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[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Some more playtesters would be nice for my v0.2 of Good Pencerkoff Hunting.

Checklist:
   1) Do all the textures meet up correctly (unlike before)?
   2) Does F4 put you into Fullscreen and does it work (quality seems kinda low to me)?
   3) Are there issues with mouse control when accessing another application?
   4) Press Esc and access the options menu.  What Mouse sensitivity do you like? It starts at 50.

-PENCERKOFF

[William Broom]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314960
Follow these steps to add the font to Windows, then it should appear in Game Maker alongside your standard fonts.

And yeah, I haven't played Might and Magic but these screenshot remind me deliciously of the first-person battle screens from Earthbound, Dragon Quest, etc.

[Derek]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314960
Follow these steps to add the font to Windows, then it should appear in Game Maker alongside your standard fonts.

People playing your game won't see the font, though.

Here's how to add a sprite font to Game Maker: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8432.0

[saluk]

Great start Pencerkoff!

Every item on your checklist checks out for me, I'm on Windows 7 64 bit. The default mouse sensitivity was perfect for me. I loved firing an endless stream of arrows, picking them up as I go so I never run out.

The mix of realtime arrows and turn based close combat sounds interesting.

[mirosurabu]

Everything works fine for me including fullscreen mode. (v0.2)

But I didn't encounter the carcass. :/

[Renton]

Every item checks out on Win7 32bit. Didn't encounter any enemies, though. Good work, Pencerkoff!

[fusion52]

hey, pressing 'Q' key reloads....is it a bug?

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

But I didn't encounter the carcass. :/

What could that mean?

hey, pressing 'Q' key reloads....is it a bug?

'Q' should add a lot of arrows to your stash, and 'I' should send you to a mostly empty screen which will one day become your inventory.  Except for going through the Esc menu, nothing should restart the game...  Let me know if that's still a problem.  

I'll try out that font stuff today.
    Edit:  OH SNAP there's a new GM tutorial.  Looks like I'll be putting off the game for a while.

-PENCERKOFF

[dbb]

I love the way you've done the arrows. This is exactly the kind of creative (mis)use of graphics I was hoping to see in part 2.

[Eraser]

Checklist:
   1) Do all the textures meet up correctly (unlike before)? Yes, but I never tried the last version.
   2) Does F4 put you into Fullscreen and does it work (quality seems kinda low to me)? Works and looks just fine for me... it might be stretching the game for you if you have a widescreen.
   3) Are there issues with mouse control when accessing another application? No problems if you use alt+tab to switch to another program.
   4) Press Esc and access the options menu.  What Mouse sensitivity do you like? It starts at 50. 40 seems good to me, based on the current movement speed.

The game does lag quite a bit when I chuck all arrows at the ground (right click for speed shooting).

[Pishtaco]

It runs fine for me, XP with a radeon 9700. Textures and fullscreen are fine. I like the default mouse sensitivity. Not having it inverted is tough. Not sure what you mean about the mouse with other applications; when I alt-tabbed away or paused the game, the mouse worked okay with other things.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

The game does lag quite a bit when I chuck all arrows at the ground (right click for speed shooting).

I'll probably have a 'for fun' testing level you can access, but otherwise the game won't feature the speed-arrow option.  My projectile collision detection is quite slow, because I haven't cut any corners with it.

Not having it inverted is tough.

An easy option I have plans for.  If you put -50 into the Mouse Sensitivity, it should invert everything, if you're into that.

Thank you beta-testers!  Er... maybe Delta-testers is more like it.

-Pencerkoff

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

v0.3 is out!  You can shoot enemies and they can be killed.  If you collide with an enemy you enter the turn-based close combat (which I haven't made yet).

One thing that looks neat is shooting an enemy using the right mouse button, loading him up with non-damaging arrows, and then killing him with your left mouse button fire, and watching the arrows that were attached to the enemy shoot away.  Sounds complicated, but it looks cool.

Play-Testers
If I could get a rough estimate from a few of you about how many arrows you can handle on the screen at once (without noticeable lag), that would be nice.  Arrows in flight are more processor-intensive, but since in the actual game there won't be more than a few going at once, what I care about right now is how many non-moving arrows.  (I made the right mouse button arrows infinite)

-PENCERKOFF

[saluk]

I get some major lag with only this many. Like 2fps. Optimize your engine man!



I don't know how many arrows it fires, so it's hard to guess, but I could hold down the button for about 10 seconds before noticeable lag.

Oh. And ARROWED:

[Synnah]

Looking nice so far! In terms of slowdown, I held down the right mouse button for about 20 seconds, firing about 630 arrows, and the framerate dropped to about 15fps while firing, and 22fps when I released the mouse button. I collected the arrows until the framerate returned to 60fps, which happened when there were about 210 arrows left onscreen. I have a quad-core PC, though.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Optimize my engine?  Man?  Why don't you optimize your face?  I'll have you know that Game Maker ain't C++, it's a little bit weaker in the world of computing.  The point is firing some arrows, not making a few hundred go everywhere at once.  Each arrow has 6 polygons with texture mapping and is an object to boot.

I'm thinking 100 for a maximum party quiver size is a good target.

-PENCERKOFF 

[Pishtaco]

Not having it inverted is tough.

An easy option I have plans for.  If you put -50 into the Mouse Sensitivity, it should invert everything, if you're into that.

I tried setting it to 0 to only invert one direction, but it looks like that isn't implemented yet.

[Renton]

I can take about maybe 400 arrows on screen without any noticeable lag.

EDIT: I right clicked for 5 seconds on a skeleton; the explosion really, really made me lag. I'd say maybe 4fps.

[LeFishy]

Oh. And ARROWND:

Fix'd

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Sorry, Pishtaco, I'll fix that up right now so it's ready for the next build.  Hey, do people like having both the x and y inverted?  I'll just keep the 'enter a negative value' keep going for people who want to flip both.

I like the explosion, but maybe I should take it out.  I know it generally lags, but I figured the effect was worth the momentary lapse in gameplay.  Maybe I can rig up something that doesn't fire all of the arrows at once.

I'm mostly working on setting up character values and probably won't have anything cool to show off for a while.  After that I'm back to making environment things like doors and NPCs.

EDIT:  Oh, I'm suprised nobody caught this but I fixed the skeleton's hitbox.  I forgot to rescale it along with the skeleton when I went over to 'multiples of 2' in the sprites.  I also made the arrow code a little more efficient, there was something I was running twice on accident.

-PENCERKOFF