Hi all! Just getting the word out that I have been working on an LPC project for just over a week. I probably will not post here often, but I'll keep an eye on this thread just in case.
Here is an early video recording of the game. (Youtube mucked the quality quite a bit) http://youtu.be/JagSFQOMyQc
My project is currently untitled (you know the drill ... cache invalidation and naming things ... ) I am currently working and blogging my progress daily: http://blog.kodewerx.org/ and even better, I have an online snapshot that is updated daily along with the blog, so you can follow progress directly: http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/ No screenshots, just check the snapshot page. ;)
The git repo is here: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/neverwell-moor/
There isn't much to it just yet. I got a late start on the project, and I've spent the majority of my time working on game engine internals. (Specifically, getting a real physics engine integrated ... see the blog for details.) Now that it's at a point where the important foundation bits are complete, I'll start turning it into an actual game! I don't have any real idea what kind of game it will be. I figure I'll just add features and see what happens. :D
Well that's it! I'm looking forward to the end of the month, when I can try everyone's completed work (and take a break from my own)!
Is it a browser based game or a standalone desktop game ? This is not clear from the post.
Very pretty! The slow movement feels very unpleasant.
Keep us updated when there's more to test! :)
Disagreed about the movement - running FF 10.0.2 on Ubuntu 10.04, and the controls were very responsive and fluid. Can't wait to see more!
My project: Bits & Bots
Good job! I'm looking forward to this project.
Thanks for the early feedback!
shirish: It's a browser-based game. Purely HTML5.
qubodup: Not clear whether the slow movement is unpleasant because it's an actual performance problem, or because the character moves at roughly 90 px per second. If it's an actual performance problem, there is A LOT of work that can be done in that area. And knowing the specifics of the machine/OS/browser used would be helpful in that case.
But if it's just because 90 px per second feels kind of slow ... yeah, it does. That's just part of all the game mechanics that I haven't touched yet (sadly).
@Parasyte :- It would be good if you edit the first post and mention it right at the top - My Untitled project - HTML5 so at least people would have some idea. Also you have been vague as to whether it would be an RPG/RTS etc.
I haven't played your game because the latency from my side for anything remotely is awful and I'm not really a fan of browser-based games (guess it's due to the first issue and the constant frustrations that has been there due to that). Add to that many browser-games become PvP or/and multi-player and suck time like anything.
Still best of luck with your project.
Done! Added "HTML5" to the thread title. Sorry it seems that I'm intentionally vague. Truth is I don't have any plans for this project, so I can't tell you exactly what kind of game it will be. It might resemble something like Secret of Mana or Legend of Zelda... Or maybe Harvest Moon... Or... Who knows! :) Definitely no immediate plans to make it multiplayer, though that is easily at my disposal.
I will be working on a story, game mechanics, title, etc. during the remaining two weeks. But everything I have for this project is already on the table.
I hope that clears up at least a few things.
Cheers!
Here's the speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2IrGnWacDg
I see, thanks. That's normal. :P
Any progress so far?
Hi kintantee. Glad you asked! I have made some progress. Lots of details on my blog. The gist of progress since my original post:
There is still a very long way to go, but I'm sticking with it. Even working during my commute to/from work, and losing sleep because I work on it all night into the early morning hours. I will take next Monday off, I think, for a nice long weekend to solely progress on this project. :)
I have a basis for a story in place, I hope I can finish as much as I have planned, but it will be tight. I'm going to need more NPC sprites... I've contacted the author of the sprite I am currently using, and he has generously agreed to lend some of his free time to adjusting sprites if I can do a few rough frames for each one. I just want to keep consistency, because it's important.
That's really it for now! Again, you can follow my blog for a lot more details, as it's updated daily. You can also keep an eye on the snapshot, since it is also updated daily.
Oh right, before I forget! I also came up with a name: Neverwell Moor. I'll update the thread title and original post with that. :D
Hi all!
The past two days have been a tremendous effort to get this thing ready to go live in just over 10 days! Here's the progress since my last post:
The first 5 in the list are available in yesterday's snapshot. Today's snapshot will contain the rest of the changes in this list, and hopefully even more!
And before I forget, here's a screenshot of Rachel's Room. Normally I would not post screens, because It's easier (better) if you just visit the snapshot and start playing. But this is a special occasion, only because this map isn't in the snapshot at the moment.
Rachels Room.png 28.8 Kb [656 download(s)]
Here's a video recording of how the game plays as of today: http://youtu.be/JagSFQOMyQc (Sorry for the poor quality. Youtube did that.) I also added it to the original post.
And here's a screenshot of what to expect from the video.
rachel_and_jessica.png 91.1 Kb [165 download(s)]
The game looks excellent so far. So much done in so little time! The art is great; as is the physics and interaction in general. I'd love to see a quest or activity that involves pushing people around.
I noticed a few things while playing that might help:
Awesome feedback! Thank you.
Which browser and operating system were you using? For reference, I'm developing on Chrome 22 (dev channel) and Mac OS X. I also briefly tested with Firefox 13.
I'll try to answer each of your points:
Thanks again! That was all very helpful.
About the color issue -- ugh! Pixie gave me a THIRD color as I was inspecting the screen. That pointed right at the real culprit: color profiles! DAMMIT GIMP! So I disabled color management in GIMP and removed the color profiles from all the images. Pixie shows everything is correct, now! Hooray!
Whew! Not a game engine bug after all.
I am playing it with Firefox 13.0.1 on Windows 7 x64. I'm surprised I forgot to put that.
Changing Rachel's collision box to a circle is a good idea, better than my idea of beveling the edges of all square collision boxes. Though, if you change Rachel's, leave the NPCs' square. That should make them easy enough to push around. ;-)
I like Jessica's new AI; she seems very lively. My only suggestion is that she turn to look at you when you speak to her.
As for animation speed, I have to disagree with you that the changes are due to map size. Upon entering Rachel's ground floor for the first time the coin spins faster than in her room although it is larger and similarly complex. Likewise, if you return to her room the coin begins spinning even faster.
Strangely, I just noticed that leaving the Neverwell window slows the animation back down and reduces skipping. Leaving and returning twice decreased the animation speed and occurrence of skipping back down to original levels. Unfortunately, it did not entirely get rid of the skipping which does occur rarely even before changing maps.
Edit: Could you also tell me the name and composer of the song you used for Rachel's house? I just love it.
Circle for Rachel, Poly for NPC. Got it! :D
I also noticed it was strange to talk to someone who wasn't even paying attention. ;) But it was 6am by the time I had AI working in a way I liked. "NPCs pay attention when talked to" is on my TODO list for sure.
Going back to my QA notes: "- Semi-frequent pauses due to JavaScript GC." The pausing comes from the JavaScript engine stopping everything to run garbage collection. And that means I'm "leaking" memory somewhere. Shame these kinds of problems are ridicoulsly difficult to debug in JavaScript. :\
Another thing I also noticed in Firefox (not apparent on Chrome) -- the animations run rather quickly for the first few seconds after loading a new map, then slows down to what I consider "normal" over time. Is that what you're talking about? It might be realted to the next thing...
Which is the game pauses when it loses focus -- at least, it tries to with varying degrees of success. There was a crazy bug in the game engine earlier where changing focus multiple times caused the game to speed up each time. This was related to the window.requestAnimationFrame() method, which is still experimental(!) I might disable it and see if it changes the weirdness in animation.
The music is from Nelson James Gatlin's LPC entry. The title of the track is "Bells (menu theme) #two": http://opengameart.org/lpc-art-entries (second one down) He has a lot of great music there.
Thanks again for your comments! They are super helpful.
Removing requestAnimationFrame seems to have fixed the problem with animation speed and skipping increasing. Unfortunately skipping does still occur "semi-frequently" on Firefox, but what's programming without a good memory leak here and there? Pausing still works flawlessly on both browsers.
I hate to say this, but I'm still seeing a color difference in the water on Firefox. Chrome looks good, though. The water color in Chrome matches the background in Firefox, but not the tiles. What a strange compatibility issue to have.
I also tried Neverwell Moor on Internet Explorer 8 and 9. I feel all dirty now. It doesn't load on IE 8 and has minor errors on IE 9 - specifically a lack of sound and the coin HUD background not rendering correctly. Of course, trying to coerce IE to run this game would probably double your production time anyway.
If you are having trouble making maps, I might be able to help. I'm not the most dependable person, but if you give me a description of what each map requires, I might be able to make a few for you.
Good, good. I did a bit of profiling on the memory leak, and it seems to be Chipmunk-js. I didn't get into it a great deal, though.
I agree with the colors on FF. I spent WAY too much time last night investigating that area, and I've determined that FF is just being incooperative, like it is applying color management to images regardless of configuration or ICC profile tags in the images themselves. Chrome and GIMP agree on the actual RGB values, so that's good enough for now. I can't spend a lot of time on it...
I'm not supporting non-free browsers (for obvious reasons) but it's good to know IE9 at least tries. I know one of the problems with IE8 offhand is my use of Array.prototype.forEach() just about everywhere -- I haven't used a compatibility method on the prototype, it's just expected to be there. The lack of sound is because I'm only using Ogg-Vorbis audio; again, it's a free software thing.
Awesome work on QA. And thanks for the offer to help with maps! the only real ideas I have left in mind are: a large outdoor area with a village (4~6 small houses), mountain, field, and forest. It is going to be a large island (surrounded by beach and water). The houses will have insides to find more items, talk to NPCs, etc. There will be a number of NPCs scattered around this large map; sadly they will have to share sprite images, because I do not have many available.
That's probably more than I can accomplish in the time remaining. But it's still not the complete vision! :\
Thank you again! You've been great already.
Fantastic entry, my 3year old daughter loves it, she's played it 4 times now. Has walked the little girl up and down the stairs I don't know how many times... More rooms please! :D
http://madmarcel.github.io
This used to load in Rekonq (webkit based and chakra linux) without a hitch. That was just after you add the the mom coin quest. It now gets stuck at the MellonJS load screen but it renders that at 60fps.
Hi verbalshadow. I don't have Rekonq, or any quick way to get it for testing. Are you able to find any error messages in the console? ... If it has a developer console? That will help debug the problem, I think.
Web inspector shows the following in console.
2melonJS: failed loading pink_and_lively.oggmelonJS: failed loading chests.ogg2melonJS: failed loading collect_coin.oggmelonJS: failed loading chests.ogg
No other output.
Does the browser support Ogg-Vorbis format audio? Do any of the following links play in the browser for you?
http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/resources/bgm/bells.ogg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Dance_Of_The_Sugar_Pl...
I thought I'd make a fishing village, following the island theme. I put an example below.
Are you using any tilesets in particular? In the map below I used the base assets, daneeklu's farming and fishing tileset, and Guido Bos's houses. Also, will the whole outside area be on a single map? That will be important to know if I continue to aid you.
Fishing village.png 157.6 Kb [20 download(s)]
Cool! I don't have any set limits on tilesets. The ones I am already using are listed here: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/lpcgame/src/ec5cf4e61923/resources/img (They may be renamed from original assets.)
And yes, the outside area is a single map. This is it: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/lpcgame/src/ec5cf4e61923/resources/map/ea... If you can use Tiled 0.9 and its auomapping feature, that would be ideal. The earth.tmx map is already configured for it, and there are rule maps in the 'rules' subdirectory.
If you can't use any of those features, I can still import the map data from a TMX ... I think. Or I could always use an image layer, I guess. Will make it difficult to modify later, though.
I suggest using fewer straight lines in the map wherever possible. Like, here's a zoomed out view of the "earth.tmx" map. Notice my path is angled in kind of a random fashion:
Screen Shot 2012-07-28 at 9.03.13 PM.png 268.8 Kb [87 download(s)]
Here's an updated screenshot of that same map, now with a dense forest. Also note the extensive use of pattern breaking. (This was created with the Tiled Automapping feature. It's very difficult to get right with complex positions, and the Automapping really makes this happen like magic.)
dense_forest.png 67.5 Kb [2137 download(s)]
rekonq plays ogg fine on wiki commons.
Works now with the timeout for ogg, though the timeout seems to be variable.
Also i shouldn't be able to walk on water.
Thanks for the heads up! There are no collision shapes on the big outside map. So you will walk through everything. It's just unfinished. :|
Danger, Will Robinson! Both Firefox and Chrome won't move past the MelonJS loading page. Both say your new baddies are undefined.
Firefox:
game.BaddieEntities is undefined @ http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/js/game.js:116
Chrome:
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found) http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/js/entities/baddies.js
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Snake' of undefined game.js:116
I'm still learning automapping, collision mapping, and getting my pipeline to match yours, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload a finished map. I've uploaded the fishing village that to my Google Drive in case it might still be of use. The fishing village map should go in your "lpcgame\resources\map" folder. I also uploaded an "img" folder that contains the extra tilemaps needed. Better file handling in Tiled would be very useful.
TMX: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8N2FLUi1LLUZ3S0U
img folder: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B3DZsRNd7EM8ZXJ6R1lDYzc5N3M/edit
Edit: I had uploaded another Fishing village.tmx, but this one is much easier to deal with.
Also, I'll upload an image if that would be easier. The road is still straight, but I would have to modify Matthew Nash's tiles for it to be otherwise. Plus, villages are regularly linear in real life.
Fishing village.png 227.6 Kb [518 download(s)]
D'OH! I just now noticed that I completely forgot to commit the baddies AI source. :( I blame literal lack of sleep... That explains the error in the snapshot. It's in the repo now, so if you can run the game from source, you can test your maps on it now.
I just finished the weapons integration (Rachel can defend herself! Hooray!) so I'm pretty much ready to do some more mapping, myself. I'll pick up your maps and try to integrate. Don't worry too much about learning to write rules for automapping; it's a pain to get right with complex patterns. But you can use the rules I already have setup! Just open the "earth.tmx" map (you should clone the git repo, so the directory structure is the same. That will solve your problem with Tiled directory handling) and press the "A" key to run automapping. You'll see some of the grass tiles and sand tiles randomly change to verify it's working. Just look at the two layers called "set" and "set_trees"; those layers define how the automapping will generate the other layers.
The tiles on the two set layers are VERY important: For grass, you must use the flat green tile in the "grass" tileset. For sand, it's the sand tile in the same position, but on the "sand" tileset. Ditto for the dirt. The "dirt2" tileset is NOT used yet. For trees, use the first trunk tile in the "trunk" tileset on the set_trees layer. And there are some spacing rules to get trees to work properly: There must be at least two horizonal spaces between each tree, and at least one vertical space. For anything that is not one of these supported tiles, use any tile EXCEPT the "no tile" (eg. don't use the eraser!) I used the blank water tile in the the "watergrass" tileset.
You can imagine why it's so difficult to write the rules... So many limitations.
Anyway, THANKS for your help on the map! Where do you think the roads will lead? :)
Because I'm failing miserably at using Git and bitbucket, I think I'll just upload files to Google Drive. (Which, itself, I started using today.)
I'm not sure where the roads will go, but I know where the doors will. I made a little shed and I'll add the general store later. Could the little house be Rachel's? I also uploaded a slightly better (and smaller) village.
Edit: The village now has a general store. Why yes, that is an anvil on the table. Why do you ask?
Village: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8eDlfaURmaHd1T0U
Shed: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8dXNWYmRRN3l5amc
Store: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8cnd3UUN4ZVF1aDA
Love the giant hammer, by the way. I also like that Jessica attacks you in retaliation. It always confused me that NPCs so rarely respond to the players' actions in games.
Ok, I just posted today's snapshot! Though I started on something else already (the story screens) they can wait, because I'm tired of Gimp for now. So I'm going to start going through your map files and begin poking them into earth.tmx. It will be some much-needed love for the area. The shed is pretty cool! I will put the Mighty Mallet there. :D
This little house can't be Rachel's ... she has a very small two-story house! hehe...
Also I wasn't able to find "misc.png" anywhere, so I don't know how to credit it to the author. You mentioned Matthew Nash in your previous post, is that it?
Yes, "misc.png" is by Matthew Nash. It can be found at this location: http://opengameart.org/content/misc-32x32-tiles. I have a series of text files with attribution information (file names, creator, source, collaborators, etc.) if you would like them or an aggregate file of the information.
It's unlikely that I'll be able to help today, but is there anything in particular that you would want done just in case? I'd like to know a little about the storyline and Rachel, both out of curiousity and the fact that it may aid my efforts (help me help you, ha ha).
Now for notes on the game.
I happened upon the website of Radomir Dopieralski ( aka Sheep ) - who is the person that made your sprites, right? - and it mentioned it contained other works of his. I didn't look through them, but I was wondering if you had. It might yield a useful sprite or two.
Edit: I just made a very quick sound effect for the Mallet. I also have it in WAV format if you would prefer that.
Mallet.ogg 9.1 Kb [55 download(s)]
(I had a full response written, but hit CMD+R by accident instead of CMD+T. So I lost all of that time. grrrr)
Yes! The attributions information would be super-super handy!
And yeah, I emailed Radomir a week ago to ask if he could help me with some sprites. He actually created two more that I'm now using! George and Betty (renamed Jessica for the story). He also has a "character creation kit" (a fantastic idea!) for download on his site, but it won't work because the dimensions don't match.
That mallet sound effect is great! I had to break it into two pieces to get it sync'd with the animation, but it fits really well. Weapons support multiple sound effects (chosen randomly at play-time) so if you can come up with one (or two!) more, I would really be into that!
Here's some story details, and background info on Rachel:
Rachel is 15 years old. She grew up hearing stories of a strange island called "Neverwell", told by her grandfather ("Poppa" to Rachel). Rachel was 5 at the time, and the stories were always something adventurous and entertaining. Poppa would tell her about the inhabitants of the island, and how they could perform magic. He would fight monsters while hunting for treasures buried in deep caves. There were so many details in his stories that he had to set some of his adventures on smaller islands around Neverwell.
Poppa died shortly after, and it's been 10 years, so she doesn't remember all of the stories he told. But she remembers important details like the eponymous moor, which was a very dangerous place, but that it held some kind of secret... Perhaps the secret to the inhabitants magic? But that was a long time ago, and they were just stories. Everyone knows there is only one island, and they call it "Earth."
So Rachel sets off on a day like any other, but, feeling a little adventurous, she decides to help a friend. That kind gesture leads to a series of quests which eventually lands Rachel on Neverwell; a place that isn't supposed to exist...
That's it! A little something for your appetite. That's just about as much as I can get done within the remaining time, so ... yeah.
And a piece of trivia: the character Rachel is actually based on a real life friend of mine.
Earth looks awesome! I love what you did with the fishing village. Who lives in the luxurious manor, may I ask? I enjoyed the backstory as well. It's so sweet that Rachel is based on your friend. Does she often carry around mallets?
I'm really sorry; I may have misspoke when I said I have attribution information. I don't have all the attributions. I only made them for things that I had downloaded, which at the time did not include the entire contest entry pack. I'll upload what attribution info I have.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8YnlyelVNVzVXSkE
A few more notes:
On the topic of the book, the buying of it worked flawlessly. I like Shakespeare, too. And all had to do to get it was continually hit my friends with an oversized hammer!
I was planning to put the Whitey character in the large manor. I don't have an inside map for it, so I just placed her spawn position right outside the door. ;)
I'm not too worried about the Z-order problems at the moment. There are a lot of them, especially after adding the mallet. Just run up and down the stairs in Rachel's house a few times. :x! I do have proper Z-ordering working for sprites against sprites, but not for sprites against background layers. That would be a REAL challenge to solve. Fixing the Z-order on the mallet is even more difficult that all of that combined. I'd have to break it into two separate images and handle them interdependently. The sprite composition code does some of this work, already, but not enough...
As for the fenced in guy, that was a bit of a gag. ;) I didn't want him running away on me as I tested things. The area is really only for decoration.
Amazing, I never would have spotted that missing collision shape on the bridge! That was an utter mistake. The whole north/north-west side of Earth was intentially left incomplete, including collision shapes. :P
I noted the same coin-pushing bug in the commit log. Sadly, I think it's a bug in Chipmunk-js. It appears that any shapes that are created touching another shape will not trigger the collision handler between those shapes. There's another bug that may be related, where the arbiters passed to the collision handler are given in a random order if the collision types are listed from highest-to-lowest. Strange stuff!
And yeah, I have everything needed for dialog. I don't know how likely it is I'll add a whole lot of dialog or quests, but it is sorely lacking!
I am actually adding all kinds of major features before submission! Lots done so far, I've been at it non-stop for about 28 hours. I have about 9 and half hours to go. Then I can sleep. My next goal is implementing notifications (like tutorial info bubbles) because it's really important for presentation.
Thanks again for all your help, it's been great.
Here are more Mallet sound effects: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B3DZsRNd7EM8MHNZMC00alo1OWs/edit. You already have mallet_swing1 and mallet_whomp1. The swishes are by artisticdude and can be found here: http://opengameart.org/content/swishes-sound-pack.
On one of the pages in the prologue the word " inhabitant's " should be " inhabitants' ". Once again, nit-picky.
Anything I can do in the dwindling time left?
I did fix the dialogue bit, thanks. No time for anything else, I'm afraid. I really appreciate all the help you've been able to provide so far! I'm now submitting my entery...
Excellent work! I really loved playing this game! I hope to see many new quests in the future.
Probably my favorite thing about this game is that it felt really dynamic; you can move quickly, and the hammer makes you feel very powerful :)
Thanks! The "dynamic" feeling is one of the things I was going for. I did not want it to feel realistic, but have a more fast-action pace. One of the features that I missed implementing was a simple targeting system, where Rachel would jump long distances to target nearby enemies... Allowing for combos and such. Maybe an upgraded mallet later in the game? ;) That definitely would have added to the pace, and show off more of what I was trying to acheive.
Has anyone found the hidden credits? The NPCs will provide hints if you help them out. I actually completed it in about 5 minutes after one death. Saving the number of coins makes it a bit too easy...
I found the hidden path, and then found the chest with lots of coin in it. But I didn't find the hidden credits... will have to play through again! :)
It's in a very silly spot. You were close. :P
Anyway, I posted my postmorten to my blog today: http://blog.kodewerx.org/?post=29
FYI, the git repo has moved since the coding competition ended. The new location is: https://bitbucket.org/parasyte/neverwell-moor/ I've also updated the original post with the new link.