New Look, New Gameplay, New Everything...

It's been a while. I took a momentary hiatus from working on ADWAS after the huge amount of trouble I was getting with the random map generator frustrated me. There was probably a really easy way to do it that I just didn't see. Anyway none of that matters anymore. During that break I started to transfer one of my old gamemaker files to XNA. I basically finished the engine and realized that I was wasting my time. So I stopped that. (I seem to be returning to my old ways where I start and quit a project :'(. ) Then I decided to take the ADWAS engine, change it to 8 Bit and make the game more Megaman esque, where there are levels and a boss for each level, not an open world. But it would have collectible items from crates, enemies would drop items, there will be special items that change your player's abilities, a shop, two different playable characters (a sword user and a gun user), and more.
So far all of the game's main menus have been completed, for example: you press start to start the game, then choose a save file (up to 3), or start a new game, then you can either deploy to a level, or go to the armory and change your equipment for the level. You can also go to the shop and buy/sell items in the armory. This has all been added to the game excluding a menu for the special items. From there I created what I think will be the first/easiest level of the game, the Junkyard. The level has 4 different unique enemies (specific to the level) and a boss. The level is complete, along will all the programming for all the enemies/boss except that the boss does not explode when it dies which will be the next thing I have to work on. I also added special abilities such as wall jumping, dashing, and rope grabbing (this one is hard to explain), and probably more that I don't remember at the time. So that is what I have done, now this is what I plan to do.
I plan on having either 6 or 8 levels in the game, probably 6. Which would break up into two tiers of 3 levels. The second tier would be locked until you defeat the first tier. Each tier starts with the first two levels locked, and the third level of the tier would be unlocked after defeating the first two levels of the tier. This will still allow you to somewhat choose what order you play the levels (like in megaman) but still have an increase of difficulty and weapon/armor drop power. I don't really remember how this drastic change to the game took place, but it was right after I broke my leg and was playing the final dlc level of Castlevania HD and thinking how much it sucked that that was going to be the final level. Anyway, to end this wall of text here are some pictures of how beautiful the game looks now. Oh, and did I mention it runs in 720p?

This is the beginning of the level, the thing on the left is the first enemy I made in the game, all it does is jump, things to the right of the main character (the guy with a sword) are compressors that squash you and you take damage. You cannot see it in the picture but to the right of the pistons is a treadmill that works just like the treadmills in metalman's stage in megaman 2.

This is a picture of the first boss. Shoots lasers, throws wheels, and smashed you with the smashers. You destroy him by hitting his eyes, then when you smash both of them you break the thing in the middle of his head. I also made an armor that looks like the original ADWAS guy. Also you can pretty much fully customize your character. The parts that you can now change independently are the head, body, legs, and arms, apposed to the original changing of the head, body, and jacket. And to the best of my knowledge everything follows the 8 Bit (Original Nintendo) rules for color somewhat strictly (sometimes I use a one or two too many colors per sprite, but each color is directly from a NES palette.)

RMG Day 4

On day 4 I fixed the overlapping room for every room except the first room. Now when a room overlaps it changes to the room that should be there after the map has been fully created. I think the game is going to end up becoming a dungeon crawler.I'll have to see how it turns out. The first picture is the RMG without any limits, rooms can be placed anywhere connected to another room, creating a very claustrophobic tight map. The second has limits on where the room is created, creating a longer map, but for some reason at the end the rooms destroy themselves. I'll find out what's wrong with that later.

RMG Day 3

A whole lotta glitches, mostly with rooms over lapping over themselves, this will hopefully be ended after the map is fully generated then I will eliminate problems with the map so that the game will be playable. At the rate I'm heading this map generator will be finished in a month or so. Hopefully by the end of February. On day 3, more like week 2, I limited the amount of 3 door passage ways could be created, and tried to stop overlapping, and failed. Here's a picture of a map that came out good.

RMG Day 2

I took about 20 minutes today and decided to add single cells with two doors instead of one, to create different paths and make the game less linear. Something happened that made me super happy. There was no glitches what so ever. Something that never happens. I put the code in, started the game and everything went exactly as I wanted. I still need to limit the amount of different paths that can be made, so the entire game isn't a whole bunch of different paths. Thats all for today, here's a picture of a randomly generated map:

RMG Started

Started the RMG (random map generator) today. I started doing it wrong, and it took a couple hours until I decided to start from scratch again. Getting all of the different tiles that form the map and naming them took the longest though, and some distractions on the way also didn't help. So far there is no limit on how the map can be created, so it just randomly creates single cell rooms that lead to other single cell rooms. Sometimes it stops before the map crosses sections, but sometimes it doesn't and that needs to be fixed. It looks like it is working well so far, here's an example of what I just generated a couple seconds ago using 30 rooms.

A wise man once said...

An idea is like a virus. Resilient… highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define, or destroy you.

And that is what is about to happen. I was in class today, and out of nowhere I had an idea. My first instinct was to start making a new game with the idea, but no. I have given up on my foolish ways of giving up. I decided to incorperate my idea with ADWAS, since the game is pratically still just an engine. So what was the idea? Randomly generated world. A randomly generated map allows unlimited replay value since the game is pratically new every time you play it. This will be quite challenging, and I hope I can pull it off. I plan to randomly generate a map/overworld, imagine the map you would see in a metroid game, hallways, vertical columns, open big rooms all making up a larger world. There would be rooms that have to be in the game ex. shops, boss rooms, special item rooms, and I would have to make a tileset for the game: something that I didn't plan on doing but is now a necessity. After generating the large map, the game will generate the individual rooms. Depending on how this ends up working the game will either remain being a castleroid exploration game, or it will become a dungeon crawler type game similar to Castlevania Harmony of Dispair. Hopefully this turns out to define, not destroy this game.

Collision

I haven't been working on the game for the week or so, however in the time that I did put into the game I added the gate that opens after getting a key, and per pixel collision checking. Now the enemies will have much better collision checking and be easier to make.

The Cave

Today I put the entire cave into the game, no enemies just blocks and room transitions. It totals more than 30 rooms so it adds a whole lot more onto the game. For the rest of the week I will be adding the mechanisms into the game that restrict where you can go in the game and I will be adding the enemies into the cave. Hopefully the cave will be complete (minus the detail) at the end of the week.

Just some random mechanics updating

Today in the few hours I spent on the game I put the tree blocks in for the forest so you have to beat Forest Grump before going certain places, I fixed where the damage number appears, I made it so the enemies health appears on the bottom of the screen instead of on top of the enemies, and I added the shaky-cam. Oddly enough the shaky-cam only took about 15 minutes to perfect, while moving the healthbar took longer than I thought, mostly because I forgot how to do everything I did with the healthbar way back when. I guess I'll end up starting the cave tomorrow. I'll put the area into the game first, then create the enemies afterword. Hopefully the entire cave will be done by the end of next week.

A whole lotta nothin'...

...is what I've gotten done in the past week because of my film paper. Tomorrow I've got a few things on my list to do. I'm going to make the trees that break when you destroy Forest Grump, change the place the enemy's health appears to be at the bottom of the screen instead of on top of the enemy [eventually it will probably give the enemies name and other info(maybe I can put some sort of ability into the game that lets you do that,)] and I will be fixing where the damage appears so it isn't just on the tip of the sword. And the thing that is probably going to give me the most trouble, the shaky cam, which will make it look like an earthquake is going on whenever I want it to.
Also, more info on when I started making the game: I found a file on my other computer which says I had the game on August 2nd 2010, but that was when I already had the entire moving engine in the game and had the idea of making ADWAS. The game was started well before that when I was planning to make a platform shooter adventure game, but realized I needed to make an easier project before I started on a more difficult project that would take so much time. Ironically, I abandoned the idea of the game and used to platform engine I created to make a puzzle platformer, which as I worked on it started to become a bigger and bigger project. Eventually I abandoned the idea of ADWAS being a puzzle game and turned the concept into a full fledged castleroid style game (pretty much the entire idea of the game I had before but with swords instead of guns and a different story.) Anyway: the first game I worked on in XNA, a four player pong game, was worked on till mid July, so ADWAS came into being after July 18th and well before August 2nd.

Forest Grump

The game now has seven minutes of gameplay in it. The entire forest is in the game, and enemies in position. The forest concludes with Forest Grump, who is probably a little to difficult, but pretty awesome none the less. After you defeat Forest Grump he does not respawn in his room, just like normal bosses in video games. After beating Forest Grump you should be around level 3, but this is not including the town, so when the game is complete you should probably be level 4 or 5 when beating him. And he will probably be a lot easier at a higher level. I am going to have to do a lot of work balancing the game.  I don't have anything else really planned for the rest of the week because I have a 10 page paper I have to finish by Thrusday and I only have 2 done. After the paper is done though, I'll be back on board and can hopefully finish the forest completely and add in the cave. Oh! I fixed the ramps so you can walk up them smoothly but sometimes you cannot jump off them and you twitch when about 20% up the 22.5 degree ramp.

Got a lot done today

Starting at around noon today, until about a half hour ago, I did nothing but work on ADWAS. I fully created Vermes and the Bat, and put the entire forest into the game. The Forest has no detail yet, just black collision blocks. I also did some work on the ramps to accommodate a 22.5 degree slant as well as the 45 degree one. The ramp that goes top to bottom, left to right respectively is the only one that works seamlessly, the other direction is horribly glitchy. All I have to do now to complete the forest is create forest grump, put the enemies in their places and put the vines that disappear after you defeat forest grump. Then the detail after I know I don't have to change anything. All of that should be completed by next Saturday, maybe even sooner.

More enemies!

I got home today and decided to work on the game on my 1080p HDTV. I wanted to see what the game would look like in HD. For some reason when the TV scales the game to fullscreen it doesn't like the 16:9 ratio, even though that is the ratio of the TV, and it looks right when in 4:3 ratio. Whatever, I'll find out whats up with that later. But playing the game in 1080p looks amazing.
On a different note, my objective for today was to create the Shadow enemy. I had to finish off the spider enemy first though, who turned out very well and only took about a half-hour to polish off. Then I started to work on the Shadow who ended up taking about an hour and a half due to his three different attacks. He could pretty much be a miniboss. He is invisible, appears on you, then does one of three attacks with his hands. So I completed everything I had to for today so I'm glad. Since tomorrow's the weekend I got a lot of work ahead of me. Hopefully I can finish it in time.

First time behind schedule

After creating a schedule for me to keep up with, this is the first day I didn't finish my "homework" in time. I was supposed to fully create the Araneae (spider) enemy today, but I only got about half-way done. I had to finish off the bear to make him more randomish, so it didn't look like he was just moving towards you and attacking you. Then I went on to the spider, and I really didn't want to start it but I did because I had to finish it today. I had some trouble making him move towards you in all directions, but I got it. Then I forgot how to rotate him to face the direction he was moving because I haven't done anything like that since the summer. I brushed up on that with Google, then went on to make his web. And that is where I am. I just finished the web (and he cannot move off it) and have to work on the acid spitting tomorrow, along with the shadow.

Here we go

From today on I should be getting a lot done with the game. I will be working a little every day that I can to put something into the game. I'll try doing something different every week. This week is enemies, next week map, next week enemies again, next week something else. So far I have about 50 enemy concepts, which if I do one every day will take two months, so I'll probably double up for efficiency, and quintuple up on weekends where I have all the time in the world.
Today I made the "Wild Bear" or "Kuma" I haven't decided which name to use yet. He moves toward you, then either bites or slashes, slashing doing more damage. He's very rough, but it will have to do as a place holder. And I don't have any real sprites yet for him, just place holder sprites. Way down the line I will put actual detailed sprites in the game, but it isn't important now.

Town almost complete

Of the two total rooms and four screens of the Town I have completed one room and three screens. I have to draw the inside of your house, which shouldn't take too long, then the town will be complete (without any story events added in yet just the landscape) Also the game will hopefully be able to run in both 4:3 and 16:9 ratios. Right now it is in 4:3, but I checked out the 16:9 and it looks good so hopefully everything will work out when it comes to device capabilities. All I have to do with that is make sure it looks good in a room that is smaller that the 16:9 size and then not worry about it until way down the road. The town should be done by the end of the week, and sometime mid this week I'll start working on the enemies for the forest.

A curse upon you!

     I added cursed items into the game. These items are super powerful, but are to be used at a price. In the beginning of the game you will be warned to not use cursed items, marked by a different color background in the selection menu (hasn't been added yet.) Using cursed items will increase how badly you are cursed. What penalties you will face for being cursed (other than not being able to see the good ending and fight the real final boss) are yet to be determined. Whenever you hit an enemy with a cursed sword, you get more and more cursed. And if you get hit by an enemy when wearing cursed defensive gear you get cursed depending on how much cursed gear you have on. I plan to use some sort of item that can be crafted to get rid of how badly you are cursed so even if you use cursed items you can still finish the game completely, but the items will probably be hard to find.
     I also added in use items into the game, which can be used once and add either health, focus, or have some sort of special status effect for a certain time (status effects haven't been tested yet.) I'm pretty ahead of schedule and will be starting on the forest very soon.

One thing led to another...

I started working early today hoping to quickly knock some things off the new todo list. Two easy things were on the top of the list, make you have a limited supply of breath underwater and allow the bubble armor to make you float under water. I finished the first task quickly, you now lose one fifth of your max health per ever two seconds or so after being underwater for about five seconds, which will probably change when I get further into the game. Then I had to do the bubble armor thing. However there was no bubble armor in the game yet so I was ready to add a new object into the game, which was going to be easy with my new system. However something was wrong and it wouldn't appear in the menu. So I fixed that, then for some reason the entire jacket menu disappeared and I had to find out why that happened. And hour of troubleshooting later, I found out the problem. Then I could finally add about five short lines of code to add the new feature. Now everything should be perfect with adding new things into the game and I got two things off my todo list.Even though it took about two hours to do something that was only should have taken five minutes, I hope it will all work out in the end.

More making stuff easier for me to add items in the future

That's what I did so far today. I made it so enemies drop items which can be common (1/20 Kills will drop an item), rare (1/50 Kills will drop an item) or Super rare ( 1/100 kills will drop an item). And I also implemented money into the game and gave items a value for when they are to be sold or bought. However there is no way to get money currently. I also create a todo list for the game, which can be viewed at:

http://www.toodledo.com/views/public.php?id=td4cf0019720155

This will make it much easier for me to find out what I should work on next, since this morning I was wondering what I should do next. Now I have about 80 things that I have to do, but many of them won't get done for a while.

Started out trying to work on the pause screen...

... ended up making new items easier to add into the game. Before today if I wanted to add a new item I had to hard code it into the global variables, player sprite, and pause screen. Now all I have to do, after an hour or so of coding, if edit the global variables code. Hopefully that I spent doing that will take off days of work in the end.