Godsent

[daoman89]

I have an idea.  Since you're putting so much work into this, make sure you have your own original music and not from other games.  For something that looks as good as this and with all of the hard work, try to make it your own as much as you can.  No shame in asking someone to write songs for you or to come up with a theme or story.  Then sell it!

[Meiscool]

All my music is original and not used in another commercial gam; just not originally made for this game in particular.

As far as selling the game goes, I don't intend to do that even if it were 100% my own work. My greatest hope is that people play this when I am finished, and I feel a price-tag might hinder that.

[daoman89]

all righty. i shall be a plus 1 to the list of ppl that play it!

[Meiscool]

Sounds good to me!

Update:

Two new enemies completed:


Clinch and Conchert.
Clinch the crab enemy does standard physical attacks, but if angered can tear its arm off and throw it at you. The screen above has an example of that, with the claw spinning to the left of the crab. High defense and immune to daggers.
Behind the rock is Conchert. A sturdy enemy that attacks by hopping. Nothing to panic about, but it has very high mobility, and your sword attacks may knock it back just far enough to where your next slash might fall too short, but its next hop won't. HINT HINT

Other noteworthy updates:
A few puzzles complete. Most of them are minor "push the rock correctly out of the way" stuff, but two major 'boss fight puzzles' have been made, and they're pretty cool.
Chests now contain contents and whatnot (where as before they were just opened and nothing happened).
Enemies can now be immune to certain attacks (typically daggers, but I may have a mist/gas enemy be immune to swords and etc). I also have it coded that enemies can be immune to attacks based on the direction they are facing (for those that have a shield in the front and etc).


Overall, the gameplay is really coming together and feels like a true game every time I test it.
Combat requires adaption: The variety of enemies is fairly large, but what really makes each fight unique are the various mixtures of enemies you encounter. 3 up close hitters or 3 slow movers might be easy to take down, but try not getting hit when dealing with a distance attacker, a fast mover, and a slow moving heavy hitter. Ignore one and you'll more than likely get hit by it.
Exploration is meaningful: Not everyplace needs to be explored to progress with the story. Everyplace does need to be explored if you want to gather enough items to fully upgrade your gear, learn more about your surroundings, etc. Exploring is made easier with backtracking via save point warps.
Scenery is varied: You spend a great deal of time in this dungeon, but hopefully the frequent changes of scenery make you want to see more of the dungeon, and not less.
Breaks are as frequent as the player decides: If you enjoy fighting and just that, then go for it. If you enjoy puzzle solving/reading diary entries, spend the time doing them.
Grinding is minimal: I'm doing my best to make this happen. Basically, once I'm done with the area I'm going to map out a "perfect route" (no unnecessary wandering), calculate the number of each individual enemy you'd encounter on that route and adjust the probability of them dropping items so they you should have enough of each item you would need to do the things items would be used for. Then I'd take the total experience received from beating them, and set that as the standard amount needed for the things that experience would be used for. Thus, assuming players kill most of what they come across during their exploration, they should not need to grind for much of anything.

[daoman89]

For those push puzzles, did you use 'If' statements say if the hero is facing right, then the object will be pushed right?  And also when the object lands on a certain square/coordinate, it activates another event that completes the puzzle?  I ask because I'm going to have some push puzzles and whatnot as well.  And I'm totally all for you're exploration ideas.  I went as far as to make side quests to go back to previous places and open up new areas within them. 

You should also post a video of one of those boss fights!!

[Meiscool]

Yeah, pushables are pretty easy to code and just use (I use a variable because of pictures, but you would use sprite: hero facing) 1 variable and 4 if statements.
Then after I do a check to see if the object actually moved, and if it did I play a sound effect and drain player stamina. To do that, record the x and y of the object, tell it to move, wait 0.0, and see if the x and y still equal the original x and y.

I have a process running that tracks the x and y cords of the objects, checks to see if they are in specific spots, and activated things based on such.

A video may come later... but probably not of a puzzle boss fight. They are kinda lack-luster if you go into the fight already knowing what to do (One of them I can end in ~10 seconds just because I know exactly how everything was coded).

[Prpl_Mage]

Yeah that's how I do it. 4 conditional branches for the hero setting. If up move up, if right move right, if down move down, if left move left. Then I have the "switches" and a paraless process that sets the X and Y coordinates for the two objects with a conditional branch "if rock X = switch X > if rock Y = switch Y
and if they do: turn on a switch that removes the possibility to move the rock and then open a door or whatever.

Game still looks amazing.

[daoman89]

I see what you mean, maybe a brief 5 second clip lol

[DragonBlaze]

I do it by creating a living invisible AI within the game. This AI just chills and hangs out on whichever map she feels like, but when someone is playing the game, she follows the main character and if she notices the player is supposed to move a block, jump, or something like that, she's actually the one who moves the block, but to the player, it looks like the main character pushes the block.

If statements are good too.

[daoman89]

Wha...? lol

[Meiscool]

Just roll with it.

Or push with it. Whatever

[daoman89]

You have to excuse my non-know how to code brain of mine lol. 

[Meiscool]

Quick update:
Working on more interesting puzzles. Visual of one:


Working on more interesting enemies. Example of one:


Enjoy~

[daoman89]

Did you make these chipsets?

[Meiscool]

Yes, but my chipsets don't include everything you see in the screenshots. I use rm to make the basic map, then add objects in photoshop and save the image as a backdrop.
NOT going to say that all the work is custom, but basically I take stuff from a lot of different sources and recolor/reshade it to make it work with my style. A lot of hunting and ripping random graphics from games is involved.