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NOTE: I haven't made enough progress since my last blog to warrant uploading a new version of the game. If you want to test out the game, go to blog #4 (below) and there is a link to download a pretty recent version of it.
Hey everyone. I'm making a 2d adventure/platformer with Game Maker, and blogging my progress on TL. If you haven't seen my previous blogs, check em out! Or if you don't want to read a bunch of old posts, at least read my short game summary below.
Previous Blogs
+ Show Spoiler +
Summary
+ Show Spoiler +You're main character is a wizard, who can use his 4 spells/abilities (fireball, shield, levitation orb, and mana-recharge) to kill enemies. All I have right now is the engine and a bunch of the NPC's. I have yet to design levels and I'm just starting to draw tilesets. I'm currently working on making enemies! This is what your character looks like: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JG6gw.gif)
Wow, it's been a while since my last progress blog. And to be honest, I really haven't made THAT much progress. This is just going to be a small update because I haven't released one in a while. Mainly, it's because the engine is pretty much done, so most of the programming (my favorite part) is done for now. Now the biggest thing I have to do is draw new enemies and tilesets, and I completely suck at / hate art... so I have a hard time finding the motivation to do it. Nevertheless, this week I grinded out a few animations for my newest enemy, and have finished up the beginning of my first tileset.
Thinking of creative ideas for enemies isn't very easy. I knew I wanted an enemy that could deflect back fireballs, but did so in a cool way, and in a way that could be outmaneuvered without TOO much difficulty. Anyway, after some thinking, I decided to make an enemy with a hard, plate-like head that would occasionally lower it towards you and charge. Whilst charging, it would deflect fireballs off of it's lowered head. I set out to draw it, and the final result kind of looked like an acorn... but it wasn't too shabby. I don't have an official name for this enemy (creative name ideas are always welcome), but the filename I called "CornHead", a tribute to it's acorn-esque shape. Anyway, as usual, here are some of it's animations. (And as always, the .gif speed isn't necessarily the same as the animation speed in game).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/70YJD.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b0Iey.gif) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QQayr.gif)
The enemy paces back and forth, and occasionally charges towards the player. While charging, it deflects fireballs back at the player (unless they hit him from the other side, of course). Pretty basic.
Another cool thing about this enemy is the way that it start's out. It starts in a "burrowed" mode, where just its plate-head is visible above the ground. If the player shoots a fireball that hits the head, or if the player gets too close, it will pop out of the ground and enter its cycle of walking/charging. This means that if the player is careful, he can completely avoid this enemy altogether. Of course, the enemy will often be positioned in places where it is extremely hard/impossible to avoid, so it won't be TOO easy to dodge. It should be interesting 
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8NTwU.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZK4f5.png)
If you look at the pictures above, you'll notice that it is burrowed in grass! That's right, my game has grass now. I'm almost done with my first tileset! It's been a pain in the ass to make, as I've never done anything like it before... but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I've looked at a lot of other tilesets from lots of games to try and understand the types of things that they use to break up the repetiton of the tiles, and I think I've done a pretty good job. It's kinda weird, as I ended up making twice as many tiles as I really needed... because each tile has 2.5 rocks in it, so I needed a "right" and "left" version of each tile to make it so there aren't just any hanging half-rocks.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OLjy2.png)
Anyway, that about sums up what I've done over the past month. Not a whole lot, but at least I'm still heading in the right direction. I always have some newfound motivation to work on the game after blogging, and I already have a few ideas for new enemies, so progress should be quicker from here on out. Ideas, feedback, questions, always welcome.
Hope you enjoyed!
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That looks pretty neat. How do you go about creating a tileset, your modus operandi if you will?
Any plans on going the extra mile and starting doing things in Flash / Actionscript 3?
Best of luck 
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On February 02 2012 06:54 Makua wrote:That looks pretty neat. How do you go about creating a tileset, your modus operandi if you will? Any plans on going the extra mile and starting doing things in Flash / Actionscript 3? Best of luck
I'm doing it all in Game Maker. The only other programming I know is a minimal understanding of Java. And to be honest, as for all my drawings I just determine what size I want it to be and just keep drawing and redrawing it until it looks good.
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Ahh had to look up Game Maker 
Do you have to program anything or just using the GUI of Game Maker?
Looks pretty good so far
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looking good man, hope you share the game with us whenever its ready :>
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On February 02 2012 07:36 shannn wrote:Ahh had to look up Game Maker Do you have to program anything or just using the GUI of Game Maker? Looks pretty good so far
GM has its own coding language called Game Maker Language (GML). It's super easy syntactically, and after a few weeks of learning Java in school, I decided to try using it, and picked it up very easily. The other option is to use predefined drag and drop commands- kind of like the list of conditions and effects you could use in the BW map editor- then it would automatically convert those commands to GML. I started out with the drag and drop commands when I first learned Game Maker like a year ago, but GML really isn't very hard to learn if you know any type of programming.
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I just ran around a bit in the version posted in post #4 and it was pretty cool. It ran well and I liked the variety of enemies and such. This is my first time checking this project out and it looks promising. As a tip for gameplay, floating around on the orb with unlimited power was pretty rocking. It might be cool to design a level with that as the premise.
Keep up the good work-looking forward to more posts!
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On February 02 2012 08:08 Alacast wrote:
I just ran around a bit in the version posted in post #4 and it was pretty cool. It ran well and I liked the variety of enemies and such. This is my first time checking this project out and it looks promising. As a tip for gameplay, floating around on the orb with unlimited power was pretty rocking. It might be cool to design a level with that as the premise.
Keep up the good work-looking forward to more posts!
Someone else also suggested I add unlimited mana in a boss battle that requires you to use the orb the whole time. I'm definitely planning on it.
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Dude i just had awesome thought
you should make a spell that makes the mips fight FOR you
the spell would take all your mana and have the mips work for you ?
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You could name the enemy Capricorn, because it has a cap and looks like an acorn.
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Wow, this looks pretty sweet. You made all these sprites and tilesets yourself? If so, for a one man project, I am baffled.
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Is there any limit to how big of a scope you can have with a game made in game maker? Like are there any limitations?
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On February 02 2012 10:23 Clbull wrote:
Wow, this looks pretty sweet. You made all these sprites and tilesets yourself? If so, for a one man project, I am baffled.
Thanks I actually have no pixel art / spriting experience, but I'm pretty good at looking at things that I know are good and mimicking what they do. I looked at a lot of the art from Cave Story and Ninja Senki to try and get an idea how to make basic sprites and tiles, and I think it's turned out somewhat decent lol.
On February 02 2012 10:59 Ulfsark wrote:
Is there any limit to how big of a scope you can have with a game made in game maker? Like are there any limitations?
Not that I'm aware of. There are some pretty well known games that were made in GM... some of the most popular ones that come to mind are Iji and Deathworm. And I love your name, it reminds me of Age of Mythology ^.^
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the npc guys kinda look like little circumcised penises
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...come on man.
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EPT
