Messages

1

Chit-Chat / Re: What is your process for designing levels?

« on: January 09, 2015, 11:37:55 pm »

I know you said you weren't looking for level design theory, so feel free to reprimand me or ignore it, but considering you said that you feel stuck right at the beginning of the process, this article from Gamasutra may help:
http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/184783/the_metrics_of_space_molecule_.php?page=1

It's lengthy and heady, but if you can wrap your mind around it I think it can be inspiring to someone like yourself that prides themselves on designing game mechanics. Also, its main focus is certainly 3d games (more specifically, first-person shooters, I believe), but I think you'll see the essence of what's being talked about can be applied to any type of game, really. The general idea is to create a diagram to represent the intended and possible paths (not necessarily physical) a player may take through a level; something like what Natrium mentioned above. This can be done on a large scale, determining the flow of the overall game - think of the masterful Symphony of the Night, where access to different areas and the items/abilities that grant you that access are balanced throughout the castle in a specific ordered way, yet still allow for plenty of freedom to explore - or on a small scale, such as placing enemies, keys, doors, etc. into a single room of a level.

Other than that, I definitely agree with the idea of building levels around each successive game mechanic, and depending on the kind of game you're trying to make, that may well be the perfect starting point, but there's obviously more to it than that; you don't want your game to end up simply being a series of demonstrations of each new mechanic. I gather from what you've said that your "designer's block" comes more from where to put things rather than the what. My personal suggestion is to play a game that's similar to yours (whatever favorite, all-time classic of the sub-genre you prefer), and when you encounter a bit of level design you enjoy - obviously, you're not going to straight-up copy it - but, try to understand the underlying concept of why that arrangement of elements works the way it does and see if you can build something from your own game around that, adjusting the non-essential aspects, adding twists, etc. Again, this can be done on both the large and small scale. Overall, I'd say it's all about designing the theory of the level before you start laying down tiles.

Sadly, as of yet, I have nothing to show for all this talk...

2

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Please check out my new (noobish) game!

« on: July 25, 2013, 10:41:17 pm »

Well, I played it until I had every upgrade maxed out, and then beat the boss... so there's certainly some enjoyment to be had. The cost for each upgrade, and increases therein, are fairly well balanced, so that I didn't just focus on one thing to enable me to get more points. They're all useful in their own way. However, the ability to "Make KoDs Weaker" is a bit of a flaw, since eventually you get to where sacrificing a handful of points at the beginning of a round to get rid of all the KoDs by running into them is more than worth it to not have to then avoid them, which allows you to get far more points. Unfortunately, the game then goes from "simplistic" to "too simplistic" without the obstacle they provide. It would be better to either leave that option out and have the KoDs do more and more damage as you progress (increasing the challenge), or if you leave it in, have a wider variety of KoDs that maybe take different amounts of hits to destroy.

One detail I definitely enjoyed was how, once you get the hat, it can be used to hang on the ledges at the side of the screen, and that's the only way to get the colored scribbles that move horizontally at the top, even with jump height completely leveled up. So, kudos on the piece of design. Not sure what function the 'stache has... other than looking cool.

Overall, for what it is, it's pretty good. The movement isn't sluggish (even before raising the speed), which I've noticed a lot of platformers suffer from, and the visual style, while being as simple as can be, is at least consistent within itself, something I rarely see with such amateur games. Heck, at times it's even charming.

Couple things: You might want to have the tutorial point out that the guy right there is the character you play as, what the controls are, and that you're meant to walk to the right to see more information. Due to the seamless visual design, my eyes just registered that as part of the background since I hadn't yet tried playing the game, and I spent a little while clicking in different places attempting to go to the next page before pressing random keys and finally realizing it was an interactive tutorial (sort of). Also, there's some sound issues*. The music that plays at first (Track 1) seems to have it's loop point in an odd place as there's some piece of the "end" right before it starts. The music defaults to mute (perhaps that's intended), and unless I'm crazy, the boxes "1 2 3" to choose a track didn't show up until I had been playing the game for quite a while, so no wonderful classical music for me for nearly the whole time. Take a look and see if the same thing happens for you. Lastly, the horizontally moving colored scribbles didn't make the same sound effect as the falling colored ones when picked up, and instead made the sound of the regular scribbles. Minor, but the details in the connection between aural and visual when playing a game can really heighten and improve the experience.

So yea, I rated it a 4 out of 5. On it's own merits, what it attempts to do, it does well. You actually seem to have a pretty good idea of game design, whether you realize it or not. A little more variety, some animation, a bit of depth, and some fixes and you'd have a fairly polished, if minimalist game that would be pleasant, entertaining and addictive enough to get most people to play through at least once.

*It is possible that many of these problems with the sound are due to me using a hacked version of the flash plugin because I have an old PowerMac G5 and Adobe stopped caring about PowerPCs a while ago, so I have to fake the internet into thinking I have a newer version of Flash than I really do...

P.S. Please tell me that the KoDs, and how they destroy imagination, is meant to represent the Call of Duty games and how they lack/destroy imagination, making your game some bizarre, surreal, cryptic commentary on the game industry... and you just changed the "C" to a "K" so it wouldn't be obvious. If so, that's wonderful.

3

Ask a Question / Re: Distance between two actors

« on: November 15, 2012, 04:23:26 pm »

The formula to determine distance between two points is: D=sqrt(dx^2 + dy^2)
Where "dx" is the difference between the two x-coordinates and "dy" is the difference between the two y-coordinates.

So, it should work with something like this:

If:
sqrt((x of self - x of cell)^2 + (y of self - y of cell)^2) > 300
Then:
etc.

I'm assuming "cell" is the player character? Sorry I can't test it out for you, I'm new to Stencyl as well and in the middle of my own troubles with it. That should be the logic behind it though, so let me know how it works out.

Edit: Oh, and now I see that your post says "PROBLEM SOLVED"... Well, I'll leave this here in case someone else has the same issue, assuming what I suggested would work.