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WIZARD JAM 2016 // Welcome Thread

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I was always doing exams during previous jams so I'm excited to finally be able to participate in one! I'm kind of tempted to roll with the idea of The First Great Brand war.

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I'm doing Zombie Train Beyond Earth probably. My friend said he's gonna try XCOM Obama. We'll see how it goes.

 

Zombie Train Beyond Earth <3

 

I was considering Zombie Train Beyond Earth also, maybe I'll just make "Brad Muir" a monster hunting strategy game with tower defense elements. (Not gonna lie, that was meant to be a joke, but it sounds pretty cool, and WAY too complex for my first game). I was also looking at Change the name to Game (either some sort of word puzzle or a platformer that takes place entirely on the start screen), Functional Cogs Only (Puzzle platformer?), Black Maps and Motel Rooms (Wadjet Eye style adventure), and Teenage Zombie Insects (just a potential alternate title for ZTBE). My current plan is to go solo in GM with some help from Tom Francis' YouTube series and audio from Soundimage, but if someone with experience/artistic talent/motivation/the ability to stop playing freaking Marvel Puzzle Quest long enough to get some work done, just loves the idea of Brad Muir: The Video Game, let me know.

 

EDIT: I was just looking at the DotA titles, and THE HOOVE OEUVRE, WITH GREG KASAVIN could be fun, but only if Greg was willing to do V/O. I picture a fighting game with various artists who happen to be ungulates, and Greg as Shao Khan style announcer. TEST YOUR ART!

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My current plan is to go solo in GM with some help from Tom Francis' YouTube series and audio from Soundimage, but if someone with experience/artistic talent/motivation/the ability to stop playing freaking Marvel Puzzle Quest long enough to get some work done, just loves the idea of Brad Muir: The Video Game, let me know.

My idea for zombie train is a walking dead (telltale) parody sort of, but in the style of wadjet eye adventure games. Also, more combat than dialogue. Because zombies don't talk too much.

Also, I have some experience with GM, I made a few prototype games before, but I'm not good at anything complicated. I still have to google a lot. I can sort of do 2D art, and if you want something specific, maybe I can help, but it depends on how much time I have. (You should probably find someone else, but I offer my help anyway.)

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Nope, there's no problem with that; it's totally allowed! Any podcast on the network is fine.  :)

I can't wait to see some of the 3MA titles: Crusader Kings II, Company Of Heroes, Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, etc. or Roguelikes.

.

.

.

...

 

or maybe Rogue(Likes) a dating sim meets Final Fantasy 1-4 where you are a Lady(or Lord) who hires a band of adventurers to take you on an escort mission, and you have to keep them all happy so they are effective in combat, which you have limited control over (Decide equipment, combat stances, and position before battle (making sure not to hurt anyone's feelings or sense of pride), 1x encounter give a bonus to ATK, DEF, or SPD, 1 x encounter use a potion).

 

I'm liking this more and more. Would the AI for this be too complicated for a jam/my first game? In my head it doesn't seem like it:

 

//Obviously not actual code.
If Fighter's HAPPY is greater than 0 Continue, Else WEEP. 
If Fighter's TIRED is less than 0 continue, Else DROWZE. 
If Fighter's HP is less than X continue, Else ATTACK. 
If Fighter's h.Potion is greater than 0 continue, else DEFEND
Use h.Potion
If Wizard's CONFIDENCE is greater than 0 Continue, Else CHOKE.
//and so on...

Thoughts, suggestions?

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@onedollarwilliam It's totally doable. Implementation of systems and the overall presentation of the game (especially things like movement) are easier or more difficult depending on the engine you use. Do you have a particular engine you would like to use? If not, give us some idea of what the most basic form of the game would look/sound/control like. I'm not sure if you are describing a visual-novel, a top-down tile-based RPG, or something else.

Edit: Sorry that I didn't see you mention Game Maker. I'm pretty sure that you could do what you describe in Game Maker, but I'm not familiar with that engine. Still, implimenting things like character movement, advancement of turns, and audio-visual presentation can consume a significant amount of effort. I recommend working on the most basic functionality and presentation of the game and then implimenting an A.I. system onece you have the base of the game functional.

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My idea for zombie train is a walking dead (telltale) parody sort of, but in the style of wadjet eye adventure games. Also, more combat than dialogue. Because zombies don't talk too much.

Also, I have some experience with GM, I made a few prototype games before, but I'm not good at anything complicated. I still have to google a lot. I can sort of do 2D art, and if you want something specific, maybe I can help, but it depends on how much time I have. (You should probably find someone else, but I offer my help anyway.)

That zombie train idea sounds pretty boss kevin. Thanks for the offer! I think I should be able to handle most of the art on my current idea(an FF style RPG merged with a dating sim). The tricky bit will be: I'd like to do emotive character portraits for the dating sim parts (not like animated, but if you make Cleric unhappy their picture switches to one with a frown, etc.). I imagine I'll start with some sort of basic template for each character and shift pixels around for the various expressions.

 

 

@onedollarwilliam It's totally doable. Implementation of systems and the overall presentation of the game (especially things like movement) are easier or more difficult depending on the engine you use. Do you have a particular engine you would like to use? If not, give us some idea of what the most basic form of the game would look/sound/control like. I'm not sure if you are describing a visual-novel, a top-down tile-based RPG, or something else.

Edit: Sorry that I didn't see you mention Game Maker. I'm pretty sure that you could do what you describe in Game Maker, but I'm not familiar with that engine. Still, implimenting things like character movement, advancement of turns, and audio-visual presentation can consume a significant amount of effort. I recommend working on the most basic functionality and presentation of the game and then implimenting an A.I. system onece you have the base of the game functional.

Thanks for the advice clyde I'll definitely focus on the basics first.

 

What I'm picturing will essentially have two parts:

1. Low-rez Visual Novel - Text box on the left with current plot elements on top and and dialogue options underneath, NPC portrait on the right with smaller text box beneath for NPC dialogue. This will be the majority of the game, talking to people figuring out what they want and need; so, like a good psychopath, you can say the things they need to hear to make them do the things you want them to do. Movement, equipment, team organization, shops, all handled in this part.

2. Old school RPG - I picture a pretty much straight early Final Fantasy rip off. Slightly tilted side view, good guys on the right, bad guys on the left, front and back rows, shift character object forward one character width and rotate sword icon 60 degrees up and down is an attack, enemy flashes and a number pops up for damage. Menu at the bottom left with five options: Continue, Encourage, Use Potion, Flee, and Auto. Text box at the bottom right with HP and MP. 

 

If there's any sort of overworld map it will only be for reference, likely in the NPC Portrait window while in the Travel dialogue tree.

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You could do it with states. You have to define everything though. What does tired mean, what does drowsy mean. It can be done, but it's up to you to decide what the variables mean and how they are shown.

Edit: I just want to add that if this is your first game, and unless you have a lot of time, maybe consider scaling down a bit. You can do everything you want, but it takes more time then you would think. Maybe I'm just bad at coding, but that's my thoughts as a beginner. I like the ideas though and I hope your game turns out really cool!

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It's cool if we experiment with prototypes before the jam right? I've got my idea sorted but I want to try a few things to see if the gameplay is actually fun.

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In anticipation of Wizard Jam I'm currently teaching myself to code simple things in Phaser. Has anyone else any interest in using this framework? It's a HTML5/JavaScript framework for 2D games and it is quite mature. (Version 2.5 is currently in Beta.)

 

It provides nice portability with the ability to embed games into basically any website, packaging it as a stand alone executable using Electron and, with some work, as Mobile Apps using something like Cordova. Though I haven't tried that last one yet.

 

If anyone of you is interested I could get you up to speed, and then we could learn together. (By that I not necessarily mean make a game together, just help each other out.)

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@Vasari

I hope you make the prototypes available to play. I'd be interested in trying them out to give context to your Wizard Jam project.

@Stack Smashing

Does it handle audio well?

I guess either way, this seems like a good opportunity to learn an html-exportable framework. I'm interested. I'll download Phaser and watch a few tutorial videos.

If you have any particular recommendations to save me time, I'm listening.

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@Stack Smashing

Does it handle audio well?

I guess either way, this seems like a good opportunity to learn an html-exportable framework. I'm interested. I'll download Phaser and watch a few tutorial videos.

If you have any particular recommendations to save me time, I'm listening.

 

It does do audio of course, though I haven't really used it for anything other than playing some sound effects yet, so I can't really say how well.

 

And great! I can't speak for video tutorials but I liked this written one where you build a near perfect Flappy Bird clone: http://www.codevinsky.com/phaser-2-0-tutorial-flappy-bird-part-1/ 

 

Depending on your prior knowledge of JavaScript and its rather ... rich ecosystem, you might want to start with this one though, where you build a more stripped down version of FB.

 

If you decide to go with the first one: The Yeoman generator he uses is quite old and not maintained, and if you decide to ultimately use one, as I did, generator-phaser-plus is what I would recommend. It is really close to the one he uses, but the boilerplate it creates uses ES6 features by way of Babel so you'll either have to know a bit about it or simply replace the generated code with the one he posts.

(There's one with fewer features as well.)

 

If you have any questions about anything of this I'll be glad to try and help.

 

And if you really hate Flappy Bird for some reason, here's one that uses Asteroids as an example.

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I'm a complete javascript noob. I'll look over what you've posted in the next couple of days.

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@Vasari

I hope you make the prototypes available to play. I'd be interested in trying them out to give context to your Wizard Jam project.

 

 

 

Sure, I'd be happy to! I was planning on starting something tonight and posting in the other thread to find a team.

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This may be an oddly specific question, but is there a way to make it so that MonoDevelop autocompletes and suggests parameters and such from the Phaser.js framework? If not, is there an inexpensive script editor that would do that?

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There is probably a really straightforward way to do that, but the way I did it without even specifically wanting to was: use Sublime Text (anyway), install TypeScript, install the SL TS Plug-In and then put the following at the beginning of my file:

/// <reference path="<relative path to phaser>/phaser/typescript/phaser.d.ts" />

That last part was intentional, of course.

I also found this: https://github.com/angelozerr/tern-phaser

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Man alive.

I just spent 3 hours getting the Phaser terms to autocomplete in Brackets. It was a nightmare because I went into the Brackets folder in Programsx86 instead of in some User folder.

If anyone needs help doing that, you better ask for it quickly, because I will soon forget all the steps I eventually had to do.

Maybe tomorrow I can get back to that Flappy Bird tutorial.

I just needed to complain for a moment. I'm ok now.

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I might end up doing something small on Twine or play with some visual landscapes in Processing for this if I can find the time, motivation and ideas for that :)

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Progress!

 

post-34045-0-82183300-1461701923_thumb.gif

 

I spent last night and tonight getting to grips with the gamemaker physics engine. My goal is to make enemies pinball around the room when shot. So far it's about 30% working; they'll move when shot, but since their rotation is locked the motion doesn't take into account where the bullet hit.

 

 

And it does this:

 

post-34045-0-12064200-1461702032_thumb.gif

 

I guess they can only move right for now. I need to do more digging on how the impulse is applied and why the way I'm applying it only moves an object in one direction.

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Looks good so far. Question though, how do you get GIFs of gameplay? Are you using a seperate screen recorder?

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Awesome. Thanks so much!

Also, it probably only moves right because the impulse is adding to it, and therefore postive and therefore to the right. You will have to have it check which side is hit and then add or subtract whatever the variables are. At least that's what I'm guessing. You probably figured it out already, but, yeah.

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Thank you so much @Visari for the ScreenToGif knowledge bomb. I went to twitter asking about a good way to get gifs out of my game and it feel dead.

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The direction signs in gamemaker confuse me every time. I built my own little physics because mine is just collisions with walls too.

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