Topic: The Art of Dying - 8-Bit Platformer w/ Level Editor

[Khris]

Were they using a wired controller maybe? This isn't game-specific btw, I noticed some time ago that my 360 pad wouldn't work with the agsjoy plugin in general. I wasn't sure whether I did something wrong though and was wondering why nobody mentioned/found out that a wireless 360 pad won't work. I'm going to try it in XP now.
In addition, if the pad is connected the game doesn't react to any keyboard keys except the up arrow key. Every other keyboard key does nothing, and I have to Alt-X out. But this is an AGS/plugin problem I guess.

Regarding the bug, just in case we're talking past each other, I'm talking about being able to jump while falling down after having walked off a platform. I'm not aware that this is standard for jump'n'run games...?

Otherwise, again, amazing job! I'm stuck in the last level and got to 500 deaths before I gave up

[DoorKnobHandle]

Interesting, I indeed tested it with a wired controller! I guess I'll bother Wyz, the author of the plugin, about it. Let me know if using XP makes a difference.

About the bug, I definitely did this on purpose, thinking it feels natural. If I understand you right, you would prefer it if you walk off a platform, start falling naturally, then only be able to jump once? I initially had it like that and didn't like how limited and restricting it felt, especially when you meant to jump off a platform and walked off instead by 1px, then suddenly 'couldn't' double jump - that actually felt more like a bug to me! Hope that makes sense.

Thanks and good attempt at the last level haha!

[Khris]

The pad did work in XP, although this time I got a DirectInput error claiming there was no mouse connected to my computer...
I could play fine though.

About the "bug": I see, actually I would have expected that you can't jump at all while falling until you're back on the ground again. Being able to do so does add to the game, but I don't think this was mentioned anywhere, and I was surprised when I accidentally discovered it because no other similar game allows for it, afaik.

[DoorKnobHandle]

I just uploaded version 1.1, both for the game itself and the source. The changes don't matter if all you do is play the levels that come with it but are related to the in-game level editor.

CHANGE LOG:

Version 1.1

- fixed a crash caused by level filenames shorter than 4 characters (plus file extension)
- fixed an issue when hitting ESCAPE while the save level dialog in the editor was open
- improved the way decorations are placed in the editor, now you left-click to place, right-click to remove and use the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard to cycle through the available types of decoration

[arj0n]

YES!
Thanx for fixing the deco cycle!

[DoorKnobHandle]

My pleasure!

The Art of Dying was mentioned on PC Gamer: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/21/the-best-free-games-of-the-week-6/ (Thanks to the wonderful IndieStatik, who also covered my game: http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/18/art-dying/). IndieGames also covered TAoD: http://indiegames.com/2013/12/the_art_of_dying.html

There's also a nice Let's Play out there already:

[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky01xU8NbJ0[/embed]

[Andail]

I give you the first TAOD Mod


Oh and in my mod, Leia is a Jedi knight because she wields a light saber.

Only re-drew the player character. If people want to add more Star wars stuff that would be cool I guess.
http://www.esseb.com/andail/DAODleiaMod.rar

[selmiak]

interesting, but download is crippeling around with 12 kb/s

[DoorKnobHandle]

Excellent work Andail, very nice animations I have to say! You people NEED to check his mod out! Nice touch with the lightsaber sound effects as well!

[bicilotti]

I am really itching to play this now that I have AGS installed on my linux machine. But alas, I cannot (because of that pesky .dll). Do I have to wait until my next trip to an internet cafe or is there a way to work around this?

[Crimson Wizard]

I am really itching to play this now that I have AGS installed on my linux machine. But alas, I cannot (because of that pesky .dll). Do I have to wait until my next trip to an internet cafe or is there a way to work around this?

Linux port should have built-in stubs for joystick plugin: they do nothing useful and tell that there are no joysticks installed.
Does not it work if you just run the game on Linux?

[bicilotti]

AGS: Load game data
AGS: Built library path: ./libagsjoy.so
AGS: dlopen returned: ./libagsjoy.so: cannot open shared object file: No such fi
le or directory
AGS: Built library path: /home/f-a/media/games/ags/Engine/libagsjoy.so
AGS: dlopen returned: /home/f-a/media/games/ags/Engine/libagsjoy.so: cannot open
 shared object file: No such file or directory
AGS: Plugin loading failed, trying built-in plugins...
AGS: No built-in plugin found. Plugin loading failed!
AGS: Placeholder functions for the plugin found.
Script link failed: Runtime error: unresolved import 'Joystick::GetAxis^1'

I call the game as ./ags -windowed -gfxfilter StdScale2 /home/someuser/games/aod/

find . -name *joy* does not find any .o

[Crimson Wizard]

Hmm, it looks like not all plugin's functions were stubbed.
This should be fixed.

find . -name *joy* does not find any .o

There should not be any, those stubs are inside the engine itself.

[Wyz]

Or better, the original author should port that plugin to linux. Oh wait, right.

The problems with the 360 controller not working also happened to a friend of mine but I was unable to find the exact source. It might be because I use the old skool joystick interface that comes with windows and maybe Microsoft does not play nice with its own standards. Maybe using Direct Input is a better idea (though it is not supported by (very) old versions of windows).
All in all it would be a huge rewrite so that will have to wait unfortunately.
I don't want to hijack this thread any further so let's continue in the module's thread.

[Mehrdad]

Great work DKH
High fps is amazing.Is it possible add somethings to optimize engine for Cinematic Platformer genre like grab ledge,hanging...?

[DoorKnobHandle]

Do you mean the AGS engine or my game code?

[Mehrdad]

Do you mean the AGS engine or my game code?

Your game code.
Similar to some AGS platformer games like : 1213 series and Concurrence
I think it will be a big revolution for make serious platform game with your codes.   

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks! It shouldn't be too hard to implement ledge grabbing into my game. You could add a new invisible ledge marker to the editor that people could place over ever ledge that the player can hang from, then the game itself would read these, check if the player is in the air and close to one of them, if that is the case, snap the player onto the ledge and display a hanging animation.

[Mehrdad]

Ok.I'll try it into your codes.Although I'm not sure for fine collision with detectors by AGS.Thanks anyway

[Dualnames]

This is top notch stuff!!!!!!!!!