13ghosts.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

oh man baorder54 thats a great idea about the crossbow, it works well with the theme. i was thinking that you should be able to do something of the sort in the way of shooting, but i didnt know how to work it into the game. A slider puzzle sounds nice, but i'm not sure how practical that would be in the way of advancing to the next level. I could possibly use the idea of a visual puzzle. I was thinking the other day that maby i could add some specialized wall switches into the game that have to be on and off in a specific pattern in order to open another part of the level. The slider puzzle for the message seems practical, but im not sure how feasable it is right this minuet, i might be able to figure something out to use that.

Kudos on the crossbow idea though, i'm definately going to start work on that soon. Do you think it would be a good idea to have the crossbow only have a temporary effect on the ghosts?

EDIT:
I added the crossbow hud just now Here's a screenshot



EDIT:
I just added an animation to the crossbow so that when you shoot it you see that you've shot it. Also i'm going to add an ammo counter to the hud, and make the crossbow item so that when you find it once, you get the crossbow, then if you find another you get ammo. I really dont have room in the program for an ammo-box sprite tex, and this works just as well, plus you'll be able to tell it apart from the random items box that sometimes pops up in the levels.

I really need to study some ray-line stuff, how to track trajectory in a raycasting environment, but other than that, this feature is nearly half way there. :biggrin:

Also i think the clue for the 8th level is going to be a code hidden in a message, instead of a riddle. I had this idea originally for the first level, but the code i came up with was ridiculously complex and really hard to decipher. It was a coordinate system based on the first message, and there was no hints to this, just a string of numbers. then i figured i probably wouldnt have figured it out if it werent for the fact that i thought it up. so i got rid of the idea.

I'm thinking of doing something similar but much easier to understand.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

here's an updated demo. you can put the hud on the screen using mode and you can make the animation work with the shift button... Other than that i'm having serious bullet-tracking issues. So it might be a while before that is operational.

Anyways... Hopefully i'll get the bugs worked out of it soon.. For now here's the example

[attachment=1584:attachment]

Whoo! with a bunch of help from Malcolm Smith, the crossbow is finished! It stuns and renders the ghosts harmless for a period of time. Not extremely long but also not too short to be useful i think. Anywho when i get all the kinks worked out of it you all can be the judge.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

hmm... i noticed pokemon purple has it's own featured projects thing... i hope 13ghosts is worthy of that eventually

[Xphoenix]

Pokepur has been a project for... *counts on fingers* Nearly two years. It was started at Cemetech in September of 2005.

[baorder54]

[AaroneusTheGreat]

yea i suppose that's all true, and wow i had no idea that game was being developed for that long. I really want to see it when it's done, that's got to be something. I guess I had the illusion that only great games ended up in the featured projects thing. and i suppose that's mostly the case.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Well, as promised, With all the kinks worked out of the new feature, Here's the demo with the completed crossbow feature.

[attachment=1591:attachment]

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Well, it seems the TI-Gods have smiled upon me once again. I wrote a nifty function into my game that finds special values in the map structures which indicate which sprites to put and where, and then puts the sprites into their respective places before the game starts and before you switch levels. Using this i managed to cut the file size before compression down by almost 4,000 bytes.

I'm ecstatic. :biggrin: And as an added bonus i also cut the save-file down to only 59 bytes! all the info for the game that needs to be loaded when you load your saved game is held in 59 bytes! i think that's mucho cool. The algorythm for putting the sprites in their right places also made level creation a breeze.

So, i may have this thing finished much quicker than i thought. But as always i'm open to suggestions on things to add into the game to make it more interesting.

I think i'm getting good enough in tigcc and with the fat engine to start thinking about creating a version of doom. That will require quite a lot of finesse and coding knowledge to make it a good game.

I started collecting sprites from Doom, and so far i have everything but the wall textures. I suppose i could create my own but i think it would be best to use all-original game images.

There are some limitations i'll face if i do take on this project, like the fact that i cannot create variable height worlds. That's going to be a drag. But other than that i think i can get away with creating everything else as close to the game as possible.

Anyone have an idea where i could get a hold of the wall-textures from the original game? If so please let me know.

Thanks everyone for being so supportive.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

I think i'm going to end this project with 13 levels. To go with the theme and also because it's beginning to tire me. Writing/finding riddles and writing codes is harder work than i originally thought. I think when i've completed all 13 levels i'm going to start work on something more worthwhile. A mindless shoot-em-up game. Doom! ha! I've already got a bunch of level design things worked out in my head on how i can use the red/blue/white key things with very little code. Also i have that nifty shot hit thing that Malcolm Smith helped me with so a lot of the game construct is already thought of in another game. All i have to do is write the rest. Also i have to lay my hands on some more of the game images. Other than that it's all gravy. Anone have any objections to 13 levels? i think it's a good a number as any. and also people would become quite tired of thinking after any more of that. Plus how big can this mansion be? It certainly cant have like 38 something levels like oblivion has. That would be a sky-scraper.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? comments? criticisms? Hate-mail?

[Harrierfalcon]

I hate you because I don't have a real 89. (TiEmu's being a jerk right now)

[AaroneusTheGreat]

what's it doing? maby i can help.


EDIT:

I finally finished level 8 and have level 9 about 80% complete.

here's a nifty animated screenshot.

[attachment=1601:attachment]

[baorder54]

. Very Nice. The crossbow is awesome.(if I do say so myself ) One thing. I feel like the doors are kinda outof place. They are too scifi, and not haunted mansion like. Adding wooden old doors would add the desired affect of 13ghosts.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

yea i was thinking about that the other day. The 8th level has those doors. I think i'm going to change all the doors to look like that. Thanks for spurring my memory.

EDIT:

How's this?
[attachment=1603:attachment]

[baorder54]

Much Better.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

thanks. btw, levels 1 - 9 are finished, level 10 is about 70% complete. So basically three more levels and this thing is ready to be wrapped up and shipped out. It's been a wonderful ride and I learned a lot ! *LOT* haha yea it's been fun. I really look foreward to putting this knowledge to good use in DOOM for the 89. (i figured out some stuff tonight how to make the creation of levels for doom ridiculously easy, so it might end up being really long. I'd like that) There are still a few kinks to be worked out in 13ghosts i'm sure. I'll be releasing the first full beta in a few days. I'll add in a temporary level-jumping thing so that the beta testers can skip to a level to test them faster. Instead of playing the game through, which could get really annoying.

Anyone interested in doing an in-depth test of the full beta, let me know. I really need some people who are willing to test things like ways around locked doors that i might have missed and misplaced items etc...

Thanks.

EDIT:

It's getting very close, i have all the basic maps defined now, (1 - 13) and all i need to do is position the sprites, define the locked doors for the levels, place the keys in their places, and the write clues to move to the next map. These things need to be done to 10 - 13 so i really only have to do the details on four levels and then some nifty ending stuff and then the final beta is complete! :biggrin:

[Madskillz]

wow I wish I had an 89 now! The game looks great!

[Xphoenix]

[frenchcalc1]

[AaroneusTheGreat]

yea it seems like someone is explaining it to someone else quite often on this thread. i really didnt expect for it to go off on so many tangents. It's actually kind of interesting.


BTW. borrowing an idea from Oblivion, i am thinking of putting in multiple switches throughout level 13, that you have to have all of them turned off in order to open the final elevator-airlock door thingy. Also there will be no more additional items located on the level. No extra ammo for the crossbow, no extra charm-potion thingys, no nothing. I think that along with the multiple keys required to open all the doors in the level, and the clue you have to solve, along with finding a decoder for the clue on the 13 level would do the game justice by going out with a bang. or a brain-hemmorage. Which ever comes first.

What do you all think?

EDIT: i fixed the dissapearing door glitch so that the doors smoothly slide open when you open them, and they smoothly close when you close them. It looks much better. Although you do still have to close them yourself if you want them to close, but i figure that's more realistic for a mansion. When i program doom. i'm going to have them close on their own.

EDIT: doors close themselves now. I rewrote the locked door checking, (again) and now it workes off special characters on the map. If i want a locked door i simply replace the regular door code (127) in the map with the locked code (126) and it recognises that you need the regular key for that square, after the code puts the door in it's right place. Much more efficient. Also it takes the hassle out of locking doors. Before i was using a very hacked method to lock doors. I'd figure out the coordinates and put them into an array manually, and i'd lose track of them once i did this... basically very annoying.

So levels 1 - 11 are completely done. Two more levels! :biggrin:

[AaroneusTheGreat]

I have finally finished all the levels!

The final beta needs testing! anyone who is willing to do this please download this beta, and play it all the way through, if you see any bugs, let me know.

If you cannot figure out a clue to the game, PM me and ask me what it is and i'll tell the beta testers. But if you're just playing the game, please try and figure stuff out before asking me, i want to see how realisitic it is for people to solve the riddles and codes. Thank you.

[attachment=1638:attachment]

p.s. Now DOOM!!! whee!

Started on doom. Animated a couple of sprites, added a sprite death animation. Basically the sprite explodes into a bunch of meaty chunks.

Pretty awesome looking if i do say so myself. And i do. So deal with it. :biggrin:

Doors code, shooting stuff and some textures are done. This time i'm using multiple graphics files in order to increase computing speed.

The sprites come directly from the original doom game. including the sprite death. i just had to remove a couple of frames to save space. looks smooth tho.

i'm going to post a demo when i have enough finished so you can get an idea what it'll be like.