Castlevania Dungeon Forums
The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => Fan Stuff => Topic started by: Corpsecrank on February 21, 2012, 01:41:48 PM
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I don't like to say I am doing this or doing that. We have all seen plenty of games that show potential just vanish into thin air for whatever reason. Right now I am dedicating all my time to working on this game but that doesn't mean I will actually finish it. I may hit a point where I just lack the skill it takes to make this happen so I want to make that clear before anyone gets to excited. I am however pretty into making this and having fun doing it rather than it being work. So on that note as long as I don't hit some kind of snag this will eventually see the light of day.
Even if I do hit a snag what you see today will become readily available to the community so that someone else can use the materials I have created for their own projects be it a game or animation or whatever.
Even if I do make it through this project I will probably release some of my materials for others to use as well.
I want to apologize in advance for the $10 mic I am stuck using for this :'( but without further delay check out the vid.
http://youtu.be/bk2g9skEZZk (http://youtu.be/bk2g9skEZZk) (yeah I have no idea how to embed none of the embed code I tried worked)
I'm not looking for any help on this one but if you happen to know MMF2 and you feel like being generous hit me up because that is the area I have the most limitation in at the moment. I know graphics as you can see but MMF2 I am learning as I go :P
I will probably do a couple of videos here and there as I make progress just so you can check out what I have. I still have to come up with a snappy name for this one and eventually when I have a name and have made real progress I will start up a blog for the project.
When I get something playable I will make that available as well but I am still a ways off from having anything yet. Believe me I am dying to get in the game and moving around with a character though lol.
Let me know what you think.
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I wish you luck. it seems promising.
and yeah that's something you heard like 1000 times.
so good luck with that.
I am looking forward for an update.
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From what I've seen, the HUD needs to be a lot bigger if you're going to keep that big-ass resolution.
Also, seeing as you plan to put Richter in as an unlockable character, are you going to try and edit your own SotN Richter? If not, you could always use Serio's Richter as that's the only one that I think is readily available to this day. Or if you're planning to use RoB Richter anyway, how about using the portrait from HD instead? Unless you're planning to do your own character portraits or recruit someone else for that.
...Yeah, I kinda didn't catch a lot of your explanations, what with the cheap mic not recording it loud enough and all, plus the fact that I was watching it on my smartphone certainly didn't help things. :-X
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Looks interesting I noticed that you imputed Nathans' shoulder attack on Richter. I did the same too with my Cristy Morris sprites (I based her off Richter too). And even if this game never sees the light of day, don't lose heart. Just do what you can and show us how far you've gotten. That about all anyone can ever ask of you ;)
PS: I'm also not a fan of the off-colors in Richter's outfit as they do scream 'limited palette'. I had mad a Richter sprite sheet where I went over it and fixed it up a bit. Richter now has his brown hair. He now has the red outline on his outfit rather then the grey-white look. And i also gave his whip-hand the brown leather glove while his other hand (that is to say wrist) is sporting the white bandage wrap. I also mirrored the sprite to keep certain things consistent in that regard.
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Just to answer a few things quickly yes I am going to edit the sotn richter which is the page you saw in progress.
The HUD size to me is great because I want that huge screen and to keep it un cluttered so as long as you can easily see the HUD without struggling to read it then that should work. Though I have considered extending the bars out a little but currently 1% health loss would result in a 2 pixel decrease in the bar which is easy enough to see.
And also yes I did use the nathan shoulder tackle it was to cool so it got added :)
What I figured was that I would first create a small area where you would normally start the game and then add richter so I can make a functioning character and start working on movement etc. That would give me enough things in the game to start making the game actually playable and a platform for testing materials as they get finished. Then I could start moving the project forward in the proper order. Create the next area some monsters for that area etc and still have a playable character to test which as I build the main character sprites which will for the most part be completely original.
Once I do have enough things in and functioning I will also have an idea how well MMF2 is going to work for this. I keep having my doubts as to how capable MMF2 is mostly with how tight and accurate I will be able to make the character movement. It has to be sotn quality controls or better for me to be ok with it.
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Well, you are at the right start. My suggestion is to try to be original as possible or putting new spins on existing gameplay mechanics. I already hear people suggesting using "Serio's Richter" and things like that which is fine, but in my opinion kinda played out. I sometimes get alot of "fan boys" that are just all about other people's fan-games but don't take the time to let you come up with some originality of your own. I am liking your design choices so far when it comes to the HUD. I would suggest you start to making your sprites in MMF2 and using photoshop secondary. (It'll save you from having to import everything from photoshop into MMF2 later.) Are you ripping all the sprites yourself, just wondering because there are ALOT of sprites already available on the net. (Save yourself some work) Now if you are trying to add onto some existing Richter sprites then that's one thing. Don't be discourage if people don't jump at the opportunity to help you out with your project at first (or at all). Sometime's that thing is kinda tricky even if it's an awesome project. I've had people come and go (which is cool) and I am appreciated to everyone that's contributed to my project in someway rather it be spriting or otherwise. You also got to remember that it's your vision and you have to share that when working with other people and sometimes everyone wants to push their vision's on to yours. For my project it's just me and one other person who's been with me ever since and we met online about my project when it was in it's infancy. He was also the one to finally get me to change over to MMF2 even though he was a novice with MMF2 himself. Now I am happy to say we have got a grasp on things, we don't know everything but we are getting the results we are looking for. Just some things to think about. Definetely check those tutorials I sent you in that PM link. As you know the MFA provided in them help you ALOT in figuring things out! As for MMF2, not too many people use it on this forum, ClickTeam Forums is the way to go. It's seems to be more GameMaker orientated here, but that's not to say people can't help here. I've gotten some cool things accomplished from the members of the Dungeon Forums as well! Oh yeah, open your youtube vids to comments dude, good or bad... no news is not good news..
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Well, you are at the right start. My suggestion is to try to be original as possible or putting new spins on existing gameplay mechanics. I already hear people suggesting using "Serio's Richter" and things like that which is fine, but in my opinion kinda played out. I sometimes get alot of "fan boys" that are just all about other people's fan-games but don't take the time to let you come up with some originality of your own. I am liking your design choices so far when it comes to the HUD. I would suggest you start to making your sprites in MMF2 and using photoshop secondary. (It'll save you from having to import everything from photoshop into MMF2 later.) Are you ripping all the sprites yourself, just wondering because there are ALOT of sprites already available on the net. (Save yourself some work) Now if you are trying to add onto some existing Richter sprites then that's one thing. Don't be discourage if people don't jump at the opportunity to help you out with your project at first (or at all). Sometime's that thing is kinda tricky even if it's an awesome project. I've had people come and go (which is cool) and I am appreciated to everyone that's contributed to my project in someway rather it be spriting or otherwise. You also got to remember that it's your vision and you have to share that when working with other people and sometimes everyone wants to push their vision's on to yours. For my project it's just me and one other person who's been with me ever since and we met online about my project when it was in it's infancy. He was also the one to finally get me to change over to MMF2 even though he was a novice with MMF2 himself. Now I am happy to say we have got a grasp on things, we don't know everything but we are getting the results we are looking for. Just some things to think about. Definetely check those tutorials I sent you in that PM link. As you know the MFA provided in them help you ALOT in figuring things out! As for MMF2, not too many people use it on this forum, ClickTeam Forums is the way to go. It's seems to be more GameMaker orientated here, but that's not to say people can't help here. I've gotten some cool things accomplished from the members of the Dungeon Forums as well! Oh yeah, open your youtube vids to comments dude, good or bad... no news is not good news..
Yeah those tutorials have been a great help. I got a copy of extension view also which is totally sweet for grabbing any extensions you need for MMF2 really fast and easy from your desktop. I found it a necessity for this project really.
Still deciding how to handle steps though. I don't want the classic style stair movement I want that to be a smooth experience so I find myself going back and playing parts of the DS games to get a handle on how things should feel. I will be going back and fourth as I get movement added. It's a challenge just keeping different aspects of this inline. I have to keep checking and comparing the art to make sure the style doesn't start to stray on me. I also want to really perfect the controls that is one of the highest priority items on my list.
I have quite a few original ideas going into this and the characters I don't feel like changing very much They will change but they will look about the same just with a lot more frames. Though there will be at least one original character in the game I feel there should be anyways so I plan to do the primary character myself. I have an enormous collection of castlevania sprites and other sprites also some are edits made by me some are customs created by other people and most are ripped directly some by me. I have a lot of other material to pull from also I do a lot of stuff and most recently I was making animations so I been building a decent resource library over the last couple years.
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Yeah those tutorials have been a great help. I got a copy of extension view also which is totally sweet for grabbing any extensions you need for MMF2 really fast and easy from your desktop. I found it a necessity for this project really.
Still deciding how to handle steps though. I don't want the classic style stair movement I want that to be a smooth experience so I find myself going back and playing parts of the DS games to get a handle on how things should feel. I will be going back and fourth as I get movement added. It's a challenge just keeping different aspects of this inline. I have to keep checking and comparing the art to make sure the style doesn't start to stray on me. I also want to really perfect the controls that is one of the highest priority items on my list.
I have quite a few original ideas going into this and the characters I don't feel like changing very much They will change but they will look about the same just with a lot more frames. Though there will be at least one original character in the game I feel there should be anyways so I plan to do the primary character myself. I have an enormous collection of castlevania sprites and other sprites also some are edits made by me some are customs created by other people and most are ripped directly some by me. I have a lot of other material to pull from also I do a lot of stuff and most recently I was making animations so I been building a decent resource library over the last couple years.
Cool man! Make a dropbox account or something equal to as well and throw copies of everything you do in there, you never know when you will have a hdd crash and lose everything! (you can only recover so much) Did you get me when I mentioned, make everything in MMF2? That way you can start moving stuff in real time and trying things out in real-time. Use photoshop to fine tune your sprites. You already have enough sprites of Richter to cut for basic walking and such to try out in MMF2 with your stage even though you mentioned he won't be the main character. I use extension view as well man! Good find there! Also, just a suggestion you should look outside Castlevania to find some cool sprites as well. I've found plenty of sprites from other games that fit right in my fan-game and you couldn't tell the difference that it was not from a CV title! Can you provide plot details? As for the steps, we threw the classic CV steps out in my fangame when we went with the somersault. When was the last time you remembered actually walking up and down steps when playing SOTN. You have so many abilities with Alucard and Richter it makes actual walking up/down steps kinda old school. You opened your CV youtube vids to comments....? For embedding video for the dungeon forum just copy the actual youtube link on the thread not the embedded code. For everything else that you want to actually upload you can use tinypic.com (video option) as well as any other options like that.
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Still deciding how to handle steps though. I don't want the classic style stair movement I want that to be a smooth experience so I find myself going back and playing parts of the DS games to get a handle on how things should feel.
The DS games don't treat steps as steps, but like ramps.
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Yeah I just want to figure out a good way to handle how feet are placed while on them. I don't want one foot to float.
Cool man! Make a dropbox account or something equal to as well and throw copies of everything you do in there, you never know when you will have a hdd crash and lose everything! (you can only recover so much) Did you get me when I mentioned, make everything in MMF2? That way you can start moving stuff in real time and trying things out in real-time. Use photoshop to fine tune your sprites. You already have enough sprites of Richter to cut for basic walking and such to try out in MMF2 with your stage even though you mentioned he won't be the main character. I use extension view as well man! Good find there! Also, just a suggestion you should look outside Castlevania to find some cool sprites as well. I've found plenty of sprites from other games that fit right in my fan-game and you couldn't tell the difference that it was not from a CV title! Can you provide plot details? As for the steps, we threw the classic CV steps out in my fangame when we went with the somersault. When was the last time you remembered actually walking up and down steps when playing SOTN. You have so many abilities with Alucard and Richter it makes actual walking up/down steps kinda old school. You opened your CV youtube vids to comments....? For embedding video for the dungeon forum just copy the actual youtube link on the thread not the embedded code. For everything else that you want to actually upload you can use tinypic.com (video option) as well as any other options like that.
Yeah I do have enough richter stuff to start I had planned on doing just that actually. I was simply trying to build an initial background for testing so I could drop it in and add some of the richter frames that are ready. I was looking for other games with similar graphics to castlevania but so far not much other than some of those HUD materials. I think one of the games I used stuff from was even for mobile phone but it looked just like the other stuff I had. Also no there shouldn't be any comments on my youtube I turn them off.
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Hey, Corpsecrank. Just an idea, but you have my full permission to add Sophia Belmont as an unlockabkle character if you so wish. :)
After all, why not share characters when the sheets are complete and technically public use, no? ;D
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Yeah I just want to figure out a good way to handle how feet are placed while on them. I don't want one foot to float.
Yeah I do have enough richter stuff to start I had planned on doing just that actually. I was simply trying to build an initial background for testing so I could drop it in and add some of the richter frames that are ready. I was looking for other games with similar graphics to castlevania but so far not much other than some of those HUD materials. I think one of the games I used stuff from was even for mobile phone but it looked just like the other stuff I had. Also no there shouldn't be any comments on my youtube I turn them off.
Well, you can also post on the spriting/ripping thread here about other games that are similar to Castlevania and people can provide you with some choices. Let me know when you do your initial testing and make a vid. I make vids pretty much for everything in Alpha and Beta phases for my game. They are especially helpful for when I am stuck on something and I can ask for help and show exactly what the problem is. I'll usually just do a voiceover or something and explain my problem.
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Well, you can also post on the spriting/ripping thread here about other games that are similar to Castlevania and people can provide you with some choices. Let me know when you do your initial testing and make a vid. I make vids pretty much for everything in Alpha and Beta phases for my game. They are especially helpful for when I am stuck on something and I can ask for help and show exactly what the problem is. I'll usually just do a voiceover or something and explain my problem.
Yeah I am making solid progress no doubt. I mean sure it took this long just to make a single screen with music and a button that advances to another screen with music but it sure does do that much well lol.
I had to fight with transparency issues today or I would have probably made it to adding in character frames or something. For some reason no matter how you add transparency to a bitmap button in MMF2 it just doesn't work properly. You always get at least some boxing behind the button no matter what. And I also noticed no matter what layer you add a button to it always stays on top of everything else. I tried cheating and adding a solid black object as an active over top of everything else on it's own layer and then adding a fade out and destroy to it with a timer which would cause the black to fade out after the game launched but the button showed right through it! I was like seriously WTF MAN! lol.
So I ended up using a bouton CS or whatever its called which is just another button someone tweaked. It did handle transparency better but not perfect. I had issues while fading the frame in and out and resolved that by simply destroying the buttons on the menu if any are pushed so they appear after the frame fade in and are destroyed then the frame fades out immediately. It resulted in what I was wanting anyhow. So my menu is in and working and my second screen which is also my test bed is in an working. I need to add a couple of animations one for each screen to be exact. Then after that I can finally add some character frames! Been waiting this whole time just for that LOL.
Anyhow I am almost ready to post another video soon so you will get to see what I have done so far. I also got the new mic in so it won't be so harsh on your ears :)
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I also got the new mic in so it won't be so harsh on your ears :)
Harsh on our ears? If anything, it was too fragging muffled and quiet to me. :P
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Harsh on our ears? If anything, it was too fragging muffled and quiet to me. :P
Yeah but the quality was horrid either way and was enough to make ears bleed lol. If you turned it up it was nasty. This mic is also quiet not sure whats up with that because I have the options all cranked up to 100 with the boost on. I will have to play with this mic and see what I can do to amp it up some since the quality is nice on it.
This video is not the greatest I just tossed it together so you could actually see what I have. Not much but hey I just started this lol. As you can see the music cannot be turned off with the menu for whatever reason just one more thing to look at when I go back to work in a minute here. So the music drowns out my voice but I had nothing important to say other than just that so your not missing much.
Project Update 2-26-2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG-lPhR4OpM#ws)
Once I get a character in I will post another video. I spent a couple hours adding some of the materials I had in the first video to my library in MMF2 tonight so I can now simply snatch them from there and drop them right into the app :) I still have more stuff that has to make it's way into the library though. I want to chop up some background for the rooms those doors lead to also so I can move about the area a little while I test the character. And like I said both screens lack one animation each yet. So I have a lot of work ahead of me before I am ready to do another video.
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I say, that is one well-built house, I tell you hwhat.
This seems really nice.
As for Richter, I'd like if someone could go for the RoB accurate styled Richter (like X described) or DXC Richter for once. It'd be cool to see some nice edits of those outfits once in a while. Or even a whole new outfit.
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I say, that is one well-built house, I tell you hwhat.
This seems really nice.
As for Richter, I'd like if someone could go for the RoB accurate styled Richter (like X described) or DXC Richter for once. It'd be cool to see some nice edits of those outfits once in a while. Or even a whole new outfit.
lol yeah damned house. I just yanked the house from ooe and patched it up in spots. I tossed some trees from the background of one of the other games sotn I think and used the same hedge sides ooe used and viola simon's crib was born! It will actually be a lot cooler once there are some rooms behind the doors. The one on the bottom left is going to be the main house interior which is going to have a storage function warp and save as well as a way to listen to the music in the game. The right side door is going to go to the cellar and the top door is a surprise! Gotta wait till the demo is out to see that one.
I actually didn't realize richter had different outfits between rondo and sotn guess I suck as a cv fan :o But I will have to check that out. I always thought it would be bitchin to make a full sheet using the frame from sotn that only gets used one time for a brief dialogue I will attach that one. I like the one and only frame that exists of it anyhow.
Hey, Corpsecrank. Just an idea, but you have my full permission to add Sophia Belmont as an unlockabkle character if you so wish. :)
After all, why not share characters when the sheets are complete and technically public use, no? ;D
I might actually do that. I was trying to come up with useable female characters as possibilities but cv is a sausage fest LOL.
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Yeah I am making solid progress no doubt. I mean sure it took this long just to make a single screen with music and a button that advances to another screen with music but it sure does do that much well lol.
I had to fight with transparency issues today or I would have probably made it to adding in character frames or something. For some reason no matter how you add transparency to a bitmap button in MMF2 it just doesn't work properly. You always get at least some boxing behind the button no matter what. And I also noticed no matter what layer you add a button to it always stays on top of everything else. I tried cheating and adding a solid black object as an active over top of everything else on it's own layer and then adding a fade out and destroy to it with a timer which would cause the black to fade out after the game launched but the button showed right through it! I was like seriously WTF MAN! lol.
So I ended up using a bouton CS or whatever its called which is just another button someone tweaked. It did handle transparency better but not perfect. I had issues while fading the frame in and out and resolved that by simply destroying the buttons on the menu if any are pushed so they appear after the frame fade in and are destroyed then the frame fades out immediately. It resulted in what I was wanting anyhow. So my menu is in and working and my second screen which is also my test bed is in an working. I need to add a couple of animations one for each screen to be exact. Then after that I can finally add some character frames! Been waiting this whole time just for that LOL.
Anyhow I am almost ready to post another video soon so you will get to see what I have done so far. I also got the new mic in so it won't be so harsh on your ears :)
That's weird about the transparency issues. I don't get that problem. Are you using the color picker in MMF2 to hide your transparency when you import your sprites as a active object? I usually use Pink as my background for when adding sprites and then use the picker to make that color transparent. I think MMF2 usually goes for black automatically and you wouldn't want that. (https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi39.tinypic.com%2F2vj4x83.jpg&hash=89bebab2ff1fb53daec06772e307b12d)
The fade deal you figured out is one way of doing the fade to black deal, it's actually part of the way you can make day to night effects in game. Did you try using the effects button and using Fade from the Transitions menu? You still have to use the destroy command but you can make your active object fade in and out at will. (https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi40.tinypic.com%2F29c5o55.jpg&hash=5a90196cb1bcd872c1a21516130a16cd)
Another way to do that is just be simply adding an invisible frame of animation to your animations, like such as for explosions. (So basically a ending frame with nothing in it..) Yet, even another way for invisibility is to use the event editor and under the object you want to make invisible select "visibility."
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi41.tinypic.com%2F2v830iu.jpg&hash=2b3ea34126b867d829520213b9e2229a)
Finally, about your issues with putting your objects on a specific layer. Don't worry about doing it in the frame editor in real-time. That is also done in the "Event Editor." Select your object and choose order:
(https://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi39.tinypic.com%2Fo7rfyt.jpg&hash=cffc17c7aecb365063b18eb21cc7b9b0)
It will even let you decide what specific frame you want the object to appear at through here! I hope I've been helpful. I posted a new vid for my game as well that you could check out:
Vamprotector Stage: 0 Mini Demo Testing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5jGOWwUZOA#)
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Just a suggestion for that stage of Vamprotector, alternate the foreground objects with the background. You have two tombstone/statue types there. Both are in the foreground. Since one of them is breakable, set its depth so it's behind the player so it looks more like he's running through the yard. It will give you a better sense of depth, I think.
ok OP can have his thread back now.
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Just a suggestion for that stage of Vamprotector, alternate the foreground objects with the background. You have two tombstone/statue types there. Both are in the foreground. Since one of them is breakable, set its depth so it's behind the player so it looks more like he's running through the yard. It will give you a better sense of depth, I think.
ok OP can have his thread back now.
Thanks, I'll look at that, you can post on my thread... don't want to hijack someone else's thread.
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haha it's fine this thread isn't exactly a complete deal about my game just a peek at what I have started. I will make a new one once I have a name for my project anyhow. And he makes a great point really. I watched that video last night and it looked alright to me but I think that the idea of moving the stones to different depth might really help set that off better.
I tried all the stuff you mentioned and I chose to use the layer editor for one major reason. It allows me to lock certain layers so I can click on things without grabbing the wrong object. Setting the front to back order had no effect either. It did have transparency the problem is that the transparency was causing weird behavior with objects behind it since they also had transparency. I think it is basically just a bug in MMF2 because changing the button to bouton CS which was built on the original button actually had better results but there were still problems with it. So yeah pretty much just a weird issues in the program and how it handles things.
I had some minor issues with one of the transitions and the text for simon's house also. If I wanted it to start small and zoom to it's normal size which looks wonderful by the way. It would have some white pixels around the edges where the semi-transparent pixels on the text are. I have a smooth edge on that so 1 or 2 pixels deep around the edges are not solid pixels and the transition has issues handling that. So I opted for fade which has no problems and also looks great.
I managed to pop the bad animation in the title last night before going to bed. I am just getting ready to animate the clouds at simon's house and add the doors. I won't add rooms behind them yet. I want to get the doors ready then add richter and see if I can make him move around before I go adding in the other rooms since they will take some time.
Hey speaking of naming this project. I am having a hell of a time coming up with something for that. I keep wanting to do something with a theme involving the passing of time or something. Like something to do with eternal night time. I just can't come up with anything catchy lol. The idea comes from dracula casting darkness over the land and that darkness lasting until he is defeated. So I thought something that played on that could be a great title.
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Some of the my name ideas: "Veil of Shadows"; "Chorus of Shadows"; "Eclipse of Discordance" (The last one is a play off Symphony of the Night)
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Some of the my name ideas: "Veil of Shadows"; "Chorus of Shadows"; "Eclipse of Discordance" (The last one is a play off Symphony of the Night)
Not bad I like the first one a lot actually.
I have to rethink my plans at this point though. I have had enough of MMF2 already. I am done fighting with things that are trivial like making a button and having it actually work the way I want or simply using transparency without problems. Look at the MMF2 boards and hear the cries of a thousand people with transparency issues. Seriously I had my doubts to begin with and I had a feeling that there was no easy way to build a game I was really hoping that MMF2 would be useable but after my experience tonight I am washing my hands of it and finding a reliable way to do this.
The last thing I want to do is get into this project and have hundreds or more hours invested only to hit a "snag" in the software and not be able to make things happen the way I want them to. So far nothing is working the way I want using MMF2 it wants to do whatever it feels like doing at run time. I designate objects to layers and they simply pop around from layer to layer randomly when the application is run and I have to wonder how they market this software watching it happen.
I am already familiar with flash. I could just as easily spend the time I would have learning MMF2 and learn action script instead. I would be worlds ahead since I already am comfortable in the flash environment and I know I wouldn't hit some hangup later on in development. It would also benefit me to learn action script as I could use that while animating also.
I don't really want a flash based game though. That was part of the appeal MMF2 had with me originally and why I gave that a try first. I want a standalone game with more flexibility in areas flash does not handle well. Saving a game using flash is not great for example though it does work.
I may have to find better software or learn to create a game from absolute scratch. I think that is the only way I am going to get the kind of crisp results I am looking for.
Let me just post a video of the layer issues I am having so you can fully understand why I am throwing in the towel with MMF2 and looking elsewhere.
Why I won't Use MMF2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuyuuTWCR5Q#ws)
I don't want to but a game out that is half-assed. There are enough of those already. I want a game that looks and plays solid so to do that i have no choice but to move on and figure out a better way to do this.
I wish I knew what that one guy was using to make Vampire Hunter X that game was actually half decent and could have eventually turned into something solid had it not been given up on.
This is by the way one of the biggest reasons I gave no promise at the start. Until I find a way to do this and not end up with some awful end result anyhow. As soon as I can find a reliable way to build this game I will be able to say I can finish it for sure.
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I'm kinda in the same boat. I mean I'll be trying, but I'm afraid despite the graphics most of it will barely even resemble Nes gameplay I'm afraid. :-\
I mean unless I can get a better program, and one that I can figure out and test fairly easily, I'm afraid to admit I maybe making a bit of a lack luster Castlevania game. Maybe I'll be wrong but I know it won't be as good as any of the past or current CV games.
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I'm kinda in the same boat. I mean I'll be trying, but I'm afraid despite the graphics most of it will barely even resemble Nes gameplay I'm afraid. :-\
I mean unless I can get a better program, and one that I can figure out and test fairly easily, I'm afraid to admit I maybe making a bit of a lack luster Castlevania game. Maybe I'll be wrong but I know it won't be as good as any of the past or current CV games.
That is exactly why I am being more picky about how I build this. It may seem like I barely gave MMF2 a chance before moving on but you have to realize I have a LOT of experience in applications far more complex than MMF2 is. I can use just about every product in the adobe line well and those are not easy to learn. MMF2 is a baby application next to those but I have also learned and used many many other applications just as complex. So it doesn't take me very long to see that MMF2 is just not going to work for me.
I should just continue learning C# and build with that but I know if I code from scratch it will be a long long wait before I have anything solid. I would have to learn enough C# to start building an engine and then build the engine. I would rather save some time in that respect and just use an existing engine capable of doing what I need. I am afraid there might not be anything capable at the moment though. We will see I have to keep looking before I decide what the best option is.
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Double post FTW!
But seriously I did some more homework on 2D engines. I am going to play around with Construct Classic for a bit before getting more serious. I think I am going to use the ORX engine to build my game. No more object based conditional editors. This is an all data driven engine that also allows me to code in things that aren't there I may need. I can fully expand on this engine and use it freely. With access to the source I can do pretty much anything necessary. This engine is efficient and clean and you can make a lot happen with only a couple lines of code. From what I have seen this is going to be the best route. No more limitations or hassles trying to get basic functions to work. I should also be able to get the tight responsive control I am looking for so I will be able to put out a really polished game with it.
Once I get going with this it will be a while before I have much to show. This is going to be a lot of learning and effort but the end result is so going to be worth it.
But if you want simple and there isn't time to learn or you want something I think is superior to MMF2 or Game Maker check out the screen attached. I found that first so I grabbed a copy. There is a better version than this one called Construct 2 but that costs money. The one in the screen I attached is free and pretty capable on it's own.
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Double post FTW!
But seriously I did some more homework on 2D engines. I am going to play around with Construct Classic for a bit before getting more serious. I think I am going to use the ORX engine to build my game. No more object based conditional editors. This is an all data driven engine that also allows me to code in things that aren't there I may need. I can fully expand on this engine and use it freely. With access to the source I can do pretty much anything necessary. This engine is efficient and clean and you can make a lot happen with only a couple lines of code. From what I have seen this is going to be the best route. No more limitations or hassles trying to get basic functions to work. I should also be able to get the tight responsive control I am looking for so I will be able to put out a really polished game with it.
Once I get going with this it will be a while before I have much to show. This is going to be a lot of learning and effort but the end result is so going to be worth it.
But if you want simple and there isn't time to learn or you want something I think is superior to MMF2 or Game Maker check out the screen attached. I found that first so I grabbed a copy. There is a better version than this one called Construct 2 but that costs money. The one in the screen I attached is free and pretty capable on it's own.
Well, that's unfortunate to hear about MMF2. I was just about to suggest you try Construct instead, but you beat me to it. I haven't played with it, but I heard it's basically a free version of MMF2. What build of MMF2 were you using? Were you using a demo or "free" version? I purchased a full version with my student discount and haven't had any issues like that... I can't tell what is causing your issues just be looking at your frame editor and not seeing what is in your event editor. MMF2 is a pretty powerful program. You can look at some examples of games that people have created from the software. But as I mentioned before it has a steep learning curve. If you didn't properly go through that Intro to MMF2 pdf. it's even more of a hassle trying to piece together how to do things from vids and such. I kinda feel that way right now about certain 3D programs. Anyways, it's all about getting the right program you need to accomplish what you want. Before I switched to MMF2 I was using the Beats of Rage engine. Just remember if you are looking for some program that is going to instantly make you a game from scratch, it's NON EXISTENT. Even the supposed "easy ones" require some form of dexterity. Just play around with the many free game design software on the net and find the one that does it for you! I'll look forward from hearing on your progress. Good luck in your future endeavors!
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I had the payed version of multimedia fusion 2 developer. That program is totally bogus if you ask me. I say that only after giving it a fair shot and after seeing competing software like construct. I am actually enjoying what construct can do so much I am thinking about tossing a basic stage based game together in between learning to use ORX. I know exactl what you mean about learning but I don't think the issue for me is learning as much as it is finding ways to deal with general issues in that software. ORX is not the "easy" way out this time. It is all code so I am actually stepping up my game and going the more complicated route since that is probably the only way I can actually get the results I want.
I have to tell you though construct is so much better than MMF2. It has a lot more features and saves you a lot more time as well. The layout is pretty damned sharp also. It actually follows a ribbon layout similar to office which works really well for this type of software.
Since I had construct and I got to see just what it can do I ended up not being able to just toss it aside without actually playing with it lol. So I am going to go with "Veil of Shadows" as my title for a construct built game. I have a feeling I may be able to actually get something accomplished in this application based on what I have seen so far. But hey I won't know till I actually get into it. I just know this application happens to handle graphics a lot better anyhow so there goes several of my issues right there. As long as I don't get any layer jumping and other crazy stuff I might have a simple but decent game when I am done. I won't get to complicated with this I just want to get a good solid handle on how construct works and if it is solid enough to build anything serious with. Construct 2 looks awfully tempting but I still have issues with building HTML5 games. I stayed out of flash so far for the same reasons I want a game that does not rely on other software to function like a browser or the flash player. I want a game that functions on it's own which I am sure many of you can understand.
Anyways I have a solid direction to go in again so on with the project once more! ORX is going to be a real challenge to use but I have dealt with far worse lol. I used to run a game server written mostly in C# I was able to modify the client any which way I wanted and add, remove, change anything I wanted about the server. It took me a while to really get a handle on how all that worked but when I was done I was able to do anything I wanted with that game. This will probably be the same type of experience.
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Just to recap what has happened for anyone new to the subject. This project was started but MMF2 wasn't doing the job. So I decided to change engines before I got to far along. The change has put a hold on this one since I have to learn a lot before continuing. While searching for the engine I settled on for this project which is ORX. I came across a MMF2 style program called Construct Classic. Because that happens to be so good I am working on the short Veil of Shadows project using that before I continue with the project from this thread. The link below takes you to the discussion for VoS and once that comes to a close I will create a new discussion for this project and link it to the end of the VoS discussion. That should make it easier to follow all the progress from one topic to the next.
http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,4621.0.html (http://castlevaniadungeon.net/forums/index.php/topic,4621.0.html)