Writing my first game

[3588897]

As most of you probably don't know, in the past month I have been learning how to program games. I have learned everything I need to know to write an RPG (except how to draw good pixel art) and have decided to go ahead and start on one. So far I have made a scrolling engine for it so the player can walk around a map and drawn the art for the players character.

In this topic I'm going to post the games progress and screenshots so you can see just what I know to do. Here is the games progress for those that want to know:
Programming phase: Initial development
Art: 0.1%
Gameplay: 1%
Sound: 0% (most likely will be silent)
Artificial Intelligence (AI): 0%
Items: 0%
Maps: 0%

As you can see the game has a long ways to go before it is even in the Beta testing phase. My goals for these next two weeks are:
Create 1 different enemy to set up the experience and combat systems.
Make 1 map for the game.
Program at least 2 of the different abilities the player will be able to train.
Draw 5% of the art the game will use.
Program "players" to make it seem more like an MMORPG.
Program inventory, banking, and information box.

And about the art, could someone tell me what you think of the current art for the game? Here is a screentshot of the game in its current form:


If you have any suggestions for the game I would like to hear them as I have hardly any.

[bounda]

So i take it you are writing this in C? I program in autoit.

[jilola]

I agree with Nodes.
The way the thing looks is independent of and secondary to the actual gan´meplay, ie. the range of actions and the consistency and quality of the responses from the game.

Separate the general game logic, the AI for the characters and the look from from the very beginning so that you can tweak each independently.
That way you can get the overll structure underway and can start exploring the engine and the rules that drive the game. Later on you can replace the view layer of the game to give it the nice look and feel.
Also,if you're planning a full blown RPG you'll do yourself a favour modularising the thing with well defined interfaces. That way you can control the complexity of each part and make it manageable. A single lump without clear modular structure will likely turn out impossible to mamange after a few weeks or months of development. It just gets too complex to wrap your mind around the whole thing at once.

2cents & L&L
Jouni

[3588897]

So i take it you are writing this in C? I program in autoit.

Would be C++ but mappyal won't compile in C++ so I have to use C.

if you sit down and alow your mind to see what it "will" look like you will know. typically the most fun with an rpg is building up your Char/Chars and exploring the story. but again all this is the easy bit the hard bit is the functions. if you can get the blue box to destroy the yellow box with an exp gain your well on the way. the maps the story etc although very important are totally redundant if you dont have the foundation.

Thanks for the advice. That helped me figure out some more stuff to put into it.

main toon (blue box)
Inventory
Health potions
a power up ie /armor/better weps
exp yealding targets (yellow box )

main toon (blue box) // done
Inventory // yet to be done but shouldn't be too hard
Health potions // programmed one today, but for some reason it isn't being drawn on screen
a power up ie /armor/better weps // yet to be done I've got some code written for it on paper though
exp yealding targets (yellow box ) // will be done tomorrow (if I can figure out why sprites aren't being drawn to the back buffer)

regarding artwork its alot easyer to put the leaves on the tree at the end

Makes since. Thanks for the advice.

Separate the general game logic, the AI for the characters and the look from from the very beginning so that you can tweak each independently.
That way you can get the overll structure underway and can start exploring the engine and the rules that drive the game. Later on you can replace the view layer of the game to give it the nice look and feel.
Also,if you're planning a full blown RPG you'll do yourself a favour modularising the thing with well defined interfaces. That way you can control the complexity of each part and make it manageable. A single lump without clear modular structure will likely turn out impossible to mamange after a few weeks or months of development. It just gets too complex to wrap your mind around the whole thing at once.

Been doing that right from the start and has saved me lots of time  .

Thanks for all the advice. Taking everyones advice into consideration I've revised my goals for the next two weeks to make it less art orriented and more programming orriented.

EDIT: Ok, this is turning into too much for a first game. I think I'll just go through the steps recomended on GameDev.net and start out with breakout and work my way up from there. So, for that reason I'm going to put this game on hold for a while.

[3588897]

Just posting an update on my progress. I have started working on it again a month ago after finishing a space invaders style game. I have figured out why items weren't being drawn and fixed it.
There is now an inventory screen (which does work), a statistics screen, and an equipment screen where it shows equiped armor and weapons. I have a level system set up so you can cut down trees (going to start working on burning the logs soon). The weapons give you an attack level increase (ie if you equip an iron sword your attack level goes up 2 levels, steel 5 levels, gold 12 levels, etc). When cutting down trees you get an experience point increase.
I'll try and get a screen shot up as soon as I start on it again so you can see the progress for yourself.

[jilola]

Will look forward to the screen cap 

2cents & L&L
Jouni

[3588897]

Okay heres the screen:

As you can see I've got all of the health bottles in inventory, some logs, and increased lumbering experience. Also, I didn't mention this before, but I have been writing some music (it isn't coming along too well) for the game to use. I'm hoping to program enemy AI this week to get the combat system up and running.

[Syke]

im just guessing that you are doing the pixel art in 32x32 pixel tiles... or similar... i just suggest that for the turf you also do corner pieces that curve around.. i too make games in a similar way and it really makes a difference..

also.. tone down the colours a little... something a little more tame and easy on the eyes will improve it greatly..
if you need a hand with a couple of cells feel free to ask.. i might be able to help out

[3588897]

Yes, the tiles are 32x32.
I'm planning on doing things like that later on. This art is only temporary and will be replaced in another month or two when the game is more complete. Also since the first screenshot posted above I have dulled down the earth tiles for pathways and mining areas. But for now I am trying to set up a combat system so that the player can fight ghosts to gain attack experience, which is currently causing the game to crash.
Also I have been working on the mining stat so when you have a pickaxe in inventory you can mine iron ore, and soon ores for metals that will be unusable unless something is done to the metal using the alchemy stat. As soon as the ghost is finished and the mining and alchemy stats are out of the way I will do some of the things you suggested to improve the look.

Just wondering but what is the circle with the one half dark and the other lite?

[Syke]

good to hear you have a plan..

the circle is merely a spawn point for the NPCs... so once ya kill an NPC it resets and pumps out another one.

is there a certain program you're using? i was thinking about changing from BYOND to a stand alone application... but didnt know of a good system.

[3588897]

If you know C/C++ I would recomend using the Allegro library alongside Mappyal (for the level art). However unless you code the bitmaps using the putpixel() function yourself the bitmaps must be either stored in a datafile or just as a bitmap. Same with midis, wavs, mp3s, and flcs. And unless you also configure it to use directx version 8 you'll have to include the alleg42.dll file along with the game itself. It sounds like an inconvenience but it actually makes editing everything seperate from the exe a lot easier. If you want the links here they are: http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/ for allegro and http://www.tilemap.co.uk/ for mappy.

Now for an update: I have written some code that allows you to teleport to a  certain location in the game when you speak with a Coastal Customs officer at the docks. I have figured out why the ghost and officer bitmaps haven't worked, which was caused by the game hogging too much memory by loading too many bitmaps from a seperate file (which is another inconvenience), which means I will have to code the bitmap using the putpixel() function like I was talking about earlier. I should have that done tomorrow though.

[3588897]

Ok, I've made some good progress on the game since my last post almost a month ago. Here are the statistics below:
Programming phase: Alpha
Art: 3%
Gameplay: 5%
Sound: 20% (most likely will be silent)
Artificial Intelligence (AI): 2%
Items: 15%
Maps: 70%
Enemies: 4%

I have written three enemies since my last post and all of them are working great. In order of when they were written here they are: Low level Ghost (dies in one hit, health may be changed soon), Medium level Ghost (tougher to beat but is a little lower than I would like right now), Very Low level Demon (he can still hit good mind you!). I have made some changes to the maps since last time. I'll have a screenshot sometime soon but it'll be a little while because its on a different computer now.