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[Aqizzar]

Aqizzar. You do know all sonic fangames are cursed to be bad right?

And I'm determined to break the rule.  Or the record for baditude instead.  One or the other will be broken.  Point is, I already have a concept, and I may be able to break the Sonic fangame curse by ripping off the almost-not-a-Sonic-game-at-all game Tails' Adventure.  And Hero Core and Notrium.  I'm probably waaay overthinking this.

Alternatively, I could take Cthulhu's method and use the Video Game Name Generator for ideas.  It eventually hit on Cyber Skate Marines, which sounds like a hybrid of Jet Set Radio and Bionic Commando, which would be cool.  Better than Furry Surgery on the High Seas.

So anyway, hey Cthulhu, how's the game coming?

[Cthulhu]

I'm compiling a color-coded list of things to do.  The player can move, change face, take damage, and heal damage.  That's it.

EDIT:  Oh, and he can die.

On movement:  Should pressing a movement key change his facing and then move him, or should it always move him?  Changing his facing would allow you to face a monster without running into it, but it's kind of annoying to press the key twice when you want to start moving in a different direction.

[SolarShado]

I'm pretty sure Spelunky was made with GameMaker as well.

I gave up on game maker when I couldn't get a basic platformer engine working... couldn't get the right combination of forces/effects/whatever to get gravity to work... character always ended up either flying into space or falling through the ground...

Best of luck to both of you!

[Aqizzar]

On movement:  Should pressing a movement key change his facing and then move him, or should it always move him?  Changing his facing would allow you to face a monster without running into it, but it's kind of annoying to press the key twice when you want to start moving in a different direction.

Going by your Zelda foundation, if the game's floormap is relatively freeform, like Link to the Past, then having the character immediately move is fine if you can just tap the button and move a little.  If it's grid-based like an NES game, I would suggest that pressing the button immediately moves, but an alternate button would do just the facing-change; i.e. arrows to move, but if you hold down Shift, you just change facing.  All the same finesse without the double-pressing all the time.

[Hugehead]

Furry Surgery on the High Seas

Little critters on a pirate ship doing surgery.

On movement:  Should pressing a movement key change his facing and then move him, or should it always move him?  Changing his facing would allow you to face a monster without running into it, but it's kind of annoying to press the key twice when you want to start moving in a different direction.

Going by your Zelda foundation, if the game's floormap is relatively freeform, like Link to the Past, then having the character immediately move is fine if you can just tap the button and move a little.  If it's grid-based like an NES game, I would suggest that pressing the button immediately moves, but an alternate button would do just the facing-change; i.e. arrows to move, but if you hold down Shift, you just change facing.  All the same finesse without the double-pressing all the time.

^ Good idea.

[Boksi]

Dammit, now I'm going to go ahead with realizing the vague idea of a DF-themed platformed I've been rolling around in my head.

If anyone needs it, I might do sprite work. They're not the most amazing, but they're pretty good all the same.

EDIT: Been checking out the VGNG for inspiration and possible names, and Throbbing Plunger Lord is neither.

[Retro]

I totally encourage the Zelda freeform movement; I've always found it much more freeing than tile-based. And yeah, Aqizzar's got the good suggestions there.

Music-wise, if you decide not to do it yourself I can absolutely help out in that field.

[Cthulhu]

Alright, I'll see about making the movement freeform.

I'll be putting up the color-coded design checklist shortly.  It doesn't contain any spoilers or anything.

Apparently forumcode doesn't support colorized lists.  I'll figure out another way to post the design document later.

[Aqizzar]

Post the list with no colorization, and add color tags where appropriate?

Anyway, I now have Game Maker 7, which is not the newest version.  If I have any kind of success, I'll bother upgrading to version 8.  I'm also remembering from the last time I did this that I hated the official tutorials, because I remember not being able to complete them.

Rather, I'm distracted by a hilarious LP thread, about abusing the crap out of glitches in the original Pokemons.  Apparently, some guy out there figured out the science behind the glitches so well, that he was able to turn the item-menu and pokemon-selection memory leak bugs into a half-way controllable hex editor.  The idea was pitched of a game based entirely on exploiting its own shoddy programming and memory problems.  Game Maker is probably not a good platform for such a thing, but the idea is interesting.

[Cthulhu]

That's what I did, the color tags don't work in the list though.

[dragnar]

Aqizzar. You do know all sonic fangames are cursed to be bad right?

It's been far too long since a good Sonic game has been released...

Game Maker is a good program to start with, mainly because it REALLY helps with keeping yourself organized. It's scripting engine is pretty versatile too once you get the hang of it.

[SolarShado]

That's what I did, the color tags don't work in the list though.

Quote one of Toady's posts?

[Cthulhu]

I dunno, I'll probably just end up making a freewebs or something for it later.

[Chutney]

I try to pass this on to every would-be Zelda game programmer I can, not only because I find it very interesting as a programmer, but also because it is really freakin' genius:
http://troygilbert.com/2006/10/the-movement-and-attack-mechanics-of-the-legend-of-zelda/

Good luck, Cthulhu (and Aqizzar), I will be watching your progresses with interest.

ps I got it

• seems to be working
• pretty good
• for me??

pps: i also offer my help as an intermediate game maker user but nigh professional programmer (looking through helpfiles on the scripting language, I look like I could do some cool stuff with it)

[dragnar]

I try to pass this on to every would-be Zelda game programmer I can, not only because I find it very interesting as a programmer, but also because it is really freakin' genius:
http://troygilbert.com/2006/10/the-movement-and-attack-mechanics-of-the-legend-of-zelda/

Huh, I never noticed the ZoL games did that. Which of course means they were doing their job well. That stuff would never have occurred to me to add.