[GRdev] Hobbyist game development

Anything to do with games at all.
jawa2
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by jawa2 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 3:48 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:...I've been trying to work out why it runs slowly on (specifically as far as I have found) Firefox on Windows...

I'm currently playing it through Firefox on an Apple iMac and it all seems okay.

Strawb, Orange - this is legit great! So impressed! Stilll playing...

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by jawa2 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:22 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:...

Orange!

Man, seriously... that was brilliant! I just completed it!

I've not played Link's Awakening but I still had a ton of fun playing this. I love the big-pixel graphic style and the way you added detail to the game was terrific; I noticed how the characters say different things depending on what you're carrying. The different locations were well implemented, too.

That was so great, dude. A really fun way to spend an hour or so. I don't think I've found all of the secrets so I will try again later.

Okay... where can I get a physical copy of it? ;-) .


QA report
1) This may not be a bug... but in the forest screen where the mushroom is, if you exit the top of the screen you re-appear at the bottom. Maybe this is intentional or something else can appear?
2) When moving against an object, in most cases the animation keepg going even if you can move - which is cool - but the exception is moving up, where the animation stops.

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sat Jan 23, 2021 5:39 pm

Thanks jawa! Really glad you enjoyed playing it through :toot:

jawa2 wrote:1) This may not be a bug... but in the forest screen where the mushroom is, if you exit the top of the screen you re-appear at the bottom. Maybe this is intentional or something else can appear?


This screen is based on a very similar screen in the mysterious forest in Link's Awakening where you meet the raccoon character - if you try and move up past the screen he says you will get lost and you appear in a different section of the forest, stopping you from getting past until you deal with the racoon. It's similar to other lost woods sections from other Zelda games. The name I gave the area of "Endless Woods" is hopefully another clue that it is intentional!

There is also a secret related to it: The number of times you loop through the top of the screen determines the number of torches lit inside the shrine in the north-east of the village. There are two lines of dialogue in the game that give a clue to how this works, one from grandma when you are going mushroom picking and another more explicit from the Trendy Man later on when he is stood outside the shrine. If you visit the shrine when all the torches are lit you will find the old man inside!

Actually the "loop around" behaviour is the default behaviour for trying to transition off-map to a non existent screen to prevent the game crashing. One of the easter eggs in the game is that I replicated a version of "screen warping", a well-known bug from the original Link's Awakening, by pressing '-' as you transition between screens (Koko the monkey gives a brief mention of this if you talk to her after finding the book in the library). If you screen warp onto a screen on the edge of the map you can see the same looping behaviour if you try moving off-map, and this works the same in relation to the above secret!

jawa2 wrote:2) When moving against an object, in most cases the animation keeps going even if you can move - which is cool - but the exception is moving up, where the animation stops.


Yeah so I added the "pushing" animation when you try and walk into a wall (it doesn't trigger on collision with NPCs) but I couldn't get the pushing up animation to animate in a satisfying way. My solution was to just use the single pushing sprite as you have noticed! Now I've changed the player sprite to the hooded character it might be worth me revisiting this to see if I can draw something better.

If you do replay the game looking for the secrets that are in there, the other big one is the ocarina that you can find. Again Trendy Man has a line of dialogue giving a clue to its location - hidden in the field in the south-east of the village. You can play the ocarina once you have it to warp back to the village pond!

jawa2 wrote:Okay... where can I get a physical copy of it? ;-)


Right click -> view source -> print! :P

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by jawa2 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 6:27 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:...

Ah! All cool, OR, and I see what you mean. Yeah, I didn't locate the Ocarina and I think I missed a couple of other hidden aspects, too!

OrangeRKN wrote:Right click -> view source -> print! :P

:o . I will take a look! So what language have you used... is it all in HTML?

*Many* years ago - around 1986 - I coded in BASIC and made a Thundercats game for my younger brother. The graphics were small - each character and screen block was an 8x8 pixel block - but it was pretty fun :-). Seeing your terrific work on Unawakening has woken up a coding part of my mind which had long been closed. I shall pay closer attention to this thread!

Last edited by jawa2 on Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:14 pm

jawa2 wrote:So what language have you used... is it all in HTML?


It's written in JavaScript. HTML is a markup (display) language for web pages, while javascript is the scripting language used in the web and built in to most browsers. The actual "screen" is a HTML canvas that javascript then draws all the graphics on to :)

jawa2 wrote:*Many* years ago - around 1986 - I coded in BASIC and made a Thundecats game for my younger brother. The graphics were small - each character and screen block was an 8x8 pixel block - but it was pretty fun :-). Seeing your terrific work on Unawakening has woken up a coding part of my mind which had long been closed. I shall pay closer attention to this thread!


That sounds cool! I really like working with very low res sprites and limited palettes, the strict limitations really encourage precision and creativity. Multiples of 8 are the standard sizes for essentially legacy technological reasons, part of the reason I chose 12x12 sprites rather than the more usual 16x16 is because 12 has more factors leading to more potential symmetries.

I'd definitely be interested in seeing anything you decide to have a go at! I've literally just found it so no idea how good it is but here is an web based BASIC environment if that's of any interest to you!

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by jawa2 » Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:56 pm

Thanks for that info, Orange! It's amazing to see that BASIC system online and it has made me think about those old commands. I'm way out of date on development but I'm sure I'd pick it up again.

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sat Sep 18, 2021 10:58 pm

GRdev bump!

Because I am incapable of leaving things alone, I've added click/touch controls to Unawakening. That means you can play with just a mouse, or more excitingly, on your phone! You just click/tap where you want to move to and to advance through dialogue. The controls aren't perfect, there is no complex pathing and I know there are a couple of bugs around juddering on the spot rather than coming to a stop (most likely to happen when talking to NPCs) - but they mostly seem to be working pretty well for comparatively little effort.

I'd be interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on the style of movement and what it feels like to play. An alternative would be to have an on-screen d-pad and button for interacting with things to make it play as similarly as possible to keyboard controls, but I kind of like the "go here" style of tapping when you don't have physical buttons.

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by shy guy 64 » Sat Sep 18, 2021 11:29 pm

Interesting a game dev thread. Well if anyone needs a writer with the attention span of a hummingbird on acid keep me in mind

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satriales
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by satriales » Sun Jun 04, 2023 1:56 pm

I've decided to have a go at making a domino puzzle game, heavily inspired by the Amiga classic 'Pushover'.
Very early days just getting the basics together and it's all a bit janky at the moment:

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sun Jun 04, 2023 4:48 pm

Very cool! Are you using unity?

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satriales
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by satriales » Sun Jun 04, 2023 10:52 pm

Yes, I'm using Unity. I've dabbled with it in the past, making a WebGL FPS for work, and a simple jigsaw puzzle app for Android. If I stick with this then I'd like it to be for PC this time, rather than mobile.

One problem that I'm ignoring for now but will need to address soon is that I'm relying too much on physics. I've added some restrictions to certain axis and I do disable them completely for some situations, but I think I'll need to switch to animations to ensure consistency (eg. A falling domino lands in exactly the middle of the block below).

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Ironhide
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Ironhide » Mon Jun 05, 2023 3:45 pm

Not entirely gaming related but this seems like a suitable thread to ask in.

I used to have an environmental control system that allowed me to control various devices like a TV or Stereo by holding down a button on a dedicated remote control that would cycle between functions and perform the action when released (it had a columnn of LEDs that had the programmed function wrote down next to each andI'd release the button when the correct LED lit up). I was thinking it'd be pretty cool to have something similar on the PC but after several lengthy online searches I couldn't find anything that already exists (other than a hardware solution costing a few hundred quid).

How difficult would it be to make a utility/app that would allow a single button (or mouse click) to have multiple functions based on how long it is held for - for example if the left mouse button is held for 1 second it presses 'z', 2 seconds presses 'x' , 3 seconds presses c''.etc.

Ideally there'd be some onscreen indication of how long it'd been held to assist with timing and the ability to remap which keys it'd press.

I have some programming experience (Visual Basic mostly) but haven't done anything with it in over 20 years so I'm very rusty.

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:22 pm

It should be relatively simple to programatically send keys to a window. The difficulty I think will be with which window is "active" as if you need to click or press a key in some utility/app, that's going to be the active window rather than the "target" window you want to send keys on to.

I reckon the collective GR brains can work something out though!

In your case is pressing and holding for x seconds easier than pressing x times then waiting a second? Kind of the reverse, I imagine it would be quicker like that (but with more presses required).

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Ironhide » Mon Jun 05, 2023 4:44 pm

OrangeRKN wrote:
In your case is pressing and holding for x seconds easier than pressing x times then waiting a second? Kind of the reverse, I imagine it would be quicker like that (but with more presses required).


It's a little easier to press and hold but I can do multiple presses in quick succession (up to around 4 or 5).

I could definitely do something like 'triple click to act as right click' as I currently only have the ability to left click with the chin switch I use (with right click being done by voice activation which often doesn't work very well due to my occasionally impaired speech).

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