Hey guys! It's been really long time since I visited Omnimaga
My life has been hectic with me joining the U.S. Army and going through trainings and whatnot, and now that my training is almost over and I have more "privileges" of using phone and computer, I hope to slowly come back to Omnimaga and be active again

Anyways, I don't know if many of older members remember my old project, Tale of the Lost Map, aka TLM, a z80 BASIC RPG that I have attempted to make.

Basically, this new game is almost exactly same as TLM, as far as game mechanics go. Linear Platform movement and map (very similar to the game MapleStory) featuring ASCII art inspired by Illusiat series, and a unique battle engine that can be best described as being similar to Tales of Phantasia (youtube shown below), but my battle system being 1v1 and turn-based.

The main difference from TLM is largely storyline. When I first made Tale of the Lost Map, I kind of made the title first, and tried to make the storyline fit into this self-made restriction. This caused so many issues concerning the game world and the storyline, and inhibited my creativity by a lot. Hence, I decided to throw away any kind of clinging I had with this "Lost Map" shit, what kind of power it would have, how would that affect the gameplay and mechanics, and whatever else that came along with it.

Although I don't want to spoil too much on the new storyline, it mixes medieval/western fantasy with science fiction in very unique and interesting way.

I will leave with this quote, which fits very nicely with the setting of this game.

"We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up, sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming."
 Ludwig Wittgenstein


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVPrt25t7XE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVPrt25t7XE</a>

I found some interesting articles on game development in general (via GameDev.net) and thought I would share here.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/166972/cognitive_flow_the_psychology_of_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131494/behavioral_game_design.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23724

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2009/GDC2009_ValvesApproachToPlaytesting.pdf

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2011/ValveBiofeedback-Ambinder.pdf

Hopefully these shed more light into people who want to create better games

Hi guys, I'm working on this turn based strategy game, for z80 BASIC contest.

It will feature 4 different types of units that you can make/move/attack with on a 4x12 sized open map.

The gameplay is relatively simple and fast: destroy opponent's base.

Eye candy should be up shortly

I was going through the auction house in diablo 3 and the best dps bow there had 1337 damage per second 

l33t bow! Sadly I'm too poor to buy such a gear, item being 25 million gold, when I only have 420k T_T

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HeE6NWmDE" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HeE6NWmDE</a>

yeah my ears disappeared after hearing this song.

I've been looking into storylines in RPGs, interactive storyline, linear storyline, interactions with NPCs, AI in enemies, simulation vs stimulation, etc.

And I stumbled upon this document that I thought is really good if you plan on developing an RPG that captures the audience. So I decided to share it

Hi guys, I need some sprites for my RPG, Tale of the Lost Map.
Monochrome, and even if someone already made a sprite for an item, I wouldn't mind getting some other variations (since I need more than 1 sprite for an item). Credits will definitely be given

NOTE: the sizes I gave you are the maximum size. If your sprite is smaller, it's totally fine! Upload it anyways!

So here are the lists of sprites I'm going to need:
Different kinds of helmets: size is 9x9. Don't draw the actual head. Just the helmet
Some of the examples of helmets you can get me are:
Barbute
Armet
Cap
Mask
Circlet
Different kinds of shoes: size is 12(width)x6(height) Again, don't need the actual feet/ankle/knee. Just the shoes.
Some of the examples of shoes:
Sandals
Moccasin
Different boots such as:
Hessian_%28boot%29
Buskin
Caligae

That's it for now, but I'll probably ask for armors and pants, weapons and shields later on after I figure out their sizes.


Also attached are my ring sprite and necklace sprite.

There were some programs which wabbitemu refused to be sent over, giving me not enough free space on the calculator (there is absolutely nothing in the calculator, and I have 24000bytes of RAM) while other programs transferred fine 

I've attached the programs that were having trouble being sent.

My wabbitemu's ROM is TI-84+SE, OS2.43, wabbitemu version 1.5.12.21 (may be I need to upgrade my wabbit?)

I thought this very handy routine should be shared. It's not mine, credit goes to Runer112 and jacobly. They helped me find a really compact way to store the flags in a variable (total of 44 flags per single variable!)

Write these codes as is in the beginning of the program. Make sure you're not in radial mode if you plan to use graph screen.

In order to utilize the above routine, you use these when you need to work with flags

So let's say you have 4 flags, and they are in the variable F. In order to see what 3rd flag is, you do:
F:r₁(3
In order to reset (make flag 0) the 2nd flag, you do
F:r₂(2
and so on.

This is a lot better and more efficient, then let's say setting each flag per element in a list.
like, L1(1,0,0,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,0,1,0,0
etc. when you can store all that in a single variable as '20148' and extract each flag by using the above method.

Just make sure the value doesn't contain more than 44 flags because after that you will lose accuracy due to how TI handles the number.

Yes... I've done it. This is the program that will shock the whole world.

I've implemented the greatness of quadratic solver with the awesomeness of randInt( command!

Now one quadratic equation will give many many different answers! WOW a humongous non-linear endings for BASIC program!¹ 

Sitting at only 97 bytes of code, and taking over 300 hours of coding and optimizing², download this amazing program right now and share it to others! They'll thank you forever, guaranteed!³

Thought I would share this here, it's been running around on facebook lol

Edit: Just noticed it's from 9gag

So I'm looking for some monster sprites with ASCII art, that fits in 1 line and 1~6 characters long.
Preferably, they should face left-side, like rat, or front view like spider

It will be going into my game Tale of the Lost Game :) Credits will be given within the game

What I have so far (some of them look better/worse on calc):
Snail   ί@_
Rat   <:3)~
Spider   /^8^\
Worm   Ooo_
Butterfly   )Ϊ(
Bunny   β
Rabies Dog   °;-;
Owl   {°v°}
Centipede   >:8888
Scorpion   ΣXX--4
Bat   ^o^
Wolf   ^ππ-
Ghost   \O.O/
Cannon   .=O&
Cyclic Robot   <\+/>
Stinger Fish   <°)><
Crab   (\°°/)
Eel   <'==><
Crocodile   Σ:88Z
Fallen Angel   ^X^
Spirit   *
Pixie   ρ
Gargoyle   ^V^

Bosses

Giant Bird   Σ°λ/\
                 \n^>
Abomination      (x.x)
                    <(**<)
Rampage Tank      <=[°]
                         /HHH\

This is a relatively small game that I had in mind to get back into programming. It will be coded in TI-Basic, and I'm not sure about graphics, I think I'm going to draw the maps while the game is loading, and save it to pic files and recall them within game, and delete them when you quit to save up space.

Anyways this game is basically going to be a simulation game where you are a guild master, trying to grow your guild.
You go around the city getting requests from people, and you assign heroes to do the task, and if they succeed, the heroes get the xp and you get the rewards money from the requestees. With the money, you advertise your guild to raise your guild ratings, which means better paying requests and more heroes applying to work for your guild. Buy the equipments and items for your heroes, train them, and send them to adventures. If you send low level heroes into hard adventures, they might die so you must send a higher level hero.

The final goal is that there is an attack on the city by the demons. You must use your heroes in your guild to protect the city and defeat the demons.

What do you guys think?

Right after the placement matches, we were placed at platinum league... rank 1!
Turns out we made our own league 

After a year of wait, the Factory Series have finally been released! This packages combines Factory by Builderboy, Factory Theta by ztrumpet, and Factory X by jsj795 in a single program. The last author is the one who packaged the games together.

You start with only Factory unlocked, and once you reach high enough score in survival mode you will unlock Factory Theta, and eventually Factory X.

Here is a screenshot of Factory:


And here are two more, which we link to since they are huge:
-Factory Theta
-Factory X

The games, which features great puzzles, challenge and fast speed by BASIC standards can be downloaded here!

Here are the discussion topic as well as the three original ones.