*Ahem*... I wrote a blog that contained a story about the development of my current project, Puzlien, so, since I'm lazy and all, I'm going to paste it here instead of writing something new.
There are probably references to 64digits.com in the below paragraphs that depending on who you are, you may or may not know what I'm talking about.
Puzlien is a platform/puzzle game that I began development on in early January, sprites have always been a little bit of a problem for me, so Puzlien was designed graphically to be retro-ish. Black and white 16x16 blocks with the occasionally smaller characters and other various objects, while some will go on towards 32x32 in size. Puzlien began as an idea, obviously… that was a stupid statement, so ignore it. I had a platform engine already made up for a few previous projects I had originally intended to finish last year, but as usual I lost interest in those projects, and used the engine in Puzlien.
While developing Puzlien, the engine evolved into a much better and smoother engine than it previously was, the few people that played the latest demo, which was released January 31st, well, February 1st but I still called it the January 31st demo, liked the engine. However I can’t take full credit for the engine, as it was partially designed by Cpsgames last year for Stick Wilson, that project that I never finished which is in my projects page here at 64D, while he basically smoothed it out from what I originally had, I did do some upgrades, but I still can’t take full credit for it.
The first Puzlien demo was released January 10th, it contained only two levels, no sound effects or music, and was visually different, as well as complications with the engine, and blocks. The demo was full of bugs, but that was to be expected with a first early demo. I didn’t originally intend to release a demo then, but people who I had talked to about Puzlien wanted to play it, so I ultimately decided to release it.
After the release of the demo, I ran into a problem. Every time I tried to run the game, I always got the unexpected error message, I couldn’t figure it out other than it always happened when I added just one object to the first room, no matter what object it was. I had someone look over the source but they couldn’t find the cause either, so I stopped working on it for about a week or two, but eventually decided to start fresh with a new file. I think I originally merged the game with the new file, but it still contained the unexpected error so I believe I started from scratch.
After all that, guess what happened? “An unexpected error occurred while running the game”. I eventually found out what was causing it, apparently when an object contained a create event in the first room, an unexpected error occurred. I needed to use create events, so I came up with the simple solution of adding a title screen to the game, and I haven’t been prompted with an unexpected error since. *knocks on wood*
January 31st the second demo was released, it contained 4 levels, and music and sound effects. I wanted feedback on the game, feedback is what either motivates me or discourages me during the development process, without feedback, I’ll lose interest in a project because apparently no one cares about it enough to provide me with even an “It sucks”, with discouraging feedback, I’ll either take their complaints in mind, brush it off, or if I get a shit ton of discouraging feedback I’ll scrap a project. With good feedback I’ll most likely be motivated enough to continue development, and be more likely to take their suggestions into consideration.
<_< I strayed away from the point. So, the feedback with demo 2 was surprising good, a couple of the few people that actually gave feedback liked the game, but most of the people didn’t like the retro-ish graphics, which is really unfortunate but I have taken that into consideration as well. Yes, I posted it on the GMC, the only reply I got first stated that it wasn’t an original idea, well who gives a shit if it’s original or not. Apparently he didn’t like the controls either, and thought that the arrows would suit the game better, I on the other hand like WASD better, but I suppose arrows would have been better for some people. He didn’t like the graphics if I recall, as I do know they aren’t exceptionally good.
Others didn’t like the file size for the demo. But 2mb is as small as I could get it and that was in a .7z file, which I believe is the reason why only 8 people downloaded the demo, because they’re too lazy to get a damn zip program that will unzip those files. At any rate, I did stop development on it because of the only 8 downloads, just because that’s the way I fly, I jump to conclusions too quickly and take shit online a little too seriously.
So then a few days ago I went back to an old forum I used to frequent, and noticed that someone replied to my Puzlien topic, and they liked it, and that’s what encouraged me enough to come back and work on it again.
I’m planning to change the game drastically, visually and gameplay wise. So far I’ve implemented two control schemes, the default uses WASD and the alternative uses the arrow keys, just to satisfy those who prefer the arrows to the letters. I’ve also finally added level 5, as well as another gameplay element.
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Okay, so Puzlien is being developed with Game Maker 7 Pro, so far after yesterdays blog release, I've added another level (bringing the total so far to 6 levels) and implemented the biggest puzzle that I have thought of thus far. I'm not planning on released another demo now, and I might not release any more demos but just wait until... if I finish this project.
Here's a download link to the second demo which I released January 31st:
http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=52551And here are 5 new screenshots that were taken after I finished with the two new levels:
Any questions, comments or suggestions? :3