Fugsnarf's site

Development Report 17: Dawn of Battle

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:00:51 +0000

It's been awhile since my last dev report. I had gone a long time not really working on any of my personal projects. Today, I am proud to announce what is really my first serious and original game that I can say with certainty will be released very soon.

I held out on giving out any information to the BYOND community about this new project of mine because I thought it would help me work on it and actually get it done. Amazingly, I was right. I hereby introduce, Dawn of Battle.

The sprites you see here are the first coded characters into the game. You can see their element and attack range. The spear girl has no element. Now, what exactly is Dawn of Battle?

Dawn of Battle is- Dawn of Battle is a fully player-versus-player game in which you face off, team to team, against other players in an individual turn-based environment. The object of the game is, of course, to beat the other team and possibly earn in-game money, other prizes, characters, and fame.

Gameplay- The gameplay of Dawn of Battle is rather simple. When it comes to your turn, you will have 30 seconds to choose your action. A HUD will pop up and give you your choices. You use the buttons ASDF to choose (F to attack, D to defend, S to use a technique or magic, and A to use a special. Click a player on the other team to target them). Your techniques, magic attacks, and specials can be used with your SP (special points). Special points are gained as you use normal attacks and defend (there's also a preset amount of SP depending on the character at the beginning of battle. You gain less SP for defending than attacking).

Using techniques, magic attacks, and specials is where the extra fun of the game really comes in. Each of these moves which use SP require you to perform a certain action which it tells you to perform. These "mini-games" can vary in length, difficulty, and type with each character and attack.

Elements are another thing that play a very vital role in Dawn of Battle. Each character, attack, and even field of battle has a certain element. All of these tie into each other to do more or less damage, or give buffs and debuffs to your or other characters.

Let's get into some screenshots so you can see what the game looks like!

You can clearly see here that I am still using placeholder graphics for the background tiles. I apologize for that, but we'll have real background tiles for the actual release. This is a shot of the warrior (a fire element character) using one of his specials on the wizard in the other team.

This is just a shot of the spear girl jumping into the other team to use her attack. This is a good time to get into attack ranges, which are pretty simple.

Two rows are planned for Dawn of Battle. In the back row, you take less damage than in the front. The catch is, you also do less damage from the back row using your normal attack. Short range characters cannot use the back row. Medium and long range characters can. Medium range just means that they use a melee weapon, but can attack from the back row. Those that have played Suikoden know well what I'm talking about.

As you can see here, I am now on the left-side team. You should also notice that the team size is now only 2. Team sizes currently range from 1 to 4. In the future, with front and back rows, going up to 8 on a team may be possible. In this screenshot we see the healer casting a heal spell on her fellow team-mate, the wizard.

Lastly, we have a simple shot of a normal attack coming from the wizard. I guess he just forms a sword out of elemental energy. I dunno, but I like it. You can see here that the team size is now 3.

Dawn of Battle is very far along now into the early stages and it's soon to be released for some alpha phase testing. I'll be announcing that soon, after some private tests this weekend.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak-peek of Dawn of Battle. Stay tuned and I'll keep you guys posted in the future as the game progresses.

BYONDcast Event: Proelium

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:02:13 +0000

Hi, everyone! It's time to get the word out for BYONDcast's latest event on Proelium 1!

If you haven't been mass-paged by someone already, be sure to check out the post about the event so that you can know the time.
http://www.byond.com/members/ Journalism?command=view_post&post=117205

They'll also be holding a live stream of the event at BYONDcast's Livestream channel! Be sure to check it out, I'll be one of the guest commentators there!

See you guys later, but on something a little off-topic here, I'll be posting a new developer report in the near future on something exciting I've been working on.

Copy and paste isometric tiles

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:18:54 +0000

Is it possible to copy and paste isometric tiles into DM and have them be isometric? I've found no method on my own. If anyone knows or has any tricks, I'd appreciate it.

The Nintendo 3DS

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:04:57 +0000

I've been saving up for some time now and just got back from a week-long trip to find the 3DS had released. Just yesterday I traded in my DS Lite and bought a 3DS for around $200. I'll give you guys my thoughts on it in case you've been curious about it and maybe considering purchasing one yourself.

What I like:

My initial response (and the initial response to everyone I showed the 3DS to at school today) to the 3D effect of the 3DS was summed up as something like "Woah". As someone who has never experienced 3D gaming before, I found it to be quite incredible. The 3D effect adds a whole new experience to the games themselves. It doesn't hurt your eyes like the movie theater might, and it feels completely natural. No glasses required, it's just there. Very impressive and a lot of fun. The first game I purchased was Pilotwings. I purchased that game for three reasons: it utilizes the Miis, it has a lot of scenery and moving around to really show off the 3D effect, and I loved the original for the SNES.

The pre-installed software is a lot to toy around with and also loads of fun. Having bought Pilotwings, I quickly found out that you can take pictures on your hang glider. The pictures display in the photo gallery in 3D. It's actually fun taking scenery pictures and seeing them there. You can also make Miis which is just like the Wii version more or less.

One really cool feature I had to see were the augmented reality cards. I must say, the augmented reality is actually loads of fun. It's incredibly easy, but a lot of fun. It's also a blast taking pictures of your Miis or Nintendo characters posing on your dresser.

The graphics are excellent compared to the DS. I'd say they're somewhere inbetween the PS1 and Gamecube. Nothing like the NGP will be, but still very nice to look at.

The overall design of the 3DS hardware itself is very nice and comfortable. It looks very sexy (I bought the Cosmo Black one, by the way). The analog stick is also very comfortable, far more than the D-pad. There's a camera looking at your to take pictures of yourself as well as two cameras on the outside of the 3DS to take 3D pictures and play things like the augmented reality in 3D.

What I dislike:

I don't dislike very much about the 3DS, but there are a couple of things I can complain about:

The stylus is actually positioned on the top-left. Since most people use it with their right hand, it's extremely uncomfortable to reach to the top and over to get it. The DS Lite had a far superior design, in my opinion, being on the side and on the right.

My biggest problem with the 3DS is the backwards compatibility with DS games. When just popping in a DS game and playing it, it comes out very distorted and blurry. To make it crisp and clear, you need to press and load Start and Select as the game is loading. This brings it down to a 1x1 pixel resolution. In that mode, however, it's very very small compared to the actual DSes before the 3DS. I was very disappointed by this.

Overall, I highly recommend the 3DS to anybody interested. It's greatly worth the $250 in my opinion. The 3D is absolutely spectacular, it's like entering an entirely new world. The 3D effect itself is definitely worth checking out even if it's just viewing a demo at your local GameStop. With everything else, though, the 3DS is definitely a system worth getting especially with all of the great titles coming out on it later on.

I give the 3DS a 9/10

What you see when watching commercials

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:42:48 +0000

I realized I was doing this and wondered if other people who use computers a lot think the same way when watching commercials.

A lot of commercials may show a browser window or mouse clicking something if the product has something to do with the internet. While I have no bias toward either Macs or PCs (besides being able to use BYOND to its fullest on Windows), I tend to find myself looking to see which OS they are using. I don't know if that's weird or not, but often I can pick it out by the browser or desktop's look, and even the mouse being used. It's actually pretty distracting for me. Does anybody else do this too?

Blog layout change overnight?

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 05:06:53 +0000

For one, you can see it's all scrunched in the middle like the new default blogs. Thing is, it wasn't like this when they changed the default blogs. It's like it just changed last night because I could swear it was the same yesterday. Even some colors changed.

Any ideas what happened? Here's another weird thing, it doesn't show the default stylesheet when I go to edit the layout.

Non-members submitting for game listings

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 23:22:40 +0000

So apparently the new site will only list games made by members. I think that non-member submissions should at least be reviewed. There aren't many games being put out by members as it is, and non-members wouldn't add an incredible amount either, I suspect. It wouldn't be long before the listings would become pretty stagnant to the point that I wouldn't mind even seeing a crappy game show up in the latest games. To add to that, it's nice for new developers that might not be members to still get their games in the listings so that they can be noticed and get some feedback.

I'm all for members perks and helping you guys at BYOND out a bit, but I really think it's going too far to not allow non-members' games to be listed. A few people have come to me with a primary issue concerning the new site being that you guys are pushing non-members under the rug by not letting their games be listed. I have to agree with that, actually.

I've provided a list of reasons, going a little more in-depth, as to why I have issue with this in the reply I made below.

Fugsnarf's Developer Report 16

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:16:12 +0000

No news on Zelda: Shadow of the Triforce. I've been focusing completely on Megaman Files.

Recently, I started from scratch to make the system a lot more efficient. I succeeded, and fixed virtually every movement bug I've ever had to deal with in the progress. In case you don't know, Megaman Files uses pixel movement. Not only that, but the plan is for the game to be multiplayer. I narrowed it down to 40 FPS, which I'm hoping should run well still (I'm basing this on the fact that pixel movement now runs well over a server, and that 1/4 tick_lag has also run well over a server I saw it used on).

Now, you shouldn't be able to break the movement at all with any button mashing or anything. Overall, it's the best and most efficient pixel movement system I've made. After I made it, though, I worked on the camera control. Most Megaman games use a system in which the camera only moves left and right. The camera will relocate up and down when you fall or climb a ladder. This means that jumping can't move your camera. I worked out this system, and it wasn't all that hard. I also made it so that I can control when the camera starts and stops moving at certain points. What I did after that ended up being a little more difficult.

While playing through a Megaman game, I noticed how the backgrounds move with the player. I thought I should give that a shot in Megaman Files. In this case, it's a bunch of clouds that move with your camera as you move. The clouds look still while the platforms move past you. It really adds a lot to the game. How to get it to work took a little bit of ingenuity, though.

I started with screen objects. Seemed like the best and easiest option. Only problem, they lagged the game a lot. Especially the big icons, and I can only imagine what would happen if a server full of people was spawning these huge screen objects everywhere. So, I decided to go with images. Using them, they have absolutely no strain on the server. However, they follow whatever they're attached to. Meaning, even though the camera doesn't move when I jump, the images do. Therefore, they aren't stationary on your screen like screen objects would be. This caused me to try something different.

In the end, I had to spawn a single object on the user's position. This object moves with the user left and right, but I don't let it move up and down with the user. When I make the object, I make the images and output the images to the user from that object. The end result is a background that moves with you in a situation where you can't move the camera up or down and you're using pixel movement. And it works out great!

I uploaded a short little demo of everything I described above.

But first, here are some screenshots to entice you!

The controls are:

Arrow keys to move
S to jump

Download the demo here: CLICK ME

Enjoy!

September 11

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:14:02 +0000

This day will live in infamy, but so much good came out of it.

9/11 is a day that truly brought America together, for even a short period of time. For how often in history has it been that weakness actually made something stronger? Very often. We hear this every year, but do not let the words fly right by you due to how repetitive they are. Let them bring a nod to your head and an ache to your hearts, fellow Americans.

We must never forget the people that lost their lives to cowards and fools. We must never forget the brave men and women that lost their lives to save so many people, whether they were professionals or not. We can't forget this day, and I don't believe we will. What we might forget, however, is what came out of it. We can't forget the justice that we are fighting for, as so many have. Until all of these men and their ideals are brought to justice, there is nothing standing in the way of another 9/11, maybe one even worse than the last.

God bless the people that lost their lives on 9/11. God bless the men that still fight for their souls.

Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 05:58:28 +0000

I went with a few friends of mine today to see Resident Evil: Afterlife in 3D. All of the friends I went with are huge fans of the games and the movies alike. I, however, had only seen the first movie. I made sure to watch the other two before Afterlife came out so I was completely caught up, though.

Now, the movie was in 3D. Due to that, I'll start by either approving or disapproving of the 3D effects. Now, there have been few movies that I thought made good use of 3D. Avatar, being the first 3D movie I saw, is one of them. I believe Resident Evil: Afterlife also made really good use of 3D effects. The entire movie was full of great eye candy and things flying at you in just about every other scene. You waited for the next zombie attack to see Alice throw some blades at the zombies in slow motion with them flying out of the screen at you, or the blood splattering on the screen in 3D and looking like it splattered on your glasses. So, I approve of the effects and the use of 3D in the movie. However, did this detract from the storyline?

Most definitely! You could almost say that this entire movie didn't even need to take place besides a certain family reunion and other little key events and antagonists. The whole movie was so focused on effects and eye candy that the storyline seemed to move so fast. Everything happened really quickly and moved right on as fast as possible to the next zombie attack. This is a bit in contrast to Resident Evil: Extinction. My friends were actually complaining about it. I was talking about how much I enjoyed Extinction, but they said it was really lame. They complained about the lack of action and the fact that most of the story took place during the day-time. Obviously, they weren't the only ones and the movie-makers got plenty of complaints. However, there seems to be another disease in this world. When someone makes a movie and gets complaints about it, they make the next one so dramatically towards the side of the complainers and not more to the middle. That's definitely the case here. The storyline was shallow.

Presentation was excellent. I give it a 10/10. I don't know how much better it could have gotten.

Storyline, as I said, was shallow. No character development. It moved way too fast and focused way too much on action. I give it a 4/10.

Overall, I give Resident Evil: Afterlife a 6/10. Here's to another 2 to 3 Resident Evil movies that focus on eye-candy over substance unless these people wise up a bit. Sounds familiar, eh?