New collab project August 2010

Alright. We'll try something new this time: we'll collaborate on a project that will be started and finished with the month. This gives us a deadline and helps with my nasty habit of setting my own standards.

THE GAME
I'd like to do a short platform adventure game because it's the best and most extensible for story-based games.

Here will be our work flow:
1. Story
2. Characters
3. Game mechanics
4. Programming
5. Graphics
6. Levels
7. Testing for purposes of polish

We're using Game Maker 8.

We need:
-Filesharing site, your choice because I really don't care which.
-IM/IRC, also indifferent.

Any ideas on a story? It's entirely up to you but I'd rather not have anything to do with space ships.

No original story ideas. Should we do a variant on a classic story? Considering the length of the game, a simple story would be good. Knight rescues princess, with a twist, maybe? We shouldn't do anything too ambitious, our main goal should be to see if we can actually finish something together.
How about this? The hero and the girl were childhood friends and lifelong lovers. One day, the prince decides to select the beautiful peasant girl to be his bride. They are to marry in sixth months. A few months before the marriage, the girl is kidnapped by a dragon, and the prince decides to go after her. The hero must follow the prince and race him to the girl, eventually leading to a showdown between the two.

The hero and the girl were childhood friends and lifelong lovers. One day, the prince decides to select the beautiful peasant girl to be his bride. They are to marry in sixth months. A few months before the marriage, the girl is kidnapped by a dragon, and the prince decides to go after her. The hero must follow the prince and race him to the girl, eventually leading to a showdown between the two.

Yes this is solid. I was hoping for something medieval. The dragon is possessed by a wizard (this can turn into a gameplay mechanic, the dragon is the weapon and the wizard is the weak spot).

The wizard uses the dragon to round up new subjects to test his spells on (trial and error - he went through a bunch of dragons until he perfected it, we could have dragon skeletons line the wizard lair)
"The Kingdom" thinks it's just a dragon. It's a mystery why the dragon keeps taking people, normal dragons are stupid and try to kill the entire kingdom the way a crazed ape goes on a rampage. It's beyond their intelligence and beyond reason for them to go out of their way to pick people off one by one. They don't see it as a huge problem because the dragon only comes every month or so. Besides, a few people dying is nothing considering the size of the kingdom. Then the prince's peasant fiancee is taken when they're out alone in the garden. The prince notes where the dragon flew off to quickly (the mountains in the background) when she calls out HELP, and rushes to tell his parents he needs to save her.
Before the prince runs in, they're talking about how disgusted they are about the marriage but the queen says he really loves her and that's that. The king suppresses his delight at the prince's news and tries to logically reason with him that she probably died the moment the dragon picked her up (remember they're all ignorant of how the dragon is possessed, they're aware it's possible but possession spells have only been known to work on animals the size of a fist and even then they're imperfect. The wizard explains later). The queen starts throwing a fit, she knows it makes sense but she doesn't want it to be true. The prince says he heard her say HELP when she was flying off. The queen cries more and the king tries to comfort her. He tells the prince that not even the strongest knight could survive after dragon claw punctures. The bleeding is too much. The prince realizes he can't get their help and they might put a ton of security measures on him if he would be so bold to ask for an immediate rescue mission in fear he might run off. He tells them he's off to think and take a rest.
GAME STARTS
He's in his room, it's dark, and he has to escape. This is where the player learns to move without messing with enemies, except crows maybe. The streets are where the player fights his/her first boss, a thug (there will be a few bosses, this is the boss for the kingdom). The prince exits the kingdom through the gates.
CUTSCENE
--This part is messy, I'll rewrite it later--
cuts over the to dragon keep, where the player witnesses the woman being thrown to the floor by the dragon. The woman starts pleading against reason for the dragon not to hurt her, when it backs off. She's confused. Then she notices she's sitting on an X. A cage falls, and a chain at the top of the cage starts moving by magic. She's being transported to the prison cell. We do not know of a wizard yet. She tries to talk with the other inmates, and only one is mentally sound enough to hold a conversation, thanking her for her company. He tries to tell her what's going on. He explains why the wizard wants them, and says his human possession skill has been getting better and that each of his attempts has had progressively less fatal results. He's scared though, he's an aristocrat and the wizard hasn't tried to possess him yet. He thinks he might be waiting until he gets it just right so he doesn't kill off his trump card. Then he asks if he recognizes her. She tells him her name. Then he goes cold. If she's properly possessed and released, the entire kingdom could be under the whim of an evil wizard.
GAME RESUMES
The forest
Then the dragon keep
Then the final showdown


Alright, it's late, I need sleep. I'm going to be busy literally all day tomorrow so we'll get back to work the next day.

It case you hadn't noticed, I wanted the hero and the prince to be two different characters. The hero is the girl's "true lover" while the prince is an arrogant sonnovabitch. The hero will beat the prince to the girl, and will be stopped by him as he's leaving the castle, resulting in the final boss fight.The dragon idea's good, though.

I also think we should use as few cutscenes as possible, both for the sake of time and for simplicity. An opening cutscene, a cutscenes at the castle, and a closing cutscene seem to be all that is necessary at this point.
I also recommend reading this: www.boingboing.net/features/morerock.html

That article made an incredible amount of sense. I always liked the Cactus games, but never understood why. It's because they are made to be video games, not any other form of entertainment. I don't get the same feeling from watching an awesome movie that I get from reading an awesome book (like Watership Down), even though they're very alike.

We're going to use your story because I like it much more (I was rambling to throw more ideas out) and I see much more potential. I'll start a prototype today when I get back from picking up my little sister, and we'll pass it off between each other every so often.

Cool. I won't be able to contribute much to the project this week, due to work, but I'll be free for most of the rest of the month.

About the article, I think that with a game with a plot as simple as ours it'll be easy to tell the story strictly through visuals and the gameplay. We're going to need to do some planning, though. The whole "rock as you go" thing can only be followed to a very limited extent.

So, what will the game mechanics be like? I imagine that the player can switch between using his sword/shield and a bow, or something like that. Combat can be simple, consisting of blocking and swinging the sword.

So how about...
UP: Jump
LEFT/RIGHT: Movement
DOWN: Duck. Can be used to dodge most projectiles. Cannot move.
Z: Attack. Shoots an arrow or swings the sword. Sword combos cannot exceed three swings.
X: Shield/reload. Speed decreases. Player either draws back the bowstring or raises his shield, protecting him from any damage in a given direction.
C: Switch weapon

Special sword attacks:
Jump attack: Swings the sword downward, dealing double damage. Sword remains lowered until the hero lands on the ground.
Crouch attack: Knocks the foe backwards. It takes a little bit longer before the sword can be swung again.
Counter attack: When the hero attacks while guarding. It takes a little bit longer before the sword can be swung again. Also breaks the guard.

Enemies can take between 1-4 hits to kill.

Assuming we even want a combat system. It could just be an adventure.

I choose the combat system route. The controls will be made with the mouse+keyboard in mind. Since it's so easy to do, there's going to be multiple keys that do the same thing. It'll be up to the user what control scheme is most comfortable. WASD or arrows will be to move, and mouse will be used to swing the sword. The gameplay will be as modern as possible. I'm working on it right now. The platform system will be something different. I think since it's at the heart of the entire game, using a cheap platforming system like in the tutorials would make the whole game feel cheap. There will be ladders, water and hopefully wall kicking.

Basic engine is 90% done, just have to implement wall kicking: mediafire DOT com/?ktesx3t4q553uuc (for some reason forummotion doesn't like mediafire's url?)
(artwork is just donor sprites from my other projects)

Features: smooth movement, water (swimming), platforms, moving platforms, ice, ladders, holding up/W longer makes you jump higher
WASD or arrows to move, hit spacebar to climb a ladder.

edit: Pausing system now works.
edit: Sword system won't use mouse.
edit: Pause menu now works, pickups work (their animation is based on their x position in the room so if you place them consecutively they make a wave)
Now I'm going to work on: interactive objects and doors. Then the combat system, then the AI.
The combat system will be based on your ideas^

edit: ducking works 100%, you can't get stuck on a block above you because it waits until it's clear to stand up.

Awesome work! That was fast.
As a matter of personal taste, I prefer swimming systems in which you just hold down the up key and you'll just continuously swim up. The swimming's not going to make or break the game, though, so whatever you prefer is fine.
Nice pausing system, too. I always just changed rooms, but making a pausable parent's a better idea.

Thanks. The swimming system would be tedious to change, but if the it makes the game hard to play when we get to that stage then I'll definitely change it.

The pause system will be great for saving, loading, and quitting the game. It can also easily double as an inventory (pressing I for example will pause the game, but instead of creating the pause menu objects, it creates the inventory objects. I haven't implemented this but it would be very easy, I should definitely save this engine for later games.)

I've added slow horizontal movement to ducking, so you can crawl out of cramped places. You can't crawl on ice though.

edit: Now working on sword system.
edit: Sword system finished for now. Working on AI. AI sounds so scary, but really you don't have to program a human being you just need to get the AI to walk around and attack. The problem for me right now is getting them to work together.

Hm. Should we have the enemies detect the player once he appears on the screen, or only if he can actually be seen? Giving the player some options to be stealthy would be good, if possible.
What do you mean by having them "work together"? Do you mean that if, for example, if the player meets two enemies to his right that one will attack from the right while the other will try to jump over him and attack from the other side? How complex is this going to be?
I made some pretty good AI for the TDS I was making a while back, so I might be able to help you out, although you've probably got it under control.

Detecting the player would be easy, so why not. We could map out the enemies to keep the action going, and have a fun and interesting sneaking spot here and there.
I only meant that the enemies would be interactive enough to not ever overlap each other. I figured that out though, the one farthest from the player (or in rare cases when they have the same x then the one with the lowest id) moves away. This way it looks natural when two enemies collide, it looks like they're just shifting position. The enemies do jump btw, and they are smart enough to jump over a block that's in the way. To answer your question, it's as complex as it should be. Sword games should make the sword part as fun as possible.
You couldn't help much with the AI because by the time you learn my silly movement code I could of already done the AI myself. You will however be able to help immensely once I get the engine down because it's simple to add to. The only weird part is the movement code. I'll PM you the latest source when I'm done with the AI. It'll be a few days because there's conveniently a lot of things going on right now.

Unfortunately, I'm going to be on a roadtrip Monday through Thursday, just to give you a heads up.

Back.

School started last week, I have a book to read by Tuesday, and cross country is still every day except Sunday. We probably won't finish by the end of the month but we might finish early next month.

This week's still mostly free for me, so just tell me what to do and I'll do it. We'll rethink the deadline once the engine's done.

link removed

Suggestions on what you can do...
-Create more enemies
-Create the health system
-Finish the sword system for the current enemy AI, right now it randomly makes a simple sword object that swings. The more charged the defensive sword is when the enemy sword hits it, the longer the enemy should be disabled (but that I have not implemented yet)
-Door/key system
-Teleport system. If we wanted to make a door that leads to a house, instead of changing the room entirely, we could just teleport to a spot a little bit off the map
-Graphics
-Sound or music
-Whatever you want

Simple hero design:


EDIT:
Some questions:
It seems to me that when the hero is charging the sword he shouldn't be able to move. Is this OK?
What differences are there/should there be between the overhand and underhand attacks?

The engine is absolutely fantastic, though. Both player and AI movement is fluid. It couldn't be done any better.


Whenever you have free time and want the source back, just let me know.

Enemy ideas:
Just to put things in perspective, let's say the player has 6 HP and can deal 1-8 damage depending on how long he charges his sword.

Human:
Guard: Basic foe. Just like the AI you designed, with more regular attacks. 1 DMG. 3 HP.
Bowman: Shoots arrows in an arc at the player. Slowly walks backward when the player approaches, otherwise sationary. 1 DMG. 1 HP.
Cavalier: Charges at the player when he approaches. Cannot be hurt while charging. If the cavalier hits a wall while charging, he is stunned and vulnerable. 1 DMG 3 HP.

Orc: Introduced at forest level
Brute: Just like the guard.
Archer: Just like the bowman
Swordfighter: Elite guard. Can use the defensive stance, and attacks more frequently. 6 HP.
Orc suspended in air by giant bat with eyes bulging out: Only if you want to code flying foes. Flies to the ground, flies into the air, shoots an arrow. 3 HP.

Undead/dragons: Introduced at dungeon level
Skeleton Knight: Just like guard, with 1 HP.
Skeleton Archer: Like the bowman.
Giant zombie chimera thing: 24 HP. Giant beast. Attacks by shooting vomit in the air which lands near the player and deals splash damage. Jumps after each attack to change location.
Dragon hatchling: 6 HP. Flies up, and either shoots a fireball or charges at the ground. The dragon is vulnerable for a few seconds after a charge. Again, only if we have flying foes.

Boss ideas:
Forest: troll
Dungeon: dragon/wizard/prince

I agree, the player shouldn't be able to move when charging the sword.
I didn't think through the differences yet and figured that they're extendable enough to worry about that later. The only thing the underhand does right now is cover both directions. It should probably hurt less. If we're going to have a stamina system then it should make the player tired faster.
Thank you, I'm proud of the engine so far. We could easily reuse it for other things.

It's important we have a system for preserving cpu. Make sure to design any AI (or anything else really) to shut off or reset itself when out of range.

Yes I'll code flying AI. It's important to have a lot of different enemies, and your list is great.

Your art is solid, I can definitely duplicate that style so we'll be on the same page. I will design the art according to that article.

Whatever you want to do, it's entirely up to you. You don't need permission to do anything, on the contrary things like game programming do better with creativity flowing freely.


Heads up: The pause system doesn't use the obj_gameobj_parent at all. When you inherit the event, it exits out of the parent event only and not the child event. Not a big deal.

About swapping code: Once you're ready to upload your source and we're on the same page again, we will both make it a habit to check back here for uploads before coding anything major in.

I would like to work on it again today, can I have the code back when you're ready?

Code:

link removed

I actually ended up having less access to the computer than I thought (hence the delayed reply) and only changed the player's sprite. He can duck and face left and right, but not much else. I'll keep on making more sprites when I get the time.

Crap, it says link removed. Did you get the code or not?
School's been a royal pain in the ass. I've barely made any progress.

I edited it to remove the link. There's no reason to leave our source just sitting there. School has been a total pain for me too, I honestly have no free time except on the weekends. Cross country practice is every day, and it was 9 before I got home from today's meet. I don't go home and have fun anymore during the week. How I miss summer.

Here's a good place for music: http://coda.s3m.us/