Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Projects and Ideas => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on October 22, 2008, 04:25:34 am
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As some people might have noticed a week ago, I uploaded a song called "Superstar Hero" in the archives and that song was a drastic change in musical genre compared to other music on this website. It was in fact intended to be used inside a game and my plan was to make one using RPG Maker 2003 using either a custom battle system or real-time action. However, since I needed to make sure such project was feasible in RPG Maker 2003, this is why I haven't been as active on the forums and IRC in the past week. THis is also why I was a bit quiet about this project. On IRC I only talked about how I may make a new RPG Maker game. Here is it today. I finally opted for an ARPG, due to it being slightly easier to do and requiring less pixel art skills, as a random battle system would have forced me to draw much bigger enemy sprites.
If you checked the screenshots or the video in the other thread or the news the game is intended to be a little cheesy and cliché. The main character is in fact a super hero and he must save the world, going through hordes of enemies, altough, as you can see in the intro, he's in a little bit of a trouble since he has nothing to defend himself with. When the game starts the first thing you will want to do after the mountain part you're on collapses is to find a weapon upgrade so your attack power is no longer 0. In this game the leveling up system will be upgrade-based. You will be able to raise 3 stats: attack, defense and speed. Attack and defense goes from LV 0 to LV 10 and speed from LV 0 to LV 5. To raise them you must gain gold from enemies and buy upgrades at shops. The game will be a mix of Zelda, Megaman, Ys and such popular titles, far away in the future in a semi middle age and futuristic environment.
It will really feel like if you were playing a Turbografx-CD game. Even some of the sound effects sounds a bit like a 8 bit or early 16 bit console. If you expect to see a super realistic graphic game here forget about it. I'm gonna try to keep it old skool and colored.
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looks like fun. On the issue of tiles, just curious, is the bit depth on the graphics 256 colors, RGB, or is it RGB+Alpha channel?
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In RPG Maker 2003 you can only use 256 colors PNG images. For transparency you don't need to enable it. You can, but it won't change anything as when you import the file in RM2K3 it asks you to choose which color you would like to be transparent. The only annoying thing is if you want to import a picture that doesn't need transparency at all, the RPG Maker forces you to select a transparent color anyway so you must add a column or row of pixels of a different color and set that color as transparent one
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Wow... you really don't have the attention span for complicated programming languages. =P
RPG Maker is the simplest you can get, though, from the looking of it... you've taken a few extra steps.
I'm looking forward to another game to play soon. I'm kinda getting peeved at Fable II.
Keep it up, mate. ^_^
(P.S. <Just interesting information> I'm making an 2D MMORPG at the moment. Well, I started on it. I used a program a lot like RPG Maker called Eclipse. Though, I went through the loops to learn VB so I could edit the engine to my will. I'll probably post about it later. Hopefully, I can get the project helped with by Omnimaga [the site, not person] when I get the spare time again.)
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yeah I don't really like to spend time trying to figure out how to code stuff seriously, I don't have the brain to dechiper all that code and complicated stuff. Even with TI-BASIC i was starting to get bored during long coding sequences without much creativity related to the game design. I like to design games but not to code them x.x
I didn't mind VB much back then though, but it was quite slow and I didn't liked how you couldn't change the screen resolution (apparently there is a way but it apparently causes lot of BSODs)
To be honest I doubt I will ever make a turn based RPG again with RPG Maker 2003 though, because the battle system is so slow paced it gets boring and you can't change the speed much. So I would need to write my own battle system through events, which would be an hassle with all menus and stuff. RPG Maker 2000, XP and VS has faster battle systems so I would probably use one of these altough I'm not too fond of them for many reasons:
-RPG Maker 2000: lacks some good 2003 features like mp3 support and the patch to add mp3 support is in german.
-RPG Maker XP: Doesn't work in Windows Vista unless you find the patch to get it to work in it. Most stuff that was doable through events in 2003 now requires you to code (Ruby), defeating the point of RPG Maker, which is meant to let people do RPGs without having to program lol. Resolution is 640x480, meaning your tiles/sprites are 2x bigger in size. I suck big balls at making such huge graphics and it loses its old skool SNES/MegaDrive style that I like
-RPG Maker VX: Better than XP since it adds back all stuff that was removed in XP, but resolution forces you to use huge sprites here too.
As for RPG Maker 95, well, you can forget about it lol. I can't get it to run and games won't show up well either on my comp. It also have 640x480 res
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Progress: I did event 2 now, where when you walk on the second save point, the nearby girl explains you about your existence and stuff (I'll talk more about the storyline later), then she gives you 50 gold so you can buy a first weapon upgrade (since at your beginning level you cause 0 damage x.x).
Also I did some tweaking so that I can now show the character total LV (atk lv+def lv+spd lv) and amount of gold on the saved files screen. Normally RPG Maker only shows the average party LV and your main character HP. However what I did is that I added a second party member (which isn't even noticeable to players, since the RM menu and battle system, except for the save option, aren't used in this game) because to have gold on the save screen there are big chances that often the amount will be 0. Right before saving the game I make sure your character HP (the game is set so the HP is 9999 at every level, as it is the max amount of gold in my game) is the same amount than your amount of gold. However, if your gold is 0 it kills the character and RPG Maker triggers a game over, so the second party member prevent this from happening. After saving your character is ressurected. As for level it's just attack, defense and speed combined together, altough when you have no upgrades it will show LV 1 anyway, since it's the minimum in RPG Maker. I also obviously renamed "HP" as "G"
The items that will be buyable inside the shops now all works. Here is the list and price so far (subject to change):
1-Bomb -Do 2 damages to all enemies. Ignore defense -200 Gold
Basically a huge explosion that attack all enemies in the entire area, even if they are off screen.
2-Flash -Do 9 damages to all enemies. Ignore defense -1000 Gold
Basically a multicolor flash that hit all enemies even harder than the bomb.
3-Clock -Speed up character for 10 seconds -200 Gold
Basically during 10 seconds you will be Sonic The Hedgehog! Er... not really, but you get the idea. :P Useful to go through areas with too many dangerous enemies or areas where you lose HP (I might have these, like lava rooms or underwater levels, IDK) EDIT (10/28/08): Got rid of it... caused too much shit
4-Potion-Restore all Life Points -100 Gold
Well I think this one needs no explanation
There is also a delay between using items, because when I first coded this you could use all your items in less than half a second and it caused bugs with the clock item. When in high speed mode you can't use items at all. Items are assigned to key number 1 through 5. Press the corresponding number key to use the item.
The current plan is that one town in the game will be a real one, altough 9100 years later. You won't be able to visit much of it though, because it will be so crowded you won't be able to get anywhere so you will be going around the town most of the time to get to the other side
I also adjusted the text beeping display effect because the sound was way fucking too loud. x.x
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Hey this looks really cool. It's nice to see you working on an action RPG as it's a change of pace from your norm. Cant wait to see more.
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I actually got rid of the clock item (the item that speeded up your character walking by 4x the normal speed), it caused way too many problems with the other game events and would have been a PITA to manage when it comes to coding new events. However I'm starting to get the shop done. I also made a new song for the first real area where you can fight enemies. I keep most of them quite short though, because I don't want the game to be 800 MB huge lol just with mp3s :P
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shops are now working (items buying, upgrades, etc) and I did the areas and events up to mini boss 1
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So, it's been a while. Have you been working on this any recently?
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I'm actually still thinking about the collision detections and how I will handle bosses right now.
Because it might cause too many problems for boss fights and because you never know when you're gonna switch from a map to another, I think I will make the character not always be at the center of the map like it does right now and like in Final Fantasy IV or older. When reaching the edge of a map the map will just stop scrolling. I wanted to have some kind of old skool feel and make it easier for conversations but I think it will cause way too many problems for coding boss fights, since they will probably not be objects on the map and they will be flying images (at least, most bosses)
I'm still thinking about it though, I don't want to end up with even more problems x.x
I,m also still trying to decide how many dungeons there will be and shops (there is only one village in the game, and one town, but there will be shops all scattered around the map and some npcs sometimes). So far I know there's the first forest and the bridge part until you reach the town, but afterward the town will be too crowded to pass through so you'll have to exit to the right and go around it through maybe another forest part (which is where I think there will be another magic item shop) until entering the town again through another part in the north, where you will eventually reach the final dungeon, altough unaccessible yet. This is where I'M still unsure how many dungeons there will be. There's one in the first village area and to the east there's another forest area, which will contain an item required to access the village dungeon. I will make sure you gain one level for all stats when you arrive at the second part of the big city, then 3 when going back to the south to go search for the item to access the dungeon, then 4 at the dungeon and 6 when finished (this one will contain all 4 gems needed to access the final dungeon, but I think there might be one that is stolen. For the music I got the song for that dungeon, the city, villages and forest areas. I also got a few other songs left. For bosses the song used is the same than the intro song and this song will probably be used for the final dungeon area
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Alright, that sounds really good. I look foward to seeing how this progresses. =) Going old school is always great, but if RPG maker is too limited to handle the scope of how this is being made it makes more sense to change it. I'm sure it'll be sweet either way.
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I actually just fixed collision detection for enemies, in a different way than I intended too, though. I added a timer that makes enemies be able to hit you only after an enemy located next to you faces you for at least 0.4 seconds (will be much lower with harder enemies), and it's map wide, so you won't get stuck among a bunch of 6 enemies and not be able to move anymore before killing them. For the first boss there's no timer though, to not remove its challenge. So now enemies at the beginning are at a reasonable difficulty and it's easier to get money to level up.
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Glad you found an easy solution for it. I also like that the boss won't have such a restriction. Nice.
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Ok I finally got the Qc City started and I must warn you it is very seizure inducing, since the game is set in the 92th century. Technology has come a long way. There is no NPC yet and no doors are working and only one part out of many is done so far. To have that many animations I had to swap back and forth between two tilesets, the difference being tile colors and some tiles moving. I'll post two videos in a few minutes in the other thread for the futuristic city
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I finally figured out that you could activate a phasing mode (ghost mode) for any event in RM2k3. WHat it does is that it makes the specified event be able to go through walls, meaning I can now have flying enemies and it will expand possibilities if I ever make another game after this one or even that one
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nice. maybe even have certian spots for the player where he has to have a certian item to use there, which allows phasing through a wall? or even have hidden passageways that look like walls that have the phasing property on them too. don't forget floor tiles like pressure traps and stuff.
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I actually thought about secret passages. To save a tile slot this can be useful, plus i can do various other stuff, like jumping accross platforms
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I finally figured out that you could activate a phasing mode (ghost mode) for any event in RM2k3. WHat it does is that it makes the specified event be able to go through walls, meaning I can now have flying enemies and it will expand possibilities if I ever make another game after this one or even that one
Hey, that's really sweet. That'll add for more variety in the game. ^_^ Nice find!
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I also optimized the game now so it runs faster when switching in 640x480 windowed mode. On my comp it wasnt too bad but my guess was that the game would have run too slow on older comps regardless of the resolution, so I splut the HUD routines into multiple events and made most of them only be triggered when needed instead of every 0.3 seconds. Now only the HP bar is refreshed non stop. This caused half a second loading maps to occur but game will run smoother on old computers now.
I also discovered a few bugs in the game too. One caused items to be useable after you died and on the GameOver screen and one other caused you to be able to attack and use items during the view on Quebec city scene before the first boss. Attacking there caused your character to appear in the middle of the screen in the air. All of these were fixed though.
Now I need to fix a new bug I discovered where if you use offensive items in a area with no enemies or unused enemy slots then go to a area where these slots are used, the item effect will cause damage to the enemies using these slots as soon as you enter the area. This was introduced with the new coding, because now the enemies slots are reset right after entering a new area instead of right before. I'll just reset them both before and after when moving to an area with more enemies.
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Update: I think I might have fixed the "0 Gold" bug in the save/load menu. However for some reasons two of my save files corrupted in the meantime, I hope it's not something very bad like a missing variable or worse. It migth eb the fact I changed lot of events around and added variables though
EDIT: Update 2:
In RPG Maker save menu, normally the template is like this
FILE <num>
<main char name>
LV: <num> HP: <num>
To the right of this you see the facesets of the characters in the party.
So it would look like this for example (without the facesets):
FILE 1
CLOUD
LV: 21 HP: 1074
However in my game I don't use the main stats at all, I use my own variables, so I could use the main stats for something else, which allowed me to display other stuff. So my game currently have this:
FILE <num>
<location name>
LV: <the total of your atk, def and spd levels. If the total is 0 it is set to 1 by default> G: <amount of gold>
This posed me a lot of trouble for the gold, because if the amount of gold was equal to 0 it triggered a default RM2K3 GameOver. So I had to create a second dummy playable character, which never gets to 0 HP, to prevent this from happening. Also locations names are limited to 12 characters, so my idea was to have a miniature pic of the area surrounding the save point as the main character faceset when your save your game too. That way when reloading your game you would have a little idea of where you were, especially if the displayed location contains acronyms.
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dude this game is sexy
is there a calc version?
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unfortunately nope :( I might do one once I finish this, though (altough this will take a long while), but it will most likely be some sort of sequel, or I might simply do a Ys clone (since it's pretty similar gameplay:
Ys would also be easier and faster since you don't need to press any button to attack enemies (you just walk through them)
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ok i guess i could wait and not try to cry because my hopes and dreams of having the coolest calculaor on the block just were blown away by that last post :(
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Well look at this.
http://www.revsoft.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=550
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Well the thing is that I started calculator programming almost 8 years ago and most stuff I did were around 2002-2005, then I slowed down and kinda lost interest, altough I still did some games such as Metroid in 2006 and its expansion set in 2007. Plus my next RPG, if I get some motivation, is meant to be old skool, meaning it will be text sprites like my old 2002-2003 RPGs (altough coded better). Then I'll probably venture into something more graphical again.
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you should try tinspire calculator, i dont have one, but there is a 240x320 screen and 20mb/16mb arc/ram memory
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Yes but there is almost no programming capabilities on it.
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oh well i didnt know because i dont have one but that stinks they should make something to program with it
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They've been trying there's a whole thread of ideas on cracking it.
http://www.unitedti.org/index.php?showtopic=8191
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True and on top of that the Nspire BASIC isn't any faster than our good old TI-83+ and seems to lock up from time to time when you ask too much to the calc, so it doesn't look too good
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yeah, but still, 240x320 and soooooo much memory
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on top of that there were rumors about the processor being in the 70-150 MHz or something.
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no idea what that means. :P
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor
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any progress?
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He's been mainly focusing on illusiat 13.
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oh sorry nvm