View Full Version : Garland's Quest
http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/files/news/2006_11_11_garland.jpg
I am very pleased to show off my latest project, Garland's Quest. It is a small puzzle game intended for both young and older audiences alike. The gameplay is inspired by an early 1990s NES game called 'Adventures of Lolo' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Lolo). I'm coming really close to a completed Alpha and predict under a months time I'll have a nice shinny new Beta in my hands and ready for final testing.
The game's story:
Garland the 'Grand Wizard' was out in the woods walking about and decided to take a nap in a near-by meadow. Just as he started to fall asleep, a dark wizard named Nem attacked Garland and stole his Wizard's staff. The old wizard, now in shame could not return home without redeeming himself and getting his own staff back from the dark wizard's keep. So Garland's Quest begins...
I'm gonna need some helpers:
It seems however I will need 3 kinds of help to complete the project. I had an artist working with me, but he however had other events come up that prevented him for finishing his work. To be honest he didn't really get too far past the starting point. I have only gotten some of the sprites I need and haven't been able to start animation yet without completed sprite sheets.
To complete the project I'll need:
A graphics artist that commit to the full required list of graphics and sprites needed, including menu graphics, a title screen and a short ending sequence. I'd like the game characters to be cartoon-ish and fun, but allow for some really nice visual effects such as ambient glowing on the gems, and magic poofs, etc...
A musician to score the title screen, ending sequence, menu and levels within the game. I'm looking to have mostly a fun feel to the music. The 5 boss maps can have a more battle tone to them, but most of the score would be a cross between ambient & light toned fun music. A nice theme track would be great too. Something catchy in case I decide to make sequels. ;)
A few intelligent folks that are creative and like making puzzles to assist with come creative brain-twisting level design. :) I may have a tiny level design competition for those that want a chance to earn a spot in the game's credits and put their own design into the game.
I'm now offering up a copy of my current pre-alpha so that anyone who wants to join as an artist or musician can get a taste of the gameplay. I've included a small Player's Manual so that you will be able to learn and understand how to play the game. It's really simple and fun once you get into the game. ;)
Please download and tell me what you think: Garland's Quest Pre-Alpha (http://www.garlandsquest.com/) (936 KB)
NOTE: because there is no animation you cannot see object facing, player will change facing in the direction of the arrow key last pressed. Magic will be cast in the direction that the player is facing. Also because I do not have up-to-date door & exit portal graphics yet, the exit is denoted by a larger green '?'!
savage
11-11-2006, 05:06 PM
I like the character graphics, not had a chance to play it yet. MacOS X is taking up too much of my spare time.
Thanks Dom! :)
Once I've found a new artist (in the next few days I'm hoping :?) I'll be able to do some nice animations. Which will help the players actually see which way the characters are facing. (with some it makes a big diference for the gameplay) Red Drakes and your own character...
I've just improved the Guardian movement so they'll still move around after you walk on something they cannot pass. Next will be adding Fireballs and Red Drakes spitting them. :)
Though technically your MacOS X efforts will help Garland to appear on the Mac in the near distant future.
Huehnerschaender
11-11-2006, 11:06 PM
Since I already know the game, I have not much to add to the things I already talked about with you.
The new implemented features (like the Eyeballman killing you at sight) makes the levels more senseful now.
The missing graphics are essential for some things, as you already mentioned. I wish you good luck in finding a good artist!
Keep the good work up! There is much to do (not only for you! I think the artist and musician has much work to do, too).
Greetings,
Dirk
Thanks Dirk, will do! ;)
I'm just adding some special effects now. Gonna look great once I have them in. fire, smoke, ambient glow around the gems and scrolls and mugic puffs galore. Oh and I almost forgot the exit portals. :)
Hey, how come after 60+ people have read the thread and a probable 10% have downloaded and tried the game, I've only gotten a response from 2 people than knew about the game from before I even posed?
If you tried the game, give me some feedback. I don't bite. ;)
Hi WILL,
downloaded and tried as you mentioned so i give feedback.
Maybe it's premature to say something at this stage because you know
better than me what to do next but, the first thing i don't like is how
the screen is moving. As far as the tiled bg stays in the window size don't
scroll it, it should remain centered. The scrolling effect can be added in
bigger rooms that can't stay in the window size.
Also, i would suggest to descrease the tile size at 32x32 maybe, it can
give a better looking feel to it.
For the rest as i said it's too early to say something, i just wait to see what
are you up next! I would leave sfx and music at the end, focusing on
leveldesign and gfx first. The gameplay it's all there, simple and clean, it
just need a better look and feel :)
Bye!
The graphics situation seems to be resolved for the moment, I'm glad to say. It seems that I'll not have to look for a new artist afterall, so I am relieved.
Thanks Federico! ;)
Good point about the moving screen for small maps. Though, I don't anticipate too many of the final maps to be quite as small. But I'll remember to put this on my list of things to do.
As for reducing the graphics down to 32x32, trust me, you'll see the reason for the large sized tiles soon enough. I'm planning a rather visually stunning experience when you play the game. You just don't have any of the cool graphics to see all the detail worth the dimentions of the maps. :)
A little update, I've managed to get some pretty cool looking fireballs made and once I work out a tiny bug in the managing of the new fireball objects, I'll post a few screenshots of them... along with some of the newly added floor tiles!
Well unfortunately I don't have anything to show off yet as I'm still debugging. Darn bugs. :?
But I can at least show you guys some of the wonderful graphics that Kas has sent me.
This is a neat little concept scene showing the different types of tiles and the new wall and door graphics!
http://upload4.postimage.org/1737814/GQ_Demo.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1737814/photo_hosting.html)
the gfx look good - nice junior appeal going on there.
Tile transitions might be a good idea - where rock makes way for grass etc
tanffn
24-11-2006, 08:28 PM
wow, the new graphics look awesome! Looking forward for the update!
Huehnerschaender
25-11-2006, 11:56 AM
Ah, it's getting shape now :)
It would be nice if you could add some shadows and transitions by alphablending...
Looking forward to see the next pre-release!
Greetings,
Dirk
JernejL
25-11-2006, 01:55 PM
the gfx look good - nice junior appeal going on there.
Tile transitions might be a good idea - where rock makes way for grass etc
perhaps using multitexturing and changing vertex alpha transparency color..
Being a tile based puzzle game, you'd want the difference in tiles to be easily defined (eps. for kids), although a nice transition would look more visually appealing. :wink:
I like the idea of multitexturing, and just changing the vertex alpha value, wouldn't take much at all to implement. Though what about limit on TextureUnits? In the end there may be more than just 3 different tile graphics per level. Or using a different method?
---
I'm quite pleased on how the artwork is coming along so far, and in my style of rendering out pictures when the art isn't really finished yet, here's a quick little pic I just made up:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v89/donuts/Logo.jpg
Still not finished at all (Will eventually have all the game characters), just an idea for the splash screen, or a banner, or something :wink:
HopeDagger
01-12-2006, 04:19 AM
The Game
Great start! All of the basic functionality seems to be there; I like those sorts of puzzle games. :) I just couldn't figure out how the eyeball enemy works. It seemed that no matter how I tried at it, I'd die if I got near him.
The Art
Directed at the new art you have lined up: wow! Looks fantastic; definitely commercial grade. The little title screen (or splash screen, perhaps?) pic you whipped up looks excellent too. Can't wait to see this one reach completion!
Artwork:
Yeah the artwork is really coming together quite nicely. I've got to hand it to Kas, he's done an amazing job interpriting my vision of Garland's world.
Mind you I guess it helps that we have been working on Cyber Crisis all this time, huh Kas? ;)
I have no doubt this game will be great visually. Which is great becasue it'll keep me on my toes to keep up with the visual effect. :lol: I just feel bad for whatever musician that joins the team, he's gonna have his work cut out for him. :P j/k
Oh and the title font is great. How would it work in our font system Kas? Or did you another one in mind for that part?
Debugging:
In short, I gave up. The fireballs code sucked so I started over and decided to do it another way. Instead of having an array for all the fireballs I made one per enemy so that I didn't have so many constantly changing things to keep track of. There is smart code and then there is brilliantly stupid ways of complicating code. :P
So in the end I'll be rid of the fireball bugs and it'll be structured in a more managable way. The only thing is that I have to move all the enemies from the one array containing all the game objects and make a seperate array just for them. This means a major revisit and recode the way all the game objects are managed/structured to do it. But the good news is that I'm mostly done, I just have to account for the new array of TEnemy objects. :P
I'll then start on animation, spruse up the graphics with Kas' fine work and I'll churn out another pre-alpha for you guys to give a run & give feedback with.
HopeDagger
01-12-2006, 05:03 AM
Purely out of curiousity, are you using FreePascal or Delphi as your compiler?
FreePascal 2.0.4 all the way! ;) Ok except for the Level editor which was originally made in Delphi with DelphiX so I'm not reinventing any wheels since it works fine as is. :P And Lazarus would be my IDE of choice for the game engine.
Yes, for this project it helped that we have worked on Cyber Crisis before hand (Which is still going ahead :wink:), and having done this side project, it's going to benefit Cyber Crisis even more.
I'd like to use that font for the game itself, I've been trying to get it into a proper bit mapped font sheet, but some of the Letters escape the bounds of the tiles, will have to do a bit of manual editing to fit it in :lol:.
8) The next Alpha Release of GQ is going to be awesome with animations 8)
----
"It seemed that no matter how I tried at it, I'd die if I got near him."
Yeah, If the EyeBallMan see's you directly in any of the 4 dirrections it's good night :lol:. You have to use the objects (Gems, Crates, etc) to block his line of sight. Ofcourse, in the next release he'll be rotating and looking around, so it'll be a bit more obvious. (Lol, the very first time playing the demo, I though it was a bug! :lol: :lol: )
Hint: try and get 4 crates from the top of the map to surround EyeBallMan :wink:
Bugs fixed! :D
Took me bloody long enough, but I nailed em. Now I get to play with enhancing graphics. Yay! ;)
New animation routines are now in! :)
Now the fun part, sequencing the animations for each object. (Well I'm past the tedious portion involving repeatitive constant listing and such. :P)
It's getting there. :)
http://upload4.postimage.org/1905149/GettingThereAni01.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1905149/photo_hosting.html) http://upload4.postimage.org/1905158/GettingThereAni02.jpg (http://upload4.postimage.org/1905158/photo_hosting.html)
Just a few minor glitches to weed out and it'll be ready for another alpha release.
Huehnerschaender
13-12-2006, 09:46 PM
Go Garland, go!
Yeah.... get your glitches fixed and send me a copy :)
And please try to add a transition to the different tiles... it's a little too squary in my opinion. I know that it's part of the game design, but you can still optically tile your map into squares using transitions... it's just for the visuals but makes it look a lot more professional.
Greetings,
Dirk
Hmm... well I'm thinking about it. Maybe this weekend we can meet up and pan out a few ideas? :)
Huehnerschaender
13-12-2006, 10:09 PM
Hmmm, depends on... my son had birthday today and at the weekend we are in another town (where my parents, brothers and sisters live). I think we can arrange something, but we have to talk about it before :)
Sure ok. Happy b-day to your son! ;)
Well we'll see what we do then...
:D As promised a brand spanking new Alpha of Garland's Quest: Download ('http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/Garlands_Quest_Alpha01.zip') 3.1 MB
Enjoy and most importantly tell me what you think!
Jeremy Darling (aka jdarling) just gave me this great idea... Ok well it's not original, but it'll fit just nicely...
Levers! :D "huh?" you say? Actually :doh: why didn't I think of this...
I'm thinking about putting in some floor switches and/or wall levers to add the puzzle factor. The only trick is to make it simple and interchangeable with my existing features.
And it's not too much to add as far as graphics so I don't think that Kas will kill me for adding it. :P
I'll have to modify the level maker though... So I guess that'll be my next big change.
Anyways waiting on feedback from you guys. Lemme know what you think. Like the direction I'm going so far?
NecroDOME
18-12-2006, 06:44 PM
Levers sound nice :)
However:
I played the game.
Graphics:
- Good, nice clear graphics
- Needing some effect as you mentioned
Gameplay:
- I like it! Push blocks to solve the puzzles.
- Difficult as you cannot see the whole play field in positive way.
As I only got to level 5 or 6 or something...
Something you need to fix:
- How ending a level? When you picked up all the gems you need to collect, how does teh level end? You can stand eternally on one spot and when you start walking it just flips to the next map.
Nice game :viking:
Legolas
18-12-2006, 07:27 PM
I like this kind of puzzle games :mrgreen:
Only a couple of issues: the [x] button does not close the window and, playing with a ps2 joypad (plugged with an adapter), sometimes it suddenly closes.
However, it's veeeeeery nice! :thumbup:
jdarling
18-12-2006, 07:39 PM
Here is a bit more feedback, that I already gave to WILL in PM but will post for all to see;
Make level codes so I can start where I stopped
Needs a walktrhough so that more people can test it all the way through
Some frigging on-screen help would be nice (I keep forgetting what keys do what)
Sound and effects need to be added
Cover off on the Big 5 I talk about in my article
Actually, just do everything I talk about in my article :)
Lookahead and scroll lock with movement would be useful
Add some picture to the little doc you have, it would be nice :)
Thats my list thus far. The graphics are decent, but you can tell the difference in programmer art and artist art.
Traveler
18-12-2006, 08:28 PM
I gave this new version a go as well.
I like the newer graphics a lot better. However, the fact that the wizzard is rendered with a different perspective than the rest doesn't feel right to me.
With the very first level, I unfortunately got an error while walking through the door. It´s a bit diificult to reproduce, but if you play a bit with the arrow keys while going through the door, you´ll come across it eventually.
jdarling also mentioned it, but one of the reasons I´m personally not a big fan of these games is because at some point you've lost all of your lives and then you have to play through each and every level just to get to the point where you died.
I already know the solution in previous levels. Why make me go through them over and over again just to get to the one I dont know the solution of? I mean, I dont mind it a second time,.. but after three times it gets tiresome and I'm done after a fourth. :-/
Have some kind of transition between levels. I sometimes find myself already pushing blocks the moment I step through a door.
Speaking of which,.. how come there's no door when I get into a new level?
Help, menu and a proper exit are still things I'm missing, but I assume you're still working on those.
Pretty good work so far though. :D
We've still got a bit more of the engine, and base graphics to finish off before we really start to think about polishing anything up, and adding menus at this stage (but in development right now). (We've only just started animations :lol: )
jdarling, your article is gold, and nothing is going to be left out, we're just still working on the Big5 :wink:
Traveler, I've reproduced this error myself. I'm not sure how levels are getting loaded (haven't seen the source yet), but there's a bit of delay between walking upto the door and switching map, your able to still walk around before the map loads. Sometimes at next map load you start out inside a wall or blocking tile, and that seems to crash the game.
What do your mean by, ".. how come there's no door when I get into a new level?" ?
Yeah, there's a little bit of inconsistancy with perspective ATM, we're trying to replicate the same sort of Old school puzzle games that were side on, but it's exagerated more by the use of pre-rendered models, and lighting. I don't want to go completely top down, or i'll lose all the detail on the characters. When I get around to creating new box sprites, I'm planning on making them on an angle, to match the characters sprites.
Thanx for the feed back so far everyone.
Traveler
19-12-2006, 08:13 AM
What do your mean by, ".. how come there's no door when I get into a new level?" ?
Ah,.. I meant the door the wizard uses to get into the level. There is an exit, but no entrance!
Its not a big thing though, and has been done countless times before. But I always found it to be a bit odd.
What do your mean by, ".. how come there's no door when I get into a new level?" ?
Ah,.. I meant the door the wizard uses to get into the level. There is an exit, but no entrance!
Its not a big thing though, and has been done countless times before. But I always found it to be a bit odd.
Ah, that's a good question, especially since the game is progresive, level by level. I think the reason is because you usually have 1 clear exit door, two doors may confuse people a bit (espesially for a kids game), and it's a bit hard to match up entrances and exits from each level, it may contrict map design a bit. And if we ever mix up levels, or add in/take away levels, it'd require a bit of messing around to match it all up again.
(oh, and (in same games atleast) you don't always exit via a door in the wall :P)
wow thanks for all the feedback guys. :)
I have a solution for that door thingy, at least a plan for explaining it. They're magic doors. So I'm gonna try having Garland shrink as he walks into them. :) That'll be the exit animation...
Maybe have a shrinking circle effect for screen transition too...
As for entrance... I could have him simply teleport in (we have an animation for that, but as of yet not put in) or I can simply drop him from above... Though I'll make the teleporting idea work first.
The whole transition from level to level is not handled very well right now, but changes will take place for the next (last) Alpha I release...
Kas already explained the graphical stuff so I'll leave you with his words on it. :)
Menus... yes, definitely, there will be a nice menuing system that I'll be working on in the beta stage. I want to make the game-time engine run very well before getting into menu splash-screen stuff just yet. But it will be in there along with passcodes, etc...
Music & Sound.... umm yeah. Well we're not there yet. Besides musicians don't really like to work on a project (game in this case) unless they can get a true sense of the full visual feel of the game. We don't want to go through the effort of fully scoring this puppy out and having to do it all over again when the whole visual mood/make-up changes, right? :) It'll come though... ;)
We just fleshed out the final look for the big bad in Garland's Quest, Nem last night. We're both really excited about him, but we're keeping it secret for now. :twisted: So you'll all have to wait until we start on the betas at least. At that point we may reveal him to the world or only to the select few individuals chosen for beta/final testing the final/commercial release. ;)
NecroDOME
19-12-2006, 08:02 PM
As for entrance... I could have him simply teleport in (we have an animation for that, but as of yet not put in) or I can simply drop him from above... Though I'll make the teleporting idea work first.
And you can put some stars on his head for about 0.5 second and standup, so the player can't move for about 0.5 or 1 second. This cause I walked sometimes upon a create when coming in the second map.
Also I got an error (some strange addresses) and I walked into a wall, like a ghost :P (also bewteen level transition while bashing buttons :P )
I'm going to be putting in a routine to restrict player controls (not menu controls) for Garland's death & map transition animation.
I've also fixed a memory leak! :o I know... but I left it in due to laziness. :P
So far only one person has complained about out of memory errors. Nice graphics cards all I assume. ;)
Basically anything 16MB or under and the game will suck it all up before you're done.
I'll be uploading a new copy of Alpha 01 to fix that. Little things like slight increase in the speed of the fireballs.
Oh and if you die suddenly in the first red/yellow drake map, it's the Yellow drake to the left (hidden) side of the screen. Sorry no electric zapping particle effects yet. :?
The Player Manual will get a recent update though... :)
Leak Fix & Tweaks patch of Alpha 01 is coming... ;)
Adding Switches & Levers
Ok adding levers and switches it seems can be quite complex so I've been milling over the idea a bit to conceive the best possible way to add them it without having to modify much of any of my existing system. So far my findings are pretty good. :thumbup:
The current plan is to be able to manipulate boulders, bridges, one-way tiles and pits. Those are the only practical things to manipulate right now. There may be enhancements later, but for now thats all she wrote (or HE will write, as it were. :P)
I can easily just add an Active flag to the TGameObject class and ignore drawing and interactivity of objects that have the flag set to 0. That will take care of boulders. The rest is just tile manipulation.
The switch function planned would work much like the Magic(); function I already have, only it will be powered much by the use of the lovely xor function and my new TEvent class. :)
This will require an events layer in the editor which is fine by me as it can be done in a straightforward way. The designer will place event triggers once per tile-space and depending on whats in that space is what event trigger will do.
Now this is the part I'm still somewhat fuzzy about and hoping to clear up in my head before I begin to add anything...
The event trigger object will have 2 state settings 'up' and 'down' and an eventtype(boulder,bridge,one-way,pit) associated with it to determine changes to make on state change.
Each state setting will have a set of parameters which will include a direction(up,down,left,right), rotation direction(cw,ccw) and on/off state(1,0). So depending on what eventtype it is, these options for the current state are what the tile will be changed to.
Complex? Heck yeah... took me a bit to process in my head a bit. The purpose of making it so is to enable semi-complex puzzles beyond a simple just flick the one switch to make one object/tile appear/disappear or change, but instead allow a switch to change multiple objects/tiles so that you have to find the right combinations in some cases.
Now the whole reason why I posted this brainstorm here; What do you guys think of all of this?
jdarling
20-12-2006, 08:17 PM
I think you just proved my point of using a scripting engine for your advanced game logic. Overall, your idea seems decent, confusing as all getout, but decent.
Where did you account for having switches 1, 3, 4, and 9 on with 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 off in order to open a "door", or are you not wanting combinations to be that advanced?
The bigest problem I see (for you to watch out for) is that if you have a yellow drake moving up and down, flip a switch to move a block to stop him in his path, and the block goes to squish him (or worse, appears over him), what happens :oops: ? He could simply be pushed out of the way or off the tile, but it is something to think about. :roll:
Ah... good point about the moving enemies... I'll give that a bit of thought.
I'm thinking of giving the switches/levers system a limit of events. Like 8 or 10 or so... I think that should give enough combination possibilities...
My plans for switches include object/tile manipulation only... switches flipping switches is not planned. At least not yet anyhow. I'd like to see how this goes first either way.
jdarling
20-12-2006, 09:24 PM
Not switches flipping switches, I mean more of the binary pattern within switches keying events. For example, I create a level with 4 switches side by side. Only when you set the switches to 1011 (on, off, on, on) does my event happen. Of course, I could put the switches in the four corners instead of side by side :)
You can set each switch to change the state of any and all of the event triggers in the map.
Each event trigger will have a single number. (up to the max allowed amount)
Now when a switch changes state (from up to down) I will then cycle all the event triggers to toggle by xor-ing all the switch settings together for their affected event triggers.
So lets say we have:
Sw1: affects et1,et2
Sw2: affects et2
and
et1: default Off
et2: default On
flipping Sw1 will effect both, but flipping Sw2 will effect only the one.
I've patched and updated the Garland's Quest Alpha 01 release.
Grab it here: Download (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/Garlands_Quest_Alpha01.zip) 3.35 MB :)
Changes:
:arrow: fixed texture memory leak.
:arrow: fixed Garland's starting position reset in new map (should not be walking through walls now)
:arrow: increased fireball speed slightly
:arrow: Updated Player's Manual!
:arrow: new Garland, Scroll & Yellow Drake graphics! All not final, but wip. ;)
tanffn
21-12-2006, 08:45 AM
I was about to complain there is too much text and too little screen shots, but I now see you added something even better :) going to give at try as soon as I find a quiet moment (in the office)
Traveler
21-12-2006, 10:05 AM
I gave it another go.
The many lives is definitely helpful for testing.
The error problem seems indeed resolved, as I did not came across it anymore.
Some things I did notice:
I can't close the game using the [x] button at the top. Alt-f4 doesn't seem to be working either.
When resizing the game window, the gamefield isn't increased. I sort of expected to be able to see more, but that wasn't the case :)
Biggest problem I have now, is that I don't know the solution to all puzzles, but that's probably only a matter of time.
jdarling
21-12-2006, 01:42 PM
WILL, to handle the X or Alt+F4 closing issue check for SDL_QUITEV in your event handler. In JumpStart this is done with the following code:
procedure TestEvents;
begin
while SDL_PollEvent(@event) > 0 do
begin
case event.type_ of
SDL_QUITEV : CloseGame;
SDL_KEYUP:
begin
Keys[Event.Key.keysym.sym] := False;
end;
SDL_KEYDOWN :
begin
Keys[Event.Key.keysym.sym] := True;
end;
end;
end;
end;
Well thats one way to get someone to put in a GUI feature. (just give the guy the code ;))
Yeah, I guess for testing or simply a quick exit. For all you in-office procrastinators. :P --err I mean.. taking a break to think of newer and better ways to improve the efficiency of your work people... yeah... ;)
Though to be honest, I've not accounted for someone to be able to simply 'X out' of the game... so later in beta, the X simply might just bring you back to the menu, which imo is odd behavior for a windows game. We shall see.
So I guess noone has read through the new manual? It's not really changed too much, same grammar mistakes :P, but I've added some of the more up-to-date graphics. Including a hint at what Nem looks like. ;)
Alright, no more maximize button (or resizing at all) and the Close (X) button will now exit the game. :)
Reason for not allowing to maximize the resolution and show more play area? :lol: Well that would be like cheating wouldn't it? ;)
Any ideas for visual queues for off-screen threats? Other than just showing everything? I want to keep the aspect of having to explore the map a little to figure out the puzzles.
A part of my idea is to add a required/trained ability to use your spatial (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=spatial) awareness and memorization skills in some of these puzzles.
Otherwise it's just your average ordinary, here is the whole ball of wax, not figure it out before you even move. Instead now you have to immerse yourself in the puzzle and discovery it as if you where actually in it yourself.
Legolas
21-12-2006, 07:05 PM
Argh! I need more crates to stop that one-eyed guy! :doh:
In my opinion, this game could be perfect for a porting to NDS :D
Let's figure: the upper screen is for the game itself; the touch screen could be used for things like a dungeon's map (only the part already discovered, and -maybe- for writing down some notes directly on the map, like zelda). But I'm drooling about another idea: the touch screen could be switched into a "Magic" mode, that could allow to draw magical sequences on the screen, with the stilus used like a magic wand :drool:
WILL, I could try to mix SDL for nds and SDL for pascal, if you think that such a port could be nice :D
jdarling
21-12-2006, 07:07 PM
Yeah, have an option to turn on "Easy" mode. In easy mode show arrows for all enemies that "Walk" around the edges of the screen. You could also show a mini-map in "Easy" mode. That also makes the game more playable for younger persons.
Argh! I need more crates to stop that one-eyed guy! :doh:
HINT: There is a way to get one more 'Magic Cubes' from the top, starting within the first 3 pushes. ;)
WILL, I could try to mix SDL for nds and SDL for pascal, if you think that such a port could be nice :D
Actually if you can make SDL work for NDS that'd be great! I have this and one other title that I'd love to be able to port to the NDS. So if you can make that possible, I guess I'm gonna have to start emailing Nintendo for a license. ;) I just hope that I'm not accidentally ripping off any of their assumed IP killing the whole idea. :lol:
Re. Easy Mode:
Yeah, thats a good idea. I'm all for making Easy modes for younger kids. In fact I was thinking earlier of having a whole set of easier maps/puzzles for an Easy Mode too. Since there can be a great deal of varying difficulty in the engine.
Can't remember if I mentioned this in the thread or if it was just in out IM talks, but another idea was the alternate endings for different modes of difficulty. The harder the mode, the better the ending. :)
Then again I'm guessing some few weeks/months down the line someone will just post all the passcodes for all the levels and difficulties online anyhow. :lol:
Legolas
21-12-2006, 08:49 PM
Argh! I need more crates to stop that one-eyed guy! :doh:
HINT: There is a way to get one more 'Magic Cubes' from the top, starting within the first 3 pushes. ;)
YAY! :lol:
WILL, I could try to mix SDL for nds and SDL for pascal, if you think that such a port could be nice :D
Actually if you can make SDL work for NDS that'd be great! I have this and one other title that I'd love to be able to port to the NDS. So if you can make that possible, I guess I'm gonna have to start emailing Nintendo for a license. ;) I just hope that I'm not accidentally ripping off any of their assumed IP killing the whole idea. :lol:
Consider it done :rambo:
I haven't started looking at sdl at all, but maybe I can even reuse some parts from jedi-sdl :think:
Well best case scenario is that it would be 100% JEDI-SDL compatible. :)
The less core source changes I have to make the better. But I'm not deluding myself that I wouldn't have to convert all the graphics, audio, etc. into a rom compilable format.
The biggest issue with porting to NDS would be the use of OpenGL. I doubt that OpenGL|ES is readily available on the platform just yet?
Legolas
21-12-2006, 11:53 PM
There is a sort of OpenGL for nds :D
Well, in fact are simply OpenGL functions mapped over 3d nds hardware, but for the moment I have only translated 2d and sound examples.
Well truth be told. My first priority is to get the game finished for commercial sale on the PC (under Windows, then Linux & MacOSX) then I can see about porting it to other platforms again, for sale.
Best case, I can turn it into a fairly decent IP. From that I can do sequels if people want it enough. I personally like that idea, myself. ;)
But other platforms is on the list, just not near that point yet to be honest.
Legolas
22-12-2006, 03:21 PM
Well truth be told. My first priority is to get the game finished for commercial sale on the PC (under Windows, then Linux & MacOSX) then I can see about porting it to other platforms again, for sale.
Best case, I can turn it into a fairly decent IP. From that I can do sequels if people want it enough. I personally like that idea, myself. ;)
But other platforms is on the list, just not near that point yet to be honest.
I'll take it easy then :lol:
However the sdl port has been very easy (matter of adding some ifndefs in external declarations of jedi-sdl). It compiles, but I'm not in SDL too much, so I can't tell if it works or not. First impression is that it could be useful for quick'n'dirt portings only, otherwise it needs some deep working :roll:
Made a new thread here (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/viewtopic.php?p=28763#28763) so you guys can continue the SDL porting to NDS topic. :)
...which I will be joining in on myself soon. ;)
Worked out the switches functionality more...
Switches (unless completely passive) will simply be active or inactive based on which way they are; up or down. And they can be set to affect any number of the map's events. (up to 24 now) Lastly, all associated switches must be active to activate the event or it will be on the inactive setting. (event types are Bridge, Boulder, Pit or Arrow) So with all of that figured out, now I just have to figure out this one last thing.
Ok, which do you guys think it better?
Switches will have...
Option 1:
one state setting for ALL associated event triggers
OR
Option 2:
one state setting for EACH associated event trigger.
Well I've pretty much fully intergrated the new FloorSwitch/Lever system into the Level Editor.
I, with a bit of advice from an IRC chat, decided to move the switch-logic over to the event objects themselves. And let them sort out what combination of what switches & levers is required to activate the switch.
Great thing about the way I've done it was that now I can simply have 2 defined states one default and one activated so I only have to check or the right combination.
All this may not be so interesting for you all as I've obviously not received any response from my previous posts about it, but I thought I'd post anyway for all you silent switch fans. ;)
All the technobabble stuff said. I hope to have switches into the engine be the end of this week. And along with it a few maps that I'll have tested them out on.
Switches implemented into the game engine and tested. :)
http://upload5.postimage.org/50482/Switches_Test01.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/50482/photo_hosting.html) http://upload5.postimage.org/50487/Switches_Test02.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/50487/photo_hosting.html)
NecroDOME
28-12-2006, 10:54 PM
:cyclops: Nice work!
Thanks! ;)
After coming home from work, I was able to get a lot more done. (More energy tonight it seems! 8))
I now have almost everything implimented into both the LE and the engine<sup>*</sup>. Plus I've expanded the Boulder event types to include ALL objects, not just Boulders. :D This will make for some cooler possibilities in the puzzles and especially the boss fights against Nem.
<sup>*</sup>(save for floor switches, which I should have in before the weekend is up)
I've also made a few feature enhancements to the engine which I'll let you guys download and try out. ;)
Garland's Quest Alpha 02: Download (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/Garlands_Quest_Alpha02.zip) 3.54 MB
Ok floor switches are in. :lol: That was too easy. :D
BTW, Alpha 02 features all switch maps. However as you can see in the included batch file you can now set parameters to run other MapList (.mls) files too. :)
http://upload5.postimage.org/113108/GQ_neweff_01.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/113108/photo_hosting.html) http://upload5.postimage.org/113121/GQ_neweff_02.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/113121/photo_hosting.html) http://upload5.postimage.org/113234/GQ_cubeman_testing.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/113234/photo_hosting.html)
dmantione
04-01-2007, 08:55 PM
How about a Linux build? :) You use FPC and SDL, so it should be a recompile?
I currently have not a Linux box (not even AndLinux or VMWare running Debian yet) so I'd have to rely on cross-compiling.
I think I'll make an effort (since interest has been shown) to try this weekend.
The Big Important Question; Can I make my Win32 edition of Lazarus (0.9.20) cross-compile capable without sacrificing it's ability to continue to compile for win32?
dmantione
04-01-2007, 09:39 PM
I currently have not a Linux box (not even AndLinux or VMWare running Debian yet) so I'd have to rely on cross-compiling.
This can be tricky, since you need to have all .so that you need to ]
The Big Important Question; Can I make my Win32 edition of Lazarus (0.9.20) cross-compile capable without sacrificing it's ability to continue to compile for win32?[/quote]
As far as I know, yes, but first get it going with the command line compiler, that seems to be already challenging enough for many people.
Planned for Alpha 03:
:arrow: Level Transitions! (Death & Success via Doors & Exit Portals)
:arrow: Fixed harmless Fireball bug!
:arrow: New themes & gems per map.
:arrow: And even more special effects & animations.
http://upload5.postimage.org/184728/GQA03_shot01.jpg (http://upload5.postimage.org/184728/photo_hosting.html)
Work on Garland's Quest is still rolling along. Just fixed another small bug and with it I've gotten even tighter management of it's memory usage.
Not long until we have a completed game engine and I can start with the menus and working towards a beta version for testing.
During this time I'll also try to create some sample maps using the (currently named, but due to change) Bombmen, Cubemen and Blue Drakes. Along with more use of the very cool switch/event system I've put in since the 2nd Alpha.
Kas is back from vacation and back at it with the graphics. I'm just waiting for the death animations so I start sequencing level transitions. Next version you will be able to watch Garland die in multiple ways.
Currently I'm working on how Cubemen push Garland around.
We're still working on it...
Some more screenshots!
http://upload6.postimage.org/390792/GQ_A3_s01.jpg (http://upload6.postimage.org/390792/photo_hosting.html) http://upload6.postimage.org/390809/GQ_A3_s02.jpg (http://upload6.postimage.org/390809/photo_hosting.html) http://upload6.postimage.org/390824/GQ_A3_s03.jpg (http://upload6.postimage.org/390824/photo_hosting.html)
Huehnerschaender
22-02-2007, 11:09 PM
Hey, looks already great :)
This will become a nice one ;) Wish you the best for completing it soon...
Thanks Dirk! :)
I'm actually all happy and proud of the current state of GQ's engine. Latest fix was the removal of the final buggy-looking aspect of the player walking into situations that he obviously have to stop and/or run into a wall. :p
My solution was to simply have him walk back. It turns out I've got Garland looking like he's backing up as if he noticed a problem moving to the space in front of him and backed up. It looks really neat as apposed to the crummy looking popping back into place solution I had previously.
Anyhow they way that came together along with some of the new graphics, some new fun/interesting puzzle ideas coming in and other things that Kas and I discussed about the visual stuff that we're doing and going to add next. I'm very happy with the engine right now.
I'd have to say at this rate (depending on how long it takes to sequence all the deaths and exit animations) we'll have Garland ready to start on the betas within or just after March. :)
Well after much tweaking I've gotten a rather nice pulsing lava glow going now.
Along with that I've also added the same glow to the gems. They look a lot better now I think. :)
<table><tr><td class='GenSmall'><center>http://upload7.postimage.org/30092/GQ_Glow_Off.jpg (http://upload7.postimage.org/30092/photo_hosting.html)
Glow Switched Off</center></td><td class='GenSmall'><center>http://upload7.postimage.org/30286/GQ_Glow_On.jpg (http://upload7.postimage.org/30286/photo_hosting.html)
Glow Switched On</center></td></tr></table>
Huehnerschaender
04-03-2007, 03:00 PM
Any chance to take a look at it "in action"? It does not look too effective without animation :)
I would like to see it working :) From what I can see now it's looking good, but I was expectig a glow for the gems which adds some kind of "aura" to them...
dmantione
04-03-2007, 10:31 PM
Yes, I have SDL_Mixer properly installed, on the Linux side that is. However, with Wine, you get first SDL_Mixer on the Windows side, which does API calls to the DirectSound emulator of Wine. Then Wine should use the ALSA APIs to produce the actual sound, which might mix again.
It looks like the DirectSound emulation doesn't fully like SDL_Mixer on the Windows side.
Well it looks like I'd have to port it for anyone to be able to play it properly on the Linux platform.
That is unless I switch over completely to OpenAL, which I've considered. I'm still undecided as of yet though.
As for the 3rd and final Alpha release, I want to hold off until I have the last of the main features included into the engine. However as Kas had to take a recent break from development of the graphics, this might delay things a bit.
I'm still working on the game, however the status of the release is now at 'wait and see'.
dmantione
05-03-2007, 01:00 PM
If you would like, I'd be happy to do an attempt to compile it.
Garland's Quest Alpha 03
It's going to be some time before I pick this one up again, so for the benefit of those interested in this project, I'm just going to make the Alpha 03 release now.
I've done quite a lot of work since the last versions so I'm sure everyone will be rather pleased with it. You can also see the start of some of the transition animation when you exit a level.
Gem and Lava glow can be a bit costly on CPU juice in some levels, so you've been warned. Though I'm more than sure there is a way to optimize this to an unnoticeable level.
Please feel free to reply with feedback and suggestions.
I'm not too sure of the status of this project anymore as my interest seems to have dwindled quite a bit while K4Z has been away doing what he has to do.
I'm either going to drop it all together or just drastically simplify this game from it's originally intended concept so I can get it released soon.
Download (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/GQ_A03.zip)
Also you can check out the game's profile on GGE:
http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/garlandsquest/gge180x135.png (http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/garlandsquest/?utm_source=gge&utm_medium=badge_user)
Huehnerschaender
07-06-2007, 05:52 AM
Bah! You don't really want to hang it on the nail??
I played it a few minutes yesterday evening. You are too far with this to stop the project. It already looks too good, Will!
jasonf
07-06-2007, 09:16 AM
OH Dear... Don't get caught in that trap!..
This is the last 20% barrier that stops most people...
The only way out now is through mate. We'll never forgive you if you drop it (well, of course we will, but you know what I mean)
I suggest a methodical approach. I played this last night and enjoyed it. There are a few things missing, but with a little extra work, it'll work like a charm.
#1 User Interface. There needs to be one. The game starts in play state. Just add a Main Menu for starting a new game etc..
#2 Music & Sound. I didn't notice any (I might have had my volume down though)
I'm loving the new textures and the sprites look cool (the main character could use some more movement in his animaiton, but that's personal taste, not a requirement)
Add some levels, add your extra characters and you're laughing.
Then once you're done, you can add graphical niceties.
The only way I managed to get through the last 20% with Crashblock was by making a detailed TODO: list, making it public and crossing it off as I did things.
Right then... Now, here's how you suck an egg.
Thanks guys! :) I appreciate your enthusiasm for the game. I really love it myself.
RANT:
However, I'm stuck in the content trap as it where. Artwork comes in so slow that it's a bottleneck. In fact my artist is missing.... again.
It's not only that though. I can't put it all on my artist. I am a little bit strained on other resources too. Plus motivation has been fluttering myself. Maybe due to all the other factors and seeing how it has changed from my original idea of how it was 'supposed to' go.
All that said and done, the problem now is that I cannot see an end to the development on this. I have two other projects on the back burners and it's all too much if I had any ideas and wanted to start something new and fresh.
I want to finish this game, in fact I'd love it to turn out the way I planned with Nem and the story and the boss fights and all that, but it too much to juggle with no help and support at all. I'm sort of at a point where I'm going to reject any game concepts where I do not have at least 1 or two working with me. My projects or theirs.
This project is a great contrast to the one that you and I did Dirk. We worked together on Iron Strike and it turned out great despite all the technical problems. I believe thats how I have to do game development if I'm going to do a project. If you work pretty much by yourself you have all these content related issues.
This is a bad game to work on by yourself because you need content. A point I caught from the guys over at Introversion.
About the game engine specifically though; interface was planned for Beta and I've not done any sound yet. I was looking at purchasing music from an indie musician on a track-by-track basis. Sound effects either make them myself or find freely available public domain stuff.
The main problem of the interface right now is getting artwork. I might see if I can come up with some sort of procedural way of gathering it.
My goal now is just finishing this game, finish my other ones and moving on to doing something completely new. If I cannot do this and the other 2 ones within 6 months, I'm going to start dropping them one by one.
jasonf
07-06-2007, 02:31 PM
What's wrong with using placeholder art instead of the real content?
In paint, draw some really cheezy drakes about the right size and use that for the time being to get the mechanics working properly.
For special effects, make crappy 60's Batman style KERPOW! and SPLAT! effects (also in paint, in garish colours so you will definitely replace them)
If your idea for your design is solid enough, you'll be able to slot the rest of the game mechanics into place, then, once this is done, you'll be able to tidy up the artwork as it arrives.
Spending a day in paint drawing kerpows and splats is better than abandoning the project completely simply because you can't get the right look right now.
I understand how you feel though. It's nice to see the project slowly progressing towards completion, never taking a step backwards.. always progressing. Not very realistic an ideal though. Think about any construction project you've seen.. placeholders are always used.. either to hold something up or to allow work to continue in something else's absence, they're always taken away afterwards and the project continues.
Fortunately, most of the work on the game does take place below the surface, the artwork isn't really a problem.. it can be anything, the guts is in the code. Rarely is the artwork a driving factor in a game, which is why it is possible for teams to work independantly on a game.
You can still build in your boss fights, your extra levels, your extra characters and spells etc. They just won't look very pretty for a little while.
Then once the coding is all done, you can slot the new art into place, make small tweaks and you'll see your game rapidly take its final, very pretty shape.
I do understand your frustration, but please don't give up.
Now is the time to focus on what you need to do, that extra push.
It's best to leave eggs boiling for 3 mins before attempting to suck them.
Robert Kosek
07-06-2007, 03:21 PM
... that second (4th I think in the level numbers, as the 3rd appears to load first) level is a bit of a zinger. It took almost all my lives and I still didn't get beyond Mr Eye in the next level. It's pretty good, I must add.
Don't give up, or in. That's the worst thing you can do now! Best of luck in completing this! :)
I hear what you're saying Jason. And I appreciate your message of not giving up on it. I've just had a nice big realization on the kinds of projects I've been choosing for the last several years. :)
The specific issues with the boss fights stem from one very simple thing. I've not completely fleshed out the idea in the first place. Which is going to lead up to 2 possible problems.
1) It'll throw off the rest of the gameplay that could be enjoyable.
2) It'll knock the end of my development timeline into sometime next year just tweaking, reinventing and getting all the bugs out (concept and code)
I don't want to get into that at the scale of development I'm doing this in.
I have placeholder stuff in right now. And I can replace the graphics later. However the biggest challenge right now is the death sequences of Garland. He dies a few different ways and I have to figure out how to sub-in for turning to stone, looking shocked, all that. Not so easy when you though that you'd have some extra animation sequences to use. :scratch:
That aside I could always 1980s the graphics and use little poofs and 3D hardware effects to cover up my soft spots as they were. So it's doable. It just makes my original concept less conceivable as I want to actually sell this game, which also looks out of the question in it's present state.
If I can't go shareware with it, then I'll likely just release as Freeware and strip down it's concept to a more casual game with the same storyline, but without the boss fight idea and a few less themes.
EDIT: Oh yeah, just so long as they were not fried in oil. :P
Some of the levels are a bit harder than others. Not that I can tell anymore as I've pretty much mastered them all while testing. :P
If you have an idea for a cool puzzle or map design drop me a line and I'll send you the map editor to try it out.
Oh and did I mention that there are cheat codes in this version? :D
Robert Kosek
07-06-2007, 10:19 PM
It's not so much that as much as the steep learning curve. With such a limited amount of lives there really isn't a good way to experiment without getting "deported" and have to find your way back through again. ;)
No real ideas at the present time but I'll let you know if I think of one.
Maybe I should pull a Mario Brothers and have little concept demonstrations or a mini tutorial to show new tips and such as you play...?
Maybe have you unlock them as you complete levels? I was thinking of having ways to hide some of the cheat codes in the maps somewhere and you have to find them.
Robert Kosek
07-06-2007, 10:51 PM
At a certain point I say delete the cheats, because for me they do nothing more than ruin a game. Sometimes, depending upon the type of game, it makes things interesting but not in puzzle games. I like a challenge and not the easy out. Sometimes I get frustrated enough for that easy out, but I don't want it.
It's just that, without the manual, the learning curve is steep. For instance the eyes see in n/s/e/w directions, but I never considered that their vision was obstructed by gems. That makes it harder and cost me a good number of lives. Once I figured that out it was no big deal.
Hmm... ok thanks Robert. Knowing that it's a non-obvious concept helps. I think what I might do is have either some easy tutorial-like levels that demonstrate these sorts of simple things such as gems block the vision of the creatures, etc. Perhaps sign posts or message scrolls might be a useful addition to the engine too.
Something to think about in beta.
chronozphere
08-06-2007, 06:52 AM
I think it's a cool game... love the graphics :thumbup:
But i would like to be able to restart a level, because when you get stuck with moving blocks etc... you need to do all previous levels over and over.
Some sound effect's and a simple GUI would make it realy nice.
Keep this project alive. You are almost there! ;)
jasonf
08-06-2007, 08:49 AM
It is possible to restart the level.. I think pressing left shift does it...
It's in the readme anyway.
I agree, cool game.. lots of brain exercise :D
Hey chronozphere, thanks!
Jason is right, it's the left shift to restart the current level. I haven't implemented a level password system yet, was saving it for the beta stage where I start making the menu, etc...
I think I'll finish off the level transition sequences and get on with the menu.
Placeholder fonts will suck btw. ;) Anyone know how to procedurally generate nice menus that look like scrolls? (envisions a photoshop tutorial somewhere)
I downloaded the thing, WILL, but haven't tried it out yet. I will, though, probably today or tomorrow. I'm curious to see what this critter's about :)
jasonf
08-06-2007, 03:13 PM
You want a script?...
Well, if you want one which can be opened up and closed which contains the menu items, I'm sure it can be done programmatically..
Otherwise, you're looking to animate something in a 3D package.
Have a look at what I did for Chaos.
http://www.cerebral-bicycle.co.uk/viewdoc.asp?doc=55
I rendered a spell book in Truespace, being lifted up and down, then used OR Blitting of my font onto the page, I got quite a nice ink effect.
I thought it looked quite effective even for a very simple effect.
I downloaded the thing, WILL, but haven't tried it out yet. I will, though, probably today or tomorrow. I'm curious to see what this critter's about :)
Great! :) Give the Player's Manual a quick look over though. It's PDF and it's small and graphical so it won't be monotonous to read. ;)
Plus while I'm working out the beta version it'll be the best way to quickly learn how all the creatures interact with Garland and the world elements.
Jason, wouldn't you know it, right after I posted that message, I found this Burnt Paper (http://www.swedesignz.com/photoshop/Burnt_Paper).
The effect works well enough. I skipped the end part for the cheesey burn effect he used and just took the burn tool to it.
Here is a screenie:
http://upload8.postimage.org/738595/Menu_Panel_Template.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/738595/photo_hosting.html)
Menu BG (Half size from original)
Though the idea of making a book would be cool for a help tutorial if I could put one it... Or maybe between stages where I can put player tips or hints...?
Are we talking animated or single frame opened? If I can get some images and diagrams to come out like old quill drawings. I could keep the appearance of a Wizard's Lore book or something. Which would be super cool. ;)
Mix that with some simple particle 'magic' effects and we'd have a pretty nice immersive menu on our hands. Now I'd only need a nice font to go with it. :P (What about the one you have there? Are each character a fixed size? Mind if I borrow? :D
jasonf
08-06-2007, 04:01 PM
Well, you're more than welcome to use any of the graphics from Chaos as placeholder art if you like. All of the files are included in the Zip.
jasonf
08-06-2007, 04:04 PM
The font I used is not fixed width, but all of the widths are defined in a text file.
Hmm ok. Do you think it'll work out if I tried to convert them to fixed width?
Ah you know what? I found this font laying around at work. :)
What do you guys think? (I might brighten it up or make it glow/animated later on)
http://upload8.postimage.org/741240/PossibleGarlandFont.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/741240/photo_hosting.html)
This font it's fixed width either, but I believe that it can still work. It just might have some (S)NES-ness to it. ;)
Robert Kosek
08-06-2007, 06:41 PM
Nice, you might want to make a very slight white outline to it to make it a bit more readable, or make the "paper" a little lighter in color. ;) The contrast is a bit tough to spot.
Yeah I was thinking that for general text or stuff that I want to stand out it would be a bit hard on the eyes.
But for 'wizard doodles' and the like the color is ok.
Actually with a faint light glow around the text it stands out much better.
Heh heh, not bad, WILL :) The character looks kinda funny :D
Thanks Bijo! ;)
Kas and I were going for a sort of wacky SMB feel to the 'cast' of characters in GQ. I think hehas done a great job so far. However unfortunately as he has not been around for quite some time, I'm not sure if I can get him to finish off the job. That could mean a lot of things for some of the characters that were not finished. Esp. Garland himself, who if you haven't noticed isn't complete himself.
Damn. Introversion is right, content really does suck! :P
Ok here is a quick little mockup of the main menu.
For highlighting I was planning on using the Exit portal effect behind each icon and text.
http://upload8.postimage.org/790770/GQ_Menu_MockUp.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/790770/photo_hosting.html)
What do you guys think?
I may add another effect (little twinkly sparkley particles moving upward --common to most 'magic' game effects) instead if it suits the menu's look a lot better.
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 08:21 PM
Looks cool, but it doesn't seem to be symmetrical. Even if this is your intention, I think it would give a more "natural" look if it was symmetrical.
Hey Dirk!
Yeah you're right. It's not a good/final layout, just some visuals get an idea of the lok of the menu. I have to put in a Garland's Quest header in there as well as some kind of Red Ant logo (any takers? It's unpaid! :D)
What I may do is put the heading outside of the panel to add some contrast to the screen.
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 08:55 PM
Red Ant logo? What's that for? Do you own a company named Red Ant?
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 09:31 PM
How about this?
http://upload8.postimage.org/792022/redant.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792022/photo_hosting.html)
Traveler
11-06-2007, 09:37 PM
ohh, nice one :shock:
jdarling
11-06-2007, 09:40 PM
Red Ant logo? What's that for? Do you own a company named Red Ant?
What Red Ant Logo? You mean the copyright statement?
Any yeah, whats up Jason, you hiding a company from us?
How about this?
http://upload8.postimage.org/792022/redant.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792022/photo_hosting.html)
Hey, not bad! :)
Naw... I used to release all my projects and stuff under the group name Red Ant Productions. I've just never had anything officially released or published since oh... 2002 or so...? Something like that.
Anyway it's my personal brand. I stole the sprite from an undisclosed game once long ago and it's been my mascot label ever since. :D
Here (I can't believe this site is still up btw ;)) have a look at em all: http://members.tripod.com/~PSE_Project/
I'm old school Pascal. ;)
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 10:01 PM
Some others I made within the last minutes :)
http://upload8.postimage.org/792462/redant3.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792462/photo_hosting.html)
http://upload8.postimage.org/792473/redant2.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792473/photo_hosting.html)
http://upload8.postimage.org/792479/redant4.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792479/photo_hosting.html)
Oh, and I just see that the image hosting site converts the images to jpg. They are png's with transparent borders, so if you like it, just tell me and I send you the correct format.
EDIT: Ok, forget it. Only the preview is jpg :)
:) Neat!
I'm partial to the bottom one. Maybe a combination of the ant from the 3rd and the text from the 1st? Or the other way around too, just to see. If it's quick.
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 10:21 PM
Did you mean this two combinations?
http://upload8.postimage.org/792813/redant6.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792813/photo_hosting.html)
http://upload8.postimage.org/792819/redant7.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/792819/photo_hosting.html)
Huehnerschaender
11-06-2007, 10:40 PM
Or how about the logo rendered in 3DS Max with some kind of golden border...
http://upload8.postimage.org/793071/redant8.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/793071/photo_hosting.html)
Hey cool. :) Well I could probably use this for GQ. Though it'll need to have the
Productions with the little (tm) added in there too since there are so many things called 'Red Ant' now. T'hieves I tells ya! :pirate:
However the best thing would be to recreate my little Red Ant guy in 3D ;) (The cartoony one that is) He is my mascot after all. :D
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 08:12 AM
However the best thing would be to recreate my little Red Ant guy in 3D ;)
Not an easy task considering his actual huge size of 24x21 pixels *lol* Quite hard to get some details out of the picture :)
:lol: Yeah I know what you mean. Well I guess you can think Cartoon ant with big beady eyes, but the basic body shape is the same, yet exaggerated on the head & 'butt' except for the feet and hands which are standard comic fare. :) (Hey it was a small game :P)
Anyhow I'm almost done the basic elements of the menu. I hope to be able to have it working soon.
$%#^^$&$ ^ ! poop. :?
Now I have to take all of last nights work and toss it and do this over again. I had all the icons set, ordered and compacted into a single 512x512 sheet for use by the menu. Now it seems that I cannot get the PNGs stored textures to use their alpha channel (using Photoshop) which I thought got stored and would kick in. :roll:
So now I have the option of trying to see if I can 'map' the alpha channel into the PNG file or use black and just ADD everything. Problem there is that my core font color is dark so that means it'll just look transparent to some degree or barely noticeable. So I'd have to find some way to separate my font's glow from my font and draw them separately in 2 different ways.
Any suggestions? :scratch:
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 02:46 PM
Where is the problem with the alpha channel? You must have used this before with your characters and so on.... So what exactly does not work?
I think the problem is that the PNG files are being stored as 24bit not 32bit thus the alpha channel doesn't get stored.
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 02:48 PM
give it to me, I'll fix it...
:doh: Awe man... I need to have on glBlend() as well as glAlphaTest(). :roll: n/m :D
Ok I've got my mouse cursor drawing with this:
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE);
Which is almost perfect, but it only draws properly on the black area around my panel.
I have glow around it and a shadow behind. I'd like it to draw both the glow and shadow correctly when drawing on black or non-black surfaces.
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 02:59 PM
Problem seems to be "fixed", huh? :) :lol:
Sorry delayed edit submission.... :P (re-read ;))
lmfao I fixed it myself again. :P
glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);
What can I say? This is a high stress hobby. :lol:
jdarling
12-06-2007, 03:55 PM
Well Will, all I can say is LOL! Glad I'm not the only one that ran into that one.
Maybe you should change your logo to a picture of a giant ant taking a bite out of your backside (A$$ for those not offended:)).
:o You said bum! :lol:
I hope to have some cheap thing put up by day's end. ;)
Hey, quick question for you guys. How does this game record? ie. using FRAPS, CamStudio, etc.
I remember trying not too long ago to do a FRAPS capture to show off gameplay in a show example video, but the game slowed right down and it didn't turn out good enough to post.
I'm just wondering why and if this is correctable?
Still working out menu (just aligning stuff now) coming real soon!
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 08:58 PM
Hmm.... I need to test it, but Fraps reduces FPS to a specific value. Older versions of Fraps were only capable of capturing at 25 FPS max. My version (latest) can capture at 60 FPS.
Maybe you had an old version?
Maybe... The Game is fixed at ~50 FPS. So that might have an effect.
It's OpenGL through SDL... maybe it's a SDL version thing?
My version of FRAPs it 2.7.3 build 5833.
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 09:41 PM
I have V 2.8.2 Build 6488 here
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 09:46 PM
I just tested it and you are right.
I configured Fraps to record at 50 FPS, then I started GQ which was running at 50 FPS. When I pressed my shortcut to start recording, GQ's FPS dropped down to 18 and your games speed is not running framerate independent. So the game was running like in slow motion :)
EDIT: And just to say it: I can record other commercial games with very complex graphics at 60 FPS without problems. Maybe its an SDL issue like you said.
Yeah... so how do I fix that? Or is it something I can fix?
Menu is working... Yay! :D
I just have to put in the leftover bits. Nice background, sub-menus (Password entry screen, etc) I think you'll all like what I have in mind. :D
BTW, do you think that 5-6 characters/symbols is too much for kids? I remember playing games at a young age where I was writing down there long alpha-numeric things down all over. ala Xanadu, Gauntlet, Mega-Man (where applied), etc...
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 09:50 PM
Kids that can solve your labyrinths MUST be able to write down 5-6 letters!
Huehnerschaender
12-06-2007, 09:52 PM
Need to get some sleep now.... TTYL Jason!
When do we get to see the menu working? :)
Kids that can solve your labyrinths MUST be able to write down 5-6 letters!
:lol: Thats a very good point. I never thought of it like that. Though I dunno, kids are pretty smart when they want to figure something out they usually do so long as it doesn't involve too much experience/knowledge.
I hope to have the menu up tonight. In fact I can put it up now, but I'd like to put in the password system and menu in first. Give everyone something really juicy to sink into. I'll see how it goes tonight and go from there.
Heading home from work myself so ttyl!
BTW, parents, please give this a look over and see if you can give me an age range? I really don't know as I don't have any children myself. I'll probably have to rely on you folks to give me pointers. Stuff like too hard, too easy, what on earth are you thinking, etc... :thumbup:
Garland's Quest Alpha 04
Ok here it is. A brand new GQ with a nice spiffy menu! ;)
I didn't have time to get the Password Menu done up yet. And it's going to take some time to organize and align the layout for the panel anyhow, so I'll just give you guys this one for now. It works very well and is more of what I invisioned the main menu to look like in the beginning.
Some stuff will be added a bit later once I have time for it. I'm sort of working with content that I have at the moment too, since it's really hard to come by lately, save for the stuff that I can do myself. (nifty Fonts and headers, etc) So far I think I'm doing ok. Let me know what you think! :D
Download (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/GQ_A04.zip) (6.2 MB)
Another shameless plug!
http://static.greatgamesexperiment.com/badge/game/garlandsquest/gge180x135.png (http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/garlandsquest/?utm_source=gge&utm_medium=badge_user)
Seriously, I'd really like to know how many people are digging this game. If you are interested please go to the game's profile and rate it accordingly. Thanks! ;)
Huehnerschaender
13-06-2007, 11:40 AM
Just gave it a quick go (I am in the office).
Looks already good.
Needs some transitions at mouseover and click etc but as you already said, its not finished yet.
One question: Why does the graphics change for the same level when I restart it using left shift? I first thought I can jump to the next level, but then I realized that everything is the same but with other graphics.
Yeah, that was a quick 'dropped in' code that randomized the themes. I used it just to be able to try them all.
In the next version of my editor/engine I'll be making themes fixed along with adding passcodes for each map.
I'd really love to be able to add a few more themes though. I had my heart set on a snow and swamp theme not too long ago. Would be nice if mixed with some cool snow and rain effects over top.
You can also use the keys/joystick to control the menu, but considering that I don't have the icon selection animation working yet, it's kind of hard to use at the moment. :) This will be a bit more useful for the password menu than this though. I'm also thinking about a menu for inputing your name. I have mechanisms to have highscores as well but I'm not sure if this would become a desired or non-nonsensical feature.
http://upload8.postimage.org/820605/GQ_Menu_BlueSky.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/820605/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/820619/GQ_Menu_DarkSky.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/820619/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/820623/GQ_Menu_DarkStorm.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/820623/photo_hosting.html)
Well... what do you guys think?
Traveler
13-06-2007, 08:05 PM
Definitely not the redish/purple/blue! :x
I'm inclined to choose the light blue over the black one.
The black version really fits well with the worn paper, but has something negative in it, like something bad is going to happen. The light blue version works a lot better as it matches the other sceenshot with Garland and the other characters on it. Only downside is that the background doesnt really work that well with the worn paper.
Huehnerschaender
13-06-2007, 08:15 PM
I like the blue version most
Yeah I sort of had the same thoughts about the dark one too. It's kind of a dark theme for small kids probably better to stick to the less intimidating stuff.
As an addition to the blue sky I wouldn't mind being able to put in a wooded background (wooded as in a crop of trees or a small forested area) The parchment texture would likely blend a bit nicer, I can have some kind of rolling hills underneath. And I think the Title would fair better if it was Gold or Yellow instead of the blue on blue thing I've got going on.
Mind you... half of that I cannot do myself. :P I might just settle for switching the color of the title and dealing with the menu panel contrast thing later.
Password Menu is progressing though. Once that is done I just have to modify the editor and map loaders and we'll have fixed themes and passcodes. ;)
Huehnerschaender
13-06-2007, 09:52 PM
The old paper should get the shape of a real scroll, not that rectangle that it is now.... :)
something like this:
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/2576200/2/istockphoto_2576200_blank_scroll.jpg
Yeah, I agree a scroll would be nicer to look at, but.... I'm not that good with the graphics. ;) I wouldn't feel bad if I got help to do it though. :D
Actually if it rolled out width-wise that'd be cool. (and better since I'd have more room on the sides for it)
Truth is I'm seeing that I will more than likely have to resort to someone elses hand in this game for me to get it out the door as it were. And it would be greatly appreciate. Especially since I've somehow managed to find all this new energy to put into getting it done.
jdarling
14-06-2007, 12:04 AM
here is my 2 cents worth:
http://upload8.postimage.org/825865/MyMenu.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/825865/photo_hosting.html)
Its not the best work, but it gets the idea across.
Huehnerschaender
14-06-2007, 05:09 AM
Hi Jeremy.
I like the idea that the characters are "hanging" on the scroll.... thats neat!
But the background doesn't fit to the game in any way. I can't remember a single scene in a forest :) Know what I mean?
Greetings,
Dirk
jdarling
14-06-2007, 12:49 PM
But the background doesn't fit to the game in any way. I can't remember a single scene in a forest :) Know what I mean?
Yep, there arn't any forested backgrounds in GQ, but WILL said he would like a forested background for the menu so I thought I'd give it a shot. The background is actually from one of those free to use picture sites. I think it was actually meant as a desktop background or something.
Huehnerschaender
14-06-2007, 01:00 PM
Ah ok... It seems I have overseen Wills wish :)
Anyway... I did not want to say that it looks bad, I just wanted to mention that the title screen of a game should show something which reminds the beholder of the game :)
Not bad Jer! :)
Unfortunately the characters would seem too undersized if used from the sprite set I have now. Perhaps if I got Kas back on the job, it might work, but I can't tell the likeliness of that right now. :?
A forest theme was in the plans too, just so you guys know.
The stages layout was to be something along the lines of:
Stage 1: Plains & Forest
Stage 2: Swamp & Jungle
Stage 3: Hills & Mountains
Stage 4: Mountains & Caves
End of Game: Nem's Keep (exceptions where you'd have only 5 levels, but all with the same theme)
Each stage would contain 20 or so levels with about 3 mixed theme sets. So about 13 themes in total.
Well some good news. I've all but finished adding the Passcode functionality into the game. :D
Almost? Oh it's in there alright! But I have no real way to provide them to your eyeballs yet. :P I'd much prefer to give out passcodes after a set chunk of levels. This would give you all something to strive for and add a little 'stress' to failing a map as you would have to do maps x thru z again so that it builds a little bit of a feeling of loss when losing. ;) Otherwise it's pretty much just do every map once and the whole 6 lives thing is a mere nuisance.
The menu is also a heck of a lot nicer and user friendly. The only things left (besides all the polish, fun transitional animations and eye candy that I'll add eventually) are the Menu Option selection highlighting (which will be some sort of particle generator. Exit portal or magic 'sparks' I'm not sure, but the first of those would be quicker/easier.) and Confirm Quitting screen.
I've added a fully functioning Password menu and Game Over screen. Stage 1 - 4, Level Password Display and Credits screens are all pending, but will be added soon enough.
I'm still contemplating how I'll put in my little tutorial screens/panels. I'll either just add it to the menu on the side or something, or I'll have them pop up before the levels of the game where you'll run into a specific character or item for the first time. It could be used as a bit of a story telling mechanism too I suppose?
Oh also, I'm sure that I've probably mentioned this in the thread already, but just in case it was missed; I know some of the levels vary greatly in difficulty from level-to-level as you go, but it's important to note that I'm not really all that concerned about the design of the maps just yet as I'm still focusing on the functionality of the engine. Once that is all sorted, I'll be in full map design mode. Psst some of them are ...taken... from a commercial game so I really can't use them if I publish the game later.
Garland's Quest Alpha 05
Another one! This time around I've polished off the base functionality of the new menu system. Very user friendly, plus I've got all the sub screens in there too.
Download (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/will/GQ_A05.zip) (6.2 MB)
Quick question; Do you think that giving out a password every 5 levels is too short/long a run or just about right?
jasonf
16-06-2007, 10:17 AM
I'd give passwords after every level, some of the levels are quite challenging, but once you've solved it, you wouldn't want to revisit it for a while.
If you want to punish the player for failing, just let them start anywhere they've completed but with a zero score.
Also, having passwords for each level lets the player start anywhere they want, or demo cool levels to their friends.
If you did want to do it though, you could say that the levels are in groups with a similar theme.. like rooms on a floor, you get the password to the 1st room, you have to play through to the final room on the floor to get the next password.
DarknessX
16-06-2007, 02:38 PM
Or maybe do your regular idea, and only give passwords every so often for each chunk of levels, but make 'rewards' which give out new passwords. IE, complete a level in 'x' amount of time, or kill 'x' amount of enemies, or whatever.
Yeah, I see what you mean about wanting to show off X level, etc...
I think what I could do to offset the difficult room issue is to scale the difficulty each set of 5 or whatever. So that they get 'tougher' as you go, but eases up a bit every set of 5 levels.
In addition to that, I kinda like DarknessX's idea about giving out passwords as a reward bonus. I had originally thought of hiding readable messages behind objects that would give you anything from level solving tips (to other levels) to cheat codes to even possibly passwords.
I could simply has a step counter that would track how many steps that the player has taken, if he/she completes the map in less than a set amount of steps then I could award a 'Step Bonus' or something with the password.
So how are the menu screens looking now? :) Besides the rather 'flat' piece of parchment, I'm quite happy with it for now. I may want to add a selection box around the gems instead of the same exit portal effect I use for everything else. Ideas...?
So... I've seen quite a bit of encouragement to continue this project prior to my picking it back up again. Yet, not too much feedback on the 2 new versions that I've posted. :scratch: (--the suggestions and ideas towards the menus are very helpful though,:thumbup:)
Nor have I seen anyone go the the GGE page and rate the game. (poor or great even)
Does this mean that the game runs perfectly and everyone is happy with it so there is nothing to say? :P Some feedback if you please. :)
I do appreciate the comments, good or bad (well so long as the negative stuff is at least semi-constructive :lol:) it gives me some sort of hint that I'm going in the right or wrong direction and especially if I missed anything.
Ok Password display screen is in. I set it to every level since everything is difficulty is very unbalanced right now.
I'm considering taking the time to make small transition maps so that you can grasp the basics of an object or a specific creature before getting into the more complex puzzles. A much required thing to do in the final product.
jdarling
18-06-2007, 06:12 PM
Nor have I seen anyone go the the GGE page and rate the game. (poor or great even)
Actually, I did that right after you added it. You won't get a rating besides an anticipation rating until you set the games release date.
BTW: If you rate and critique other peoples games you stand a better chance of getting ratings yourself.
I noticed that there was 1 other that rated. Now I know who. ;) (So how does that likeliness thing work exactly?)
btw, the anticipation meter is exactly what I meant. :) I don't have and won't put a release date until I'm sure of it's actual release time frame.
http://upload8.postimage.org/912164/GQ_05a.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/912164/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/912191/GQ_05b.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/912191/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/912278/GQ_05c.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/912278/photo_hosting.html)
In the last few days I've been letting this thread cool down as I worked on the 'Death' effects for Garland. It's coming along nicely! :)
So far I've set him on fire, turned him to stone, electrocuted and dropped him down a bottomless pit! :twisted:
I think I just have a few more ways I need to animate his timely demise and I'll have them all in. Some of the much older bugs have been fixed as well.
Robert Kosek
25-06-2007, 07:52 PM
Heh, I'll have to pick this up again and try it out. Is the last image above an example of line of sight? Even though it's just a restriction on the viewing range.
Oh no, I was demonstrating the enhancement of the exit animation. I've not impaired the player's sight during gameplay.
It's a 'circle in to black' as he walks through the door. ;)
Unfortunately you won't get to see all these new animations until Alpha 06 is released. I'm planning on the one last Alpha before I move onto beta, with all the main features in and I'll be focusing on level/puzzle design and bug fixing from there.
After that I'll be working on a final demo. And a final version of the released commercial game.
The Beta versions will be kept private and by request to be a beta tester only.
Here are some screenies of my current progress.
http://upload8.postimage.org/1001767/GQ_06burn.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/1001767/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/1001775/GQ_06stone.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/1001775/photo_hosting.html) http://upload8.postimage.org/1001785/GQ_06zap.jpg (http://upload8.postimage.org/1001785/photo_hosting.html)
Huehnerschaender
25-06-2007, 09:04 PM
I like the screenies! :)
Here is a video of the gameplay and Solve for Level 18. :)
<center><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/gp75S1eMSnA"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/gp75S1eMSnA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object></center>
Wow it's been ages since I've done an update here. :) Well guess what guys? I've picked up GQ a bit for the last couple of days and did some work on it.
Nothing new as far as visuals (sorry screenshot jockies ;)) except for the color change glitch for Garland's cape. It's now blue like the other animation sequences.
Other than that I've fixed:
:arrow: the Yellow Drake's LOS detection of Garland and
:arrow: an Input control bug that would cause a double use of Magic Scrolls or flipping of a Wall Switch
Next few issues to be worked on:
:arrow: a glitch with Garland's continued pushing state
:arrow: fix up Yellow Drake's attack animation
:arrow: do Eyeball Man's attack animation
:arrow: Bomb Man's explosion and attack animation
:arrow: Magic transformation effect
:arrow: a pretty Gem pickup effect and
:arrow: a pretty magic aura effect for Magic Scrolls
I'm sort of contemplating Garland's fate of late. I'm still rather busy with school so it'll remain second chair, but if I can hire an artist to finish some of the missing, required sprites ad tilesets, I may yet be able to release this game as I previously intended. I'm considering putting up a few hundred dollars towards the effort aswell. Know of any interested artists that can continue the visual style of the game and will work for cheap? :)
Just as a point of interest...
Remaining Needed Graphical Assets:
:arrow: Gem Guardian character (Statue form, walking, attacking) x 4 directions
:arrow: Nem boss wizard (idle, walking, casting, pushing) x 4 directions + (getting angry/throwing a fit, being banished) x facing forwards
:arrow: more Gem colors/shapes
:arrow: Garland's Staff
:arrow: Magic Cubes x 4 themes
:arrow: Blocking Object x 4 themes (Boulder, Tree, Pillar, etc)
:arrow: Tileset + Switches/Doors + Water/Bridge sets x 4 Themes (Basic as seen in the alpha version, Forrest, Snowy/Winter, Cave)
:arrow: Some minor cinematic work which needs to be discussed. (intro, still framed image for each themed stage, ending)
I have Nem's design already done with my previous artist, but I never got the original 3D assets from him nor the sprite sets to put him in the game.
Chesso
14-01-2009, 06:47 AM
Sounds good mate, been awhile since I checked things out here also.
Legolas
14-01-2009, 11:17 AM
Just yesterday I was wondering about the state of Garland's Quest :lol:
Keep the good work, Jason!
jdarling
14-01-2009, 02:20 PM
Glad to hear your back to working on GQ WILL. Really a fun game to play. So, how long till I get my beta copy so I can smash holes in it on Win, Lin, and Mac :)
well what was the last version that you tried out? I forget what the state of the game was with the last public Alpha. :) Was it Alpha 4?
I just fixed another lingering bug last night too. I think I have only 2 major bugs left to squish then I'm going to be focusing on animation sequences, graphical effects and menus.
Maybe after I've gotten all the major animations in I'll release a new alpha. Beta will come only once I've gotten all the graphics I need in and all animation and main special effects are completed.
Oh and cool thing to note; I've compiled and tested GQ on my girlfriend's 32-bit version of Windows Vista. So Yes to all that want to know, GQ will be available for Vista! :)
A little update; I'm currently putting all my graphics into Display Lists (after much deciding of what would be best to do to optimize, that was it... for now) after I've done that to the best of my ability. I'll finish the remaining Enemy animations and effects (Eyeball Man, Bomb Man and a touch-up of the Red & Yellow Drakes).
The game seems to be running a bit smoother except for the Lava glow. Hopefully once I've optimize that a bit it'll run nicer. I'll likely just replace it as I'm not too impressed with how it looks. It's visually not worth the extra processing. :P
Anyhow the last version was Version Alpha 05 (http://www.garlandsquest.com/) so the next release will obviously be Alpha 06. I'll release this once I've got all the remaining animation above put in and put in a proper password menu gui.
I've already added quite a few new things so it might be an interesting update. Please let me know. Feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Oh and I'll be posting in a new thread altogether to help exposure... stay tuned GQ fans! ;)
http://youtu.be/b7iRVC6jG0c
...and you thought Garland's Quest was long gone? ;)
Cybermonkey
06-04-2012, 08:34 AM
I like it! What engine do you use? Is it based on SDL or OpenGL?
I like it! What engine do you use? Is it based on SDL or OpenGL?
Thanks! :) I use both SDL and OpenGL for graphics. I have since added all the death and creature animations, plus I'm tinkering with music. I've also added 3D water, but I'm having issues with getting it to display in the background properly. Once that is sorted out I'll be arranging a release of Alpha 7. It only took 3 years. :)
The game's code is it's own engine. I've built it all from the ground up, nothing borrowed save for the basic APIs I use for graphics and image/music file loading.
Thanks to the efforts of Stoney in helping me get Lazarus working on my Mac, I'll be aiming for a Win/Mac release with a possibility of an iOS release down the road. I've always intended this to be a franchise of mine so other games could easily come out after that, including an actual 3D sequel, should all the other pieces fall into place.
Graphics will be getting an overhaul. Characters will maintain their looks, but be redrawn by another artist. I'd like to up their level of detail since my graphics are of a nice high resolution. (Back when I started, it was actually seen as a wasteful thing. That is to say, pre-HD market. Guess I was thinking ahead. ;))
Here is a preview video of my current progress with Garland's Quest Alpha 7.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VarHOjIr2c
Ñuño Martínez
12-04-2012, 08:46 PM
It's looking good. :)
wagenheimer
13-04-2012, 12:00 AM
Very Nice! It reminds me Eggerland Mystery from MSX! =)
Thanks guys!
Very Nice! It reminds me Eggerland Mystery from MSX! =)
That was one of the main inspirations of this game at first. :)
Eventually Garland's Quest became it's own thing and grew it's own themes and own form of game play. At some point I'm going to be raising funds to contract a very talented artist and very skilled musician to redraw and score the game. I'm very excited about how Garland is going to look in a few months time. (My plans and budget permitting!)
paul_nicholls
14-04-2012, 06:46 AM
Looking good bro! :)
Congrats with it now on Mac OSX! :D
Thanks Paul! :)
After Alpha 7 is out, you guys won't believe the changes we're going to be making next. It's costing a pretty penny, but the game will look and sound really awesome once I'm done. I'm also going to need the community's help spreading the word once my funding campaign starts.
What you see for graphics now and hear for music aren't even on the same scale of where I'm taking it to. ;)
pstudio
14-04-2012, 02:32 PM
looking good.
Are you negotiating with someone right now regarding the gfx and music or is it only on the todo list? I'm wandering if you can give us and idea of what the final game will look like visually.
Actually I'm currently in negotiations with the artist right now, but I've already done so with the musician. There isn't really anything to show at the moment, I don't want to tip my hand just yet for obvious reasons. :)
The main issue with contracting content is that it costs more than I can reasonably afford myself with my own personal income. This is why I'm going out to crowd funding to help fund the game.
I'll say this though. I have Garland's Quest on GitHub and I have a list of a few issues being knocked out one by one. The new water is being fixed up, many of the glitches and small bugs are going bye bye. New game screens are being worked on as we speak. All the effects are in, but a couple will need some tinkering and tweaking.
Stoney is working with me on it as well. In fact he's been helping me with my dev tools a good bit too. Don't think the game would be on Mac yet if it weren't for him so I'm really grateful for that.
I have yet to port over my "Level Maker" aka Level Editor. :) It still only runs on Windows 32-bit. It will need a total UI redesign since it was created using DelphiX and Delphi 5 or 7. I'll need to dig into this tool sometime in the near future since there will be a couple of added features still to come. Message Scrolls and Nem himself for example. :)
Selfish post: You guys are going to fall in love the with new look of the characters. I have already hired the artist on for a few things to get things started and we are doing some great work re-imagining the looks of Garland and Nem.
We are working out some details on Nem's final look and finishing touches to Garland himself. Once the contract we signed is complete, I can show off some of what he has done during out collaboration. It'll feel like a whole new game visually by the end. :)
paul_nicholls
19-04-2012, 04:30 AM
Selfish post: You guys are going to fall in love the with new look of the characters. I have already hired the artist on for a few things to get things started and we are doing some great work re-imagining the looks of Garland and Nem.
We are working out some details on Nem's final look and finishing touches to Garland himself. Once the contract we signed is complete, I can show off some of what he has done during out collaboration. It'll feel like a whole new game visually by the end. :)
Sweet! Nice...can't wait :D
Wow, it's hard to believe that this game project is over 6 years old! :P
I've been posting some cool behind the scenes dev bits about Garland's Quest on my twitter (@jkamcmillen (http://www.twitter.com/jkamcmillen)) if you are interested or what to see whats behind the curtain, you may want to follow me on Twitter.
I've done so much work in the past few months and it's looking better than ever. Chris (artist) and I have been working out the new theme layout and Zack (musician) has composed the game's main theme. I plan on doing a big reveal this year in my crowd funding campaign. I can use all the support, even if just helping to spreading the word about the project. Even Paul will be chipping in and helping with some level design.
The aim of the campaign is to get a profession level of artwork to envision the world properly and add beauty both visually and with amazingly moving music.
Too soon to show off anything big yet, but the demo that will be available for the campaign will be designed to wow and impress.
paul_nicholls
05-01-2013, 09:29 AM
Looking forward to the demo :)
The 3D water is still killing me. I figured out how to have the water actually move with them map, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to have it draw within a set confines of a viewport.
Any 3D OpenGL experts out there? :P
paul_nicholls
05-01-2013, 08:59 PM
The 3D water is still killing me. I figured out how to have the water actually move with them map, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to have it draw within a set confines of a viewport.
Any 3D OpenGL experts out there? :P
If you want to clip the water within a rectangular part of the screen (viewport), you can use code like this (origin at top left of screen):
procedure TxeGraphics.SetClippingRect_2d(x,y,w,h: Word);var
xeMax : Integer;
xeMin : Integer;
glMax : Integer;
glMin : Integer;
scissorY : Integer;
begin
if (x = 0) and (y = 0) and (w = FWidth) and (h = FHeight) then
begin
glDisable(GL_SCISSOR_TEST);
Exit;
end;
glEnable(GL_SCISSOR_TEST);
// in 2d mode, OpenGL y-coords are 0 at bottom, FHeight - 1 at top
glMax := FHeight - 1;
glMin := 0;
// in 2d mode, xe y-coords are 0 at top, FHeight - 1 at bottom
xeMax := 0;
xeMin := FHeight - 1;
scissorY := glMin + (glMax - glMin) * ((y - xeMin) div (xeMax - xeMin));
glScissor(x,scissorY,w,h);
end;
If you want a non-rectangular clipping region, you need to use the stencil buffer I believe....
Sascha Willems
06-01-2013, 11:00 AM
I prefer the stencil do restrict rendering to a given region of the screen. Scissor has some drawbacks, for example that you need to specify it's region in window coordinates and (as Paul said) you're restricted to a single rectangular region. So some time ago I removed all scissor-stuff from my GUI and replaced it with stenciling. It's a bit more code but offers more freedom and allows you to clip out any shape you want and even do CSG on your shapes to clip out complex areas (it even allows you to cut out threedimensional areas, see here (http://www.saschawillems.de/?p=1060)) :
// Clear the stencil buffer (usually done at start of rendering)
glClear(GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT);
// We fill the stencil buffer now with the shape that we want our stuff be drawn in
glDepthFunc(GL_ALWAYS); // Don't care about depth values for our stencil shape
glColorMask(False, False, False, False); // We don't want to see the shape, so we disable rendering to the color buffer
glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); // Activate stencil
glStencilFunc(GL_ALWAYS, 1, 1); // Write to stencil, no matter what's currently in place and set it to 1
glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_REPLACE); // Control behaviour of stencil writing, for our scenario, only the last value matters. GL_REPLACE means that our shape sets the buffer to 1 where it's drawn
// Draw the shape in which you want your stuff below drawn here
// Can be of any complexity, you could even create a chess-board cutout, a real 3D-coutout, etc.
// You can do a simple GL_QUAD, GL_TRIANGLE or render a 3D-model here
DrawPlainRect(0, 0, 0, Width, Height);
// Now we're going to render our scene / objects so that they're only visible where the stencil was set by our shape
glColorMask(True, True, True, True); // Needs to be enabled again, as we want to see our object
glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, 1, 1); // Now we only want to draw where the stencil buffer is 1 (as set by our shape), the rest of our screen contains zero
glStencilOp(GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP, GL_KEEP); // No change to the stencil buffer
glEnable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); // Activate it
glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); // Restore our normal depth test
// Render anything here you want to have stencilled out
glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST);
See the comments for how the stencil actually works. It's pretty complex and not only limited to restricting rendering to a certain area. You can even use it to count pixels and stuff.
And though this is a bit more code than the scissor stuff, it's extremly flexible. E.g. by just replacing glStencilFunc(GL_EQUAL, 1, 1) with glStencilFunc(GL_NOTEQUAL, 1, 1) for rendering your scene, you'd render only "outside" of the stencil shape :)
paul_nicholls
06-01-2013, 08:58 PM
Very cool Sascha! I wasn't sure how to use the stencil buffer myself before, only the theory, so that code will be very helpful :)
Wow, that's pretty cool Sascha. :)
I should get you to write a couple of basic tutorials on using the Stencil functions for the upcoming 4th issue of Pascal Gamer mag. Just something to get people started maybe.
Unfortunately I've given up on 3D water as I'm realizing that thats not where my strengths lay. So sticking to what I know and that's 2D. Doesn't mean the water will look bad, actually I've been focusing on that alone lately trying to come up with something rather nice for once. I found some great textures and I took some of my caustics lighting tiles and tried layering them together. With a few alpha tricks and the nice pretty lighting animation below it. It looks pretty decent.
1031 1032
What do you guys think?
paul_nicholls
07-01-2013, 02:58 AM
Looks ok from here, could you try making a video of it animating?
SilverWarior
07-01-2013, 08:11 AM
Looks verry nice.
And since you are using layering why not try and make water tiles semitransparent and then render the botom textures below, closer to shore more visible the botom texture is. This way you could get the impresion of increasing water depth which would look realy nice.
Also since you are using layering you might wanna go and use larger textures whose dimensions are actually bigger than tile dimensions. This way the textures will look less repetive (you can clearly see repetive paterns in water texture in the left picture).
Well I am using 2 layers really.
The first is the caustic lighting effect animation consisting of 36 frames with some coloring thrown in.
The second is a 1:1 scale seamless texture that I found, scalled down to the 80x80 size required, added a bit of an alpha mask and put it all together in-game.
The caustic lighting cycles through it's animation and on top I draw the water surface texture with an alpha value that goes up and down just slightly as to give it a nice animated effect.
I'll see about posting a video of it sometime soon.
The real fun stuff is what I've been up to lately. Graphics is nice an all, but I've finally been adding 2 things I've been dying to do for a while now; Message Scrolls and Hidden Objects inside of Objects. Hint: Magic gets them out. ;)
I think that this will give a lot more to the gameplay and allow me to tell a bit more of the story as you play through it.
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