Messages

Congratulations!
I just wish all people were as open-minded as the AGS forum members (< as seen in PT's thread). The world would be a better place to live in.

Those are great characters!

I couldn't keep my grubby hands from tinkering with them, so...



I think he'd fit the backgrounds better that way. Wanna give this kind of shading a try?

Thanks for the comments!

Helm - I disagree, but I guess everyone should use what he feels comfortable with. So far, I was able to do everything I want in MMF, so it's just fine for me.
In the end, only the result matters.

MMF is a more powerful version of Clickteams The Games Factory, and I love it.

If you're interested in MMF games and want to try some, you can go to www.faind.com and try the free games we offer. Streambolt (made by my friend gustav) and Douglas Circumstance are great platformers, as well as Commando.

Just kidding...
My point is that it looks like it takes a lot of innate artistic ability to produce your backgrounds. Which you don't get from a tutorial.

I can't draw with pencils at all and I haven't been any good at art at school. I doubt I have an innate artistic ability, but I've been drawing on the computer for a few years now.
I suppose that means you still can learn to draw even if you're born with zero innate artistic ability if you just keep drawing a lot.

Maybe I'll make a small tutorial when I have some more free time.

Aye, I'm not fond of that man, too. Apparently, the catholic church has no intention to change anything anytime soon (or at least those cardinal guys who elected him), otherwise a better pope would have been choosen.

I wonder why I care at all. I used to be protestant and became atheist 4 years ago because of people like Ratzinger and their conservative attitude and... other things.
Hmm... I probably care because so many people will listen to that guy and believe whatever he'll say. Even political parties do, to some extent. Crazy.

Kinoko's RPG thread:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=15608.0
Doesn't look like it, but it's an AGS game!

Seeing as you want to make a very complex and big RPG, AGS may not be what you want to use. I'd use Multimedia Fusion for a game like that. But it's not free...

Hmm... why do you think a tutorial from me would sound like this?

Parallax is really easy.
Just add a Background System Box, edit it and paste a picture in it. They're treated like backgrounds, but can move about. Now just tell it to always position its x coordinate at, for example, left frame border / 2 and its y coord and top frame border / 2. That'll make it scroll half as fast. This method is quite speedy, works on 300 Mhz comps, too.

The rest of the game wasn't too hard to do. I used older character/enemy/dialog engines from other games I made and put them together to a game engine.

In MMF, if you want your game to play without flaws, you need to code your own movement engine. It'll give you complete control over your movement, too. With a good grasp on that, you could make a Super Mario World clone in it if you wanted, or a RPG at PSX quality.

EDIT - I didn't make the music for this game; I can't do music at all. It's a midi from www.vgmusic.com.

Thanks for the comments!

This is still very early in development. The moves would be unlocked while the game progresses, pressing 1 merely is a debug function for me to test out all the bugs the moves may cause. So is pressing E to level up and placing the character by holding the mouse button.

mätzyboy:
There's only this small test area. In Multimedia Fusion (the authoring app the game was made with), it's a bad idea to make multiple levels this early in development because of the way it works. Basically, I'm creating all aspects of the game on one screen, then I copy and paste the basic level to produce new areas. The code of the game is not global. (It could be, but it's such a pain in the butt in MMF.) I didn't even bother to add borders at the end of the level yet...

[Screenshot:]

I made this game engine quite a while ago, and now it's just sitting there on my hardrive, being useless. So I thought I'd upload it so people can try it.

Screenshot:



Controls:

Arrow keys - > Move
Shift -> Jump
Ctrl -> Hit stuff
Enter -> Call menu, use arrow keys to navigate through collected items, press shift to use.
Alt + Enter -> Switch to Fullscreen/Windowed mode

To access all the moves, press 1 on the keyboard. Press E to level up your character to get more HP and MP. You can use the save altar to heal up and save progress.

The available moves after pressing 1:

Down while walking: Roll

Up + Ctrl:
Supar Hit!1 (Jumping while performing a Supar Hit!1 lets you jump longer.)

Running up walls:
Just jump at a wall while walking. You can jump from walls by pressing Shift.

Double Jump:
Press Shift while in midair.

Magic attacks:
Hold Ctrl until character flashes. From that point on, you can shoot fire by releasing ctrl, or perform a radial fire attack by releasing ctrl by pressing up - works with 15+ MP only.

Supar Jump:
Duck until the character flashes, then jump. This move can break blocks and hurt the baddies.

Okay, that's all I can remember for now. Please let me know what you think! Ideas and crits are always welcome.

At the moment, I don't know if I'll ever go anywhere with this small idea. Probably not before finishing Hero Theorem, City of Fortune or Skyhammer (see www.origamihero.com for more info).

The game:
http://www.origamihero.com/files/game.zip

Thanks~

>Goldmund: Excuse me, but I don't buy all this
>"You had to be in Hitler Jugend or die!!!11!" talk.

History books and what my grandmother and grandfather told me indicate that it was either move with the masses or go down. I never said you'd die for sure if you didn't, but it was a likely possibility. I know I'll never ever blame anyone for participating in Hitler Jugend.

Of course, in the case of Ratzinger, the press will definately come up with a few nice headlines. Nazi pope!!1JeffK!1.

>Goldmund: I guess all the german emmigrants of 1933-1939 were just tourists
>and escaped to Switzerland, USA and South America for the kick of it?

Hmm... this doesn't have anything to do with Hitler Jugend at all as it was a youth group thing. But still, it's not like everyone who was against Hitler had the option to escape to some other country. Especially if you were poor.

In the last few years of the war, if you tried to escape or stated your negative opinion of hitler and his followers to loudly, you were likely to be labeled a traitor and be imprisoned or worse. It's not like those nazi KZ things were for foreigners and jews only, a lot of germans also died in those.

In Germany and Austria, WWII is being focused on quite thoroughly in history lessons at school. Everything I know about it came from school and my grannie's tales.

Ack, I hate discussing WWII. I'm not even sure if I'm getting your point about the emmigrants bit, Goldmund. Oh well.

By the way, this is also the first time I'm engaging in one of those internet forum discussions. This post also took me over 30 minutes to write. I'm such a slowpoke.

This looks very tasty! Can't wait to play!

Thanks for the comments!

rookworm3: I would rather not explain the title as it might spoil some of the story.

I'm almost done with chapter 2 of the game. Once that's finished, I'll draw new backgrounds and post more screenshots. Work is hampering my progress at the moment, but I'm still getting somewhere.

By the way, my server is being annoying at the moment, the screenshots in previous posts may not show up for a while.

EDIT: My server works again. Hooray! Here's a shot-o-screen:

I'm not happy at all with the new pope. He's so old-fashioned.

By the way - back in german's Hitler days, you HAD to go with the masses, or face the consequences, which resulted in death quite a lot, or being locked up in those KZ things. In the last few months of the war, even kids were forced to fight.

That's why I think that Ratzinger's involvment with the Hitler Jugend doesn't mean anything, really.

He's still damn old-fashioned, though. Nothing's gonna change in the church while he's the pope. But changes aren't likely to happen in the catholic church, anyway.

Thanks for the comments!

Beta testing isn't something I'm thinking about at the moment; picking people for that now wouldn't be appropriate as the game is only about 60% finished.

The backgrounds were done in Photoshop, the sprites in a basic, paint-like editor (the sprite editor that comes with CnC/TGF, if you know those programs).

Nice work on the new release, works like a charm!

A little bug I've found: My player character guy only walks around solid characters if he himself is set to solid. If I deactivate solid for him, he walks through other solid characters.

Thank you! Your game Force majeure 2 looks interesting as well.

Here's a picture of the game's protagonist:

I've already used my Hit command in two puzzles - might use it in a third one, too. One puzzle involves making something burst, the other one's about making something fall down.

There's a bunch of possiblities this verb allows for - for example, one could hit a locked chest to get it open. Raw violence can be so useful sometimes!

I think I might be able to finish the game in a month or two. I added a lot of puzzles the last few days and the game is ~55% complete now.

I have to agree - Blitzbasic 3D is great. It would work nicely for a 3D adventure game. You gotta be prepared to code your own pathfinding routines and dialog/inventory systems, though.

How did you do the images? What are your steps from the first idea to the final background? It interests me, because I'm really astonished by your artwork.

Thanks! I usually just bring down big blobs of color in photoshop, no sketch or anything. Then I just keep refining every color blob. Afterwards, I use the line tool to define edges of the different objects a little. I usually make a new layer for stuff like furniture. When I need a texture, I sprinkle different colors about and smudge them into form.
Also, don't use the lightning tools (dodge, etc) too much. You're better off making a lighten, screen or multiply layer.

Abisso: It's not really as much a police story as one might think. This game focuses on the two main character's pasts much more than anything else. This game isn't about finding or catching a killer or similar.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that the game's name isn't Hero Theorem because the main characters are being (or are trying to be) heroic or anything like that. There are no heroes in this game.

Anyway, here are three more screenshots: