Day 75: Final Post... Probably

     This year in infotech has been a real journey. I have learned many important lessons throughout the semester, through mistakes of my own, and others around me. We all(mostly) have worked very hard and made some awesome progress so far, and we don't plan to stop. This year has also been a real learning experience, and through that I  have managed to come up with a bit of advice for anyone who plans to start out on something like this with their own group.

    

    Working as a team is extremely important in a setting like this, as you need to constantly communicate with your peers.You need to know what is being worked on, and need to collaborate on things so that they turn out the way the group wants. It is also important to be an active member of the team; you can't just slack off and ride along on everyone's coattails. Everyone needs to do their part for the game. Otherwise you will end up with angered people and a dysfunctional group. It is important to be working with people that you can trust, as well as people that you can count on to get their jobs done.  

    We bit off a lot more than we could chew this semester, and I will bet that you will make the same mistake; in an attempt to make an amazing game, we tried to incorporate too many things into the game at one time. Now that we are nearing the end we are finally getting it together, however throughout the year we were quite the unorganized group. If there's one piece of advice I could give, it would be to only tackle jobs that you can handle, and not to go overboard on the details. You will spend a lot more time on pointless things than you will actually developing the game. Once you get all of your important bits set up and working, then you can start adding extra effects like particles, game features, dialogue, etc. 

    I learned a good amount of things this semester; from technical coding things to artistic and musical design. Aside from the bigger topics above of course, you need to be aware of many different things. For one, it is very important to stick to your original ideas and not get ahead of yourself. You'll want to change things as you go, just try not to outdo yourself. It is also very important to make sure you are organized with your code and your setup; make sure everything is put together neatly so that when you do need to change something, it isn't too much of a hassle. 

    This class has been by far one of my favourites in all of my time here; I enjoyed every minute of it, whether I was spending hours fixing errors, or  I was composing some music for the game. I, along with some others will not me ceasing development of the game; we do actually plan on continuing to develop drop dead and other games in the future. Now that we know what we are doing and have a good team with the right skills and software, we can work together to make some awesome video games. The blog posts are done for now, but they may return; just not on a daily basis. That way I can still have some sort of showing my progress to the outside world. 

(Don't forget to check out my soundcloud as I will be posting some new music there in the near future. My keyboard is here and  I have the hardware to hook it up to my computer, so production will begin again very soon)

Day 74: IT WORKS. IT FINALLY WORKS.

Tonight and in class I have worked on the slopes and jumping for the game that have been broken for the longest time. I was finally able to make everything work, without any weird glitches. Take a look for yourself:

The player is finally able to go up and down slopes of varying angles (to some degree) and even hang off of steep slopes that the player can't normally walk upwards on. However, I can make it so that player is able to take slopes of much higher angles if I really want to in the future. I made many changes to my movement and jumping code throughout, most of which I can't even list at this point (I forgot most of them). Now that this is finally finished, I will be able to transfer it all into the main game, and finally get on with some more progress (That will be a task for next class). Aside from my success there, I do have a problem where occasionally the player can climb up walls, but I can fix it just by making a separate wall object instead of just using the floor as a wall.

Day 73: Jumping for Joy! ...wait

I finally remembered to put my own game into my Dropbox account! (Huzzah!) Finally I can work on getting the slopes integrated into the main game... although there is a slight problem; my jumping still is broken, and I cannot understand why. Currently when I try to jump, it just doesn't work at all... that's how much progress I have made so far. Previously it would cause the player to hover midair as long as the player was moving left or right. Once the player stopped, then the jump would continue. Through some attempts at fixing it, I have even made it so that the player can't move at all. Or other times, where the player can move, just as long as it is through the air while jumping or falling.  I have tried everything, from changing the way the player jumps, to changing how gravity works in the game. I've even tried only allowing gravity to have effect if certain conditions are met, which still isn't working. Here are a few examples of what  I'm trying to use to fix this:

Changing the way the player jumps:
- Changing the vspeed of the player to go in an upward direction and reducing it with gravity
- Using move_contact_solid (90,15) to move the player in an upward motion
- Attempting to change the y position of the player using y-=(n)

How gravity works and affects the player:
- Only allow gravity to have effect if the player is in the air/not in contact with anything else but the floor(using: if !place_meeting(x,y,par_Wall){gravity=1}else{gravity=0}
- Make gravity in a different way: move_contact_solid (270,15) ;
vspeed=15;

With gravity in effect on its own, my movement code doesn't work. I am trying to find a way to correct this but alas, nothing is working. Instead of using hspeed and vspeed, I am using x+=(n) and such to move around. They are essentially the same code, just slightly different in the way they work. Gravity and hspeed work fine together, but hspeed and slopes do not. However, slopes and x+=(n) work amazingly together, although x+=(n) and gravity do not. Of the three nice things, it would seem you can only pick two in this case. I think it is just a matter of getting a gravity setting in place, or something that will change gravity properly based on whether or not the player is colliding with the floor. Next class I will try my best to come up with a better system for this. Obviously the "if !place_meeting" idea isn't working too well, so I will have to come up with something else. I might end up playing with custom variables to detect when the player is in air and when they are on the ground, changing it based on if they hit the ground or hit the jump key. I am hopeful here, but I don't think it is going to be quite so simple.

Day 72: Many Things to Do

Today I worked on a few things. I started out by fixing an earlier mentioned, Ammo issue, where the ammo wasn't being subtracted properly. It turns out it was only for the pistol, and was an extremely easy fix. Just had to replace a number. From there, I helped Stephen to understand power-ups. To do this, we made a triple-shot power-up effect, that for a few seconds, shoots three bullets at a time, 20 degrees apart from each other. First we separated the shooting events into their own cases, using variables singleshot and tripleshot. Then, we just made it so that the single one starts at 1 at the beginning of the game, and the triple at zero, and when the power-up is contacted the opposite is true for a few seconds. All we need to figure out is how to make the powerup spawn randomly, which could be done easily with the random_range thing, as well as picking a random place for it to spawn. From there,  I worked a bit on some scenery.  I have fixed our old house sprite to fit with the platformer style, and  I plan to put it in the game tomorrow. I just need to align the room transferring object so that you can go in and out of the house properly. Tonight I might start transferring the movement code with slopes into this game, but I might be too busy - I ordered a digital keyboard recently and it is being delivered today. If I don't get the movement code done,  I'll at least save it for tomorrow's class. I'll at least have some music to edit tomorrow if nothing else.

Day 71: cONFUSION

So... please excuse the lateness for this post, as I forgot to make it on Thursday.

Also I have forgotten what  I did on Thursday. I am pretty sure I tried working on slopes, as I don't really have anything else that I could have worked on. Now although I cannot remember what I did then,  I can say I managed to do a fair bit of work on my own time. Over the  long weekend I was able to make some substantial progress on slopes; I finally got them to work properly! (In my own game, at least.) I am just having a problem with my jumping right now, but I think that wit ha bit of time I am able to fix it. I think I am just going to completely redo the movement for this game, taking the movement from my own. I don't have a copy of it here at school so I'll have to work on it later.For now however, I do have one issue I can fix. Currently my Ammo is not subtracting properly, which means the player is getting about 2 times more ammo than they are supposed to. [Next class] I will work on fixing that issue, and later on I will start moving my new movement code into here.

Day 70: Animation

Today  I worked on the selection animation for the start screen; it is a few little flies buzzing around the menu that the player has selected. The animation is really nice, and pretty smooth for the first try at this animation. I was thinking of using particles for it, but that was just over complicating things. Instead I just made a 9 frame animation, which definitely fits the style of the game much better than the particles would have. I also changed the text color, so now everything matches and flows nicely. In class today I also showed Nick how to make the player have animated sprites when moving, and still sprites when it's not. All I used was image_speed and image_index to make it work. When moving, image_speed=1, and the animation plays through. If not moving, image_speed=0, and image_index=0, meaning the animation doesn't play, and it is stopped on the first frame; a still image of the character. Tomorrow I will work on some gameplay mechanics; I want to try again at getting the slopes to work smoothly. As of right now they are atrocious, only working a little bit.

Day 69: All Over the Place

Today I did some work on various things, whether it was from helping Justin and Ty with some of their problems, to drawing a sprite of a tiny fly... let me explain.

I started off today not knowing what I wanted to work on. I noticed that the start screen was looking a little out of place, at least in terms of obj_Menu with the selection sprite looking too vibrant. Currently it is a bright red, standing out on a dark and dull background. What I had in mind was to make a particle effect that goes around the buttons instead. I thought of using fire, and once I got something I was happy with, I had a change of plans. After showing it to Jake, he suggested we use flies instead, which I think would be really cool for the game. I started on that, but after a slight complication with my sprites and backgrounds in particle designer I was getting bored, and wanted to move on to something else for a little bit. It was convenient at that time that Justin needed help incorporating my zombies into his game, and Ty also needed a bit of help figuring out how to make some sounds play.

(That's about it for today...  I forgot to take a screenshot of my particles, so here's my picture of a boat. I'll try to get some more stuff done with the particles tomorrow so I have something to show for my efforts.)

Day 68: Broken Arm Blues

Today I started off the day by trying to fix the players broken arm, as shown above. When jumping, the arm's y position becomes different from where it should be on the player. When the player jumps, the arm does not follow it right away, which I find to be quite odd. I tried to make them equal in code, just by saying obj_Arm.y=obj_Player.y, but I am already using that as the basis for the arm's positioning on the player. That means that the code I am using is either not going to work, or there is another error. I think I could try rounding the x and y values of the arm and player  so that they are only exact values, but I don't think that will fix it.

After getting tired of that, I decided to work on the background for the start screen. I added some text for the game title onto the background that Jake made a while ago, and add on the menu items. As you can see, there is a black border around the edges of the screen. While typing this post up, I just realized that it is the border of the glow sprite that is causing the darkness effect with a slight glow in the middle. I just need to move obj_Menu, because it is being centered around that. Next class I will add the finishing touches to the background, like editing the selection sprite and changing the text color, and then I may work on my hotbar sprites. 

EDIT*

With some critique from Jake on the positioning of the text, I have changed the start screen to look even better. I had to move obj_Menu, which screwed up the glow, and would normally be hard to fix. However, I was able to make it work by creating an empty, invisible object that sits in the middle of the screen, and making the glow follow that object. 

Day 67: Change of Plans

Instead of working on the game itself, today I decided to work on my music that  I started a week ago. I finished the track, and  I have to say I am extremely pleased with the result. half way through making it, I changed a few things, added in a few different chords that work well in this key, and added a bit more of the flute part. That and a little bit of repetition later, the song is complete and ready to be heard.

The finished track and any other music I make in the future can be found on my soundcloud:

Tomorrow I plan on going out to look for a nice electric keyboard, which will really help me in creating more music. It will be much easier than putting in each individual note, as I will be able to test stuff on the fly. Next class I will definitely be working on the game, as I will be able to work on the music at home rather than just at school. 

Day 66: Health and Ammo

Today I continued work on my GUI and as I proposed yesterday, I finished the health bar and ammo text. Currently they are both working, and look really nice. It took a while to get the health bar in place, but once that was done, everything became quite simple. From there, I was able to use the coordinates of the health bar and text to help determine where to put everything else, and it made putting in the ammo text much easier as well.From there I had to edit the hotbar sprite to remove one of he gauges on the right side to accommodate some space for the ammo text. I added in a bit of a shaded background behind the text as well just to add some more depth. Also, while in debug mode, I noticed that there were many instances of the bullet objects as the game goes on, and I realized that they are just going on forever(which isn't necessarily good). I made it so that the bullets get destroyed if they travel a distance of 650 units away from the player in either the direction of left or right. That way I can help to reduce lag for the future. Tomorrow I will work on making a "selected weapon" type thing for the hotbar, in the sense that it is just showing what weapon is being used at the moment. So basically just a sprite that will hover over slots 1 through 5 accordingly.I just need to make a good sprite for it, and find out where to draw the sprites over each box.

Day 65: GUI and Slopes

Today I did a bit of work on the GUI, being around the spot where the ammo will go. I may have to move one of the meters that I made if it is in the way of the ammo text, but that is no issue. That or I could just make the text smaller. I also need to add the health text, which I am going to change to say "HP" as there isn't really enough room for "Health."

The talk of slopes also came up earlier, so I decided to play around with the code that we have. I temporarily disabled our current code that didn't work very well, and started experimenting. I was able to come up with one thing that did work actually sort of well(although it is pretty unreliable.). It checks whether or not there is a place free to the side of the player, and if there isn't, then checks for a place to the side and up from the player. If there is a place, it sends the player up and to the side in that direction. In some situations it works extremely smoothly, but sometimes it doesn't. I may need to come up with something new, or maybe our movement code just sucks. Tomorrow however I will go back to the GUI, and I will put the text on properly and make it look nice, as well as applying the health bar. If I am able, I might also place the clock somewhere if I can. 

Day 64: GUI Stuff

I worked on the GUI today. I was having some troubles deciding how I wanted it to look, but I finally got something  I am happy with. Instead of having a separate health bar, it is sunken into the hotbar; that will be where all important information is, rather than spread apart across the entire screen. I think it might be cool to make the hotbar look damaged if your health is low, having steam venting from the pipes, sparks flying and fire coming out of torn open spots, and even to make it look like glass is cracked and health is leaking out. I added some knobs and will have a few more things like that in the future as well. They just add a bit more texture to it, rather than having a flat color.

Next, I need to make a spot for the ammo counter on the right, and I need to think of a place to put the clock. I already have the cutout for the health bar, I just haven't moved the health bar itself yet.I need something on the bottom to look like it is holding up the health bar as well, I think that would look better. Tomorrow I will find a place for the ammo and clock, and I will try to add some more visual details. If I can't think of what  I want to do to it, Ill position the health bar correctly inside of the cutout I made for it. This is coming along well.

Day 63: Problem Solving

Today was a bit of an interesting day. Let me explain:

Over the holiday, a security update for windows 10 was released. This update was automatically installed of course. However, this update caused some issues to arise. With a few programs, namely Skype and GameMaker (and probably a few else) there was an "external exception 80000003" error that occurred upon the startup of these programs. This resulted in them crashing repeatedly and being unable to load. A fresh installation didn't fix it, and at the time I had no idea what was wrong.

After searching for a little bit, I found on the YoYoGames forums, that others were having the same problem, and it was revealed to me that it was the update that caused this. The directions one person posted were basically as follows:

>Boot into Safe Mode
>Go to Control Panel>Programs>Uninstall a Program
>Click view installed updates
>In windows updates, look for KB3132372
>Uninstall and restart the computer

That was the solution for me, and GameMaker ran just fine after that. Soon after, it was discovered that Justin was having the same problem, so I went to fix it. I messed up trying to boot into safe mode, but that wasn't 100% necessary anyways, just extra cautious. (I hit update and restart instead of normal restart, so booting into safe mode kind of failed). The problem was, the security update wasn't there, but I was still getting the "80000003" exception. After alot of error, and installing a different launcher for game maker, I checked the updates again, and thankfully it was there. One uninstall and restart later, everything is back to normal. Tomorrow I will be doing some work in GameMaker, probably on my GUI stuff. I don't know exactly what I was working on before the break, so Ill get back into that tomorrow.