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Korax

[RELEASE] The Wizard

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I have a small amount of old, rudimentary programming experience, but I bought a copy of Game Maker a little while ago and have been following Tom Francis'

videos. I'm keeping it simple to make sure it's something I can do and to (hopefully) allow a good amount of time to tweak things once I get the basic systems ironed out.

 

The first thing that popped into my head was something that I then retrofitted to an episode title:

 

Once a year, wizards from across the land gather to compete to prove that they are The Wizard. They risk their lives in a deadly contest that sees them flinging devastating magic missiles back and forth until one wizard wavers, and is punished for it. Who will lay claim to the title of The Wizard? WILL IT BE YOU????

 

 

It's a 2-player pong-esque game where you both control wizards reflecting a wizard-seeking ball of energy back and forth until one wizard fails to reflect it and gets hit. There will probably be a best-of-5 thing to win a round.

 

I got some basic things working last night, so right now I have two controllable rectangles that can fire a homing circle and automatically volley it back and forth when it gets close to them.

 

Next up is making the missile reflection manually triggered, getting the missile collision set up, and implementing alternating turns for missile serving.

 

I have a few ideas for extra tweaks (both mechanical and aesthetic), but as long as the basics work, I'll be happy.

 

I may solicit art at some point, but it wouldn't be much. A few sprites and a play field. Maybe something with simple animation, if I can figure that out.

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Did some brief work yesterday and set the missile reflection to be triggered manually, limited by distance from the player.

 

post-8476-0-29572300-1428797144_thumb.gif

 

Putting in missile collision shouldn't take too long, and then I'll see if I can figure out how to make turns alternate between players.

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Missile hits and alternating turns! And the first serve is determined randomly! Also blood!

 

post-8476-0-40207700-1428816823_thumb.gif

 

I need to put a delay between getting hit and serving the next missile.

 

I'm already keeping track of current server and score, so indicating those will be something I can easily indicate. I also want to implement better movement; what I have right now is simple and has the problem of being faster on diagonals. I'm not familiar enough with Game Maker's systems and I'm not good at figuring out whatever math is needed to do it properly.

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Looks good! I like the mechanics of having the missile orbit around you and then firing it back.

 

The premise of the game (A fantasy tournament in an area) reminds me a bit of

. Which is good!

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After looking at a couple of Game Maker player movement tutorials, I came up with a movement system that's a bit convoluted, but didn't involve a bunch of triangle math. So now diagonal movement is the same speed as horizontal/vertical movement.

 

In addition to resizing the player sprites to something less huge, I put in an energy shield to help represent the reflection radius. I also made it flare in opacity when it reflects, and added a check to that reflection code that makes sure it's faded again before it can reflect to give it a bit of a charge-up mechanic. I'll have to tweak the timing on that to make it actually matter.

 

post-8476-0-06741800-1428986159_thumb.gif

 

I also fixed a bug! Because of the order I had serving, reflection, and collision, any serves after the first would act like a reflection - launching the wrong way and making the shield flare. Switching them around fixed it and now it acts like it's supposed to, as far as I can tell.

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Put in a delay before a missile serve, scores, and a few announcements in an appropriate (read: dumb) WIZARDLY font. The game now has a win condition!

 

post-8476-0-07262400-1429242309_thumb.gif

 

I definitely need to adjust the missile's homing ability. I was thinking of making a build with a number of selectable movement presets, and seeing what people think feels the best.

 

I also want to learn a bit more about Game Maker's particle systems, and possibly implement the blood splatter using that instead of sprites. And maybe a sparkly trail for the missile.

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Playtesting build!

 

In order to help with tweaking missile movement, I made a version that lets you cycle through a bunch of different variable combinations. I've got some text showing to let you know what preset is running, and you can also disable the win condition to allow uninterrupted play.

 

So if some kind people would download the game here (Windows standalone EXE):

 

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5sEOrIC8WBOflE3WmtZd016dHpFX2xlQWkxenpndTZYNXlCeGtienJ6SGd2enFwUTNpMDg&usp=sharing

 

take some time to mess around with it and then give me some feedback here:

 

http://goo.gl/forms/qsyrOgnHoQ

 

that would be great!

 

 

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I replied! I figured I'd post my feedback here, too:

 

Did you plan on having the missile speed constant? Because I thought it might add a bit of extra depth if the speed at which you fired the missile back were determined by how close to your wizard it is when you press the button. If this were the case, Preset 1 would be the kind of average speed I'd like to see, with slightly slower and slightly faster returns based on proximity. Also, I noticed there's a bug where if you're moving forward when you serve, the missile immediately hits you.

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Thanks for the feedback! I've (hopefully) fixed that bug and put the new version in the same shared folder.

 

I was thinking about variable speed early on, but more as a function of how long the missile had been flying. I dropped it to concentrate more on getting basic motion down, but I might look back at it as the end of the jam nears or possibly after, since there are things I want to experiment with even after it's more or less finished.

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Added in a couple final details, and I'm now at a more-or-less finished point! I'll spend the rest of my time making tweaks and maybe some light bug-hunting. I've gotten some feedback on my test version, but it would be great if some more people could help with it!

 

 

So if some kind people would download the game here (Windows standalone EXE):

 

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5sEOrIC8WBOflE3WmtZd016dHpFX2xlQWkxenpndTZYNXlCeGtienJ6SGd2enFwUTNpMDg&usp=sharing

 

take some time to mess around with it and then give me some feedback here:

 

http://goo.gl/forms/qsyrOgnHoQ

 

that would be great!

 

Now that it's almost done, I'm also looking for some art. If you look at the GIFs I've posted, it won't need much. A few sprites, a background, maybe some simple animation. I don't have a particular style in mind, but something pixel-arty might work better with everything being kind of small. Let me know if you'd like to contribute!

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I got a bit bogged down with our game so I haven't been keeping up with many other games, but all I'm going to do now is put it up on itch.io

Is there anything I can do to help in this late stage?

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If you haven't already done it, it would be great if you could try out my test build and let me know what you think. Otherwise, I'm pretty much finished. I'm planning on doing a couple small additions later tonight, and then it'll be good to go. Thanks!

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And now it's up on itch.io!

 

http://korax.itch.io/the-wizard

 

I plan on working on it more when I figure out how to do more things in Game Maker, but I'm more than satisfied with the game as it is right now.

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I've been playing this as one person; as in, I'm controlling both characters. As I get better at it, the narrative which is implied by me controlling both of them is kind of interesting; it's like I am the power from which they draw and they have become my puppets so I both control them and battle them for my own monstrous entertainment while they believe that they themselves want to do this.

 

I get the impression that you developed it while testing it by contolling both players. I think that might have led it it a QWOP-like direction, where the goal which forms (in single-player) is to just get nice volleys. I would be interested in seeing something like this control-scheme (with two wizards) being played in a shmup. Both wizards can still be killed, but the player challenge becomes destroying patterns of enemies by reflecting the magic-missle between them. 

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This game looks fun but sadly my laptop doesn't have a numberpad, so I can't play it. Any chance of a build with alternate controls?

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I am reasonably certain that it could absolutely be done! I'll take a shot at it when I've got some time this evening.

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Done! Version 1.1 now up on itch.io.

 

Player 2 can now missile with numpad 0, rControl, OR rShift! It didn't seem to have any issues during my brief testing, but let me know if you encounter any problems.

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Really enjoyed playing this with my girlfriend. Once we started understanding the game, it got real competitive.

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Again, a game I'd love to play with a friend - not possible atm. The mechanics are delightfully physics-based - seems like there's a lot of room for individual playstyle there. Also - that art is super appealing, as someone who grew up on Amigas!

 

 --Rev

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