I'm looking to hear from people who have downloaded either my Pixel Movement library or Sidescroller library. I'd like to know more about your experiences with these libraries. Specifically, I'd like to know:
1. What library you downloaded and what version (I really just care if it was the most recent version or if you checked it out 4 months ago)
2. What you used it for. Did you play around with it for a minute and lose interest? Did you create a project that uses it?
3. If you created a project that uses either of the libraries, for each project:
a. Short description of the game
b. Any relevant links (to blog posts, screenshots, hub entries, etc.)
c. State of the game (finished, in development, abandoned, on hold, etc.)
d. If it's not finished, what's holding you back (especially if what's holding you back is something about the library)
4. If you didn't create a project that uses the library, why not?
You don't have to stick to this format, that's just the kind of stuff I'm looking to hear about.
There are a few reasons why I'd like to have this information:
1. It helps me improve the libraries. If it turns out that half of the people using the library have to implement a common feature, maybe that feature should become part of the library (or at least a demo that's included in the library). I've made a lot of changes and additions to the libraries based on features I thought were useful or necessary, but the way I use the library is different from the way you use the library.
2. I'm hoping to create a sense of community among the people who use these libraries. You might be inspired by something that someone else is doing. Having a community will also give you a place to get help about using it (I have space on my forum for library related stuff, but it's not used frequently). I'd love to get to the point where other people are contributing to the library and are making demos that show new and interesting uses of it, but to build this community we have to start somewhere.
3. I'm curious to see what people have made. I'd like to include on the hub entry of each library a list of projects that have used it.
May 11 2011, 11:22 am
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Albro1
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I downloaded it and tried using my GSD entry(A Pokemon game), but my mob wouldn't move. It was highly likely I wasn't doing something correctly, but at the time I was under some stress and didn't feel like tinkering with it.
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What do I need to do with my .dmf file if I include this? When I include it, the arrow keys stop working.
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1. Sidescroller - One of the first few versions.
2. Pascal's Challenge 3. It was going to be submitted to the Casual Game Competition. The artist, MdNight, fell behind on his college assignments and had to step down from the project. I still have tons of design documents and concept art, just couldn't ever get an artist to hop on board and see the game to completion. Also, I'm broke. One thing I remember specifically about working on it is I hated your jump command. It's too static, not the best thing for a platformer. I ended up making my own "variable jump" mechanic to work more like the one in a Megaman or Mario game. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
One thing I remember specifically about working on it is I hated your jump command. It's too static, not the best thing for a platformer. I ended up making my own "variable jump" mechanic to work more like the one in a Megaman or Mario game. Do you have an implementation you'd like to share? This is a feature I've wanted to add, but I never made it a high priority. I also didn't have a good idea for how to make it so jumps still look somewhat parabolic. I guess I need to play more Mario and Mega Man and figure out what they did. | |
The first thing I did was add a terminal velocity variable. Your falling works great for physics puzzles, not so great for actual games. The momentum builds up way too fast.
For the jumping what I did was not very elegant, I couldn't figure out a great way to do it. You see, if you just do some kind of gradual arc you end up with moon physics. It doesn't work at all for an actual platformer. You need an initial boost to get your guy into the air, otherwise all your jumps will be too little too late. What I did was give an initial boost to get the guy in the air. While the button was still being held I kept giving the boost-1, once the boost ran out of juice normal gravity would take over. That way at any time during the jump you can stop giving the boost if they've released their jump key. | |
I'm seriously thinking of adding the pixel movement to Freeze Tag HideAway.
How well would this work with 20+ mobs running around a map all at the same time? I'm going to be looking into it today, to see how much time it will take to convert the game over to pixel movement. | |
If all 20 mobs are live players I'm not sure how well it would work. You should do some testing first to see how well it'll support than many players, but it's certainly worth trying.
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Will I need to remove all of my own edits to the default movement system like: Move() Bump() and North()?
Because I can't get movement to work at all with the library. I removed all Directional movements under the client and Move(). Still can't move. Any advice? | |
It could be a problem with using an interface file. I think you just need to delete the macros you have defined for the arrow keys, the library creates its own macros.
Move() will still be called when you transition from one tile to another, but you can't use it to prevent movement (by not calling ..()). The library defines a bump proc with a lowercase b that you can use instead. Instead of North() there are a few things you can use, either the mob's move (with a lowercase m) proc or key_down proc. | |
I'll just have to think about adding it to a new project. I can't get it to work at all.
I guess the main difficulty of this library is adding it to an existing game. I don't know the problem though, I've removed the macros and my overwrite of the directional movements. I'm willing to try any other advice. | |
I had the same issue. I removed my NORTH, SOUTH, WEST, and EAST macros. No luck.
I then removed my entire macro file. Still, no movement happened. | |
This line of comments certainly feels validating to read.
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If it's not a problem with the .dmf file, there's only one other thing I can think of: Open up the library itself and make sure you don't have the files for a demo included. If you still have problems, I'd need to take a look at the actual project.
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None of the demos were included. I did, however Copy, Paste, and edit the code from the intermediate-demo.dm file.
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If you can isolate the problem and send me a .zip of the files I can take a look at it. If you're including the library in a large project there are lots of things that could be causing problems.
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How would you like me to send it to you? I would prefer not to release it to the public.
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You can upload it somewhere and send me a link to the .zip on the BYOND pager.
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The library is trying to add the macros it needs at runtime and it recognizes which windows exist, but for some reason the macros aren't working. I'll try to narrow things down further. I absolutely hate winset and winget and try to avoid them as much as possible, but needed to use them for this part of the library. There may be a problem in the library or it may be a BYOND issue.
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I found the problem. The winget() call was returning "macro" as the name of the macro set when you only have one window in the .dmf file, but when you have two windows it would return "window.macro". The winset() call to create the macros only works when you specify "macro", not "window.macro". The next update will include this fix (for the pixel movement and sidescroller libraries).
Edit: SuperAntx wrote: What I did was give an initial boost to get the guy in the air. While the button was still being held I kept giving the boost-1, once the boost ran out of juice normal gravity would take over. That way at any time during the jump you can stop giving the boost if they've released their jump key. I was playing around with this kind of thing and got something that looks nice. This type of change makes the rising part of the jump linear, but I guess what games do is set a kind of low terminal velocity so the peak of the jump is still an arc and the rising/falling parts are both linear. I should probably add a demo to show all kinds of jumping features because it's one of the things people will want to change most - change jump heights, add double jumps, change gravity, etc. | |