Messages

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Re: Final version before Comp ends

« on: October 16, 2016, 12:14:01 pm »

LOL, well the fact his arms literally come off, must be kind of a new 'spooky' first of sorts. Yes, bugs, bugs, bugs. I'm not a coder, spent so long getting those arms to work. Change one variable and it throws something out. I have realised how important it is to have a clear outline before getting into it. That said in terms of just producing assets - this has been the most productive week, there is a lot of background stuff that just hasn't made it in yet. I recorded about 10 minutes of audio that I just didn't have time to put on.

Part of the mechanics of the game - is you can push buttons, pull levers etc. So in the opening section of the game, the chief is at his desk and to the left is the vampire bat and the chief keeps saying (recorded audio) Blasted Bats. Then when you select the chief to talk he asks you to pull a lever (which I didn't get around to completeting), you pull the lever and a 100 ton weight falls from the sky and kills the vampire bat.

The rooms are really sparse, I went for a dingy blue / yellow colour scheme deliberately, but I was going to have a garish colour scheme generally some rooms would be magneta etc (A nod to 8 bit classics like the Speccy). But yeah, I had a whole drawing list of potted plants (which were going to turn into Audrey out of Little House of Horrors), manic filing cabinets (draws opening and shutting etc), water coolers. Of course horror theme meant I could make zombie, werewolf, skeleton monsters. There's just so much I wanted to put in.

I really pushed myself on this, although tired and although a buggy mess I'm quite chuffed what I did manage in the time frame - all created from scratch - this didn't exist prior 8th Oct - even on paper.I have slept, I have eaten, walked dogs and spent about 16 hours a day at comp doing this and other things. Feel I have something I want to develop in fact over a less crazy time frame.

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Final version before Comp ends

« on: October 16, 2016, 03:12:17 am »

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/35399

Well there we go. 8 days of work on and off. Got an hour, but I know the problems I have left are not going to be solved in that time - so submitting something that sort of works, bugs n all. Had a load of sound to add, and some features, but I did something and messed up my weapons handler, spent the last four hours trying to get it to as near a working state as it was. If I had packed up and gone to bed 6 hours ago - I'd be submitting a better game. Sigh. Still it has been fun, fully intend to complete this game and polish it up. All art work, sound effects done my be this week, including little background ditty.

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Re: Oh, I thought I could do this...

« on: October 11, 2016, 02:02:26 am »

Thank you for the feedback guys. As you may have seen I started developing the first idea because I wanted to create something with a bit of eye candy - after all it is the reason I got into making computer games - because I am quite visual, very into my movies etc. I'm kind of aware that I listed a load of films and referenced Tim Burton - forgetting there is a film called R.I.P'D, which full confession - I have seen and actually really enjoyed - despite people slagging it off for it's simularities with M.I.B. No such thing as an original idea...?

As for idea 2 - the audio game - well.  I feel quite passionately about the idea of audio games for the blind generally - I had pitched it to my coding colleague some months ago (he was / is helping me code the big game idea I am working on longer term) and had the idea of creating a series of games. Through my partner I meet people with various disabilities and already met some blind people where the idea took root. And if you do some research there are some people already making audio games for the blind, but they are undercatered for. Soooo it is definately something I will persue outside of this GameJam and openly welcome people to consider and create their own versions. To further add to that - only last night I was at an event for the blind (through my partner) and took the opportunity to ask someone about games for blind people. It was a mostly 'older' group so I couldn't get quite as much feed back as I would have liked. But from what I heard - yes audio games are very much appreciated, but they tend to get a bit samey and just not enough of them. So there is a real audience for this kind of work. If you are interested I found a link a few months ago:

https://www.audiogames.net/

It seems to me - the best way to create a good audio game is to have a lot of story and atmosphere - I'm thinking at the moment about a blind version of Alien or even better Day of the Triffids in which blindness is a big part of the story. Or I remember there was a book set entirely in the dark in a dungeon. So many good references for ideas for a good audio game. Sorry I'm going on a bit, but you get the idea.

Once again thank you for the feed back

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Ask a Question / Re: How to jump over enemies and get points?

« on: October 09, 2016, 12:02:26 pm »

Hi, sorry was just browsing questions. Don't know if this is even a sensible offering, because it's not something I've needed to do, but just on the surface of it couldn't you divide the final score by the number of frames it takes? That was probably a really dumb thing to say, by someone who has no idea.

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Ask a Question / Is it possible to change my avatar name?

« on: October 09, 2016, 07:37:41 am »

Hi,

It doesn't take much observation to notice my name is mispelt. Don't ask me how drunk I was when I must have created it. I'm guessing it was one of those reflex moments when you're asked for a name and password and I er just rolled with it. Anyway I am seriously getting ready to get all professional and stuff and have a whole image I want to portray and obviously having a mispelt 'company' name is kind of naff from the get go. So can I change the name - or is it better / acceptable to just start a new account and load my IP's into that?

Thanks in advance.

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Re: Oh, I thought I could do this...

« on: October 08, 2016, 02:02:26 pm »

Replying to my own thread. But I am happy again. Had all day to play with the upgrade and done a ton of work. Still love Stencyl.

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Proof of concept for Spook E Oct 8th

« on: October 08, 2016, 07:22:21 am »

So far:

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/35349

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Stencyl Jam 16: "Spooky" / Oh, I thought I could do this...

« on: October 08, 2016, 04:27:10 am »

I upgraded Stencyl a few days ago. Haven't really had time to check the differences and I'm as confused as all heck.

I had two ideas, three if you count the game I've been working on for two years - which I'm not, but the one I decided to do has issues which looking at the changes is going to take me an age to work out - so in case it never sees light of day:

Idea Number one: It's called E666. You play a dead Spook for the Supernatural Bureau of Investigation and solve crimes, pick up items, talk to your chief and get into punch ups and shoot ups. Heavily influenced by the likes of films such as Beetlejuice, The Frightners and anything Tim Burton I guess. Main character is a guy called Moon Face, who is blue with fire for hair.... This is the one I am attempting because it is more visual.... but

Idea Number Two: I've always thought there might be a market for blind or partially sighted people in the concept of Audio Games - think interactive Audio books / or radio - the theatre of the mind - or even the old text based games of the 8-bit era. You have basic controls, no visuals and the sound tells the story and plays the game. I thought this would be awesome for a 'Spooky' game. You could close your eyes and play. When you walk you hear your footsteps which you have to learn to listen to - to gauge your 'position' - i.e stop walking - I've hit a wall / object. You listen for enemies - so breathing / sounds of enemy getting closer. You hear your inner monlogue - telling you things like: "I've picked up an object, I think it's a gun...." Etc, etc - think you can get the idea.

So back to work, but I'm a little dismayed today because I've realised most of what I knew how to do has changed...

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Chit-Chat / Released a game demo by mistake... lol

« on: October 02, 2016, 12:00:48 pm »

So, after messing around on the update I wondered what I could and could not release. Only have a free access account, so didn't think it would work. So call it a happy accident, because if it hadn't have uploaded I'd be like Meh, but cos it did - I can now say I've released some of my work!

Even though I know it is a limited effort - still a bit chuffed, and means I really want to get some of my other work tidied up to demo.

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Ask a Question / Re: What happens if I upgrade?

« on: September 28, 2016, 06:17:01 pm »

Thank you for the link that is perfect!

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Ask a Question / Re: What happens if I upgrade?

« on: September 28, 2016, 07:11:49 am »

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. In reverse order:

The main Youtube vids I have been watching have been done by SunriseKingdom. This guy is a massive help, really love his tutorials - and even though I'd downloaded things like the Weapons Manager from the Stencyl archive - I couldn't get it to work. The only way I managed to get it working was by following his tutorials and doing it step by step. I actually have a demo of a top down shooter that works as a game (apart from score board and some things I have in other games), built using his vids, graphics are a bit basic and I know there's a lot of work it still needs; but put it this way you can pick up and select and fire three weapons that all have different effects and can kill the enemy. So big kudos to that guy (SunriseKingdom), he taught me everything I know!

I can and do back up the games quite regularly, but is it possible to go back to an older version of Stencly if things don't work out?

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Ask a Question / What happens if I upgrade?

« on: September 27, 2016, 10:16:27 am »

Hi,

I am currently running version 3.3.2 of Stencyl. I've been using Stencyl for about two years now and still very much low on the learning curve. That said I have 5 games that I have been working on. I've already upgraded once or twice and encountered some problems with my behaviours working after the fact. If I upgrade to 3.4.0 is it going to royally stitch up all my original work?

I only want to - because I decided to work my way through the crash courses again to see if I can get my games working better. I've been using youtube vids mostly and found this extremely helpful, but some of these vids seem to use 'old' methods of doing things. Not to mention how confused I am that some basic functions in a game - such as weapons handling - seems to be done in a variety of methods - I can understand how / why, but when you are dealing with different versions, different methods it creates a world of confusion for someone teaching themselves basic coding. Basically how much changes in the new version?

Thanks in advance

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Ask a Question / Re: Re-use code without retyping?

« on: September 22, 2016, 04:52:48 pm »

Sweet - yes - thank you.  Export to hard drive and import resource, fill in the variables. Thank you again!

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Ask a Question / Re-use code without retyping?

« on: September 22, 2016, 04:42:38 pm »

Hi,

This is probably a really dumb question, but I've got about 5 games on the go, and as I learn and develop - I often end up with better code to do the same stuff in other games. All my development is 2 steps forward, one back. It would just be useful to have a central place where all my code can be stored. Does this exist on Stencyl, in a way that I can just share code over games?

Thanks in advance

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Chit-Chat / Re: Copyright Discussion

« on: March 26, 2015, 02:15:41 pm »

LOL. Wanna know what's to blame for all this. I only got the idea to use photos as graphics in a game from this article:

http://watchlist.kotaku.com/a-computer-program-made-a-game-by-itself-well-thats-1494080189

and some of those games:

http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/games/

A penny dropped and that is why I began a game using photographs directly but the plan was to blend them in with hand drawn graphics to an extent that it created a unique visual effect. The other thing of course is how many years have games been selling themselves as: "photographically realistic graphics...!" I just thought well why not have photographically real graphics....!

So two points: I wanted to blend those graphics to such an extent that they were not recognisable from the original. Which and I had checked this before, but since this discussion have rechecked as much as possible - I think can be justified as (paraphrasing) "significant modification enough, as to become a new piece of work."  At the moment not enough work has been done that this is the case - which is why I said it is still a work in progress, but I thought represented the concept of how this game was being put together.

If you can imagine my process was going to be about layering many images over each other, altering shapes and sizes to fit in with my tile grid, filling in blanks, adding shadow and light combining real images into the whole as you see it moving and animated and interacting with it. I was brimming with ideas and the only thing holding me back was my basic understanding of Stencyl.

I've been working on this project for 3 months, it's been my baby, I've lost sleep working on it because its the only time I get to do something I love.  Basically this wasn't some throw away quick project to make a quick buck.  I wanted to create something that made people look and just the joy of - well you know!? When you see just a small part of it come together...

Anyway, peace, respect, keep on trucking!

Pyschographics