Makes me want to make a little game.

Thanksss!

I completed my resolution changer. At the moment I'm rewriting completely the scroll system, so It will allow a continuous scroll, without transitions, like Ultima VII style.

This involves splitting the map in chunks (you cannot put it completely in memory, it's too large) and loading in screen only the chunks which the player can see, and creating and destroying the chunks depending on the direction which takes the player.

In other words, to explain it easy, It's like if in the real life, it only exists the room in which you are now. Outside there's nothing. But when you open the door, I put the next room immediately, so you will notice anything. When you close the door I destroy the first room and you notice anything, but a smooth scroll and a continuous world. Now imagine there's no door. I create only what you can see, and when you sight range increases, i put new things and destroy the things that are not in your sight now...

: )) COOL!, isn'it?

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 04 November 2010 at 11:10am

Number, it's like in real life you are in a corridor, you are facing one direction and you feel you are in a corridor, BUT, behind you there's nothing, BUT WHEN YOU TURN to see what's behind you, then you see the other side of the corridor BUT THE FIRST things you where looking at (that now are on your back) have ceased their existance.

If you turn back again to see the "void" you can't because i create again what you can see and erase what's on your back.

You'll never see the void.

It's like "only exists what you can see". This allows big maps without lagging the game.

Well, I will try to explain it, with no offense to anyone, especially ChrisButton.

I spend so many hours with this, and work so hard in this, and put all my illusions, effort, soul, mind, tears and blood in this, that I feel a little shocked and sad to see how my programming skills are questioned, like if its "ok, kid, it's enough, give us your code and let the real programmers do the job"..

Do you really need to program the same game I'm doing?Of course you can do what you want, but If you are really so good programmer, do you have to ask for the source code???, should i give to someone else what I have programmed, to see how other people take credit for my programming work? : ( this is very frustrating.

There are not out there so many projects and ideas to do?

Can't you do the Dali game version of the Jalonso mockup?



Can't you do the Plagued game version of the Jalonso mockup?



Do you need to redo all what i've done, only to show that you are the good programmer and I'm the bad???? : (

I'm sorry if i've been rough, I feel very stressed now, I just felt judged incompetent, as a programmer, and I don't believe that. I do the best I can, I almost finished the continous scroll thing, yesterday night, after work I was awake until 00:30 programming, and this morning from 8 o'clock until 10:00 i was programming, and then went to work.. In fact, now i feel compelled and stressed to release the next update before you redo all what i've done, to show the world "how you would do the job" instead of me (meaning for me, that i'm doing bad..)

*sigh*

Please people, give me a chance. I'm working hard, i'm serious. If you feel I can't or shouldn't do this game, say it clearly.

Pd: Sorry for my little upset answer, I couldn't resist anymore the stress. I felt very attacked. I felt burned. I felt burned because I worked so hard and had this in return. Please don't be angry with me Chris. May be is just a misunderstanding that we had here. I hope so.

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 05 November 2010 at 6:44am

@JaumeAlcazo, to make you happy here's the basic forest layout (almost complete) for you to work on the scrolling programming.
It tiles with Florence :D

I wish to say that I am happily making items/map and stuff because unlike most who talk you have been making things. I am however busy with work and commissions and stuff so I make stuff for you when I have free time. For this reason its important for me to know what to make and have almost no revisions or remaking stuff. I will give you what I have as I get to areas and stuff like NPCs, effects, water animations and stuff like that I'm leaving for later. I'm just concentrating on the 'world' for now.
This is the basic world map mockup idea I have. Should something be wrong with it, please say so.
To be safe I added the items and what they mean to me on the bottom.

Awesome work man!

I´m in the process of making a game myself,
so I´m really eager to see the progress on your project!

What you have right now is impresive!
Of course the graphics are superb aswell,
keep up the good work you 2, I wanna play the game! :)

New Catacombs entrance and some cave in secret area.

Florence interior teaser previews

Hi jal! I have no words to describe how cool this is looking O_O!! You are doing great! : ))))))

As for me, I'm very sorry with the delay posting things! : /// I will tell you what happened. Yesterday I realized that I wasted a whole programming week trying to do this with the walls of the city: (I will call this from now on "autohiding")



Only to find that the path i was following was a dead end : / I was very upset with myself for tracking a false way. For instance, yesterday I spent 5 hours on this, and before yesterday 4h. Well, it was a hard time, realizing that the lines and lines of code can be thrown to the garbage (and that with that time i could have implementing other things) but at least now finally I know how to carry on from now on.

I will left out autohiding for the moment, and concentrate on "floor 1", and I need your help for this.

This past week i did 3 things:
1 - Rewrited the collision detection to work with the new scrolling engine. THIS IS WORKING FINE! : )
2 - Drawed the collisions for entire Florence. THIS IS WORKING FINE! : )
3 - Wasted many hours trying to implement autohiding, realize that is better not to do this for the moment and realize that i will must concentrate on floor 1 of Florence for now.

Explanation of why autohiding is not so easy to do: (I explain, so I can release myself, and undestand better what happened).

- For programmers.. NO, IT CAN'T BE DONE WITH swapDepths()! Why? Because the chunks of the city are below Leo, and Leo is above them. And the blocking walls are INSIDE the chunks. Thus, you can't swapdepths with a movieclip that is INSIDE other movieclip (well, you can, but flash will ignore you : P)
- First two obvious solutions: Put the blocking outside the chunks, or put Leo inside the chunks. The first one could be done, but it brings many problems of repositioning the blocking walls when entering/exiting buildings (and the blocking walls must be taking in account for the scroll), so it must be avoided at all prices. Second: it doesn't make sense to put Leo inside the chunks, because the chunks are destroyed constantly, so Leo would be destroyed when his chunk goes out from the screen.
- Third "solution": Trying to cut the sprite of Leo when touching a wall from upside and restoring it when not touching. I tried this in 2 or 3 ways and did not work, I also tried to add a mask into the sprite and activating and unactivating it, but It didn't work as it should (mm.. i could retry this in the future, it should work with all that I know now).
- Fourth "solution": Create a movieclip on the fly, when Leo touches a wall from upside. The mc (movieclip) should have the same width and height as the blocking wall, and only appear when touching from upside, and released (destroyed) when going out. It should follow the scroll. I did all of this.
- Then I tried to mask the map chunks with this movieclips, to use the blending modes, etc.. The solution i found was to create a copy of the current chunk and mask it with the new mc created and destroyed on the fly, so it can crop Leo to the right size. This worked, but...
- More problems, you must have in account the different forms of the blocking walls, the "L" walls, the inverted "L" walls, etc... when creating the mc.. It was a pain, but I did it, only to realize the final problem:
- The final problem: sometimes when touching something from UPSIDE the hiding of the Leo feet should not be done! For example when aprouching a cliff from upside.
- The solution to the final problem is to implement the "floor 1" and forgetting of autohiding for the moment.

How to implement floor 1?

- I'll draw another grid of map chunks, above the existing one, but with a greater z-depth, and it will be inside _root, but outside the first grid of chunks. I'll insert it in to the scroll and that's it!!! The solution was MUCH more easier than I was trying to do.

jal, so I ask you now to...

...Help me with the "floor 1" (the things that should be drawed above Leo, for example, the roof of the cathedral and other things). I need it to be a layer with transparent background in the psd (as you did it) but instead of black pixels for the mask, it should have the real pixels that should be drawed above Leo.

So i mean, instead a black cathedral roof in the mask layer, it should have a colorful cathedral roof.

I need other things to be in the "floor 1" i marked them in the psd i send to you now.

Please note that the doors should be half, half (as I show you), because when approaching from top the door should be above, and when approaching from bottom should be drawn below!!

It's too much asking that the tree sprites are added to the mask? It should be added only the top half.. (colourful)

Thank you very much and I'm very sorry for the delay !!!!!! I'll try to post something by the end of this current week as much late. Sorry!!
Talk to you soon : )

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 15 November 2010 at 5:02am

Yeah, Chris. It's from Tonypa's. That links were really cool (thanks : D), but It can't be done in the same way as Tonypa, mainly because you can't swapdepths() with a mc which is inside another mc.

The solution I've found is what I've written above, ("how to implement floor1"), that will work, but of course I would like to hear whatever you find out about this particular question : ) Thanks!

How could I overlook this thread :( I wanna join in the developers team if you don't mind:) I'd program it on J2ME.

Mostly 'plop' here :)

@a3um, just making tiles, not up to me.

@Elk, :D

Things were not Renaissance looking enough.
Regular Item Shop + Special Chemistry-Biology-Ore Shop
Mona Lisa's Crib, and the Library. In second room 2 chandeliers float and 2 stand on the floor :p






Edited by jalonso - 18 November 2010 at 1:27pm

@Bannana, I dunno about technicalities like that.

Last Supper House, its a winery and restaurant. Basement is push puzzles.
This interior is weird because almost all details come from the Last Supper painting and its surprisingly modern looking :/ - Especially those ceiling beams.





Edited by jalonso - 18 November 2010 at 7:18pm

UPDATE 6

Hi all!

** EDITED: See the last update at the end of the thread **

Here comes update 6. I've been programming as fast as hell (so some bugs could have slipped in) and i'm not finished, it's very WIP, but is all what I've got right now.

- You can wander around the whole Florence and whole forest.
- I left the collisions detection visibles because I want all of you to see and to test, and tell me if you feel comfortable with this collisions. I'm worried about if they are too strong or too weak (I mean: too many freedom to the player or too less? or okay?). The collisions for Florence are the ones of jal (well, in fact I took his walkable zones and inverted to get the blocking zones).

The collisions of the forest are drawed by me in a different color from jal and are half done, because they're much more specific and time consuming (from a discarded previous idea in which I planned to put every single f**king bush and tree top half into floor1, to have the low half drawed below Leo, and the top half drawed above Leo).

I suggest jal to draw the walking areas for the forest in your style (and throw mines to garbage), that is much easier to implement (bigger blocks, less freedom to the player, but faster programming without loosing any gameplay experience).





- The Floor 1 is done (the things that are drawed above Leo) for instance, the clock tower, the roof of the cathedral, the roof of the houses, the doors, etc.. jal, please take a look at the psd i send to you to see mainly the layers "floor1" and "block" and you will get an idea of what I'm doing and what I meant with the doors of the buildings.



- You can change the "resolution" at the beginning.



- You can enter only into the Cathedral (but can't exit, at the moment i'll fix this).
- You can wander around the whole Cathedral.
- The collision detection and floor1 of the Cathedral is not done yet.
- The pope blinks and moves his head at random.
- You can talk with the pope, following the conversation pattern I did for the another update.

</a>

- I tried to do the font for the dialog as a .ttf from your graphics, but had problems (i explain you in the mail), so I left out the "times 12 outlined" look for the moment.
- I left out the music for the moment.
- Leo now carries no wand.
- Added our emails to the credits.
- Added a "slower" in the stairs of the Cathedral, notice that Leo takes twice the time to go through stairs (he's and old man.. : P )
- Changed the fonts of the credits.
- Made all the text (that i could find) *unselectable* by the player (with the mouse). If you can find any, please report.
- Rewrited the automoving, blocking, and floor1 subsystems to work with the new scrolling system.
- I wanted to show you a screenshot from the forest in-game:



Suggestions to jal

- Please jal, draw for me the walkable zones of the Cathedral or the blocking zones, following the reference of the psd I attach you for Florence. And please give me the "floor1" of Cathedral as a separate layer.
- Please draw the walkable zones (or blocking ones) of the forest, following the psd I send you.
- Weight plates in the ground for the dungeon, to make puzzles (you have to drop some weight in the plate to open something, etc..)
- Traps for the dungeon, for instance.. a room that begins to push the walls with spikes against you to crush you, or the ceiling falls to crush you, like indiana jones or the last trap of the movie Saw V.

Bug reporting

- Please attach screenshot if you can, or explain well the situation and mention the "resolution" you are using (big, normal,...)

Important gameplay decision (thoughs needed)

- Well, I'll try to explain this with my poor english.. The resolution changer initially was to do the screen smaller. Initially, if you choosed smallest resolution I putted black things on the borders, so you could only see the same proportion of the map as you can see in "big" resolution.

Then I removed the "black things" to do testings and then I realized that I did not want to put back the black things, because I liked seeing more map.

The decision we must take is...

1 - I put back the black things.. and the player can see in "smallest" the same amount of map as "big".

or..

2- I do not put back the black things, i left it as is, but i fill the black holes that you can see now in smallest with the actual map (i "extend" the map to fill the whole screen in "smallest").

(also i would put the hud elements to the border of the screen, not in the middle, as are now in "smallest". Actually, the hud elements mark the limits of what you would normally see in "smallest" if i hadn't removed the black things)

I think i like more the 2!!!! Seeing more map is cool if the player wants! isn'it?

I need thoughs around this please! : )

One more idea

Okay, we can't make him meet Bach, because Bach wasn't born, but... He could meet an ancestor of Bach!! (that we could completely invent.. maybe he has began the well tempered clavier and passes it unfinished to his sons.. hmmm... too fantastic and unhistorical? : PPP )

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 04 December 2010 at 1:12pm

Thanks stats! : )
I'll fix that things!

Is the game running smooth on your computer? It lags?

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 22 November 2010 at 2:59am

Edit: Thanks stats!! great! Can you please tell me what type of computer do you have? ram memory and cpu speed mainly, please?

I just realized that a great cpu-consumer is the function onenterframe()

The game plays at 40fps, so, all the code in all onenterframes() is evaluated 40 times a second.

This is just absurd.

For instance, instead of checking 40 times a second if you press LEFT to move Leo, I could check every 100 milliseconds, that is, 10 times a second, or less, probably with the player going unnoticed and doing 4 times less CPU calculations (the game 4 times faster? or 4 times less lag?)

In other cases is even more absurd. The squarish invisible thing that is inside the Cathedral and checks if you touch it to move the background to the Cathedral...

It checks 40 times a second if you touch it.. even when you are walking through Florence.. (with that chunk visible, of course.. when that chunk is invisible the invisible square is destroyed).

Instead of that I could check only 1 time a second if you touch the invisible square that brings you inside the Cathedral. That would be 40 TIMES LESS CPU!! : ))

In exchange of that (40 times less cpu), realize that the only "counterpart" (in the *worst* case) would be that the player only would have to wait 1 second between Leo enters the doors of the Cathedral and is teleported magically to the Cathedral interior!!! The player would never notice anything!

Also, some filtering of the credit texts, or replacing completelly with images is maybe a good idea!

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 22 November 2010 at 1:47pm

Cathedral

Good, glad I helped you point something out.  Check this link out for more info or this.

Okay, now I am wondering about how much of the background image you are drawing at the time.  Do you load the whole image at once and simply slide the image around depending on what direction Leo is walking?  I think this is why the game is sluggish.

You see, A major reason game developers work with tiled backgrounds is so they can calculate what is displayed on the screen easier.  This is how I have worked with tiles in the past.

define an array string that represents the level being drawn

"##########"
"#                    #"
"#  ###          #"
"#              T    #"
"##########"

You would process these strings and use the chars as a mapping for what tile to display.  For example, '#' would be a wall and 'T' would be a treasure. 

Now you know what to display, you just calculate where your character is in relation to the indexes of the array.  Now just draw all the tiles within that array that you would see.

I realize it is a lot of work to set this all up but the nice thing is that you can make tweaks to levels in notepad without having to edit any image.   This also makes collision detection easier because you are working with a grid and you know what indexes your player shouldn't be allowed to walk through.

Hope that helps.




Edited by shampoop - 23 November 2010 at 12:15pm

Last Supper Interior and an empty house

How about adding a hedge maze? There could be a small fountain in the center with a special item or something like that.

It's gorgeous and amazing work, J. -- I don't know how you do it! (I think an elevator is a terrific idea, but I'm a bit confused as to how all the rooms fit together.)

Heh, just need to critique the viola organista. (sorry!)
First, it's beautiful, but it looks too much like a more modern piano. (and it's a bit small to be an obvious focal point) Here is a picture of a v.o. by Leonardo himself that shows off at least one wheel, which is the defining feature of the v.o., as mentioned here:
I think the long, tapering body is quite visually striking, and a decent contrast to modern instruments. Perhaps if the wheel was exaggerated to the point where it almost looks 'steampunk', it would make the clearest, most readable image (in the sense of representative icon)?

Also, I don't know how significant your label of 'invention room' was meant to be, but at the moment, the 'clutter' around the v.o. doesn't really look like workshop clutter, but more like casual knick-knacks in any large home's music room.

I hope that's not too trivial -- this really is inspiring stuff despite those tiny reservations.

O_o!!! You always amaze me, how can you work so fast and so great!?! It's very cool! Don't worry about the colour count, we have no restriction, is looking good!

It's hard to keep your pace! :) If all goes well I hope to post update 7 by the ends of this week. Now I have in the game the new Cathedral with floor1 and collisions, the new Library with f1+collisions and working on Mona's house and the shops (they need a different type of scroll, a not chunked one).

The castle is absolutelly amazing!

May be when Leo fixes the harpsi, the musician goes away and let's Leo put his hands on it, to play something for doing some puzzle, as we talked in this thread?

The most obvious puzzle is playing a certain combination to open some secret door.

Have you played the videogame Coma, from Newgrounds? I mean something like this:







Leo goes to prison xD

Another idea is to have some prisoners in the underground floor, with some poor demons with long beard and chained, and an empty prison.

As in Ultima games, may be when Leo tries to steal something (and there is a npcs around) the guards knock out him, fade to black, and he wakes up in the underground prison secret switch and goes out

Scrolling improved

I forget to tell that I did some optimizations and rewriting of the continous scrolling engine. Instead of attaching and removing the chunks, now they always are in memory, I just move them, and change the bitmap that is inside of them. This way is faster.

Is like if in this video, instead of creating that insane amount of bullets, and erasing them when they go offscreen, imagine that i pick the bullet that goes offscreen and move it, and it's a new bullet that fires the boss.

In this way we could save some instructions from the cpu, that may be handy later, with npc IA, and stuff like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ

The idea of the elevator and falling through the hole is very very cool!

Edited by JaumeAlcazo - 29 November 2010 at 10:19am

those rocks remind me of the rocks from Final fantasy 3(i think). awesome figurehead too. but on the left, i dont know what those rock plateau things are? they look gorgeous, but i just dont get what theyre supposed to be?

@ jalonso: Before-and-after harpsichord is brilliant!

@ JaumeAlcazo: Those are cool docks -- if anyone can do it, jalonso can!