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[Kamani]

I like the idea of being able to do anything myself.

[IndigoFenix]

I like the idea of being able to do anything myself.

Me too.

I'm building BW as the level design tool I would have enjoyed when I was a kid - easy enough to spit out a quick dungeon, but with enough flexibility to pretty much build your own game.  Striking a balance is tough, but I have some plans, mostly revolving around unlockable features (start out with basic tools and preset objects, then unlock deeper-level modification tools later).

As for the baseline playstyle, I'd say Zelda is a good example of what I'm going for.  It is also a good example of how changing the average enemy can change the feel of the game, or an area within the game, while leaving the player controls unchanged - some enemies can swarm you and die in one or two hits, others (usually minibosses) require you to play defensively and wait for the right moment to strike.  Dark Souls uses the latter type as its basic mook, while Super Mario is composed almost entirely of the first.  Any game with a level creator and availability of both enemy types will produce examples of either kind of game, or a mix.

This is a nice post detailing different "feels" for fighting systems, which I made use of while designing the combat system.  I want it to be possible to make worlds that occupy all parts of the spectrum.

Transformations could be an issue as far as making every world feel like a different game, but I hope to make the player character's controls robust enough that most world builders won't feel the need to bother with it, or make a handful of default transformations that will be available to all players, making the game more coherent.  Unique transformations could be fun occasional diversions, sort of the way they were used in Banjo-Kazooie.

A chargeable basic attack could increase the potential application of the default avatar - you can hack and slash through weak enemies, but stronger enemies might have heavy armor and will shrug off non-charged attacks, forcing you to plan ahead more while fighting them.

[Retropunch]

I really do get and agree with what you're trying to do - freedom of design is great. The problem is that the player is going through loads of different worlds, and you need to insert some coherence or it'll just be a mess. This isn't about stopping designers making the world they want to design and telling the story they want to tell, it's about allowing the player to actually have a fun challenge and be able to enjoy these worlds in some coherent fashion.

To use the Dark Souls vs Mario example, they're two different types of games with two different enemy types, and whilst they both work equally well, they wouldn't work if you combined them with the player abilities staying the same. It'd be like making all DS enemies do just one basic attack (you'd be able to floor all of them), or have all of the Mario goons do 12 different timed attacks which kill you in one hit (it'd be incredibly difficult).

As another problem, lets say my attack takes 3 seconds to charge, and I go to world X where creatures rush me in 2 seconds, I can't possibly win. Say I now have a character that does an instant attack, if I go to world Y and the creatures there have a 4 second charge up, I'll win without issue.

Without putting in some sort of structure, you'll end up with the player never getting an enjoyable challenge - it'll always be that the combat is too hard or too easy depending on how the designer has created it.

[Kamani]

Based on my understanding:

On the Dark Souls vs. Mario thing: you make the enemies. If you make them do one hit kills, you can give them one attack. If you make them deal normal damage, then you can give them many attacks.

On the Charge Attacks thing: it seemed like you could charge your attack or not charge your attack. Against one enemy with lots of life, you could charge attack to do more damage. Against lots of little enemies, you could not charge to do faster damage.

Note that this is just my understanding of what has been said.

[Retropunch]

Based on my understanding:

On the Dark Souls vs. Mario thing: you make the enemies. If you make them do one hit kills, you can give them one attack. If you make them deal normal damage, then you can give them many attacks.

On the Charge Attacks thing: it seemed like you could charge your attack or not charge your attack. Against one enemy with lots of life, you could charge attack to do more damage. Against lots of little enemies, you could not charge to do faster damage.

Note that this is just my understanding of what has been said.

That's fine if that's the combat system, but there does need to be a system in place.

[IndigoFenix]

Based on my understanding:

On the Dark Souls vs. Mario thing: you make the enemies. If you make them do one hit kills, you can give them one attack. If you make them deal normal damage, then you can give them many attacks.

On the Charge Attacks thing: it seemed like you could charge your attack or not charge your attack. Against one enemy with lots of life, you could charge attack to do more damage. Against lots of little enemies, you could not charge to do faster damage.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I was going for.  I've added an experimental version, although since spiders are the only enemies right now in the demo arena it's hard to see the multiple uses.

I've added the ability to make individual sprites that inherit certain attributes from their class while leaving other attributes modifiable.  The green checkbox on the class builder indicates that individual sprites of that class can have adjusted values.

Mostly this is for the sake of convenience when making multiple similar one-use sprites; you don't have to give them each their own class. However, it is also an important bit for the future of the world builder: instead of dumping all the options on the player's head at once, they will unlock ready-made objects with certain attributes that can be modified.  (For example, signs will be a default object and the builder will be able to add custom text to the signs.)  This will make it easier to understand what all of the options actually do.  Only later will they be given the ability to create fully-custom sprite classes.

I've also done some experimenting with status effects.  This is not a built in feature yet, but it is possible to make a hitbox that runs a function on collision with a target, a function that creates an "effect" sprite and stores a reference to the target inside it, and make the object apply an effect to the target when updating.  Spiders have poison now.

[IndigoFenix]

Hey!  I haven't updated this post in a while, but I have been gradually adding new features to BoundWorlds.

In addition to physics-related features like projectiles, dashes, knockback, and more, I've decided to add a radical addition to the entire system in the form of exporting and importing packages of objects.

Importing is not yet ready, but basically the idea is that you can export collections of objects that go together (for instance, enemies and their bullets) as a file, which other players can then import into their own worlds.  Moreover, imported packages may optionally remain "attached" to their original owner and will automatically be updated when the owner of the file updates them.  In addition to allowing you to spread your creations around and/or make use of publicly available objects, this system can also allow you to leave "messages" in other player's worlds using imported objects as a proxy.

As the potential for trolling or otherwise messing with other players' worlds after they include your objects is substantial, I'm going to add optional "sandbox restrictions" that limit the permissions of imported objects.

The same system will also be utilized in the "game" aspect of BoundWorlds; new players will be able to unlock "official" objects in order to ease them into the world building system before they are allowed access to actually create their own objects or import those from other players.

[Kamani]

Neat! 

[Daren Kazzarch]

Fun fact 1: You can't deleat an oject if it has no hitbox to hit.
Fun fact 2: New objects have a default hitbox size of 0.
Took me a while to figure that one out.
Nice work, i especialy like that i can upload my resources directly in the game. A bit troublesome (for those who draw thier graphics on the fly) is that if you uplaod the modified image under the same name as the old one, you have to reload the cache (i think thats how it is written?) to make the changes visible.

How can i force my 64*64 door to stay betwen tilles? Sometimes, when i adjustet its location manualy in the editor, from its initial placement, it seemed to stick alright. But then i would go on with other edits and in the next test run the door is dissing me again .

Also becouse i feel like i don't mention it enough: I realy like what you have going here and appreciate that you kept working on it even thought the feedback stopped for months.

[IndigoFenix]

I've been watching you work and have been fixing new problems as you have been encountering them   Graphic offset is a little bit funny, and automatically aligning to tiles can cause some issues I suppose.  I made the auto-alignment optional to fix that issue.  Also added a fudge factor for clicking on tiny (or hitboxless) objects.

The browser cache is an issue I have encountered before, I'll have to work out some way of dealing with that.

[Daren Kazzarch]

I am out of my depth on this one. On one hand, what you did certainly improved the rate at which the door sticks where it should. On the other there are still cases where the door decides that it wants to sit on the grid no mater how often i asign it to the proper location. There are only two ways to circumvent it which i found. Delete the door and place it again, then it begins to stick to its place again until whatever hapens that makes it snap to the grid. Which is all wiered and inconsistent, i got it to trigger by changing the object name, changing the objects script and removing one of the object instances, but i have also done all that without triggering it.
The other way to make a grid door stick to the coordinates it's asinged to, is to add another door to the scene. That's the only thing about this wierednes that seems consisten.
My current siuation: The upper door is one that wants to snap to the grid. Then i added the lower one and both stay where they should, but the moment i deleat the lower one, the upper one starts snapping to the grid when i enter the room.
I hope you have an idea whats going on, because i sure don't.

[IndigoFenix]

That shouldn't be necessary...Did you remember to reload the page?

I tried fiddling with your data and was able to get it to stick simply by removing all existing copies of the door and then adding a new one in the proper position.

EDIT: Also, setting the graphics to autocenter may help.

You can adjust individual objects more precisely by clicking on them when no class or tileset is selected.

[Daren Kazzarch]

But I have already been doing that. Remove all the doors, place a new one, adjust the coordinates, so it alings properly with the tilles, test it, the door sticks, go do other edits. I may have not described it properly, but since your change the door allways sticks in the editor. It is after whatever triggers, that when i enter the room, the door snaps to the grid and when i get back in the editor it's coordinates are set to the grid position.
Autocenter didn't help, but while making random edits, to see if it would trigger again, i foud out what the green sqares are for.

Unreleated, could you add the funcionality of the "z" key to the "y" key? I have a qwertz keyboard.

[IndigoFenix]

Ok, I'll see if I can work out the alignment issue later.
I guess the best solution for the keys would be to make them customizable, but that will have to wait a bit.

[Asgarus]

I have a room and a global tileset and object (just default graphics, nothing wild). I can set a background for the room and also see it, but I can not place any tiles or objects. If I left click after selecting a tile from the set, nothing happens.
Is there some secret mechanic I'm not aware of?^^


EDIT: Whatever you changed fixed my placement problems

EDIT2: One thing I noticed is that if you change the name of an object from inside a room, its name in the global list (in the window where you have objects and rooms listed) doesn't refresh.