next »

[Angelo]

Hmm sounds like a bottlneck at drawing the viewport? I'll be damned if there's a way to work around that in Game Maker.

Thanks for the info! It's good to know. Anyway, with delta time the game will play with the same speed regardless of the fps.

--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.

That was a stupid bug to miss... Thanks! It's fixed for the next version.

[Triplefox]

I don't have a mousewheel on my laptop's touchpad. Alternative, please?

Also, "Brooks Crackletackle?" mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Angelo]

Doesn't it have a slider thingy at the right side?
One alternative for mousewheel-ing coming up!

[Rostiger]

Wow, quite a heap of a project you are pushing here. Looks really stylish and intersting so far. It's really mostly a toy still, but that's always a good start.
Are you working on this all alone? How long did it take you to get this far with the project?
Great work so far, I'll definitely keep an eye on this! 

[Angelo]

Thanks for the comment
Yep I'm working on it alone since February, but considering the breaks I took I'd say the actual time I've put on it until now must be about half of that.

[LeFishy]

This game looks awesome. Sadly I'm running OSX at the moment but I will try it as soon as I go home. I have to say the character sprites do look bigger than the background tiles would suggest.

I wish you luck on this endeavor. Mostly because a little Dwarf Fortress esque town building game is my dream project so seeing someone else succeed first will be a confidence boost.

[Angelo]

Actually, their heads are big I wanted to keep their size small but still be able to give them facial expressions.

Have you started your own project?

[LeFishy]

My city building project? Not really started work on it yet. I am always nothing things down though. It is kind of a big thing so I don't want to get going without at least a basic idea of what I am doing

[Angelo]

I think you should just dive into it

[LeFishy]

I tell you it really is tempting. I'm struggling to work out what I am working on at the moment.

I just don't want to give up on another project so soon. We'll see.

[PleasingFungus]

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Mouse Event for Glob Left Pressed
for object obj_tile_paint:

In script tile_paint:
In script tile_update:
Error in code at line 62:
       current_tree = tile_get_background((ds_map_find_value(global.trees, current_tile)).tree)

at position 89: Unknown variable tree




While placing a big brush of some sort of flower/shrub thing.

Otherwise, seems fairly nifty! (Could maybe do with a click-and-drag way of placing tiles - clicking for each placement is a bit cumbersome. But that's maybe nitpicking.)

[Angelo]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I'll do a click and drag way of placing tiles. Already did it with walls for the next version

[Angelo]

I've created a meebo chat room and embedded it in the game blog! Come and chat live if you want
Visit the blog or go directly to http://www.meebo.com/room/startatownbe060915/

And a quick update to some of the new stuff I'm working on for the next versions.
- Random map generation (just a perlin noise implementation for the time being)
- NPCs. AI and dialogue.
- Skills
- Farming
- Task system. Queue up tasks (like walking) by holding shift key (like most strategy games let you)
- Better interface.
- Save settings in ini file.
- Save new maps by file name.
- Tile variations (not only 1 type of grass for example) and new walls / decks. Better interface to place them.

[Angelo]

A little teaser for some of the latest things.



To explain the pictures a bit...

• The first one is self explanatory. I sexied up the context menu.
• Second one: Each character will have the "Communication" skill. If it's low, the character will stutter before communicating a message to another character, hence the bar filling. Now, if the other character doesn't have enough "Patience" or "Attention span", he may just turn around and go about his day halfway the other's communication attempt!
• The third one just shows that the AI can go harvest berries when hungry! Nasa here I come.

These are some of the new things that are "showable". More to come!

[tim_the_tam]

finished playing it.

wow it sounds like a ambitious project especially trying to match sims and dwarf fortess.

well so far so good. all need is more stuff and more interactions.

also i think its better if you add the zoom in and out.

and also you need to improve the tutorial

[Angelo]

Thanks for trying it out!

Right now I'm trying to add a bit of everything in their basic form, so I can work out how everything interacts with each other. For example, I began writing the task system and the AI at the same time, so I can make the latter choose its tasks from the same task pool as the player's. Sounds trivial but I've never made a game before so it takes a bit time for me until I figure everything out and put it in its place

The tutorial will be updated and improved with every new feature. And you won't go through it as a whole, it will pop up in various moments in the game to help you out with any new feature you unlock.

That said, expect to see many new stuff in some basic form in the next release!

[Angelo]

BAM
After months of absence, here I am to remind everyone (or anyone that still cares) that this project is far from dead!
New teaser screenshot showing some of the things I've been working on lately!


To the right side you can see the widgets, little panels that hide offscreen and appear on mouseover. You can pin them so they don't hide.
Inventory window, complete with drag and drop capabilities.
Sexification of the UI. You can customize the color. Teal is the default one.
More things that don't appear in this screenshot.
Stage 1 of the building construction system. Mark a plot of land, enter edit more, and draw on that blueprint-like thingy. Give the command to commence building and your little person will go and build wall frames according to plan. Later stages involve adding wall designs to replace the wooden frames, and floors.
Last time I promised a new demo within 2 or so weeks was.... last november, and I ended up not posting any more updates out of shame. So this time no! I have absolutely no idea when I'm gonna release a demo. I realized the game is like 0.0005% done and it's a joke releasing demos at that point. I wanna have something basic, but playable. So, stay tuned! I'll be around more often from now on. I'll try to get around to updating that blog of mine.

[Angelo]

This is today's work. I basically created tags for each decorative item. For example, in the screenshot you can see the currently available floors, and at the left of the window you can filter them according to each tag. Tags can refer to texture, color, or general style like "modern". Characters, including the player, will have a preference towards certain "tags" and will be happier when their place is decorated accordingly.

By the way you can see the new trees and bushed I made. I think I've finally nailed the style I was aiming at. Oh and some of the tag icons are placeholders.

[PKBT]

Those new trees look rad, and I'm very glad to see it's still kicking!
Out of curiosity, but when do you think you'll be able to release a newer version?
I'm really looking forward to this and seriously can't wait to see the rest of this.

Keep it up!

[Angelo]

Thanks for the reply
I really want to finalize the house building process for the next version. However, as you may have figured, items won't appear out of thin air. You need to physically construct them or have them delivered. So in all, I must also work on construction and a store system which sends you items (literally, a delivery truck comes and drops the items). When those things are done, I'll release a new version