Shining Fanwork: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

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Chaoswizard98
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

Sorry for the random MIA for almost 2 months. One of the classes I need to take for my major was canceled so I had to get that sorted, and then I left on a 3 week vacation lol. Anyways, I worked on a few major things for the engine.

The dialogue system is now officially done and optimized. This includes panning in and out, and scrolling text up when reaching the bottom of the window. Text prints out at 6 different speeds (4 game speeds, each gives a +2 to render speed) and the dialogue "bleep" sounds will play accordingly (if you have a speed of 1 it beeps for every character, higher speeds means it skips more characters).

I also added the ability to insert the '@' symbol which will call an action with the object that created the dialogue window. For example, if my "cutscene" object summoned the dialogue window, the '@' would call whatever action the cutscene wanted to play at that time (like a screen shake, a sound, a pause ect.). Should you wish to add more symbols to call other functions for whatever reason, you can add another if(symbol = 'whatevs'){ do stuff.} statement to the code fairly easily.

I also upped the game's FPS to 60 (it used to be the gamemaker default of 30). This was mainly to allow for faster dialogue render speeds. Because of this increase, steps are now faster and pans / animations are now smoother. Later on when I add the "Modder's quick config" script, I'll add a variable that keeps animation speeds from bugging out if you wanted to change the fps of the game to something other than 60.

I also started working on a global menu system controller which will take care of all of the game's menus and their functions. This is more for people with coding experience but, it will allow you to easily re-arrange existing menus and it will also allow you to create new menus and functions.

In regards to future engine releases, I'm working on making every game object interact with all other objects in the same way. This should make future bug fixes, tweaks, and additions to the engine much easier to add since you wouldn't have to worry about updating 1 object only to break another.

Fun stuff:
I made giving characters multiple turns easier. You now assign them a "Number of turns" number.
Items now have a "bonus turns" value.
Dual wielding is officially unofficially added. (Items now have an equip slot value. Main hand, off-hand/ring, or both).
I found out you can assign values to an instance's create event via the game-room creator. Thus, you can get away with a single "Lizardman" object, and give only 1 of them the "heat axe" while giving another a different weapon.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Tyadran »

Yay, progress reports! Sounds like everything is moving along at a good clip, and it's nice to know that text boxes are working great.

Very hype for dual wielding and giving enemies separate equipment. That is absolutely beautiful.

Somewhat out of the blue (I don't believe this has been asked), will there be implementation for enemies appearing mid-battle?
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Chaoswizard98
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

Tyadran wrote:Somewhat out of the blue (I don't believe this has been asked), will there be implementation for enemies appearing mid-battle?
Haven't thought about how to implement it yet, but yes, you will be able to run events during battle.
Things like spawning hidden enemies, SF2 Oddeye battle path falling apart, npcs switching sides / saying stuff mid battle, enemies changing AI types during battle, ect. will all be doable eventually.

In terms of "dual wielding," sprites will likely not show 2 weapons unless you specifically added a "dual wield" sprite. Nonetheless, the option to add such a sprite will (hopefully) be there when I fix up battle cutscenes.

Edit: Working on fixing up speed issues with the battle stuff. Doubling the game speed ended up doubling animation speed, movement speed, ect. Nonetheless It's a funny bug that reminds me of "turbo mode." Depending on complexity, I may add a "turbo mode" option for those who just want to play the game faster.

Also working on fixing up the battle controller so it properly uses the new menu controller.

Regarding items, I'm taking Earl's advice and making it so that items can utilize any existing attribute in the game. This means things like adding max hp / mp, giving a character more turns, giving resistances, more crit, more evasion, damage type, attack area, ect. This way, should anyone wish to utilize such a thing, it's already built into the system.

In terms of resistances / damage types, if you wanted to add a new one, you can do so easily, as a script will handle battle damages.

Edit: Tweaked "Number of Turns" slightly to make it more mod friendly. Also... I just had the crazy Idea of adding attackable walls / doors / barricades during battle...

Edit: Fixed a very annoying eye candy bug due to the speed increase. It should be all better now :D
Also in regards to the speed increase, dialogue speeds / sounds, menu pans, and character movement are just about 100% in sync in look, feel, and speed of the original shining games.

I find it interesting how much my brain can pick out the slightest error in step sound, and the classic triple menu swish sound when "staying" and panning out the menu, LE, and HP windows.

Nonetheless, I am very happy with the way things look now compared to the clustermess of code I originally had. (even if I broke the entire game several times to get here...)

Edit: The battle controller now correctly interacts with the new menu controller.
I also decided to split up the menu controller into several different controllers. (Battle, Cursor, Town, Status, Church, Town, Yes/No). They work the same as they used to, it just makes it easier to find what piece of code you're looking for.

When you bring up the menu, (after moving your character) the menu will auto select either stay or attack based on if you can attack an enemy from your current location.

Edit: Attempting to "attack" when you have no available targets now displays the "No attackable targets" message and shows your character's attack range.

I also implemented the Cursor menu as well. Currently it has no function, it's just a placeholder until I get all those functions working. (Minimap, speed, quit, status).

Edit: It needs fancifying but eh, the math is working and that's the important thing.
Spoiler
Image
Minimaps will always be centered no matter what room dimensions you use.
Edit: Item menus are a pain in the rear but I'm officially working on them now...

Edit: Officially done with the menu side of 'USE' and 'DROP'. That leaves only equip and give.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Tyadran »

Wow, all this info I've been missing with college starting. Good to hear.

(also just a bump so you can stop editing ^.^ )
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Chaoswizard98
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

This is going to be a long semester. 3 programming classes and discrete math >.<

Anyways, Give is now working as far as the menu controller goes. That leaves Equip as the only battle menu function not implemented yet. I also went back and polished up the other menu functions as well.

Magic now displays it's range when selecting a spell.

Items now have several more attributes including effect range, effect range limit (basically how archer attack range works), effect targets (can target enemies, allies, or both). I will add effect and effect radius after I figure out how to implement different effects (Probably after I re-code battle cutscenes).

Give and Use also display their ranges when hovering over an item.
============

The remaining things left to add / re-code for battle stuff.
1. Equip
2. Selection Controller (so you can actually target and select things)
3. Battle Cutscenes
4. Enemy AI
5. Cursor menu (Minimap is partially working, it just needs prettying up)
6. Events (AI changes, spawning more mobs, ect.)
7. Winning / Losing the battle.
8. Experience / stat / level gains.
9. Maybe more stuff I'm forgetting...
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Earl »

Another possible feature :
Dialogue choices. Sometimes yes/no just isn't enough.
Assuming traditional SF layout (three lines per text box), this would mean holding in memory more lines than are displayed at any given time so a player could scroll up/down the options... a highlighting of the currently selected option... tying a flag to each option...

While this has really gotten to be a staple in modern games, there was no reason why it couldn't have been done back in the day.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Grim04 »

Chaoswizard98 wrote:
Caedmonball19 wrote:Inserting a reply so you don't have to keep editing your last post :)
Thanks lol

Magic only needs animating and adding to the battle code. But since that is a pain, I decided to take a break from magic and work on the beginning of the game a bit.

I finished writing the beginning of the game and most of its dialogue. I layed out the basic shape of the starting town but its far from done. Since I only wanted the basic layout of the town I didn't care about decorating, sprite details, ect. Later on it will look like 4 nukes, 3 armies, and Godzilla blew through the town.

Image
I'm not really familiar with Gamemaker, are you using that in the above screenshot to make the maps?

I'm planning on making my own Shining Force game when this Editor comes out, I might start making the maps now.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

@Earl
Dialogue options was something I thought about however my original intent was to simply use the Yes/No menus. You do bring up a good point though and that is that 2 options is sometimes not enough when it comes to complex dialogue. It seems simple enough to set up another controller that would allow for this type of action so I'll add it to the list of eventual stuff.

@Grim
Yes, that is a direct screenshot from GameMaker's room creator. I set the snap X and Y values to 24 (the size of SF tiles) and just started clicking away lol.

My progress and what I've been up to:
Progress has been slow due to the massive amount of schoolwork I've been getting. I do however, plan on getting at least 2 things done this week. The Battle HUD draw function needs updating. Since I learned about surfaces, I found a way to make the windows less cpu extensive and it should help to prevent tons of draw calls every step of the game. On top of this, it also makes sliding menus around WAY easier and takes way less code. Also... it doesn't take enemies into consideration which are needed for the target selection controller...

That being said, the target selection controller is the second thing I want to complete this week. So far it's working great, and the cursor will no longer jump between targets. Now it will slide (path-find) to the next target. It seems to slide at a speed accurate to SF, however until I add the target's battle HUD slide functions and the sound effects I won't be able to tell for sure.

"Equip" is also half done. I'll be working on that function on and off when I'm in the mood since I hate working on menu stuff lol.

I really cannot wait until I finish these 3 features. After these 3, I'm pretty sure Battle cut-scenes come next which I am super excited for :)

Anyways, I'm glad I finally have a week off of schoolwork to work on this project. I will definitely try to get as much done as I can before more work is assigned!

Edit:
+Battle HUD is all cleaned up.
+Battle HUD now supports enemies. (If you wanted, you could also include the enemies class / level in the window)
+Target selection controller (what you use to select your target) is 75% done. All that's needed is to allow the player to back out of selection and to link it properly with the battle menu controller. (So far it only works for attack)
-Fixed archers being able to attack things close to them.

Edit:
The above fix apparently was only a graphical fix and archers could still attack things next to them. Nonetheless, problem solved.

Edit:
+You can now back out of choosing a target.
+Attacking officially supports different attack areas. (which is determined by a character's attack area stat, weapon area bonus, and item area bonus.) For balance sake, most people would only set 1 of those at any given time (probably a weapon or a character who cant equip weapons). If for whatever crazy reason you'd want to go all out, all 3 bonuses will stack capped at a radius of 3 and a minimum of 1 (in case of negatives).

Edit:
Great News!
So I was talking with my advisor today and there is a very high chance that I will be able to use this project as my senior capstone project. This means that the game and engine should be in a completed state by summer (May 2016). Although it isn't official yet, my advisor is the head of the CS department and also the one running the capstone course. That being said, he pretty much gave me the green light and that's the rout I am planning on taking.

Edit:
Long time no update. Been busy with school lately. Nonetheless, I have had some time to work on this project more recently so I figured I might as well give a little update.

+Battle HUD and LE windows now use surfaces. This makes them easier to move around the screen.
+Non glowing tiles no longer run their draw events. (Major fps boost)
-Fixed archers showing incorrect attack range when no enemies were in range.
-Fixed magic not showing correct range when choosing a spell

Edit:
+Attack target selection is fully implemented
+Target selection for magic is fully implemented
+Depending on spell, item, ect. the cursor will select enemies, allies, or both.

In its current state, target selection could probably be tweaked slightly to allow for the selection of empty tiles. So just maybe, I'll be able to add that "summon" spell that many of you had suggested...

Officially started working on item use effects!

Edit:
Took a nice break from battle stuff to get some of the "start room" junk sorted out.
We now have a working "character creation" system.

Image

So far it works the exact same as every SF game (aside from the fact that I increased the character limit from 7ish? to 19. I figured I might as well make the "Name" bar be even with the dialogue window.

Eventually I will add the ability to change the portrait, gender, and class of the character, but that can be added at a later date.

Edit:
Well, it's been a fun and productive weekend working on this.
The game now has its own config file in anticipation for setting your own controls. For now, the only thing stored in it is game speed. When the game is loaded, it checks your config file for your game settings (controls, gamespeed, ect.) if it doesn't exist, it creates it and assigns default values.

I also added an intro room which is a placeholder for the introductory cutscene. This room, and the title screen can be skipped at any time by pushing whatever your "Start" button is set to. For now, it's hardcoded to the space bar.

Next up, we have the New, Load, Options room. All of this is patchy at current time. Bits and pieces are done but what is working, I'm happy with. New game needs to have "choose a game save slot" inserted into it as it currently just transitions to character creation. Character creation is 99% done. All that's needed is to prevent the ability to select more letters past the max and the "END" button's functionality.

Load Game is getting close to being done as far as this room's menu is concerned. If you have no saved games, Load will be greyed out and unable to be selected. If saved games do exist, you will be able to select load which will bring up a list of your saved games. Again, if a slot is empty, it will be grey and un-selectable.

I also fixed 2 small things in regards to the dialogue controller and tweaked its pan speed slightly.

Pictures below!
Spoiler
Image
Edit:
New game is almost fully complete. All that's needed is a deletion / override warning when selecting an existing save. Empty slots are fully functional. As far as new and load game go, you can select the different save slots and if you are loading a game, you can only switch between the slots with data in them. The Empty slots are greyed out and un-selectable.

Edit: (1/7/16)
Hope everyone's holidays went well! I'm off of school for all of January which means I'll be working full time on this project for this entire month :)

Anyways, Dialogue is now super simple to use now that it's finally in function form. (Substituting character actions with time delays since I don't have an official cut-scene controller set up yet) I managed to code the entire SF2 cut-scene stuff up to where Sarah and Chester join the force in about 3 minutes.

The Main Menu should be 'complete' tomorrow. I say "complete" because I'm not sure if I want to add the ability to change controls just yet. For now Options simply displays "Sorry! This isn't coded yet!"

Regarding the next Demo, (InDev / Pre Alpha 2.0)
The next demo will be able to stand alone as a game (though a very small one). The reason why I say it will stand alone is because I have a very small and unique plot for it which is related in no way to my main game. It will be a simple demo that tests out very light cut-scene stuff, and pretty much everything in regards to battle. It should be... "Special..." I don't have an ETA on it unfortunately, mainly because I don't know how much time optimizing the battle cut-scenes is going to take. Plus I have to figure out how to fix a bug Earl unknowingly pointed out to me... Curse you mobility ring!
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by TehCupcakes »

This is very exciting to me! Shining Force is one of my favorite games to this day, and it has always been a dream of mine to make a game like it. When I started using Game Maker back in 2004, one of the first projects I started was a SF fan game... Unfortunately, I was severely lacking in the skill to make such a complicated engine. Now that I have the GM knowledge and programming skill, I simply don't have the time.

You seem like you are very competent and motivated enough to actually make this a reality. Looking forward to seeing where this goes! :) My biggest question is why are you still using GM8.1? The free version of studio has significantly better performance and a number of other improvements, and they did away with the resource limit a long time ago so I don't really see a great reason to stay on 8.1.

It looks like you've got most of the engine done, but if you want some help feel free to shoot me a PM or email (tehcupcakes@hotmail.com). Like I said, I don't have much time right now, but I am well-versed in GM and programming techniques, plus I love working on game engines more than anything.

Good luck!
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by macadoum »

Happy to see that things are moving for your game and engine. I don't know for which one i am more excited between your engine and the opengoldensun engine. I hope to test an alpha soon. Thanks for your work. :cool:
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

TehCupcakes wrote:This is very exciting to me! Shining Force is one of my favorite games to this day, and it has always been a dream of mine to make a game like it. When I started using Game Maker back in 2004, one of the first projects I started was a SF fan game.
That statement pretty much sums up my life and time with this project as well XD.
TehCupcakes wrote:My biggest question is why are you still using GM8.1? The free version of studio has significantly better performance and a number of other improvements, and they did away with the resource limit a long time ago so I don't really see a great reason to stay on 8.1.
Personally, I don't like GMS as much as 8.1. When you test run your project, GMS takes 30 seconds to compile your project, then it also has to load your project. GM8.1 takes like 2 seconds to compile it since it doesn't have to deal with all that extra cross compatibility stuff. The amount of times that I load and reload my game makes GMS really not worth my time to use right now. I will be porting the engine to GMS when it is completed so if you have 8.1 or GMS you can use it either way. :thumbsup:

Another reason why I don't like GMS as much is because its error messages are more cryptic and harder to read than 8.1. For example, in GMS I might get a "Null Pointer Error," whereas in GM8.1 it points me right to the line of code causing problems. Practically saying "uhm yeah, you spelled the variable wrong"

Also, I don't feel like spending 100ish bucks just to export my game without the GMS splash screen lol.
TehCupcakes wrote:You seem like you are very competent and motivated enough to actually make this a reality. Looking forward to seeing where this goes! :)
macadoum wrote:Happy to see that things are moving for your game and engine. I don't know for which one i am more excited between your engine and the opengoldensun engine. I hope to test an alpha soon. Thanks for your work. :cool:
Thanks for the support guys! I appreciate it!
I'm aiming to have the next demo out end of January. It has its own very small plot and should be able to stand alone as very small game which should be quite fun. :)

Edit:
Today was quite productive. I came up with a very nice layout for menus (finally) that is very flexible and easy to read and modify. This was done to allow for the addition of new menus and to change the way existing ones work. This way "weapon skills" displaying like magic does when selecting attack becomes super easy to do. Hell, adding a bottom "next page" option for spells, items, ect. now becomes possible. Since Items and Spells are stored in array form... Oh man, 1 character could have ALL the spells! Or, if you simply didn't like the design of a menu (like if you wanted spells / items to display in list format) you can change just that section of the menu system without having to worry about anything else breaking.

'Drop,' 'Give,' 'Attack' and 'Use' are 100% done. "Shining Ball" item was added so I could test offensive use items. The character's now face the direction of their target. Character 'Marching' no longer goes out of sync after their turn (this annoyed the hell out of me for the longest time and I finally got around to fixing it). Magic will display as 'You have no magic' if you do not have any spells, if you do... well the game breaks cause magic is coming tomorrow :)

The Cursor's diagonal manual movement code has been fixed. Now if you hit the edge of the map when moving diagonally, it will slide along the edge instead of just stopping. I also set up a new battlefield for the sake of the upcoming demo and added Evil Gizmos ("Dark Smoke") to the enemy list.

Oh yeah, and we have the mini-map now! No matter what room size you use, no matter what tiles you use, no matter what / where characters are on the map, it will draw a 100% accurate minimap in the middle of your screen just like in SF. It also fades to black slightly before it pans in so you can see the map better and fades back to normal when you close it. Oh and idk... If you wanted to add "Allies" or "Teams" or just distinguish between "Bosses" you could add more marker colors. :)

Edit: (Day 2)
Magic is now 100% done and optimized. I also added 2 more spells to the current spell list (freeze and bolt) to help test a few things. Equipping items is half done. Weapons are equippable, items are not. As far as weapons go, the wooden rod, elven arrow, short spear, and stick were added to the current items list with their various stats to test a variety of things. Mainly attack ranges and stat buffs.

Equipping should be finished up tomorrow morning. Then the long painful grind of optimizing the battle cut-scene code begins... I'll probably make another update video tomorrow showing everything up to the completion of the battle menu. :thumbsup:
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by bum_199 »

this sounds awesome! i'm glad to hear its coming along well. it sounds like the engine and game are doing great. i just don't know if id call it the shining engine and have those assets included cause of legal junk. i mean it would probably be safer to specify what formats sizes etc resources need to be in and what people do with it would be out of your hands.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

bum_199 wrote:this sounds awesome! i'm glad to hear its coming along well. it sounds like the engine and game are doing great. i just don't know if id call it the shining engine and have those assets included cause of legal junk. i mean it would probably be safer to specify what formats sizes etc resources need to be in and what people do with it would be out of your hands.
Most certainly I'll be trying to avoid using anything 'Sega' when my project is finally complete. I never did plan on calling it "The Shining Engine" or even using "Shining" in the name. Although I don't have a name for it yet, I will probably call it something along the lines of "<something> Turn Based Tactics Engine."

I have been searching newgrounds on and off for some music since I don't know any composers. So far that search is going alright. I'm still missing a "title screen / game theme" and an "overworld exploration" track though. As far as sprites and tiles go, the only art people I know are the more lazy type who would maybe get 1-2 frames of a character done XD. That being said though, assets aren't really my concern right now since it would take only a few minutes to swap them out and really, that can be done at the end.

Anyways, here's the completed state of the battle menu system! (Mobility ring also added as an equippable item to help me test item equipping and so I could fix an issue caused by the mobility ring and pathfinding)

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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by TehCupcakes »

Personally, I don't like GMS as much as 8.1. When you test run your project, GMS takes 30 seconds to compile your project, then it also has to load your project. GM8.1 takes like 2 seconds to compile it since it doesn't have to deal with all that extra cross compatibility stuff. The amount of times that I load and reload my game makes GMS really not worth my time to use right now. I will be porting the engine to GMS when it is completed so if you have 8.1 or GMS you can use it either way. :thumbsup:

Another reason why I don't like GMS as much is because its error messages are more cryptic and harder to read than 8.1. For example, in GMS I might get a "Null Pointer Error," whereas in GM8.1 it points me right to the line of code causing problems. Practically saying "uhm yeah, you spelled the variable wrong"

Also, I don't feel like spending 100ish bucks just to export my game without the GMS splash screen lol.
You have some good points. GM:S does take an eternity to compile, and unfortunately there's not much that can be done about that since the whole point was to get away from the GM8 compiler for the sake of multi-platform functionality. XD

Yeah, the error messages often suck, but the debugger is hardcore. I held off on learning the GM:S debugger for a while because it's much more complicated and seemed confusing, but once I got into it, it's really useful with breakpoints and all. It more than makes up for the shortcoming in error messages, in my opinion.

The splash screen never bothered me much... Of course, I also got the Pro version of GM:S from a humblebundle for $12, so I can't complain. :) I would be happy to export the project for you when it's done, if only to get rid of the splash screen. lol. But yeah, making it in 8.1 and porting to Studio does sound like a good plan. (Hopeful it imports well... XD)

Anyway, it's looking great! Still on track for completing this by May? I can't wait to get my hands on that Shiny code (pun intended). :D
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

TehCupcakes wrote:Yeah, the error messages often suck, but the debugger is hardcore. I held off on learning the GM:S debugger for a while because it's much more complicated and seemed confusing, but once I got into it, it's really useful with breakpoints and all. It more than makes up for the shortcoming in error messages, in my opinion.
Yeah that's one of the things that I wish GM8.1 had was breakpoints. (And for instance creation code to not be backwards)
TehCupcakes wrote:The splash screen never bothered me much... Of course, I also got the Pro version of GM:S from a humblebundle for $12, so I can't complain. :) I would be happy to export the project for you when it's done, if only to get rid of the splash screen. lol. But yeah, making it in 8.1 and porting to Studio does sound like a good plan. (Hopeful it imports well... XD)
Yeah I test imported it a while back and for the most part it imports pretty well. There's only a few minor things that will need fixing, mainly in regards to sound. I do plan on buying GMS and the Mac export option sometime in the future however, if you've ever looked into that, it takes a lot more work to export it to a Mac. :damnit:
TehCupcakes wrote:Anyway, it's looking great! Still on track for completing this by May? I can't wait to get my hands on that Shiny code (pun intended). :D
Yeah this should be done by the time I graduate in May. (The fact that I'll have an entire class this semester dedicated solely to working on this project also helps :) ). Honestly the 2 biggest things left at this point is fixing up battle cut-scenes (I had them done at one point, but it was never up to my standards so I'm re-working them to make them more flexible) and more AI work.

I'm aiming to have battle cut-scenes re-implemented, and to fix basic AI (the cost calculation is off) by the end of this month. In short, I want the game to be 'playable' again by February. That and I have this crazy idea for the next demo that I cant wait to get working :)

Oh and I sent you an email btw, not sure if you got it or not.

Edit: (1/15/16)
Holy freaking hell. It's one thing when you run into a bug, it's another when you run into a bug with the program itself :damnit: . Anyways, the bug is fixed (I hope!) and the battle cut-scenes are starting to take shape (but still a ways to go yet!). Character death (swirly swirly bang) was also re-implemented and optimized.

Edit: (1/17/16)
Attack works for both players and enemies and now supports critical hits. Archer / ranged attack pan also works. Double attack and Counter have yet to be added as well as a little bit of polish work.

Edit: (1/18/16)
Originally I forgot about blocking but that is now officially added. The battle cut-scenes now support any frame limit as well as whatever animation speed you want to give it. This way you can really animate every aspect of the cutscene at the speed you want. I also fixed an issue caused by button spam and added 2 scripts which take care of drawing the right character and animation for the battle cutscene. Crit and Block scripts have also been added.

Chances to Crit, Block, Double, and Crit Damage are not restricted in any way. Every character can have their own chance to perform such actions as well as receiving bonuses from items, weapons, buffs, debuffs, ect. All of the above is defaulted to 1/16 chance and a 1.25 multiplier for crit damage.

Boop!


Edit: (1/23/16)
Took a 2 day break so I don't get burnt out but I'm back now for the most part. 'Attack' is done for now. It doesn't support AoE attacks yet, but since the next demo will not contain an AoE weapon, I'm holding off on it until later. Other than that, double, counter, crit, block, experience gains, ect. have all been added. Next up is re-adding magic.

Edit: (1/28/16)
Magic is now fully implemented at least as far as players go. Enemies should theoretically be able to use it, however I don't have an AI set up for that yet so I can't test it. Bolt and Blaze (minus the L4 fire dragon) are animated. Freeze , Heal, and Aura all work, though there is no animation for those yet.

Enemy AI is also re-implemented. The demo itself should be feature complete by the end of the week, and finalized a few days later. :)

Edit: (2/5/16)
I still have a few small things that I need to change regarding the official Pre-Alpha demo but that's right around the corner. In the mean time, here's a somewhat challenging Pre-Demo map for you guys to test out. Note that controls, graphical issues, ect. are only temporary and will be different in the upcoming demo, as this is the map I use to test stuff with. Good Luck!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-F-g- ... sp=sharing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Creator of the GameMaker Shining Engine and "The Legend of Syro" Fan Game. (WIP)
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bum_199
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by bum_199 »

great demo! some things i noticed. my first time playing through hitting escape instantly took me to the desk top after making some battle progress kind of sucked. maybe add a are you sure message to that? one time i couldnt get the keyboard to do anything in game. i could still move the mouse over it and everything but then again i had only made the window as large as i could for the game because i couldn't find a full screen mode. i also noticed something that may or may not be a bug. normally hitting 0 on the numpad would bring up a normal scrolling map cursor. but if i selected a spell with ciera, then after doing so on that same turn, brought up the map cursor it would be the same size as the cursor for the previously selected spell. just letting you know.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

Yeah, Gamemaker assigns 'close the game' to the escape key by default. I will be using the escape key as a 'main menu' later on but since I haven't gotten around to working on that yet, I just left it with it's default function to help speed up testing.

Fullscreen is something that I haven't officially added yet. Gamemaker does default F4 to fullscreen, F5 to save and F6 to load. Now, I've heard mixed things about Gamemaker's built in save / load system which is why I coded my own, but for the most part it works just like savestates do on emulators.

The 'keyboard not working' is something that I've been trying to fix for a while now. Unfortunately, I have no idea what causes it (though I think it has something to do with the menu system and probably button spam). Since I can't figure out how to re-create it, I cant figure out how to fix it lol. If you find a way to consistently trigger it, let me know!

The cursor issue was something I overlooked at the time. I never reset the cursor's size after backing out of the magic menu. Nonetheless, it has been fixed. Thanks for letting me know!

===============
The main pre-alpha demo (The one that should have been done a month ago, apologies!) is just about done. I have only the painfully tedious task of creating one last cut-scene before I finalize the demo.
Creator of the GameMaker Shining Engine and "The Legend of Syro" Fan Game. (WIP)
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bum_199
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by bum_199 »

the keyboard not responding normally wouldnt be a big deal. but with battles that long it would be nice if we could save mid battle in case that happens.


edit: what you said about keyboard spam is confirmed. i tried hitting all the arrows and both and 1 and 0 on the numpad quickly and all at once. that triggers it for me.
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by Chaoswizard98 »

bum_199 wrote:what you said about keyboard spam is confirmed. i tried hitting all the arrows and both and 1 and 0 on the numpad quickly and all at once. that triggers it for me.
It triggers by button spam when already in the menu I take it? Any specific menu that seems to trigger it more?
Appreciate it!
Creator of the GameMaker Shining Engine and "The Legend of Syro" Fan Game. (WIP)
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bum_199
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Re: The Legend of Syro (Fan Game)

Post by bum_199 »

i just started hitting all the keys that were used in the game over and over as soon as i could control people on the battlefield. im pretty sure that brought up at least the main menu. not sure what menu it got to but not long of keeping that up froze it.
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