Garland's Quest

[Traveler]

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.

[K4Z]

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

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]

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.

[K4Z]

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 )

[WILL]

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 [size=9px](we have an animation for that, but as of yet not put in)[/size] 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 [size=9px](last)[/size] 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 [size=9px](game in this case)[/size] 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]

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 (also bewteen level transition while bashing buttons )

[WILL]

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! I know... but I left it in due to laziness.

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...

[WILL]

[size=9px]Leak Fix & Tweaks patch of Alpha 01 is coming... [/size]

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 [size=9px](or HE will write, as it were. )[/size]

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]

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 ops: ? He could simply be pushed out of the way or off the tile, but it is something to think about. :roll:

[WILL]

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.