Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Video Update of Tilly's Rose Garden - Spring!

Yes, I finally have a video to show for the walls of text I have written over the past month or so.
But before that let me talk a little bit more about some updates!


1. Game Tiles:


Tiles in GameMaker 8.1
For those who don't know, tiles in game maker are like little beautifying objects you put in backgrounds, they don't bog the game down as much and make it look nice. So far I've made thirty 16x16 tiles for paths and stuff, I might make more, might not. This is more of a beautifying move than a needed move, but I might put them to some relevant use as well. I've also made a few tiles for the pond to have a tile background, as well as a shadow.

In the game, you might see some "Easter-Eggs" in a few of the tiles.

Here's and example of me using the tiles together:





Making tiles was a pain too, I made in one file in GIMP and transferred to a larger canvas size in GIMP to make a graph so I could make a solid image for game maker to cut in to tiles.


Making Tiles in GIMP

2. Rakes and Keys:


Yes this mess is finally fixed!!! - At least until I have to make the persistence thing to work.
This took me hours over a period of litterally days if not weeks to fix. BUT FINALLY!!! I got it.
Thank you God. I had to end up rewriting the entire code and remaking the settings in all the objects involved. But I must say, this is a much easier to understand code than the old one. I used that online whiteboard to help me out. I put all my variables and codes in there so I could move them around easier...though I forgot some of the time.



VIDEO:


This video is quick peeks, you won't see anything play-through-esque just quick peeks....Gotta save some interest for the release don't I? - Enjoy!






Thank you for reading, I hope you stay and enjoy the rest of the ride!





~ God Bless ~

~ Firefly




Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Tilly's Rose Garden - Updates!

Tilly's Rose Garden has had a little work done on it, though I'm still in procrastination mode for some things and I have a lot of bugs! - Tilly's Rose Garden has some new "friends", animated enemies! I'll post the gifs of these friends so you can see what they look like up close and personal, but in the game you loose a lot of detail since they're like 1/6th the size.



1. Enemy Caterpillar:


Yes, this is for real! My mother helped me a lot with this actually, she drew me a "walk cycle" on how they look (she's in to bugs and plants and stuff) and that helped me in animating this little dude. Though he's a caterpillar I'll call him what my mentor does "Wormy". So meet Wormy!

I picked red because that would mean bad /enemy or whatever you wanna call it. I added green and brown spikes so it could be one of those freaky caterpillars.


2. Enemy Mole:


So this is my cartoon mole (I looked up those things to see what they look like...yeah, very funny God), he's going to be kinda like the scarecrow that stays in one place only  but he'll pop out of his hole. I gave him a red tuft of hair since, well, he's kinda boring without it and I wanted something that represented "he's bad". Red seems to be the anti-hero in this game. lol





3: Beautifying Pond:


I made a little animated pond with fisheys! They're kinda hard to see but if you look close you'll see little fish swimming about in there.


4. More Butterflies! - 5.Keys and Blocks


I made some more butterflies so there would be a more colorful addition since they'll be flying at random. I also made 2 more keys and blocks, this time I used gardening hoes (yes that it a tool to those who have never gardened lol). These are kinda buggy at the moment and I have no clue why...




6. Other stuffs:


I've been working on little things but they keep not wanting to work, I'm focused on the more technical side so I can make things faster, easier and more fun for people who might wanna play one of my games. I have crossed some things off of my list I posted a week or so ago but in doing that I have also added stuff. So it's a never ending cycle until everything is done!

Hmmm what else...?..Well, I will be making the background 1 simple image and use tiles to make things look better, this will work out good becauseI'm told tiles don't use up as much memory so it'll look good but not slow down....Not sure what else to say except if nothing else this game is going to be prettier than before!

Once I get the bugs fixed for my current stuff I'll post a video of it.


And speaking of bugs...ever wondered what a programming fail looked like?

Ahhh attack of the bees! D:


_____

I hope you enjoy the update!


~ God Bless ~


~ Firefly

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Some Updates For Tilly's Rose Garden, Spring!

Okay well, I wanted to post something a few days ago but well...I've been very stressed about other things and haven't gotten the proper mojo to get out there and work on more things. But I have worked on some things!




New Sprite (Not Animated)
Frames For Tilly's New Object (sprites)



The main change you'll see is the sprite(s) for the player! She has been totally remade, making this the 3rd change to the player graphics in the nearly 2 year run with the games. Her overall design stays the same but she can now appear to be pointing in all diagonal directions instead of whatever your last sprite happened to be. And she blinks! Yes, I have given my creature lifeeeeeeeeee!!! *evil scientist laugh*....Okay that's weird but okay. lol





the animations up close (gif)



Another change that is still a WIP (work in progress) is I'm making tiles ( a beautifying feature in gamemaker) for the background images so they look better and they don't prohibit the objects or make huge files so it works out well I think!

Here's a simple example of tiles and a few other things (that aren't exactly new but oh well. xD)




Other things have been more "behind the scenes" work, things you don't know is there but it's doing something! I've had a lot of help from my mentor and I'm going to have to put that stuff to use to make this game how I vision it in my head.

Here's a quick little video before I close:





I still have these things to do! (though I have crossed out a few minor things from here)





Soooooo, yep that's all for now. More things to come soon!


~ God Bless ~

~ Firefly



Monday, July 6, 2015

Tilly's Rose Garden - Changes and Developmental Possibilies

As some may know, Tilly's Rose Garden has been my primary project. In fact it's the first project I've ever started! It's been ongoing for almost 2 years now, the longest amount of time I've ever put in to a project. Of course there has been gaps in time do to life such as it is, and other smaller projects. Anyways, the reason for this post isn't to bore you to tears so I'm going to get to the point.

Tilly's Rose Garden, as I have stated in the past has been very repeative, this is going to change!
Though the gameplay in general will be the same there will be some major changes. If the feed-back is good some I'll keep them, if some of them aren't good they might go back the old way or in  a new direction.


Main Changes:

I will label each change with a status.

1. No longer resetting points when you die. - ( Feature In Development)


In the past if you hit an enemy that restarts the level all the points come-back. That was okay, but it's not really "cheat"proof". Now when you die you will not be able to pick-up all the points again. Bonuses, enemies, and point-drainers will be excluded from this. They will be able to stay even after the room restarts. 


2. Diagonal and Animated Sprites - (A Possibility)


Current Sprite
In the next version of Tilly's Rose Garden (Seasons: Spring) there might be animated sprites for Tilly and there might be new additional sprites for moving diagonally. - I'm probably going to do this but I'm not totally sure yet.


3. Lives/Game-Over System - (Possible Development)


I'm seriously considering making this a reality. In the past you can go on forever until you finish the game. That's "fine" but I think it would be a more fun game if you were actually competing against something instead of having no real challenge. I don't know how many lives, what they'd take the form of or anything else. I do know that it would be the same basic thing as in Blox. The lives being gone and then you get a game-over menu.

4. Technical changes - (More coding, cleaner development style)


This will be the stuff that nobody "sees" but will make a world of difference. I'm right now learning how to code things and that will make the game work smoother. This though, will slow me down because I'm learning brand new things with this. I'm getting it though, slowly but I'm getting it!


_______

This should give you an idea of where this is heading, at least for now!
I hope to do weekly or bi-weekly posts for updates, like I had with Blox but we'll see what happens!



~ God Bless ~


~ Firefly



Thank you for the sucess of -Blox, Demo- !

I worked hard on this project, and I'm really pleased to say that it was a well worth effort!

After Approx 2.5 months of hard work, countless hours of work, graphic designing, writing, planning and everything else that goes with it, my release was a rousing success!

After my one week campaign I gained almost 450 views and 10 [+1] between two posts!



Other Realivant Posts:

A Few General Approaches - Things I'm Going To Be Changing With my Game-Development!
Blox [Demo] has been released, so what's next? - Where I'm Going From Here.
{Game Demo} Blox - Release - Download and Information
 Promo Vid for Blox  - Video Trailer