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[chaoticag]

I have a one year old copy of gamemaker on my laptop, and it took me this long to decide to make a completely original game using it.

So here I run into my first problem:
I am really bad at spriting and I'd hate to recycle someone elses sprites without their permission (not to mention that so far that I know, this will be a somewhat new-ish concept, so any sprites I get will probably be out of place). They don't need to be animated at all, since it will be a 4x top down game.

So if you can help me out, that would be great.

This is what I will need to get a playable version out as soon as possible:

Spoiler: sprites (preferibly 32x32 pixels) (click to show/hide)

Zombies, in various group sizes.
 -single
 -crowd
 -hoard

People
 -worker

Army, in various sizes
 -Lone ranger
 -squadron
 -battalion

Various buildings of your choice, in post-apocalypse fashion. (As 32x32 pixel tiles, can be multiple tiles)
Roads.
Parkland/outskirts.

In case anyone wants to know what the plans are:

Spoiler: Short term (click to show/hide)

-Get zombies vs humans done
-give humans multiple unit types (long range, medium and short)
-ability to clean out buildings
-One pre-generated map
-One resource (human)

Spoiler: Long term (click to show/hide)

-Iron out bugs
-Make game winnable

-randomly generated map (priority)
-Buildible fortifications (Priority)
-Buildible buildings (Priority)
-Random events (Priority)
-More human factions (Priority)
-Equipment (Priority)
-Resources (Priority)

-More variety of above, before adding new stuff in, plus bug fixes.

-Ability to hold buildings.
-Special buildings have assosciated bonuses.
-Unique  buildings.
-Add in researching tree.

-Bug fix and variety.

-Weapons get noisy here, and other stuff I need to think about.

I have no idea how long I'll be able to get this done, or even how to get this done, but the plan is to get a playable version within the end of this month and the end of the next. I hope you guys will enjoy it.

[Enzo]

Friendly advice : spriting is not your first problem. You can always use placeholders until you have something playable. Also, you should probably mention what size the sprites should be.

[chaoticag]

Friendly advice : spriting is not your first problem. You can always use placeholders until you have something playable. Also, you should probably mention what size the sprites should be.

I knew I was forgetting something, thanks for the feedback. I've tried to get together place holders, which for me generally was more time consuming than I would have liked it to be. Plus, I'm something of a perfectionist, and I spent too much time trying to sprite the letter Z for a placeholder because "it looked a little off". I never was much of an artist...

I do have some stuff that I'm doing on my own though.

[Boksi]

Eh. I might try to do it. Not today, though. But I have a few days until school starts, so...

[chaoticag]

Eh. I might try to do it. Not today, though. But I have a few days until school starts, so...

Thanks!

[Derakon]

Just use the placeholders. No sense spending lots of time on art if your project runs into difficulties after a month, as so many do.

That said, I wish you luck.

[Sensei]

Mkay, do the same thing 3D graphics placeholders do- they make a 'kork' (think cube meets trapazoid, or a steep pyramid with the top cut off) to occupy space as a marker and apply scripts to. The shape is generally conducive to identifying its angle etc, since  it looks different when you rotate it. Traditionally, it's small side down. Just do one and change the colors for more sprites as you go along, will take you seconds in paint.

THEN when the game is mostly done and you have the designs ironed out, you can do the sprites- suppose you have some cause to add or remove units before you're done. Remember, being recognizably a game is actually the last thing on your list. Figure out how it's going to work first.

At that point, sure I'd draw some crap if I have time.

[Boksi]

Heh, I was left with nothing to do for a while so I whipped up some placeholders for you in MS Pain.



Zombies and 'umies and workers and buildings, oh my!

[Jakkarra]

i MIGHT do this for you tommorrow, unless someone else does it, or my attempts look crappy.

[chaoticag]

Heh, I was left with nothing to do for a while so I whipped up some placeholders for you in MS Pain.



Zombies and 'umies and workers and buildings, oh my!

I'll work on those right away.

[chaoticag]

Okay... it doesn't seem that game maker lite can split up those sprites automatically, so today was mostly finding out how to do the impossible, failing, splitting up the sprites, failing (damn you jpeg!), sulking followed by actually splitting up the sprites.

In all honesty, now that I know better how to split those sprites, it would take me a few minutes to do so, but the darned sprite option was awfully confusing on a lot of levels when dealing with anything with multiple sprites on it.

Tommorow, I'll hopefully have humans moving about and having them selectable.

[Sensei]

Instead of using a spritesheet, split each sprite into its own picture.
Just use MS Paint to move/crop each one separately, reloading the entire sheet each time.

[chaoticag]

Instead of using a spritesheet, split each sprite into its own picture.
Just use MS Paint to move/crop each one separately, reloading the entire sheet each time.

I did that, but saved the results as jpeg instead of png. I went back and fixed that.

In other news, development has come to a stop today due to a family tragedy. I'm getting back on it now, and will hopefull get what was planned today done tommorow.

[Boksi]

If you succeed in making a functioning movement engine I'll be convinced to do proper sprites for you.

[chaoticag]

Okay, so far I've gotten the game to give you selectable units, provided that you click on the 1-pixel wide rendition of a human, and that human is in a group no larger than one. I'll do the same to the other units tommorow, then make sure that clicking units haphazardly does not cause your army to either grow or shrink. Once that is done, I should get them walking around as long as nothing is in their way.