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[Loren Schmidt]

Neat idea. I've always been interested in this sort of social town development game (though I'm coming at it more from Animal Crossing angle). The backgrounds look good in particular.

P.S.- one thing that might look nice is to put little tufts of foliage around the bases of trees, to soften the transition into the ground.

[Angelo]

You are right, but I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna make trees appear exclusively on fresh grass. If they don't, I have to make the foliage adjust to their appropriate version depending on the ground (dry grass, dead grass, dirt, etc), which is something that is still pretty low on the "Bothers me" scale.

Thanks for the reply! 

[Türbo Bröther]

Mister Girl!

Brilliant!

When will you be adding Mr. Busy, Mr. Chatterbox and Mr. Cool?

[Angelo]

I'm polishing some things up, in order to release a functional demo of what I've made so far. This means I need to enrich the interface with certain gui elements like tickboxes, dropdown menus, sliders, and cheesy self-referring buttons.

Mister Girl!

Brilliant!

When will you be adding Mr. Busy, Mr. Chatterbox and Mr. Cool?

I get the feeling that one or more of these are certain cult figures I ought to know about? 

[mokesmoe]

I get the feeling that one or more of these are certain cult figures I ought to know about? 

It's a series of children books. The only one I remember reading is Mr. Noisy though.

[Iamthejuggler]

I don't remember a Mr. Men character called Mr. Girl!

[Angelo]

I don't remember a Mr. Men character called Mr. Girl!

That would probably confuse children...

[One of the Beatles]

I think you should use different waterfall tiles. These just seem so... unnatural I guess.
Other than that, sounds like a nice game. About the houses, how big will they be?
1 tile or bigger? Or will it be like, residencial 1x1 tile, commercial 3x2 etc.?

[Angelo]

I think you should use different waterfall tiles. These just seem so... unnatural I guess.
Other than that, sounds like a nice game. About the houses, how big will they be?
1 tile or bigger? Or will it be like, residencial 1x1 tile, commercial 3x2 etc.?

Thanks for the feedback. I will improve the waterfalls at some point.

And 1 tile for a house would be a little narrow don't you think? 1 tile is the size of a character, or a tree, or a chair. Did you mean city blocks or something?

[One of the Beatles]

He. I wwasn't really thinking about the actual size, but more about the scale between houses and stuff. I guess I didn't actually thought it through entirely.
What I meant was, since it will be randomly generated, will there be huge houses and small ones, or will it be a fixed size with different graphics?
Hmm. Well, I wasn't able to express myself clearly, but did you get what I mean?

Also, are there going to be other cities? And then maybe you would have to 'compete' for population? Like, if your town's people start moving to another town, maybe you could lower taxes or, dunno, build a theater. Get it?

[Angelo]

He. I wwasn't really thinking about the actual size, but more about the scale between houses and stuff. I guess I didn't actually thought it through entirely.
What I meant was, since it will be randomly generated, will there be huge houses and small ones, or will it be a fixed size with different graphics?
Hmm. Well, I wasn't able to express myself clearly, but did you get what I mean?

Also, are there going to be other cities? And then maybe you would have to 'compete' for population? Like, if your town's people start moving to another town, maybe you could lower taxes or, dunno, build a theater. Get it?

The existance of other towns and the danger of your townie's moving to other more attractive towns is an interesting idea. Though if there's gonna be other towns, they're gonna be only in statistics, not actual towns that you can see.

[One of the Beatles]

they're gonna be only in statistics, not actual towns that you can see.

Yes yes, that was my original idea.

[Angelo]

I just prepared a (new) demo!

• The tutorial explains everything you have to know about the demo! If I forgot something, ask here.
• There are many problems. Some I know, and some I don't know. Feel free to report them here.
• I also very much want to hear your suggestions about how things (that are currently in the demo) could be better.
• Lastly I want to hear what would you like to see next!

DOWNLOAD: Start-a-Town! v0.0.2

[FiaStarta]

Looks lovely. You know what I'd want in this? To control a little guy's life, just like in Millenium Interactive's Robin Hood. That game had GTA-like freedom. It was nice to see seasons passing, shoot a guard and see his body taken to the cemetary, etc.

Mister Bloated Head!

Strange, on the first screenshot I was imagining much smaller people, like 1/3 of that guy.

[Angelo]

New release.

Download Start-a-Town! v0.0.3 (28/7/09)
3.11 MB (self-extracting exe)
3.01 MB (rar)
3.21 MB (zip)

By the way I need a favor. I want you to tell me your fps when you start a new game, without necessarily having built anything on the map. Along with your specs if that's possible.

Code:

Start-a-Town! Version History
0.0.3 - NEW FEATURES
	- New custom mouse cursors
	- Walking made easier by use of tile highlighting.
	- Better mouse/tile detection, currently used for walking. Might be unstable.
	- Changed trees from tiles to objects. 
	- Tiles, cliffs and walls in front of the currently highlighted tile made transparent, for better visibility.
	- Added togglable fps counter.

	FIXES
	- Tile level tool is hopefuly working now.
	- Fixed bug when clicking on another tool without canceling currently selected one.
	- Cleaned up some code.
	- Some pathfinding improvements. Can now catch fish if the fish school is exactly near the shore.
	- Updated tutorial text, mentioning that Control-clicking deletes already placed trees and 	walls.

[gorgyme]

Your hyperlinks are badly formatted in your posts.

Equally, a problem I've had in v0.0.2 as well as 0.0.3 is that the size of the window is too big for my screen meaning I can either move up but not down, or down but not up.

Full screen would be a nice default size, or something small enough for 1024x768 to use all the nav.

[Angelo]

Thanks.

[gorgyme]

Oh - just saw your question as well - my FPS rides at 20-22

[Angelo]

Ouch that's pretty low. What are your specs? I'm running it at a constant 60 fps, although my other pc which is very old (p4) runs it at around 30-40. I have to use delta time or it will be unplayable under such conditions. I wonder if there's something I'm doing wrong or it's just Game Maker that's slow.

[gorgyme]

lowering my res to 800x600 gives me a 33-36 FPS. Keeping in mind that my laptop is pretty old, at 1.50 GHz

--edit--

Problem with the toggle camera view. Default follows the mouse. I toggle it to follow the character fine enough, but when I toggle it for a second time it stops following the character - as opposed to reverting back to following the mouse. Subsequent toggles flick between following the character and not.