Stuff Under the Header

9/28/2010

No Changes To Water Barrier

Edit: (October 11, 2010) GDC is over and was tons of fun. Not quite as good overall as other years, but had more fun than any other year with the night parties.


Edit: (October 1, 2010) Newest version (0.0.14.5) is out now. The content said below is available now. A change was made to the Distortion 2 boss. The room is a bit taller so you don't bump your head at the top. During its bullet storm, Jeremy will warn you a second before it changes direction. This will be the last update for awhile unless someone finds a major bug. Enjoy the game. :)

I will not be around next week as it will be the week of GDC, but that's next week... Sometime this week I will be releasing the not-really-final version of the game. It will have the finished up ending as well as a ranking at the end. The rank you get is determined by a few things such as death count and the rest you'll have to see. The rank only affects one thing at the end and you don't need a very high rank to "unlock" what it is. I like unlockables, but at the same time, I don't. If this were a much shorter game, I would put in more of these types of things. The ranking (and extra scene) is after the credits, so be sure to stay for them. Once the game returns you to the title screen, your save file will be flagged as having completed the game. Keep that file since, at a later date, I MIGHT release a bonus dungeon that is unlocked after the game is completed.

Other than that, the changes are quite unnoticeable.
I may post some pics from GDC.

Hmm, this post is too short and I don't seem to have much else to say right now... (This is why I should write down the things I want to say here since I tend to forget half of what was going to be said.)

Well I'm on the 5th generation of Agarest War, suddenly the difficulty spiked up. I figured I had overpowered my characters in the previous generation, but apparently the developers knew that would happen. That's okay, I just reoverpowered them, so I'll see how that works out for me. (Had my first loss on this generation aside from a really cheap death that happened early on in the game.) Oh yeah, to gauge how long this game is, one generation will take, on average, just as long or longer than it does to get through all of Distorted Travesty. (Well I did it in 12 hours.) Here's a screenshot of my stat window after playing all the way through the beta. Item % is 99, I missed 3 items.

9/19/2010

Stuff I'm Doing Now

Edit: (September 21, 2010) Slaix was kind enough to write a TVtropes page for the game. :) You can find it here and on the side bar.


Edit: (September 20, 2010) Version 0.0.14.3 (now 0.0.14.4) 'should' fix the rare loading issue for those who are using Vista or Windows 7.
It also makes a very important mechanic change. You can now execute the jump attack at any time when you are in the air, not just when you are falling. It also gives you a bit less upward momentum when used, but you can actually go a tiny bit higher than you could with the original jump attack mechanic.

Well the game is almost done now. Most of the things that need to be fixed are small things. I still need to fix up the very very end after the credits, but really that's all I "want" to do. Here is what I mean. It's gotten to the point where I hate the game now. I don't want to look at it anymore. I've heard this is both a good and bad thing. You're never truly done with a project until you can't stand working on it anymore. This doesn't mean I'm going to abandon the bit of stuff left to do on the game, but it may take some time. I'd like to do other things. Give myself a break from Distorted Travesty for awhile. (I spend a lot of free time with it.)

I'm going to play around with a game I had started making about 3 years ago. Not going to spend too much time with it, just going to play around with some concepts. In the future, I'm going to take more breaks from game design. At least with one project anyway. I feel my creativity starts to burn away if I put myself into one thing for too long. I definitely feel like some areas in DT suffered from some of this.

Overall, I'm happy with how DT turned out. It's the best project I've made, I think I've made something enjoyable and that's all I was aiming for as far as for other people. For myself, I've learn a lot from the project and I know it will show into future works of mine. My advice for anyone with a project of any size is to properly plan all the game details and mechanics out. I'm a total hypocrite with that, not "every" aspect of DT was planned from the beginning. Though feature creep will happen with almost any project, I just like to keep that stuff from happening as much as possible.

Again, the main thing left with the game is finishing up the bit after the credits. I may make the tutorial section have a bit more graphical representation for pointing things out, such as when the game explains what the element meters are for. (Or not.) One other thing is making a semi-transparent change (transparent to you anyway) to how it loads external resources. On some computers, (specifically Vista and Windows 7) the game doesn't properly load the audio resources in which causes errors and makes the game not start. Apparently I was not forcing Game Maker to look in the root DT folder. If I don't tell it to look in the working directory, Game Maker typically assumes that is the path... just not always. Luckily Game Maker provides this function for me so it's not really a problem.

Long posts are lo... anyway... I think I'm going to actually sit down and try to enjoy some games. I want to finish playing through Season 2 of Sam & Max. I was recently given a laptop that is better than my Desktop. (the one I'm typing from.) So I can use that to actually play the game without it freezing and lagging a lot.

Possibly finish playing Agarest War. Don't play that game, it's good and it sucks, my roommate Jerry convinced me to play it again. It's a strategy rpg with a fairly weak dating sim aspect. You play the story through 5 generations of characters, each one lasting about 15-20 hours, I kid you not. I just started the 4th generation and I can see that the developers were not lying about the 80+ hours of gameplay. I've been playing the game for months on and off. I've found that I hate the start of each generation, I finally get used to all the characters and the interactions between them and then at the end of that story arc, most of them have to say good-bye and then we're onto a new generation with new people I must become acquainted with. (Some characters carry over, such as the "immortals" like elves and such.) The end of the 3rd generation was the worst as that generation had the best character interactions and I didn't want them to part ways at the end. The battle system is repetitive, though rewarding and fun at times, especially when you manipulate the field the way you want. It's actually a very deep system with a lot of choice. I play it now for the story and mostly to see the interactions between the characters since that is done fairly well. (Plus I've already put 60 hours into it, might as well see it to the end.)

Well that last paragraph went on too long. My roommates and were talking today and I mentioned I might have a little thing at the end of DT that changes depending on your item %, much like how Metroid Prime went. The more you have, the more content at the end there is. Prime had 3, below 75%, above 75%, and 100%. Jerry jokingly said, parody Super Metroid exactly how it was and have the character strip down... No worries, I'm not doing that, not even for the laughs... well maybe. If someone sprites it in that style, I'll do it. No joke.

Anyway, I'm going to end this... oh wait. I'll be at GDC on October 4th - 8th. That'll be fun and informative. I've always enjoyed GDC. I'll be sure to actually get pictures this year. Now I'm done.

P.S. Does anyone want me to change the skin of this back to the orange one, or at least something else? Just wondering if this white on black is bugging anyone.

9/15/2010

Fixed Up Beta

My brother's wife had her kid this last Sunday and it's a boy. I heard back from him yesterday and they are out of the hospital, which means both her and the baby are doing well. So it was an exciting weekend.

I've released an update to the beta with all the stuff I've fixed up. Some of the changes include:
-No longer having to press [L] to reach your equipment in the inventory submenu.
-No lag in The Hideout, fixed up the code for the conveyor belts there. The conveyor belts also keep objects moving at a consistent speed now. Note: Some conveyors may move you a bit slower or faster than previous versions.
-1 more skill capsule.
-Lots of fixed up typos.
-A few more binary indexes that give irrelevant info.
-Rave mode music now stops when moving to another map. (It didn't do this for all maps.)
-A few level changes.

Game Manual
-The pdf manual is also included with the game download now.
For a bit of time, I've placed the pdf in its own download here and here if you don't want to download this update but want the manual.

9/06/2010

The Beta is Done

Edit: (September 14, 2010) Last edit to this before I just make a new post. I may release an updated version due to all the little things that have been fixed up. As you can see, there's a lot. Some of them are as simple as a typo, others are things like the inventory menu fixed up and even another skill capsule added in. Slaix (and my beta run) confirmed that I was 1 capsule too short for all the skills to be learned. A look at my skill list and total capsules in the game would have also fixed that. The new capsule was added in the second portion of Distortion 3. It's practically given to you... or I could move it and place in another hidden map somewhere. :P


Edit: (September 8, 2010) The side info now shows how close I am to fixing all the major bugs I have.


Edit: (September 7, 2010) The complete version save files will NOT be compatible with the beta or anything before it. The "encryption" on the save file will cause it to not be read properly. (It will read, but it will make some nasty mistakes and cause your saved game to do some odd things.) Anyway, with the beta, I accidentally left one of my test modes on, if you find out how to access it, well... there's nothing I can do to stop you from using it. Though I don't recommend saving after using it. (Depending on what you change with the debug settings.)


Edit: (September 6, 2010) It's uploaded, have fun!

Note: If you don't see it actually updated here, then it isn't uploaded yet. The beta is done, but when I have it actually packed up and uploaded, you'll see an edit above this and the side updated. Anyway...

I actually got it all ready by the date I previously said. There are still some things to do on the game, but for all intensive purposes, the game is "done". It is fully playable and ready for you guys to bug test and enjoy. During this time, I will be addressing a lot of issues like control schemes, typos, and some other random stuff, sound... I might make a boss rush mode (mega man style) or at least make the bosses replayable in their rooms. The submenu for inventory will be changed to where you don't have to press [L] to get to your equipment. There are currently 14 major bugs/issues that need to be fixed, when they are, I will consider the game "complete". This process may be a little slow as I won't be giving this as much time as I used to, so I will not be setting a release date for the full complete version, but I'll say here that I'd like the end of September.

Anyway, if it isn't already here, keep a look out today. It's done and will be uploaded today.