ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1633055:date=Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM) [snapback]1633055[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> You could play with it now... if by "play" you mean "walk around in a huge open space with a hideous blue border around everything.
I used to have a slot2 thing that took an SD card. Using this in combination with a passme should result in it working just fine.
As for Redford's idea: I really don't want to write a jillion lines of dialog for the game. Or put in anything more than a basic conversation system, if one at all. Think nethack. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Cool, I actualy have a slto 2 device and am just unsure as to what the deal is between thigns workign only in slot 1/2 (or both), but I ran into it briefely with a lemming's clone (I think).
<!--quoteo(post=1633055:date=Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM) [snapback]1633055[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> As for Redford's idea: I really don't want to write a jillion lines of dialog for the game. Or put in anything more than a basic conversation system, if one at all. Think nethack. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Hmmmm.
Net hack port for the DS?
<a href="http://stuartp.commixus.com/nhds/" target="_blank">NH DS</a> (answerign my own questions ftw)
I'm going to have to rewrite the drawing system I think. The way it allocates sprite IDs is pretty retarded. It's mostly held together with spit and stickytape at the moment.
This should be interesting once released <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> keep up the good work, i'll help beta-test it if needed later on <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Not much... Rewrote the map system to use an eighth of the memory it did before. Made the pillar system a little more streamlined.
I'm having to give some thought to the targeting system I'm going to use. I wonder if something along the lines of Xcom's system of having a list of visible targets. Let me post some ideas and I'll see what everyone thinks:
1) Stylus tap to target an enemy. A red reticule appears around it.
Personally I hate using the stylus during fast-paced gameplay. Keep in mind this is real-time (except pause-time). It covers up the screen and forces to clumsily hold the DS.
2) Only shoot straight along the X or Y axis.
This could lead to more tactical play, or more frustrating. I'm leaning towards frustrating. You'd set your direction and hit fire. The projectile would hit the first thing it came across in that direction. Bear in mind that you can only face in four directions:
I'm thinking shoulder buttons for this. I had vaguely had in mind another purpose for them, but nothing concrete. If need be I could relegate them to cycling back and forwards between visible targets. A red reticle would appear over the current target. Could get ugly if there's a lot of targets on the screen at once.
It's worth noting that one of the skills I'm planning is a stop-time ability that will let you spend action points to perform a certain number of moves instantly. You'd hit your pause button, select your enemies and the abilities you want to use on each then unpause. Each target would then be hit by your selected series of abilities. I want this kind of thing to be fluid and intuitive.
As always any view is very much appreciated. Except "u r t3h sux".
--Scythe--
P.S. Here's a quick mockup I made of how my buttons are going to be configured. This screen will come up upon pressing the "Select" button. I've assumed I'll be using the #3 option from above and not included the shoulder buttons in the config, only the abxy buttons. The player will be able to drag and drop abilities from the list on the left into the slots that correspond to each button. I may have a picture of the skill tree on the left instead of a list, but that might be too bulky and cumbersome. We'll see.
P.P.S.S. It occurred to me just now that using the shoulder keys to cycle back and forth between targets would work if the target change was made upon RELEASE of the shoulder button. This would allow the game to be paused by pressing both shoulder buttons at once. If you have the pause-time ability you'll be able to perform some actions during the pause, if you don't you'll still be able to take a breath, pick a target and an ability and unpause.
A similar issue with shooting directions exists in DOOMRL. Your character, being an @ sign, can clearly only "face" four directions. You can still aim at things anywhere on the screen, but since the LINE in between those two points is also limited to the cells it has to pass through, sometimes it's possible to "fool" the game and make a shot it says is impossible, or miss a shot it says you should make. Regardless, while limiting weapon fire to cells would be much simpler code, it would also be inherently a little harder to the user to make use of.
As for limiting fire in four directions, this would make the game more tactical in that you would have to line up with enemies before you could shoot them. However, it would make no sense. At all. Regardless, this option would also be even easier to code. It's possible you could have some sort of challenge mode, and a mode where you can only shoot in four directions could be one of them, for example. That may be something for an advanced version however.
<!--quoteo(post=1634492:date=Jun 19 2007, 03:12 PM:name=The_Flying_Fish)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(The_Flying_Fish @ Jun 19 2007, 03:12 PM) [snapback]1634492[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Don't worry about helping Scythe guys, I always seem to solve the problems on IRC.
and then scythe will say that he enjoys the personal touch of signing his posts, completely ignoring the fact that forum sigs are derived from .sigs (of usenet descent) which enabled people to do the very same without having to type it out every time. we usually just ignore it and let him live in his little wonderland.
What does Zing do? No idea! Will he be in the final release of the game? Probably not. Placeholder art only.
--Scythe--
P.S. A bit of code in zing's update(); function and he now follows you around. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1636089:date=Jun 27 2007, 06:20 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Jun 27 2007, 06:20 AM) [snapback]1636089[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> What does Zing do? No idea! Will he be in the final release of the game? Probably not. Placeholder art only. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I smell an easter egg!
Anyway, glad to hear things are progressing nicely. Keep in mind its very easy keep interest in a project at its outset, very hard as time goes on. Hope you end up completing this!
My two cents: I don't know how you're going to do the health/damage system, but I would suggest using small numbers. I mean, like...
Okay, you know those games where you start out with like, 2000 HP and a weapon that does 112dmg, and as you go along you get a better weapon that does 120dmg and then 130dmg and then 134dmg and level up to 2123 HP? I'm not fond ofgames with big details and minute increases. My favorite RPG is Paper Mario, one of the reasons being that it super-simplifies HP and FP and damage. You start out with 10 HP, and enemies do 1 damage (or 0 if you block correctly). It's fair and fun, but avoids all the nonsense of big numbers.
I haven't really given much thought to the combat. That'll probably come further down the road. I'm thinking that the max HP a character could ever have would be in the vicinity of maybe 200? Something like that.
My galaxy generator is up and running! It generates a galaxy containing 80 to 110 systems, each system has between 1 and 6 planets around it, orbiting at various distances. At present I haven't accounted for sun colour, so they all use the red giant sprite. Planet distance will determine its mineral content and habitability. The systems further from the player's starting position will be further out from the main hub of civilisation. As such, rare minerals will be more plentiful out there. As will people that want to kill you.
At the moment I'm having some problems seeding the random number generator function that comes as a part of PAlib, it refuses to seed properly, might just fall back to math.h.
<!--quoteo(post=1637495:date=Jul 5 2007, 10:00 PM:name=puzl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(puzl @ Jul 5 2007, 10:00 PM) [snapback]1637495[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> You're probably not interested, but red giants are unlikely to have habitable planets.
What value are you using to seed your random number generator? Usually, it needs to be different every time you invoke it. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I know, and I know. I made a post on PAlib's forums about it. I'm seeding it with the current time, the DS has an onboard absolute time clock. Doesn't ever change the pattern it generates. Though if I manually change the seed and recompile I get a different pattern.
<!--quoteo(post=1632781:date=Jun 10 2007, 05:18 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Jun 10 2007, 05:18 AM) [snapback]1632781[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> <img src="http://xs216.xs.to/xs216/07230/wooedge.PNG" border="0" alt="IPB Image" /> That's an ingame screenshot! You may recognise the guy in the middle from xkcd.com. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> damn you. your short reference to xkcd made me waste an hour and a half browsing through their archives instead of studying for the exam i have tomorrow. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
That is pretty cool, where do you go to school Scythe?
I go to Full Sail am also trying to make a game for the DS (of course I need get more opengl knowledge first though). My idea of a game is an isometric sims style game that I thought would be pretty cool to try out.
<!--quoteo(post=1637717:date=Jul 7 2007, 08:57 AM:name=exoity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(exoity @ Jul 7 2007, 08:57 AM) [snapback]1637717[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> That is pretty cool, where do you go to school Scythe?
I go to Full Sail am also trying to make a game for the DS (of course I need get more opengl knowledge first though). My idea of a game is an isometric sims style game that I thought would be pretty cool to try out. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just graduated with a mechatronic engineering degree from the University of Queensland.
I've got the random number generator properly seeding now. It turns out that I needed to initialise the PAlib library before the seeder would work properly, and since i was initialising it at the top of my main() function I was having problems since the random numbers were being used inside the galaxy class constructor. The galaxy was declared in main.h, before the initialisation function call. -.-
I've been messing about with my webserver and I've finally settled on a stable configuration. As such, I've registered a domain to celebrate: <a href="http://tjhowse.com" target="_blank">tjhowse.com</a>. On my webserver I've hosted some forums. I'll be using these forums as a kind of poor-man's blog to document my progress on my game. I've also settled upon a name, "Unnamed Space Game", for the time being.
I just finished writing my first new blog entry, you can read it <a href="http://www.tjhowse.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59" target="_blank">here</a>. Some of it is technical drivel about how I've implemented a spanking new background system to lighten my sprite usage without generating union tiles, and some of it is showing off my spiffy new and improved galaxy generator. Feel free to sign up to the forums if you want to ask me something. Free custom titles to NS community members. :þ
Latest <a href="http://scythe.gotdns.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=62" target="_blank">news</a> is that I've abandoned the DS in favour of DirectX on the PC. My reasoning for doing so is explained at that link. There's also a screenshot of what I've got working to date! It's fantastic!
Cough.
I'll have something a little more substantial up before too long. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Aww, before you get too far into Direct X, think about SDL! Linux nerds sometimes like to play games, as to Mac users and people with PDA's and the like.
Points A and C in your link work better with SDL, broader audience and more portable.
Comments
You could play with it now... if by "play" you mean "walk around in a huge open space with a hideous blue border around everything.
I used to have a slot2 thing that took an SD card. Using this in combination with a passme should result in it working just fine.
As for Redford's idea: I really don't want to write a jillion lines of dialog for the game. Or put in anything more than a basic conversation system, if one at all. Think nethack.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cool, I actualy have a slto 2 device and am just unsure as to what the deal is between thigns workign only in slot 1/2 (or both), but I ran into it briefely with a lemming's clone (I think).
<!--quoteo(post=1633055:date=Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Jun 12 2007, 03:14 AM) [snapback]1633055[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
As for Redford's idea: I really don't want to write a jillion lines of dialog for the game. Or put in anything more than a basic conversation system, if one at all. Think nethack.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmmmm.
Net hack port for the DS?
<a href="http://stuartp.commixus.com/nhds/" target="_blank">NH DS</a> (answerign my own questions ftw)
A pillar!
I'm going to have to rewrite the drawing system I think. The way it allocates sprite IDs is pretty retarded. It's mostly held together with spit and stickytape at the moment.
--Scythe--
Not much... Rewrote the map system to use an eighth of the memory it did before. Made the pillar system a little more streamlined.
I'm having to give some thought to the targeting system I'm going to use. I wonder if something along the lines of Xcom's system of having a list of visible targets. Let me post some ideas and I'll see what everyone thinks:
1) Stylus tap to target an enemy. A red reticule appears around it.
Personally I hate using the stylus during fast-paced gameplay. Keep in mind this is real-time (except pause-time). It covers up the screen and forces to clumsily hold the DS.
2) Only shoot straight along the X or Y axis.
This could lead to more tactical play, or more frustrating. I'm leaning towards frustrating. You'd set your direction and hit fire. The projectile would hit the first thing it came across in that direction. Bear in mind that you can only face in four directions:
<img src="http://xs116.xs.to/xs116/07234/move1.png" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
3) Using buttons to cycle through targets.
I'm thinking shoulder buttons for this. I had vaguely had in mind another purpose for them, but nothing concrete. If need be I could relegate them to cycling back and forwards between visible targets. A red reticle would appear over the current target. Could get ugly if there's a lot of targets on the screen at once.
4) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
It's worth noting that one of the skills I'm planning is a stop-time ability that will let you spend action points to perform a certain number of moves instantly. You'd hit your pause button, select your enemies and the abilities you want to use on each then unpause. Each target would then be hit by your selected series of abilities. I want this kind of thing to be fluid and intuitive.
As always any view is very much appreciated. Except "u r t3h sux".
--Scythe--
P.S. Here's a quick mockup I made of how my buttons are going to be configured. This screen will come up upon pressing the "Select" button. I've assumed I'll be using the #3 option from above and not included the shoulder buttons in the config, only the abxy buttons. The player will be able to drag and drop abilities from the list on the left into the slots that correspond to each button. I may have a picture of the skill tree on the left instead of a list, but that might be too bulky and cumbersome. We'll see.
<img src="http://xs216.xs.to/xs216/07251/selection-mockup.png" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
P.P.S.S. It occurred to me just now that using the shoulder keys to cycle back and forth between targets would work if the target change was made upon RELEASE of the shoulder button. This would allow the game to be paused by pressing both shoulder buttons at once. If you have the pause-time ability you'll be able to perform some actions during the pause, if you don't you'll still be able to take a breath, pick a target and an ability and unpause.
As for limiting fire in four directions, this would make the game more tactical in that you would have to line up with enemies before you could shoot them. However, it would make no sense. At all. Regardless, this option would also be even easier to code. It's possible you could have some sort of challenge mode, and a mode where you can only shoot in four directions could be one of them, for example. That may be something for an advanced version however.
--Scythe--
Don't worry about helping Scythe guys, I always seem to solve the problems on IRC.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro-->--Scythe--<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
...?
--Scythe--
--Scythe--
<img src="http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/1999/zingta2.png" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Bigger pic:
<img src="http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/5704/zingpicbh3.png" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
What does Zing do? No idea! Will he be in the final release of the game? Probably not. Placeholder art only.
--Scythe--
P.S. A bit of code in zing's update(); function and he now follows you around. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
What does Zing do? No idea! Will he be in the final release of the game? Probably not. Placeholder art only.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I smell an easter egg!
Anyway, glad to hear things are progressing nicely. Keep in mind its very easy keep interest in a project at its outset, very hard as time goes on. Hope you end up completing this!
Okay, you know those games where you start out with like, 2000 HP and a weapon that does 112dmg, and as you go along you get a better weapon that does 120dmg and then 130dmg and then 134dmg and level up to 2123 HP? I'm not fond ofgames with big details and minute increases.
My favorite RPG is Paper Mario, one of the reasons being that it super-simplifies HP and FP and damage. You start out with 10 HP, and enemies do 1 damage (or 0 if you block correctly). It's fair and fun, but avoids all the nonsense of big numbers.
So, yeah. Stick with simple, small numbers.
--Scythe--
My galaxy generator is up and running! It generates a galaxy containing 80 to 110 systems, each system has between 1 and 6 planets around it, orbiting at various distances. At present I haven't accounted for sun colour, so they all use the red giant sprite. Planet distance will determine its mineral content and habitability. The systems further from the player's starting position will be further out from the main hub of civilisation. As such, rare minerals will be more plentiful out there. As will people that want to kill you.
At the moment I'm having some problems seeding the random number generator function that comes as a part of PAlib, it refuses to seed properly, might just fall back to math.h.
--Scythe--
What value are you using to seed your random number generator? Usually, it needs to be different every time you invoke it.
You're probably not interested, but red giants are unlikely to have habitable planets.
What value are you using to seed your random number generator? Usually, it needs to be different every time you invoke it.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I know, and I know. I made a post on PAlib's forums about it. I'm seeding it with the current time, the DS has an onboard absolute time clock. Doesn't ever change the pattern it generates. Though if I manually change the seed and recompile I get a different pattern.
--Scythe--
<img src="http://xs216.xs.to/xs216/07230/wooedge.PNG" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
That's an ingame screenshot! You may recognise the guy in the middle from xkcd.com. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
damn you. your short reference to xkcd made me waste an hour and a half browsing through their archives instead of studying for the exam i have tomorrow. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
I go to Full Sail am also trying to make a game for the DS (of course I need get more opengl knowledge first though). My idea of a game is an isometric sims style game that I thought would be pretty cool to try out.
That is pretty cool, where do you go to school Scythe?
I go to Full Sail am also trying to make a game for the DS (of course I need get more opengl knowledge first though). My idea of a game is an isometric sims style game that I thought would be pretty cool to try out.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I just graduated with a mechatronic engineering degree from the University of Queensland.
I've got the random number generator properly seeding now. It turns out that I needed to initialise the PAlib library before the seeder would work properly, and since i was initialising it at the top of my main() function I was having problems since the random numbers were being used inside the galaxy class constructor. The galaxy was declared in main.h, before the initialisation function call. -.-
--Scythe--
--Scythe00
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lolnub
I just finished writing my first new blog entry, you can read it <a href="http://www.tjhowse.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=59" target="_blank">here</a>. Some of it is technical drivel about how I've implemented a spanking new background system to lighten my sprite usage without generating union tiles, and some of it is showing off my spiffy new and improved galaxy generator. Feel free to sign up to the forums if you want to ask me something. Free custom titles to NS community members. :þ
--Scythe--
Latest <a href="http://scythe.gotdns.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=62" target="_blank">news</a> is that I've abandoned the DS in favour of DirectX on the PC. My reasoning for doing so is explained at that link. There's also a screenshot of what I've got working to date! It's fantastic!
Cough.
I'll have something a little more substantial up before too long. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
--Scythe--
Points A and C in your link work better with SDL, broader audience and more portable.