[MLP Fan-Game] Adventure is Magic: Road to Arath

Started by Xeno Aura, 2012 Oct 21, 15:38:23

previous topic - next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Go Down

Xeno Aura

I use Game Maker. Don't hate me.  D: (Decided to make it large enough to read, opening notepad is annoying.)

At the moment I'm doing all the programming, although I am looking at a few examples in the community for help on certain things, the inventory system for example, is mostly taken from a system made by someone else. Kind of lazy, but the inventory works, and they give full permission to use in non-commercial games, so why not?

Sprite work is mostly taken from our older games, so the majority is probably by my cousin, with some of my own work, also I think 1 sprite is from the MLP community.

No sounds or music are in the game yet.

Decided to have a lazy day yesterday and just worked on level design, might get some work done today, but having some family problems, so maybe not...

Tekner

Don't feel bad for using Game Maker. I learned to program using it and am probably more proficient in using Game Maker and GML than Visual Studio and C# still. Also, I wouldn't say that not many of us develop games with it. You'd be surprised. I still use it if I want to make something lazily, like my WebApp. I made my WebApp that you guys (briefly) were using to vote with in Game Maker HTML5.

If you plan on continuing programming, I would recommend that you get either NetBeans and learn Java or get Visual Studio and learn C# (both are extremely similar to each other.) One thing I wish I hadn't done was expect to only use Game Maker and not teach myself any other languages, or at least not ones you can make games with. I ended up teaching myself Java and Javascript (not the same language at all.) Then I taught myself C# for use in Unity. I've probably learned more about programming in the last 4-5 months I've been working on LoE than I have in the previous 5-6 years I'd been programming in Game Maker.

Xeno Aura

Yeah, I would like to learn C#, it's just hard when I'm already working on 2 GM projects, probably for the long-term as well.

Not sure where to start in C#, I fiddled around with it a bit when XBL Community Games first came out, but didn't get near the point of making a game. I even have the iOS and Android modules for Unity, which I got for free in a special promotion they did... Shame I haven't really been able to use them, at all.

As far as this game goes, I did manage to get a little bit done yesterday, re-did the movement and collision system which fixed a couple of glitches, might be looking at adding my own gravity system etc. to the game, see if I can make jumping a bit less.... fixed?

Also having a teeny weeny problem with Mac support, so I'll have to get back to you on that, I'll have to change a couple of fairly integrated things to get it to work I think...

Xeno Aura

2012 Oct 31, 06:59:27 #23 Last Edit: 2012 Oct 31, 08:23:04 by Xeno Aura
Just posting to let you all know that I'm still working on this pretty much every day.

Currently trying to decide between 2 systems for levelling up and skills.

System 1:

You level up, earn skill points to improve certain aspects of your character, whether it be more range on your attacks, faster attacks, more damage etc. or unlock new attacks/skills.

System 2:

Unlocks are fixed, levelling up will automatically increase the power of your character, through no input of your own, additional attacks/skills unlock at specific levels.

I'm sure pretty much everyone would prefer System 1?

Other than that I've been adding a few sprites and prettying up the environment, not my strong suit, but I think it looks better now than it did before. I still have a couple of things I want to try out to make it look better, but once I've done those, I'll get around to some more programming.

Hopefully once I get to the point where I can do some more level design, I can upload a short video of what the game looks like so far.

Just fixed a bug which makes it run about 30% faster on my PC, trying to get it to run fast even on slow PC's, going well so far. :)

Also feel free to suggest any skills that you'd like to see Unicorns/Earth Ponies/Pegasi have.

Weremetalwolf

Hey! there will be some classes depending on the race of the pony?
For example: the earth ponies will be warriors, unicorns will be wizards (obviously) and pegasi will be thieves?
<br />My channel<br />My DA<br /><br />

Julius

Great to hear all is going smoothly! ^-^

I choose system 1. It's better definitely and it adds variety.

As for skills, It would be nice to have a dash attack for Melee based Pegasi, you know, to be one mean fast killing machine. B)
Purr~

Xeno Aura

Quote from: Weremetalwolf on 2012 Oct 31, 11:04:28
Hey! there will be some classes depending on the race of the pony?
For example: the earth ponies will be warriors, unicorns will be wizards (obviously) and pegasi will be thieves?


The way I want to handle it is to have the 3 races, and no classes, certain items only usable by certain races, and skills unique to each race, what skills and items you decide to use for your race is up to you, in effect, letting you play how you want, without having to choose a specific class.

Quote from: Julius
As for skills, It would be nice to have a dash attack for Melee based Pegasi, you know, to be one mean fast killing machine. B)


I have only programmed Unicorns so far, but I'm quite interested in ideas for Pegasi, as I think they will be the hardest to give abilities to. I started with Unicorns as they don't need much imagination to create skills for, possibly because there are several hundred games with magic classes with an abundance of skills for me to draw inspiration from.

Working on adding a shop system now, buying of items primarily, but perhaps selling of items soon?

Xeno Aura

Hi all,

Been a week since I updated you all on how this is going.

I decided to "port" the game from the Game Maker 8.1 engine to the Game Maker Studio engine. This has some good points and some bad points.

Bad Points:

- The lighting system broke, it isn't compatible with the new engine, I'm using a sort of workaround for it at the moment, but I would like to add a new system soon.
- Character customization at the moment, causes the game to freeze, I am looking at this as we speak to try and work out why this is happening.
- There are possibly some other small bugs I haven't noticed... The inventory system popped up a bug, but I haven't been able to replicate it again, so hoping it was a random glitch.
- I just had to spend the past 4 days getting the game to actually work on the new engine, so not really anything new added.

But enough of that, onto the good/sort of good points:

- The new engine uses a C++ runner instead of Delphi like the old engine, this makes the game run much faster, and should let me add more things to the game before it slows down. As an example, the game went from 220FPS to 350FPS in the tutorial area on my PC.
- Some adjustments in the engine mean I can get rid of some additional files that may have made it harder to get to work on platforms other than Windows.
- The new engine has the ability to export to Mac, unfortunately this is problematic...

In order to develop for Mac, I need an Apple Developers License (Why? I have no idea) as well as a Mac computer... I'm sure you're all aware of how much Mac's and any Apple-related product costs, I would be looking at several hundred dollars to develop this game for Mac, something I cannot afford. I am looking at alternatives, but haven't found one as of yet, I won't stop trying though, if there is a way I can get this on Mac, I'll find it.

As for Linux? I don't know, I'll have to develop the game some more, and test it on Linux with Wine and see what happens. I'm hoping the new engine makes it more compatible with Linux.

That's pretty much it, since the last post all I've done is get it to work in the new engine. It is worth noting that the previous engine had a 0% chance of native Mac support, just incase you thought the change to the new engine did more harm than good. Also the Studio engine is still being updated with more features and improvements.

Sorry there isn't more info on the game, I will be continuing development on it this week, and will fix current bugs while adding new content.

Julius

Glad to see there's hope for us Mac users! lol

If there's anything I can help with, let me know. I may not have any game making knowledge, but I've a Mac and lots of free time! ^-^
Purr~

Xeno Aura

2012 Nov 07, 06:15:26 #29 Last Edit: 2012 Nov 22, 09:25:06 by Xeno Aura
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't even let me test the game on a Mac without paying the yearly developers fee. So I can't even tell if the game would work until I pay them money. :/

But enough of that, time to get back to game developing. :)

Is there anyway for Mac users to run Windows applications legally?

EDIT: Buying of items appears to be working for player 1, I'll get around to implementing it for players 2-4 once I polish it up a bit.

Julius

Yeah but I need to buy Windows software and that's extremely expensive here. Been looking into it though, so I may get it sometime soon.

There's also Wine but I've no idea on how to use that! lol
Purr~

Xeno Aura

2012 Nov 07, 12:03:54 #31 Last Edit: 2012 Nov 07, 20:06:29 by Xeno Aura
Wine in Linux is fairly easy to use, the game may work straight off the bat with it (I can dream), I'll have to test it later, I have 2 computers with Ubuntu installed.

It would be a shame if I can only make it run on Windows though, even though it's the only OS I like, I know that others prefer Linux and Mac.

EDIT: Just tried it on my Laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Wine 1.5, seems to work without any bugs/glitches, and with no modification. Lets hope it stays like that when I add more things to it. As to whether it runs as fast as it does in Windows, I'm not sure yet.

EDIT#2: The controls for Players 2, 3 & 4 don't work in Wine, they use the Xbox 360 pad to control them, so I had a feeling it wouldn't work straight away with that. But I'll have a look at getting it working. I have my Ubuntu Laptop recognizing my 360 pad, but it fails to control the game, so I think I may have to edit something in the game to get it working.

Xeno Aura

2012 Nov 17, 20:56:22 #32 Last Edit: 2012 Nov 18, 08:10:11 by Xeno Aura
Hi,

Haven't updated in a while, I had a go at making a developers log video, you can watch it here:



A note that when I said "It doesn't work in Wine for Linux yet." I meant that it doesn't recognize the 360 controller, the single player mode appears to work fine under Wine.

Alternatively, if you don't want to watch a video that had its quality scrambled by a certain Microsoft product, and my voice in my first ever Youtube video (I was a bit too quiet, and breathed too loudly lol), using a Microsoft headset. You can read below for the highlights.

- Buying of items for Player 1 now works properly
- Player 1 can drop/trade items.... see the video if you want to know what player 2/3/4 do.
- Added a boss enemy, not shown in the video.
- Added a system to show the storyline, skipped in video due to it being a bit buggy, and no real story yet, I had one, but decided it was too.... "dark" for what I wanted.
- Added armour system, as well as a defense counter to show how much resistance you have against attacks. Still need to add removal of armour.
- Fixed quite a lot of bugs related to the HUD drawing incorrectly.
- Added 2 new areas, shown in the video. They will most likely change design however, and the 2nd area in the video will definitely need a different background.

Something I want to try and add soon is some sound effects, and possibly some form of weapon system. But the first thing I want to do is let the player remove armour, it's pretty much essential for me to add in order to test the game further.

2AM, so goodnight. :)

Julius

Did you...

You did!

You chose one of the names I suggested! lol

I'll watch that video later! I'm not home at the moment.
Purr~

Xeno Aura

The video was basically how the game is at the moment. I didn't control it at all, which is obvious when I show the 2 player mode. And I was completely unaware of the Inventory dropping glitch in multiplayer until the moment I did it in the video. :P

And yes, I google'd the name, and only found an old MLP fan-game from 2011 which I believe finished development or just ended development, I believe it was a school/college/university project. All other occurences of the name seemed to just be random artwork and possibly a fanfic or 2. So I decided it was unique enough for a video game name, without upsetting anyone else. So I decided to run with it. :)

Julius

Purr~

Xeno Aura

2012 Nov 18, 18:58:15 #36 Last Edit: 2012 Nov 18, 18:59:48 by Xeno Aura
Yeah, I don't work on the game on weekends, that's my resting period where I usually just test it a bit, work out what I'll do next week.

While prepping for the video and doing the video itself, I did come across a few glitches, such as player 2's inventory dropping being completely insane, and the slimes falling through the world. Elevators not working wasn't really a glitch, I just wanted to get the video out last night, and I didn't have time to enter a few lines of code to make it work.

As it was my first video, it took about 2 hours to do, hopefully it'll take about an hour next time. Also recording my voice at 1AM probably wasn't a good idea, had to keep my voice down so I sounded a bit weird. I don't speak loud anyway, so maybe that's just how I sound. :)

Anyway, I'll have my handsful tomorrow when I start fixing those bugs, I also want to improve the AI a bit, the unicorn doesn't struggle too much to keep them at bay, and they can't jump up hills for some reason...

Also enemy suggestions, if you think of any, please post, I'm really bad at thinking up enemies, and remember to keep the enemies child-friendly, I'm not looking for a rated mature game. :)

Julius

2012 Nov 18, 19:12:06 #37 Last Edit: 2012 Nov 18, 19:15:49 by Julius
Take a look at my signature and tell me you don't know what I'm about to suggest as an enemy. :]

Hint: It's Pink, and it's a Mustache. lol
Purr~

Xeno Aura

I'm possibly really dumb, but I haven't figured it out yet. :D

Not looking forward to programming Earth Ponies and Pegasi... Unicorns are so much easier to work with.

Luckily I'm not touching them until the basic engine is done, Unicorn is easiest, so I'm going to do the engine, make sure the Unicorn works fine, and then add the others in.

Julius

Wait for it...

It's... One. Evil. Pink. Mustache. O:

HAH!

Bet you weren't expecting that!

lol

Seriously though... How about Harpies, Manticores, Griffons, Chimeras and Timberwolves, to start off?

Think the slimes could be replaced with something else? Like Parasprites? Slimes are in almost every game you know. X3

What about evil ponies too?

Changelings could be interesting... Same with storm clouds...

...

...

...

SOMBRA CRYSTALS! POISON JOKE! ENEMIES WITH MUSTACHES! ovO
Purr~

Go Up