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Working on tons – and tons – and tons (ugh) of many different idle animations for whenever a player is just standing at a space for a substantial amount of time. Originally I just did it where the sprite would just blink their eyes after a couple of seconds in the previous version and do nothing else (‘cause I was lazy at the time and I didn't wanna do any work), but I thought that this time that I would flesh it out more and add a bit more personality to the characters by having to do other things.

Case in point, Mr. Monopolo here will brandish out a newspaper and read it while keeping his head up in the event that it’s go time, and then he’ll just put it away. I’ll probably do about 8 different idle animations for each character (and the different color tokens that go with it, UGH) before I move on to the next part.

I’m also considering doing a sound barrier type of system where if the player that’s currently in play is around where all the other players are via the same screen, then, say, for the newspaper animation, I’ll put in some kind of a paper rolling up sound effect whereas if that player was far away from that person he or she wouldn’t hear anything.

The things I do for you, game.
Finished yet another dungeon, and now having issues deciding on what dungeon to do next. I got 17 lined up in the database, not including any extras that I may have forgotten. I got someone that's supposed to be taking care of one right now, so that leaves 16 others to deal with...perhaps someone can give me a good idea on which ones to work on, or which chipset would best suit them? @_@;
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Just spent three hours getting burnable items to burn adjacent burnable items after you burn them

SCRIPTING IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVENTS GUYS, LOOK HOW FAST THIS IS TO DO

...to be fair most of that was spent not remembering one of the dumb hacks I'd used to get the rest of the system a couple years ago, and thus being unable to figure out why the fire events weren't updating at all.

On the plus side, the one good part about scripting this, and the reason I'm actually doing so, is that now all I need to do to create a burnable event anywhere in the game is make an event with the comment #CopyEvent(20, 7) in it
Almost done the south side of my forest themed dungeon (I broke it into 3 sections because there's like...80 events on each one and I didn't want to risk massive lag on some toaste-I mean computers!).

...Unfortunately, the Custom Move Route..."thing" is being phenomenally stupid.

Some of my on-field enemies are turned on or off depending on whether a certain switch is on. And they never remember where they were supposed to be moving.

.....I think I'm going to have to re-teleport all Monster events back to their starting positions whenever the player hits a switch. ;_;
Operation clean up my act is kinda starting! It's been fucking ages since I've really done anything. Started a dozen ditty little games, none finished or even what I'd call a respectable playable state. What have I finished? Jack shit. I decided to get off my ass and clean up my act and get to doing something productive again. Or at the very least pretend I have some presence. So I:

- Fixed some old gameprofiles. There were broken image links or css that needed some fixing (or additions for new site properties). Seeing broken images on a gameprofile is unacceptable. Fix that shit!

- Convert downloads from RARs to ZIPs. Zips are a way more friendly format for players than RARs due to their widespread adoption. Anybody can get zips to work and the headache for players of having to deal with a RAR isn't worth the 5% better compression.

- jfc the main download for RMN Bros 2 is to my busted version. Fixed that so it points to Hali's and made it abundantly clear that my release is broken. The only reason I didn't toss it is just to keep the download count. I am never being a community leader on a game project again.

- Finish a fucking game! And do something about the blight known as Altima. Altima is a shitty game that back when man was first walking upright I decided to try and make an improved version that would be fun and not garbage called Altima Xtreme. It has since evolved into a horrific aberration: I have two VX versions, one with the original map and one with a new one and god knows what the backend split is like, and then an Ace version. For something that I made a gameprofile about back in 2010 it's mired in half implemented ideas and indecision. Technically you can start and get to the endgame but that isn't worth much in an open world game like Altima. I need closure, I need it to die so I quit hemming and hawing if I should finish it and if I do finish it what version oh and if I should add X or rethink Y. I refocused the project recently and decided to do the following:

- Use some of my improved scripts for some fixes on the original game. Like the minimap causes huge processing time spikes due to poor implementation that I fixed in AX. I'll take that fix into original Altima (AO) so while the minimap is still ugly as sin it won't be a cpu-time hog.

- AO used a script that used a third party plugin to play music (some winamp hack). It also breaks random animations consistently because ???. AX replaced it with looped OGG music so I'll do the same with AO, toss the old winamp script, and add battle animations to all skills and weapons.

- Fill in the piles of missing descriptions. Half the equipment has some garbage inconsistent description format. Some enemies have nothing.

- The original AO had twelve characters but a four man party. So at towns you can ditch a party member. This is dumb and makes it a hassle to try new characters. YF has a party change script that will replace all of this so you can get all the heroes and make a party simply and easily.

- Use the fixed Mode7 script so vehicles don't fly in the air anymore.

That will be the new AO: Something resembling playable under poor light and after a few too many drinks. The old brokenness of it will persist like the double-HP move that in fact fully heals the party. I also plan on an Altima Improved version by taking the original map AX version and tossing anything half finished and completing the content. Lots of it is done and working but it got hit hard by indecisiveness on what to improve and how to do it. Only a small handful of skills need to be done, enemies will need a bit of work (esp. considering in AO only about a dozen did anything beyond 'Attack'), and equipment needs to be finished. I plan to be done with it all long before 2014 ends because I want it done and behind me.

As for AX?
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Aegix_Drakan
...Unfortunately, the Custom Move Route..."thing" is being phenomenally stupid.

Some of my on-field enemies are turned on or off depending on whether a certain switch is on. And they never remember where they were supposed to be moving.

.....I think I'm going to have to re-teleport all Monster events back to their starting positions whenever the player hits a switch. ;_;


Here's a better way, assuming the switch is supposed to cause the enemies to disappear:

- Use a parallel process map event to move all the enemies, instead of using the Custom Move Route
- Have the parallel process running all the time, no matter what the switch is set to
- Give the enemies two pages, so when the switch is turned off they have the correct graphic and can start a battle, and when the switch is turned on they have no graphic and do nothing
- Because of the parallel process, they'll still keep getting moved around while invisible!

If you just want them to freeze when the switch is turned on, but still be visible, then you'll need a different plan. Probably still will want their movement to be done in a parallel process though. So that you can check the switch after each step, or whatever.
benos
My mind is full of fuck.
624
I wish there was something I can upload here. Personal stuff, until I'm sure to be on the internet in the near future. I think my other game Dawn of Ages is interesting. Hmmm. I haven't stopped on Desperation of A New Era. Onto Part 4, but part 3 is finished. I pretty much work on small projects one at a time, and my main ones, mostly.
Currently going through my music folder, looking at what can potentially be removed outright from the game (mostly from the Extended Pack). As well as dungeons that could be removed outright, fixing up abilities, etc. So much work left to do on this game, not enough time to do so...at least the dungeon making is going fine. Already axed like 4 dungeons from the game, and probably going to axe 14 songs from the game (reducing the track count to 212 songs), which is still a lot of songs in the game, but they're all used for specific purposes (and some are only in the Extended Pack, which is just bonus stuff that isn't necessary to get anyways so...). Still need to decide what's going to be finalized on both packs though, and then reupload both packs later (ugh...).

Maybe I can get someone to help brainstorm what to remove and stuff? Right now, my Vanilla Music Pack is 313 MB big, and the Extended Music Pack (right now) is 317 MB. Then there's the beta5+ Music (which most is probably going to wind up in the Extended Music Pack) that's 529 MB big, so you can see where the problem lies...and that's just the music! @_@;
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Battle design!

I'm considering a battle system where you only control one character, but that character gets 2 actions per round - an attack and a support action. Attacks are obvious - they hurt an enemy or enemies, and have other various effects. Support actions do things like build up your shield, buff you, give your next attack poison, etc. Support actions can be focused on offense or defense, and using both actions in tandem, while keeping the enemy's potential in mind, will allow you to maximize damage dealt while minimizing damage taken. The rest of the game is very attrition-based with little healing, so being smart and efficient in battle is super-important!

(I like this idea because it allows for little creative combos like Poison Weapon & Attack-All! Also, it increases the importance of weird secondary actions like status effects and buffs, which are often abandoned in lieu of more immediate damage!)
Welp, balance for the first half of my dungeon is alright I guess. Maybe just need to tweak the EXP upwards a tiny bit (since levels only give +1 to all stats, and some more HP), but that aside, its' great.

Now to decorate, populate and....testificate(?) the second half and the boss and I should be ready to share what I have for feedback. I need feedback baaad. I wanna know what others think of it so far.

EDIT: BTW, boss is pretty looking and all his functions work well enough. It's just balance testing he'll need.

author=LockeZ
*snip*

Thanks for the suggestion. Turns out that teleporting all roving enemies "home" every time I hit one of the switches is working out just fine.

author=Xenomic
*yoink*

Ugh...I've lived that nightmare once before. I was working on a 2-person project about...God...Like, 7 years ago, and my partner (the project was his "baby" you could call it) liked to import any song that may or may not turn out to be useful since it was "cool". x_x It was a MESS. Especially when the two of us were working on stuff separately and then tried to merge our work...mismatched teleports EVERYWHERE. *cries a little inside*

Personally, these days I only import stuff into my game at the exact moment that I need it. That way I keep the project as lean as possible. Music is a bit of a pain, but I try my best to reuse tracks whenever I can get away with it.

author=slashphoenix
Battle design!

That's a neat concept. Wish I had thought of it too. XD

My current game is kinda the exact opposite of your design. 4 characters with very disparate roles, and you can dramatically change them with Mods (equipment that changes skills and stuff). That and it's HEAVILY focused on damage prevention and mitigation. Most normal enemies can drop you to half health in one turn, but you have so many options for healing and tanking (AND reviving!) that it works out well enough.
author=Aegix_Drakan
Ugh...I've lived that nightmare once before. I was working on a 2-person project about...God...Like, 7 years ago, and my partner (the project was his "baby" you could call it) liked to import any song that may or may not turn out to be useful since it was "cool". x_x It was a MESS. Especially when the two of us were working on stuff separately and then tried to merge our work...mismatched teleports EVERYWHERE. *cries a little inside*

Personally, these days I only import stuff into my game at the exact moment that I need it. That way I keep the project as lean as possible. Music is a bit of a pain, but I try my best to reuse tracks whenever I can get away with it.


Heh...sounds like my issue with the music. Though with my music, each individual piece was used for something, whether it be a stage theme, boss/battle theme, event theme, or whatnot. And then...well, I hit like 270 tracks or something like that, and 1.14 GB worth of music. Even if I split it into two separate packs, that's still WAY too much for a game, so trying to trim it down best I can. Already chopped out a good deal of music (now at 207 songs, 835 MB total!), but gonna be hell to chop out any further ones than I got right now.

Oh right, also chopped out like 4-6 dungeons in the game thus far, and thinking of trimming down my hour long cutscene (yes, there's an hour long cutscene, no joke), but not sure how to do so since everything in that cutscene is extremely relevant. I guess I could cut it apart and use it as flashbacks in some scenarios later or something? Hm...

Oh, and I still need to finish mapping 20-30 more areas for the rest of the game, and then start eventing all of those, and then start adding monsters/monster groups to all of those, and then code the monster groups, and then add in the rest of the weapons/armor/etc. and then code abilities based around those for Weapon Bless and then....there's just a loooot of work yet to do lol. 20-30 hours gameplay thus far at 50%, and aiming for roughly 50-60 hours gameplay, bar the sidequest stuff right now as I'm not worried about that atm...@_@;

EDIT - If I'm right, the current Vanilla Pack would be 91 songs, 371 MB big...oi vey...

EDIT - Herp, forgot that I made it so that the Character-Exclusive Battle Themes are Extended Pack. So it's really 61 songs, 272 MB big. That's a bit more reasonable right now, right?? Of course, not sure if there will be other songs that will be forced to be in the Vanilla Pack (of course there will be), so...yeah...>_>;


EDIT #3 - Oh, for funsies, I was looking through my playlists on YT and found THE original video I did for my game, 5 years ago when it was first starting out. You guys were yelling at me for big maps now? Ohohoho...oh gods...you don't even know the half of it...


Trust me, you DON'T even know the half of it...@_@;
[
author=Xenomic
(yes, there's an hour long cutscene, no joke)

As a game writer at heart, this makes me cringe a little ;_;. That's insane.

There's no way for you to break it into smaller chunks with gameplay and save points along the way? :(

Unless it's an absolutely riveting scene, you're going to have a chunk of your audience who was previously paying attention starting to just mash specebar to get through it, and that's always a horrible thing to have happen.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The opening scene to Xenosaga is the longest cut scene in all of video games - long enough that there are two save points before the player ever gets control of his character for the first time. It made the entire series the laughing stock of the video game world, no one was ever able to take it seriously. Xenosaga forever became "that 40 hour long movie with a couple gameplay segments in it."

Your scene, if your time estimate is not an exaggeration, is nearly twice as long as the one from Xenosaga.

Even long, story-heavy games don't usually need much more than two hours worth of cut scenes total, spread across the entire game. That's probably about how many Chrono Trigger had, for example.

As a general rule of thumb, most cut scenes should be about a minute or less, and the longest, most pivotal scene in the game should be about 5 minutes tops. I think I remember reading that after about 3 minutes or so, the player starts to get really bored and just starts skipping everything.

I wish I could say this was the worst problem your game had, but honestly it doesn't even register on my radar, with the other things I know about the game...
author=LockeZ
I think I remember reading that after about 3 minutes or so, the player starts to get really bored and just starts skipping everything.


That's actually something that worries me for my own game. I try to keep my scenes short and concise, but I worry that my intro is too long.

I have the setup (two short 2 minute scenes), then introducing you to the characters (another 3-5), which then segways/mixes into the combat tutorial which sort of continues the previous scene while providing combat.

...And then, after that, my scenes really dry up. Usually only one or two short ones after each dungeon.
Most of my cutscenes generally run about 5-10 minutes if I'm not mistaken. Obviously there are some that run less, and some that run a bit more, but that's the general time frame for them. The hour long thing I'm thinking of cutting out pretty much everything from and moving it to other cutscenes or segments of the game. Just not sure how to do that yet.

I could probably toss a save point in the middle of the cutscenes but...it's better to just cut out/split it up. Kinda like with the intro really, which I'm thinking of doing since most of it is unnecessary. Although it does have the tutorial of the game, which isn't really needed I suppose.



At roughly 20 minutes is where the end cutscene for beta4 begins. 20 minutes to 56 minutes. Ok, so it's not an hour, it's 36 minutes, but that doesn't include the boss fight and the cutscene before said boss fight (starting at 0:20 and ending at 7:03, so about 7 minutes added to cutscene, then from about 7:03 to 20:00, so about 13 minutes for the boss fight). Bosses start taking up a lot of time later on...

Making cutscenes not take too long, but not be too short and carry out what I want them to carry out is the hardest part I feel. Just how this game is, I suppose. @_@;
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Man, you are making a Touhou fangame, the plot is only there to provide the bare minimum excuse to unlock the next silly-hat-wearing girl with wings that aren't made out of things that wings should be made from.

I will also note that your time is inflated because you leave every message box on screen for twice as long as it needs to be, though.

But really, you just need an editor, badly. You say a lot of things with three paragraphs that could be said with three words, and your characters spend a lot of time reiterating the same stuff over and over, and also a lot of time confirming or reacting to what someone else just said.

I started at 20:00 and made it to about 23:00 before I realized I'd been zoning out and hadn't actually read the last ten text boxes or so.
author=Xenomic
The hour long thing I'm thinking of cutting out pretty much everything from and moving it to other cutscenes or segments of the game. Just not sure how to do that yet.


Random suggestion: Cut it into smaller scenes, then tie those to items you can find along the way so that to get the whole thing they need to find all of those items?
@LockeZ: Mm...true. I guess I do leave message boxes up a bit longer than usual since I leave it there for people to read. Probably is less than the time the video runs by far. >_>;;

Yeah, I tend to do that a lot. Like, I know what I WANT to have them say and whatnot, but I don't do it in a concise and clear manner (though some characters aren't supposed to be that way at all. I'm looking at you Yukari!). Probably comes from my lack of understanding social interactions since I don't really interact THAT often with people myself. ^^;;

Also, yes while it is a Touhou fangame and they're not really known for having deep plots, this one I intended from the get-go to have a deep plot. Probably why people told me to just write a fanfiction or whatever, but I didn't want to do that obviously. ^^;

@Aegix: You mean similar to Jecht's Spheres in FFX? I could see something like that working out, though that'd be a lot of items to deal with. Hmm...though I guess several of the cutscenes are just fluff, while the other two are not. I can probably just leave the other two cutscenes in since those are more important.
Almost done with my second dungeon. It's all decorated, I did a run-through with no enemies to make sure I didn't overlook any exploits and that all the chests and secrets are reachable. I'm pretty damn pleased with it.

All that's left to do is to put in the enemies, make sure the Wolf guys in the second half are the right strength, test the boss, and it'll be all done.

I'm getting some minor framerate drop, though. Not in "lag spikes" fortunately...That's a little worrysome.

Do you guys think having more than one picture up on screen have anything to do with that? If so, maybe I'll need to axe my lovely little "sight radius" picture, which darkens the screen a bit outside the center for atmospheric effect. The other picture is essential for the dungeon's puzzle so I can't get rid of it.
What, pictures? Nah. I've used eight constantly and simultaneous moving pictures on a map without any lag issues at all. I haven't tested it on older computers though but I doubt that's it.