Adventure Game Studio

The Art of Dying is a small new game I've been working on for about a month. It's a platformer made in AGS of course! The idea is to start with easy levels and then ramp it up to pretty ridiculous degrees of difficulty. I'm doing everything including art and animation except for the music! The game features an ingame level editor that's easy to use and should hopefully result in a couple of self-made levels by you, the players! The way I am presenting the game is with several short Youtube videos that focus on a particular aspect of the game - here's the first one talking about movement. Please check it out:





Please let me know what you think! I'd also like to get an idea about how much interest there is in the level editor. Stay tuned for further video updates, I'm going to produce them in very regular intervals. Keep a close eye on this thread and/or subscribe to my Youtube account to stay up-to-date. The next one is going to focus on how attacks work in the game. More and more information will be revealed about the whole game with each video.

Cool stuff, man.
Looking forward to the next video :-)
Are you planning any live dev streams a la KTX-1?

Cool Beans! Hard gameplay in jump and runs? Count me in! I'm lLooking forward to more videos with funny explanations and more gameplay. And I'm interested in the backstory how the cop got the sword instead of a gun ;)

Thanks! Stupot, I'm not planning livestreams, no. The coding is pretty much done so there's no point in starting now anyways. Streaming takes a huge amount of work, The Art of Dying is something I'm development whenever I get an hour or two of free time inbetween work sessions.

Selmiak, I can't promise much backstory but we'll see! Glad to see that I caught your interest with the project! :)

The next video will be uploaded within 24 hours and, as I said, it will go over the various attacks in the game!

A level editor is a GREAT idea! User-generated content is a way of involving the players rather than them being just passive receivers. It's what made Minecraft the goldmine that it is. Oh, if there were a way to do that in adventure games!

Cool stuff, DKH!
While it looks pretty straightforward for a platformer, the fact that you've made it in AGS is pretty awesome. I also like the development video thing, quite educational :)

It's great to see that you've gotten the most important aspect - movement - really, really precise. It looks fun to control.

Awesome, I'm glad to hear that you like the video idea! Fitz, let's hope the build-in level editor takes off only 0.001% as much as Minecraft did! I'd just love to play levels made by other people in my own game! Andail, it is indeed a straightforward platformer, I'm not really focusing on innovating with this one, I just want it to be a good, solid AGS platformer. Secret Fawful, I really hope I did get it right, it's indeed the most fundamental thing to get right in a platformer, for obvious reasons! I personally think it's very fun to control, both on keyboard and gamepad!

Very smooth movements, indeed, that's the first thing I noted in the video.

one very important thing for platformers: don't use the Y/Z keys because of qwertz/qwerty keyboards, rather use control and space.

Do you have a 'story' in mind, like levelthemes and sublevels like 1-1, 1-2, 1-3? The reason I'm asking this is another question: is there any chance to get a userlevel into the main game?

Thanks, Crimson. I hope it's not too smooth, I really want precise and tight controls!

selmiak: the keyboard currently used A to jump, S to attack. This configuration is only a problem with French keyboards. I'd like to implement rebindable keys, hopefully I'll get around to that. Otherwise, I'll make a universal key binding (or just make players use a gamepad haha)!

Right now I'm planning to just 'ship' the game with a bunch of levels that you can play as a campaign, one after the other. But those levels wouldn't be encrypted in any way. You could load them up in the editor and edit them etc.

Looks great, Jan - very fluid and fun.

Was there any extra challenge to make the controls this precise and responsive within AGS?

A platform sidescroller? I love platform games. Awesome job!
I had 2 questions during he video that got answered: the double jump and xbox-conroller-for-pc support.
Great you add the sliding too (reminds me a bit of 3 great classic platform games that used that too: titus the fox, prehistoric2 & blues brothers).

As for the editor: yes please ;-)

Ascovel: Good question! Not really, but I did increase the framerate of the game to 60fps via GetGameSpeed(). It's absolutely important that the game runs at ~60fps and not just the default 30-40, this doesn't matter much for more static point'n'click games but for an action game like this it's vital. Apart from that, I just detect the frame in which a key is pressed with IsKeyPressed() and a boolean variable per button and then perform the actions. Nothing special!

Arjon: Thanks for the interest! The sliding will be explained further in the next video on attacks! I'm also glad to hear that you're also interested in the editor!

AGS platformer +  ridiculous degrees of difficulty = instant win.

Will play when it's out.

  Awesome stuff!  I'm looking forward to seeing more of this one.

Looking awesome, can't wait to try it!

Thanks for the nice comments! Here's the promised second video talking about attacking:


Take a look and let me know what you think! It's getting a bit more interesting now! The next video will introduce the various enemies in the game!

Nice! You really put a lot of thought into the game mechanics. Looking forwards to more dev diaries, might learn a thing or two in case I ever try to make a platformer myself!

Thanks Fitz! I think it's important to really go into detail when designing games, I myself made the mistake of not doing that way too many times. Also, please do make a platformer - we need MORE AGS platformers!! :)

That's really cool.  Quite interesting from a design perspective, and fun to play from the looks of things.  Looking forward to more videos.

Also, level editors are always fantastic.  I'm definitely behind that idea.

I am curious about one thing, though.  I'm interested in the story of this game.  So far, we know that the character is a sword wielding police officer.  Will there be more exploration of story in further videos?

Keep up the good work!

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Sun 27/10/2013 09:55:43
Also, please do make a platformer - we need MORE AGS platformers!! :)

+1

Quote from: dactylopus on Sun 27/10/2013 10:15:07
That's really cool.  Quite interesting from a design perspective, and fun to play from the looks of things.  Looking forward to more videos.

Also, level editors are always fantastic.  I'm definitely behind that idea.

I am curious about one thing, though.  I'm interested in the story of this game.  So far, we know that the character is a sword wielding police officer.  Will there be more exploration of story in further videos?

Thanks! Right now the plan is to go very, very story light. But maybe I'll get a good idea and put that in? I was thinking more along the lines of Spelunky; you're a guy in a cave, there's treasure to loot and enemies to kill. That's it. But maybe I should get more creative. I'm not sure how I would implement story telling though. Intercom at the lower third of the screen? Log files you can access and read? Not sure.

I wouldn't mind having 2 screens at the beginning explaining the little bit of story you need for an action game, something like: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president will do already. Or you got betrayed by your best friend (who happens to be a cyborg, as that makes a cool final boss...) and he sent his personal ninja army after you and one of the ninjas was about to throw you into the hole and you grabbed onto him and dragged him down with you. You managed to land on him and thus survived the fall and got the sword from him. Now it's revenge time! Voila.

Quote from: selmiak on Sun 27/10/2013 16:59:41
I wouldn't mind having 2 screens at the beginning explaining the little bit of story you need for an action game, something like: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president will do already. Or you got betrayed by your best friend (who happens to be a cyborg, as that makes a cool final boss...) and he sent his personal ninja army after you and one of the ninjas was about to throw you into the hole and you grabbed onto him and dragged him down with you. You managed to land on him and thus survived the fall and got the sword from him. Now it's revenge time! Voila.

Good ideas. Man, I need to think about whether or not to go for boss battles at all. I'm undecided. On the one hand I like the idea, on the other, it's tricky haha. Opinions?

it's probably very tricky to allow people to create their own bosses via the editor, but if you have them precoded and just add them in it will be relatively easier, like people using the editor can place the bosses from the normal game in their levels or not. But of course it would be super cool to be able to add a custom boss. Also a good coding challenge to come up with a way to script the motion pathes of bosses and import their sprites and the trickest thing, their attacks and damages within the leveleditor.

Yeah if the game is going to have bosses at all, they will be pre-coded. I definitely won't be able to support people making their own bosses. Would be interesting but it's just way too complex.

Oh wow, this is my kind of platformer! The developer videos are a lovely insight again, you have a really engaging voice (and should totally do tuition videos!).

Cute animations too :) The double jump/attack mechanic looks really fun, can we expect destructible platforms? It might be nice to have the odd 'trick' platform to make players cautious of attacking on every landing.

Thanks Chicky! Destructible platforms are absolutely possible, I just hadn't thought of them for some reason. Consider that a yes!

New video is on the way! It'll talk about enemy variety and show you the enemies that I've already implemented!

Well that looks excellent, consider me hyped! :-D
I like the looks and feel of this; it makes me think of a few platform games on the NES I use to love watching other people play.

Also nice to have game controller support; it's always good to have somthing to throw at my screen! ;)

Wow, looking great DKH! Woo AGS platformers!

Thanks Wyz and VinceXII! Wyz, I'm using your joystick plugin of course, completely forgot to mention that so far. You'll be credited of course! :p

New video is almost done, now, if only I didn't have to make the show off level in it so freaking hard, haha! :) Drives me crazy when I need 50 takes to get the level done flawlessly.

Do you have a release date you aim for? It looks pretty stable already. You know, talking about games is a lot like masturbating. But somehow your videos really make me hot...
It's probabaly all about small bugfixes and the leveldesign and implementing the mentioned difficulty curve atm?
But then again I'm glad you have to release it this year to compete in the Best non Adventure game category or wait another year ;)

selmiak: Haha err... That's cool! :) I have no fixed date but I want the game to be done very soon, and I am definitely not going to put a bazillion features in it or delay it in any other way. I want this to be a simple small game!

Here's the third video, this time I'm talking about enemy design and show you a couple of enemies in detail:


Take a look, let me know what you think! I'm planning to make the next video about the editor!

Awesome vid again DKH.
Those hellbots reminds me a bit of the enemies in the original Thexder game (1987)

Thanks Arj0n. Never played that game, Thexder. I will take a look at it.

And here's another one. As promised, it introduces the level editor. Take a look, I really, really hope this inspires one or two of you to use it make some really cool levels with it:


As always, let me know what you think and if you could see yourself using this editor. Also, ask any questions you might have, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I forgot to explain how it works in the video. If you have improvements on user friendliness (that are reasonable, AGS doesn't exactly make user-friendly tool development easy haha), please share them with me!

Nice one. Can't wait to have a play around with the editor.

I was going to ask why draw the extra lines on all the walls and floors; why not make the collision detect automatically when you lay the tiles. But then I realised it's actually better to keep them separate, because now you can have walk-through walls and secret areas :-D

but then why have secret areas when there are no power ups and 1ups? But yeah, I also want to play tAoD and play around with the leveleditor.

Ahh true, but I've noticed in previous vids a little '100' floating up when you smash crates and stuff, so I assume theres a scoring system. Maybe secret rooms full of crates will be good for players who want to get maximum points :-)

also, DKH, I meant to ask this after vid #3.  At 2:01 you do a weird, awesome backflippy-wall-roll type move to get onto the floor above.  Are there more special moves like that? :D

Looks like the normal double jump to me.

@dkh: the controls and basic moves video is over and out there already but you give indepth info on your thoughts on controls. It looks like it is possible to control movement of the player character in midair. What do you think about games where your motion vector basically determines your landing point when you start jumping. Dunno if there are any games that have realistic jumping in that aspect as I can't name one game that does this from the top of my head atm but I'm always surprised how it is taken for granted that you can change direction in midair in jump n run games.

This game looks absolutely amazing!

I thought of the same thing that Stupot did a few posts above -- and realized you could also do twisted things like wooden platforms acting as ice, ice platforms acting as lava, etc. (laugh)

Thanks guys! The primary reason I went with the line-approach for collisions, as opposed to going tile-based, was the flexibility. This way, I can have an elevator in the game, for example, that can move up and down smoothly. It's also faster, at least from my tests (I did start out with tile-based collisions). And yeah, the freedom to do whatever you want in maps, no matter what tiles you use, is another plus!

Quote from: Stupot+ on Fri 01/11/2013 17:29:44But then I realised it's actually better to keep them separate, because now you can have walk-through walls and secret areas :-D

Also

Spoiler

invisible floors

[close]

:)

Now, invisible floors, that would just be plain mean, Crimson! :p

Nice vid about the editor!
Can't wait to build some levels.

One minor thing: due to color choice, the ice-line is a bit hard to see after it's been placed over the ice-tiles...

And a question: are you planning to add warp-tiles in order to warp to secret rooms within the level for example?

This looks delicious and incredibly smooth! I am impressed!

Arj0n: Would be great to see some levels from you! I've already answered your questions in private, but let me restate what I said, for everybody else: warping/teleporters are not planned, color-coded doors with keys are however! And I'll make the ice line color white instead, good observation!

bicilotti: Thanks!

I'm very interested in this, DKH,
I've PMed you with some questions!

Wow! did you actually build a platformer and level editor in a month?! that sounds pretty ags-incredible, or was that editor interface in your back pocket previously?

miguel: I guess I'll repeat what I wrote to you in the PM for everybody to read: I am planning on releasing the source for this project in its entirety!

MiteWiseacreLives!: Thanks! It's more like 2-2.5 months now though (although that is with 6-10 hours of University every weekday)! I did not have anything pre-made or anything.

Okay I'm pretty sure I've got everything in the game that I wanted to...

(http://i.imgur.com/Je7rlm7.png)

So now it's just level design, putting in sounds/music, making a main menu and then testing and release!

Yeey!

Quote from: DoorKnobHandle on Mon 04/11/2013 17:53:04
...I am planning on releasing the source for this project in its entirety!

Awesome!  Eager to get my hands on this.

Thanks guys! A bit of an update: Despite being a bit more quiet and no new videos coming out (there isn't really anything left to cover I feel), I've been very hard at work in order to get the game finalized. Most importantly, I've implemented a main menu that works with keyboard and gamepad, has a bunch of simple options and - and this is the big deal here - allows you to rebind your controls for both keyboard AND gamepad! This was more complicated to implement than I would've thought and took most of last weekend - but I think it's very important to allow people to, for example, switch the jump/attack buttons around on keyboard/gamepad. The default is jump is A and attack is S but if those keys don't work for you and/or you want to switch them from left/right to right/left (Mario-style for example), you can now do that easily!

Here's a screenshot (it looks much better in motion though, trust me):

The option to redefine key's (or gamepad buttons) is a great addition!
For me it's important that a player can customize the key's to his/her personally choice, especially for platformers.

Nicely done, can't wait to try this!

Update time: today I finished the level design for 8 stages on paper! Now I need to put them in the game and make them look pretty with the editor (and draw a couple decorative assets) - then I'll do a quick beta test and then The Art of Dying is going to release! Yay! :p Btw, every new stage will be unique and feature at least one new type of enemy and/or gameplay mechanic! It won't take long to beat the 8 levels, especially if you're good at the game and don't die too many times (which will be very hard however) - but that's where the editor and YOU come in! :)

I'd love to play this using a SEGA Master System gamepad :P

Haha, well a quick google query tells me that they do have USB adapters for those - so the game would totally support it!

I'll get one of them now just so I can play this with one :P

I didn't know this kind of thing was possible in AGS.  I mean from the videos it looks pretty fast.

I'm really looking forward to making levels with this. Will we easily be able to share the files and play each other's levels?

Awesome, Peder!

Stupot: I don't think it gets much easier (except for a build-in marketplace or something). When you go into the editor, make a level and save it, it writes out a file. So you go the directory where you're installed the game and under the levels folder, there's your level! So you take that, maybe put it in a zip-file with other levels you made, you upload them and post the link. That's it! Players then need to download your level and put it in their own levels subfolder in their game directory. Then they can start the game and load it up!

This looks very nice! Can't wait to try it out and I'm especially looking forward to play around with the editor.

Okay the closed beta test is going to take place in a matter of a couple days. Please let me know if you are interested in betatesting The Art of Dying by posting here! You will get one week to play and give me your feedback! In case a lot of people want in, I'm going to pick a couple of you randomly, we'll see. Please only sign up if you're interested in playing the game and giving me your feedback, both within the timeframe of one week. Thank you very much!

Colour me interested dkh :)

Quote from: Stupot+ on Sat 07/12/2013 20:16:07
Colour me interested dkh :)

Same here.

me want!
So much that I'd even take 2 copies (if that's in the budget!)

jan, as you know, count me in for sure!
I'm back from AdventureX @ wednesday, shouldn't be a problem I guess/hope... :)

Looks brilliant, DKH!

Also- "What would a run and jump game be without the ability to jump?"

Bionic Commando.

Thanks, no problem, arj0n. The beta test will start in a couple of days, you'll all be notified by PM.

Surplusguy, thanks! Bionic Commando had the claw thing instead I guess. Weird mechanic! ;p Are you interested in beta testing?

I spent about 2 hours dying in this today, and about 30 minutes using the level editor (which is absolutely excellent). Hopefully lots of people make level packs for this, because the level editor is super easy to use, and the gameplay is super smooth. Keep your eyes peeled, folks!

Count me in! :D

If it's not too late to join, I'd love to test this one out for you as well. :)

Thanks for the interest, it's not too late to sign up for beta testing. I'm still working on the last couple of details of the beta build. Looks like it'll start later this week or on the weekend, depending on how much time I have. Thanks for the interest!

Wow, I can't believe I've missed this. Looks amazing :D

I'd be up for some beta testing, but I'm too busy now until the 20th. So if you need the testing to take place prior to that I won't be able to help, but after the 20th I have a ton of spare time.

In any case, I'll make sure to check it out at release and will probably make some levels for it. Seems level design is all I have time for these days :p

I could try, I have very little experience with platformers, but still! Would be fun to get away from my own game making for a little while.

This.  This is really jaw-droppingly impressive -- I still can't believe this was done using AGS.  Titularly, I made the mistake of confusing it with Just Kill Yourself (http://www.desura.com/games/just-kill-yourself), but your game is far more slick and polished.  And...wait, did you say you were going to release the SOURCE CODE?!?  There goes my productivity for the next two years. 

Thank you KodiakBehr and everybody else! Since we're already up to eight interested beta testers plus four 'friends and family' testers, and I think 12+ testers is really overkill and hard to handle and keep track of myself, I'm probably going to randomly invite a couple of people who signed up. More details when I'm closer to starting the actual beta test in a couple of days. I know this can result in some frustration for the interested people that don't get in but 1.) it's the only fair way to deal with the situation and 2.) it's hopefully not going to be a long beta test and you'll be playing the game very soon anyways!

In the meantime, please continue to sign up for the beta test with a post in this thread if you're interested in helping out!

I can't beta test the game since I have lots of my own stuff to do but I just want to show my support by chiming in to say that this looks astounding, not only that it's done in AGS but overall it looks extremely interesting. I hope things go well and I'll be sure to check it out once it's finished. Keep it up. :)

Thanks Frostfalk. So this is the list of currently entered beta testers:


4 "Friends and Family" Testers
Stupot+
Adeel S. Ahmed
selmiak
Arj0n
Peder Johnsen+
Scarab
Bulbapuck
Andail

I'm almost done assembling the beta build so this is your last chance to sign up if you're interested in betatesting The Art of Dying. I will randomly pick a number of people from the list very soon!

hehe, and now you polish it up so much that you need no betatesters at all and I feel a bit bad for nitpicking in case I get the chance :D

Spoiler

PICK ME!

[close]

Haha!

The Art of Dying is officially in beta! The testers lucky enough to be selected by random.org have been contacted! If you weren't selected, don't fret, the game is hopefully releasing very soon and, if more issues are found, there's a good chance I'm going to include a second wave of testers a bit later.

Have fun, testers! Keep in mind not to share the gamefiles themselves please, but do go ahead and post or tweet about the game, take screenshots or record gameplay footage and upload it!

Thank you for the interest during development, now go over to the Completed Games thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49687.msg636476005#new) to download the game, play it and let me know how you liked it!

Congrats on the release!!