Yep that is the name of my next project. I drawed something on my sketchbook and chosen that I will use it as intro. Well I will need to edit it. But yea, this is the project.
Not to give you soma basic info.
The game is a puzzle platformer. So you go arround solving puzzles. The main thing in the game is, that you work together with you shadow. (There is no 2 players, the game is singleplayer). Your shadow helps you solve diffrent puzzles or you have to help you shadow to solve something. I alredy have some basic moves in my head in what you will be able to do. The game is effected by the next games: Braid ( the shadow world ) and WIMH ( Where is my heart ).
I will post more updates of the game idea when I will be making them.
Today I worked on the level editor which is a essential part fort the game. Because the main thing will be the levels. Today I made following: object deletion, saving, and loading levels, grid. That means the editor is done. So now comes the platformer part. I am a little affraid how the gravity and all will work because I have bad experiances from Game Maker with platformers.
Here is the level editor. ( Level made with bricks. ) lol
So yea. It took me somewhere 2.5 hours to make good game states and basic level editor with the use of polymorism and inheriance. All this stuff was new to me soo I am pleased with the result and the time taken to make it.
Here are some test screens:
The level editor is object based, soo you place object ( in this case blocks ). You can bee pixel perfect with this because it is not grid based. I don't know if I will make it grid based. I will probably just put a background with a grid soo I will have a better orientation.
I need to add the deletion of an object with a right click and some more object to test it.
Yep I am back. I took a 2 week ( more ) break from programming. I have just been doing anything else I found. I have holidays now but the first 3 days of it was party and all that stuff so I havent worked on anything. I did go through the level editor tutorials I have some knowlage how it needs to be builded.
Yea it wont look like this but still.
So today I will start on my new project. The first thing I am going to do is a Object based level editor. I only saw some stuff on how it should be made so my head will probably hurt me later this day. I hope I will complete it and that it will work fine.
A lot has happened in those 2 weeks. The "A game A week" guy named swarmer is trying to finish his game and he has only few days left. I hope he will make it. A lot of indie games came out and Dyson got an update. :P
First I have to dissapoint you that there are no news about a new project. It is easter now and there is other stuff to do.
But I have been learning. I learned polymorphism and inheriance. Then I learned to make game states based on poly.... Till now I have ben using switch game states. I also lerned scroling. So you move around the level. Finaly I started on tiling and level editor. I somehow understand how tiling workd by reading a file and I will learn how to make a level editor tomorrow. I also made some console apps to try my new skills.
I also need to mention Braid. It is one of the greatest games I played. I also put it on the first place on my list of best indie games. Cave story is now 2nd.
A realy great game with epic story and epic gameplay.
Stupid name I know. I just whrite this now to make some updates because the last post I did was 1 week back.
As I said I learned the stuff in C++ that I said I will. I am makeing some practice programs to get some experiance with this.
In this week I mostly played games. The Godfather 2 to be precise. It is a nice game to play and it doesn't get booring. I recomend it to anyone who likes games like GTA and MAFIA or just be the Don.
I am realy happy that I finnished the last hard test in school ( I think ). It was geography. I don't like it. I will now be able to concetrate more on developing. I will post some updates in the following days when I will finish practicing the new skills.
Yep it is time againg for a postmortem. I did the same thing with Battle Pong and now it is time for this game.
I won't make what did I good and wrong but I will just list stuf and say something about it.
Finished it
Yea probably the most important thing. I finished the project.
Day started: 26.1.2009
Day finnished: 3.4.2009
Hours spend: ~51 hours
Lines of code ~5.000 , ~2.800 statements
I am happy that I finished the project that took me 2,5 months to finish. It could have been done in like 2 weeks but I was just totaly slacking. Most of the game was done in the last week.
There is one bug in the game that can make the game crash but I didn't take my time to find it. The game crashed few times in the development process.
Learned a lot
One of the most important thing about this project is, that I learned a lot from it. If you compare this to te simple Battle Pong, there is a huge difference. I learned a lot about everything and got a lot of experiance. I also learned that I can make a game in small amount of time if I just take my time and work on it.
Made a decision
I hope I spelled that right. I decided that I won't make any remakes. All my project till now were remakes or more remixes that haved additional stuf. Space Invaders was the biggest remake because it is very diffrent from the original and there are 3 modes to play in.
From now on I decided to make creative games. More indie games. So I will make something that noone has done or at least it isn't a remake. I alredy have a great idea for a simple game.
Not using the full power of C++
I noticed today when I was looking how to make a level editor, that there are some vital C++ functions that I don't use and know. And these are: Friendship, inheritance and Polymorphism. These are some vital things that I need to know before I start on my next project. If I learn this I will know how to program more object oriented, that will make my games better.
So what is next
I am now plannig to start learning these vital things. I will realy need them if I want to understand how to make a level editor, that is very important in the next game. Because the game won't be that complex but the levels + interesting gameplay style will make the game nice. So first will be learning, then I will make some example programs to test my knowlage. I hope I will start the next project next week. Till then I will draw the ideas for the game on paper and plan everything out so it will be easier to develop it.
That was what I wanted to say. I hope I didn't complicate much. Also thanks for all the support that you gave me. Specialy Swarmer that gave me support by easily just testing it and giving feedback, that can be a lot for somebody.
I also put the video of the development process on YouTube today. The quality that is on youtube is s**t, but I can't help it.
I will also post a video with all my games till now.
It is finaly done. I just finished it before 15 minutes. It is done. The last hour has been a total pain in the ass as I was optimizing all the thing and my school mates were needing me at the MSN it was realy stresfull. But it is done. I have recorded the last 6 hours of devoplent so that will be on youtube tomorrow. I wont make this post long because I am totaly stressed and soo I will let the pictures and the link do the work.
All I need to say that this project has totaly drainem my energy. It got totaly booring in a part because all I was doing was the same stuf. So I decided to stop making remakes for some time. From now on it is a totaly new idea from me. A real indie game.
I also need to say that I learned a lot lot lot from this project and can't wait to start on my totaly indie game in few days. No not tomorrow but maybe a brief start on Sunday. I will also make the project less complex but more interesting so I won't get bored.
