them. I think there's a name for these little "text box commands" but I don't know what they're called. This is used in a lot of games, but I loved how paper mario did it. All the text in that game showed lots of emotion, so that inspired me to do something similar. Here's the actual text that the text box is processing:
"Check out how dynamic this text is!*P20  I can change the speed to talk *S15 really slowly *S5 or it can*S15 ...*P30 *S0  print the whole text box in 1 frame!*P100 *S5  I can also make *r5 rainbows *r0 with *r1 different *r20 speeds!*r0 *P20  I can put pauses in, so...*P50  dialogue can show*S12 ...*S8 *P30  emotion*P70  or*P70 *S2  something like that.*S5 *P70  I can make the text *c"+str(rgb(255,0,0))+" any *c"+str(rgb(0,255,0))+" color *c"+str(rgb(255,255,255))+" you can imagine!*P50  I can even change the color of the *S0 *P10 BOX!*S5 *P50  Let's try *P10 blue-greenish. *C"+str(rgb(0,255,200))+" *P50 NICE!*P50 *c"+str(rgb(100,0,255))+"  I can make text *s8 shake, *s0 with *s12 different *s30 speeds!*s0 *P30 *c"+str(rgb(255,180,0))+"  I've still got a lot more things to add, like different ways of actually printing the text.*P20  These text boxes will be*P20 *S1 *s20 *r8  AWESOME!"

*P=pause length
*c=text color
*C=box color
*S=print speed
*s=shake speed
*r=rainbow speed

I'll be adding a few more commands, like print styles. So I can have characters print by starting at 1 pixel and growing, or having them float down, or having them fade in, or rotating in, or.... any combination of the above! It'll be super cool.
These text boxes aren't just for dialogue, even though it looks like it. I can have the text box print instantly, in one frame; change the size of the text; make the actual box invisible. So these text boxes will be for everything, like dialogue from npc's, and menu and hud text.

I've never made text boxes before, so I don't know if it's the best way of doing it. I didn't do any research at all, cause I couldn't find any articles about it  I don't really feel like explaining how they work, lol. But if anyone's asks, I will.
I also want to add animal-crossing-like voices to dialogue. So rather than each letter making a "tick" sound, I can have it play a sound file specific to that letter. So it'll *kind of* sound like text to speech. You will be able to vaguely make out words just from listening to the text print out.

But as for me, I'm busy moving house and doing other... adult-ish things. If I were you, I wouldn't expect amazing progress with the game in the next few weeks.
But I'm always writing down new ideas and thinking about how to program them even while I'm not actively working on the game.
Thanks for reading :D

[Fayer]

This looks awesome! keep up the good work.

[crusty]

Looks cool so far!  Are you making this from scratch or are you using an engine?

[Octopus Tophat]

This looks awesome! keep up the good work.

Looks cool so far!  Are you making this from scratch or are you using an engine?

Thanks guys! :D
I'm making it with construct classic.  It is an outdated and very buggy editor. It's like gamemaker, but really buggy, lol. If people are experiencing compatibility/performance issues after release, or I, by some miracle, get to port to consoles, I will port it to gamemaker first. Any games I work on after this will also be made in gamemaker, or unity.
So yes, I'm making it in an engine, but I'm not using many pre-built features. I didn't just slap a 'physics object' on to my entities. I am coding everything from scratch. All the editor lets me do is easily make objects, draw with a built in sprite editor, and easily program with a drag and drop event system. But like I mentioned in my introduction post, I know "actual" programming, so I should be able to pick up gamemaker and unity fairly quickly.
As far as I know, my game is the biggest game made in construct classic, with towerclimb being a close second. I'm friends with the dev of towerclimb, so he got me interested in construct, but we both agree it's outdated, buggy, and pretty much shouldn't be used anymore. So... don't use it. You're better off with construct 2 or gamemaker. Or unity/Unreal if you're a smarty pants.
Of course, I love gifs, so here's what it looks like when I work on the game.
This is something I would think is really interesting to see from other people's point of view. I'd love to see this kind of gif from other devs 

The event system is just one LOOOONG list of events and actions. There's lots of categories and nested expanding lists. It can be a bit confusing, so I have notes for almost everything.
Before any super observant people tell me my player is a premade/built in "platforming" object, I know. I will be removing that, and writing my own platforming code from scratch. The built in code interferes with grappling hooks, and I'll need the extra control over player physics later on when I add more items. Other than that, I'm pretty sure everything else is just a sprite with it's code completely written by me. No pre-written code. I'm trying to stay away from pre-made game objects. They're not healthy.
This was a super long response to your question, but I wanted to talk about the editor at some point. I took the opportunity 

[crusty]

Thanks for the detailed reply!  Cool stuff.  Definitely agree with writing the physics code yourself.

Game engines are handy for all that building, rendering, and multi-platform nonsense though!

Looking forward to seeing what you'll do with the gameplay!  I like the attention to detail you seem to be putting into the movement mechanics.

[martincerdeira]

This is a really great idea. I wish we can play this soon!

[Octopus Tophat]

This is a really great idea. I wish we can play this soon!

Thanks! I wish I could play it too! haha 
This game isn't about making money, it's about making the best game I could possibly imagine! That's my goal. Making money from it is just.... a nice bonus 

Thanks for the detailed reply!  Cool stuff.  Definitely agree with writing the physics code yourself.

Game engines are handy for all that building, rendering, and multi-platform nonsense though!

Looking forward to seeing what you'll do with the gameplay!  I like the attention to detail you seem to be putting into the movement mechanics.

Thank you! I've spent a lot of time working on the movement physics. The built in platform object handles controls, jumping, gravity, friction, but everything else like wall jumping, wall sliding, slope physics, ledge grabbing, is written by me, by overriding the pre-written code. This is dumb, which is why I'm ditching the pre-made code, and writing it from scratch.

But I'm glad everyone sees the potential for this game :D It's going to take a lot more work till casuals find it interesting.
While I'm here, lemme show some new music!

Tower dungeon(industrial themed)
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/d0tgbu7zaos1tze/Tower%202.wav?dl=0

Crystal caves(sub level. Not a whole dungeon, but a door in a dungeon can take you here)
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/pb15ktwbj49gxp6/Crystal%20cave.wav?dl=0

[Octopus Tophat]

I've got some new art that I'm pretty satisfied with.

What do you guys think?
I'm pretty sure this art will be final, unless I come up with something better. 
Overall I think the game is shaping up well.
I finally have a character sprite. I call him "wilson".
I still need to get him animated, but I really like how he is now. 

I've implemented the "Procedurally Executed Nature Installation System" Or PENIS for short.
This lets me automatically populate the dungeons with bushes and other natural decorations.
Handling PENIS wasn't easy, but it makes the dungeons feel much more alive and natural. I'm fairly happy with it 
Next month marks the 1 year anniversary of RogueWorld, so you can expect some nice surprises then. I'll give out one teaser right now. The game will be renamed "Wilson: The adventures of Wilson and friends".
This is a much more family friendly name, and I think it really catches the eye.
I'll also be announcing the first DLC, which is called "The second half of the game" and lets you unlock the last 5 dungeons. The first 5 are free, don't worry .
I also have the second DLC pack almost done, and it lets you unlock music, which should be a great addition, and make the game a lot more interesting for people.
I've also decided to take the game in a less violent direction. The game is no longer "roguelike". It's much more fun and interesting now! When you die, you lose some of your gold, but you'll respawn right away. No more punishing deaths.
There are also no guns or melee weapons. I've decided to stick solely on stomping on enemies to get rid of them, similar to the classic "super mario" games. I've found this makes the game much more interesting and less violent. This brings a whole new level of strategy and gameplay possibilities to Wilson:TAOWAF. I'm sure many people will be pleased with these changes.
And with all these additions, I've happily increased the threads progress meter to 20%! The game is now one fifth done!

I also have a sequel already underway called "Wilson 2: The Wilsoning".
This will be slightly more edgy than the original. It's actually a horror game.
Despite the inevitable confusion this will cause, wilson 2 will actually release before wilson 1, on may 20th this year.
Look out for it! And stay tuned for wilson 1, coming Q3 2025.
In completely unrelated news: Happy April fools day! 

[crusty]

Could the PENIS be extended to also handle Tom Hanks whereabouts and placement?

PENIS: THWAP?