Legacy of Kain: Revival - First preview

[bluemonkmn]

I'll try again when I get home.  Maybe it'll work on my desktop.

[bluemonkmn]

It works fine on my desktop, which reports a maximum texture size of 4096.

[Vincent]

Great, at least you can try it.

Tell me what you think of it when you have time.

Thanks!

[bluemonkmn]

Well, all versions of this project function on my 6 year old desktop, which is a good sign.
I noticed that the player seems to overlap more of the background than I expect.  When I try to jump onto a ledge, it feels like I should land on it, but I fall "through" it because the character's "hit zone" is so much narrower than the character image (and also the character moves frustratingly slowly horizontally while jumping -- it feels like he should move faster horizontally, at least while jumping).  For some reason, I'm really frustrated by games where the character doesn't move fast enough horizontally... or is there some super speed button I'm not aware of?

I'm also wondering why you needed to create a separate hit zone sprite from the main Kain sprite?  Why not just define the Kain sprite's size as the size you want the hit zone to be, and offset the frames so that the player is drawn as the right location?

Are you going to integrate the instructions into the game at some point?  If not, I suggest using HTML format instead of DOC format.

Wow!  I really like the monsters.  I can't wait to see them integrated into a real game.  It seems like it summons a lot of them -- possibly because I'm holding the summon key too long.  But they look quite impressive.  And I've only summoned the first 3 so far!  I look forward to playing with this some more.

[Vincent]

Hum, for the HitZone, well, It was implemented before I was aware of the possibilities of defining a solid area of an image by moving the image within the frameset and then specifying an exact size into the sprite definition.  I didn't bother to change it when I realized it could be done this way.  I guess I eventually will.   

For the speed of the character, it's exactly why I wanted some people to play around with this demo!   I'm working on it for so much time, that I don't even spot these annoyances anymore.  I'm taking a note of it!   Also, there is a skill you can use to augment the moving speed of the character.  It's the "MoveFaster" skill (what an original name heh?).  You can select the skill by holding down the select button (default right-shift) and pressing the left arrow key until you see it appear in the skill selector. (The image is that of a red stickman with speed lines behind him.)  Of course, you have to pick the skill up before you can select and use it.  It's with all the skills available on the left side of the test map.  Once you have selected the skill, press the skill button (default enter) to activate or deactivate it.  The skill uses magic for as long it is active.  It's easy to know when the skill is active, because the character leaves "after images" when he moves with the "MoveFaster" skill.  He still not moving very fast in this way, but it's better.  And he jumps higher too.

There is a thing though, about jumping characters, that tends to annoy me in games.  When the character moves faster when he jumps, the game tends to become silly, because advanced players want the game to be faster and they end up jumping like rabbits all the time to get the speed boost!  :p  Ever played Baldur's gate on playstation 2?  The characters moved faster when they jumped and they shouted something like "Ooh  Ooh"  when they jumped.  Since the levels in this game are quite big, I ended up jumping all the time in the game to move faster hearing the "Ooh Ooh" all the time.  It got on my nerves. :p  And I always told myself that if I made a game, I would make sure the characters doesn't move faster when he jumps than on the ground!  laugh:

I'm not sure how much I will be able to speed up the character up though...  Because, if he moves too fast, the monsters will probable have a hard time hitting him...  I will have to balance this out someday.   :suspious:

Yeah, eventually, I want to integrate the instructions in the game.  The first part of the first level will be a playable tutorial, with Kain (the main character) facing really minor challenges to teach him how to move, jump, transform into mist, drink blood and, of course, attack.  The story line will be explained with dialogues and the inner thoughts of Kain.  And when Kain finds a new skill, he will have another short tutorial explaining how to select and use the skill.  I think that should do it.

Yeah!     I'm really glad you like the monsters!    Most of the development time went into creating them (and the skills of Kain of course).  There is not a lot of monsters for this kind of game (17 for now), but I believe that if the game alternates between platforming challenges, little puzzles, traps, monster fights and boss fights, it should be entertaining and not too dull.

I can't wait to hear what you think of the other monsters and Kain's skills.

If you have any suggestions to improve the monsters, skills, etc, they are more than welcome!

Thanks a lot bluemonkmn!

[Vincent]

Oh yeah, I forgot: about the spawning of mutliple monsters at once?  The rules that summon the monsters are into the ManageKainSprite plan.  The condition is on the pressing of a key but, unlike the pressing of a player input, I cannot specifiy "intial input only", so if you hold the key down, many monsters appear. 

So unless you have a suggestion to make them appear only one at a time, I guess you will have to do like and press-and-realse the summon key as fast as you can.

Thanks again!

[bluemonkmn]

To stop the key from summoning multiple monsters, maybe you can set some parameter/variable to 1 when a monster is summoned and stop summoning until it is reset to 0.  For example:

Code: [Select]

SetMapFlag(1, false);
if (IsKeyPressed(Digit1))
{
  if (!IsMapFlagOn(2))
  {
     Summon Monster 1
  }
  SetMapFlag(1, true);
}
if (IsKeyPressed(Digit2))
{
  if (!IsMapFlagOn(2))
  {
     Summon Monster 2
  }
  SetMapFlag(1, true);
}
if IsMapFlagOn(1)
   SetMapFlag(2, true);
else
   SetMapFlag(2, false);

In the above example, map flag 1 represents the answer to the question "Is the user pressing a summon button this frame?" and map flag 2 represents "Was the user pressing a summon button last frame?".

[Vincent]

Oh!  I thought there was only one map flag...  :suspious:

Yes that should solve the problem!

Thanks!

[bluemonkmn]

Someone tried downloading the latest version of the project from the project listing and reported a bitmap-related error.  Did you forget to include the bitmap again?  (This is why SGDK2 files like to be self contained Sure you don't want to embed the bitmap as an embedded resource like sound files are embedded?).

[Vincent]

Doh!  You're right, I did forget to include it into the archive again.

Embedding the bmp sure looks like a good idea!

I'm not sure how to do it, I'll look into the help file to see how to do it.

By the way, I'm interested in passing to the new SGDK 2.1.2 version for my game.  The sprite pushing behaviors and better tile touching are very tempting.   What would be the best way to upgrade my project from one version to next?  I was planning to open the project with the 2.1.2 version, make sure all the source code files are from the 2.1.2 version (I would copy-paste the code from a brand new 2.1.2 project into my project), and then paste my custom code into the 2.1.2 source code files.

Is that the best way to proceed?

Thanks a lot!

I won't update the project in the project listing right away, I don't have the project with me.  Also, I want to reduce the size of the graphic sheets so that more people can actually run the game... and embed the bmp file of course.

[bluemonkmn]

Well, the best way would be to move your custom code to separate files.  Then you can simply load your project in 2.1.2 and reset the source code (there's a simple command to reset the source code).  If you have a specific functions where you don't know how to do that, give an example.

But if you don't want to do that, you could certainly copy your customized pieces, reset the source code, and paste your pieces back in where they were.

Also, the process of embedding a resource may not be very well documented.  But looking at how sounds files accomplish this might help.  When you get to that point, if you get stuck, let me know and (when I have more free time) I can maybe provide an example.

[Vincent]

Well, most of my code is in separate files now, so it should be easy to re-implement my minor modifications to the existing functions.

Oh, I was unaware of a function to reset the source code!  Great!

OK, I'll keep you informed of how well, goes the embedding of the image file.

Thanks a lot!

[Vincent]

Allright!   Got the project to version 2.1.2 quite easily.

I also embedded the bmp file into the project, using the sound import procedure.  I didn't bother to "clean it up", the file is located in the fmodex namespace, because I'm going to import music and sound effects at some point, so what the hell.

Now that the project uses the fmodex.dll, should it provide this dll with the project file in the zip that will be posted in the project listing site?  I'll update the project when you tell me what to do bluemonkmn!  (Even if I didn't re-sized all the graphic sheets yet.)

Thanks again!

[bluemonkmn]

Hm... good question.  I believe SGDK2 will automatically find fmodex.dll (from the SGDK2IDE.exe directory) when compiling the project, and since you have to have SGDK2IDE to load an SGDK2 file, I think it's safe not to include it with your SGDK2 file.

[Vincent]

Okay dokey!

 I just updated the archive with the *now* embedded splash screen.  Should be okay to run it now.

Can you approve it please?