Messages

16

Unfinished / Incomplete / Re: Work In Progress (and Discontinued) Screenshot Thread

« on: January 03, 2016, 11:28:14 AM »

nice; how's the development going, can't wait to put my hands on PSIFT

Thanks for the kind words!

The game and scope of the project surrounding it has turned into a beast since the competition & we've also decided not to release it until it's 100% done, so that's why it's taking a while. Hopefully it lives up to expectations :~)

17

User-Made Creations / Re: I wanna be the Co-op v0.1

« on: December 27, 2015, 04:29:53 AM »

Shout out to those Sonic Worlds Engine tiles!

I haven't quite finished this yet, but I played it on single player and really enjoyed it.

I played it in Firefox and it lagged a lot while loading, but as soon as the platforming started it ran smoothly.

18

Gameplay & Discussion / Re: Introducing Delicious-Fruit.com!

« on: December 24, 2015, 05:05:20 AM »

I'm curious, did anything ever come off the aim to switch del-fruit from passive to active fangame management? I know Klazen and I discussed the difficulties a few months back but has anything progressed on that front?

19

Programming Questions / Re: Mid-Boss Avoidance

« on: December 24, 2015, 04:43:29 AM »

Since these are fangames, you can pretty much get away with coding stuff any way you want. It's not like we're operating the LHC over here. Baron asked for suggestions, I gave him one, as did a bunch of other people. Sorry mine didn't live up to your best coding practices or whatever.

I don't see why everything always has to devolve into a climactic struggle between right and wrong with you.

What are you even talking about Kyir? We're trying to help BaronBlade. Your suggestion had things wrong with it, just because you were trying to help doesn't mean you're immune to criticism. Grow up.

20

Programming Questions / Re: Mid-Boss Avoidance

« on: December 24, 2015, 03:56:22 AM »

Persistence is more trouble than it's worth in my opinion. My way has the added benefit of simplifying things if you want attacks to change after the avoidance. There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to this sort of thing though.

I don't understand why you would suggest making two objects when one will suffice. Not to mention you'd also have to create a second separate room to house this object unless you want to code an exception of what to spawn when re-entering the initial room, and by that point you're doing enough coding that you may as well use global variables anyway because they'll take less effort and lines of code. The added benefit you mention is also something that can easily and simply be achieved by either of the other two methods by putting a switch case or if/else statement for the bosses health in the code block where you program its attacks, which is likely something that will already be coded in if it's a functional boss. The problem with this suggestion is it appears initially very simple, and indeed the initial step is more simple than any of the other methods, but it's so inefficient that when it comes to things like handling re-spawning back into the room and having healthbars it's clearly the least efficient of the methods mentioned.

There are situations where you can get away with cowboy coding to create shortcuts in the design process, but when you're creating something as finicky as a three-part boss it's best to just use tried and true methods like global.variables that have literally no downsides and won't create fringe issues which will come back to bite you later on in the process.

Persistence is more trouble than it's worth in my opinion. My way has the added benefit of simplifying things if you want attacks to change after the avoidance. There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to this sort of thing though.

Thanks for the tip, Kyir! With your way, though, would I be able to keep the healthbar at a fraction of the total health? I'm really unfamiliar with how healthbars are handled in gamemaker studio.

Are you coding the healthbar from scratch or using GMs in built functionality for healthbars? Lawatson's suggestion seems like a good way to go (and you could certainly do it with Kyir's method but it would probably end up being more confusing). It might be worthwhile using global.variables to handle the bosses health and making the heathbar object itself persistent.

21

Programming Questions / Re: Mid-Boss Avoidance

« on: December 23, 2015, 07:02:03 PM »

No you should be fine with a persistent object as long as you make sure to write in the object's code not to trigger any of its attacks if the room = the avoidance room. Lawatson's suggestion of a global.variable works as well and might be less cumbersome than using persistent objects in all honestly. Kyir's suggestion seems pointlessly inefficient to me.

I'd go with the global.variable suggestion if I were you, just make sure to reset it when the payer dies and you should be a-ok. Failing that persistent objects will do fine.

22

Game Design / Re: Mega Avoidance!! How to make it not too dificult/tedious?

« on: December 16, 2015, 12:12:07 PM »

I think this is really cool and unique idea, but the problem with cool ideas is they don't always translate to real life and retain their novelty. I'm not trying to dissuade you from the idea, I'd actually really like to see it completed, but I though I'd give you some food for thought in regards to my experiences with a similar idea and avoidances in general:

I once toyed with the idea of an hour long avoidance fight. And I ran into many of the problems people here are suggesting: struggling to retain the player's interest or effort, making it interesting while also easily readable so people don't get insta-killed every new attack, etc. I eventually settled on a system whereby the player has infinite health points and at the end they get a score based on how many times they got hit. I ended up scrapping the whole thing because I realised that even when I only had to play through it once, and even though I found parts of it cool, I could barely stay interested through the 10 minutes I had roughly programmed, let alone another 50.

I think the problem is that I simply don't like avoidances at all, no matter how flashy or interesting. And I share that sentiment with many other IWBTG players. For me, when I've spent a lot of time and effort beating a game's platforming, to then be halted from completing the game, or even moving on, because of a boss or avoidance that is arbitrarily harder than what has preceded (and probably what will succeed) is a huge kick to my garden furniture. Now not everyone is the same. A lot of people like challenging bosses and avoidances and there's nothing wrong with that. Different strokes for different folks. But what you probably need to consider is that now you've made it public you're going to include a 50 (or at the least 25 minute avoidance, which to me is still absurd) in your fangame, you drastically limit the amount of people who will play and complete the game.

Now this might not be a concern to you -- and that's totally fair -- but this is something that not only requires the player to like avoidances, it requires them to love them and be good at them and have a lot of patience. Suddenly it all stacks up and then you see that the pool of people who will complete your game will be absolutely minuscule -- not to mention the fact that some people might waive on playing the game altogether because they don't want to be stopped arbitrarily by something like this. Choosing the skill level required to beat your game is always a tough point of production because it will always push certain people away, too easy and people don't want to waste their time, too hard and people don't want to waste their time etc. So it's usually a balance of what kinda of skill range you want people to be to play your game. A common way of getting around this is having the game itself be of average difficulty, but the secrets and extra stage tough as nails. You could consider putting the avoidance in its own extra stage, or letting people skip it at the cost of a "True ending" screen which is for bragging rights only etc.

Again, I don't want to be paternalistic, and I actually want to see this idea fleshed out even though I think it needs more revisions (TJ had some good suggestions) to really be feasible. I just would hate for you to put a lot of effort into your game (especially since I thought the first installment was relatively charming) to have people turned away by such an insane idea*.










*Insane in both the bad and good way! :~)

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User-Made Creations / Re: I wanna be the Bear: Attack of the Girls

« on: December 16, 2015, 11:18:57 AM »

Not OP Fate, but the one song people in your stream (and Para's) seemed interested in knowing was the one in the haunted house section which is this song from the AVGN game.

Also I'm with you. The game's problems outweigh it's qualities by a large margin but the game itself is kinda charming. I'd like to see more from Keygrin in the future.