WIP: Tommy's Tomb

[thaaks]

Okay, okay, no WIP yet - just an empty project and a working title  ;)

I will use this thread to ask questions, mention progress and so on as I am definitely joining this compo  8)

Right now I'm thinking about level design in general:

• What level editor should I use? One of the PB mappers? Mappy? A inbuilt game level editor?
• What map format? Tiles or Shapes? What's the easiest for collision checking, gravity handling, drawing?
• Edit the levels with a tool or give it a try and procedurally generate levels for a platformer?

What are your suggestions, guys and girls? Do you have recommendations? What works best with PB?

BTW: What tool was used to create the level for the 2D platformer in the Projects\Games directory of PB (the one with the ice tiles)?

Cheers,
Tommy

[ATLUS]

hm i dont know 8-(

[reno]

You can include the editor into the game. Didn't tried something with PB, but it should not be too hard to add I think ;)

[thaaks]

Yes, an ingame editor is always pretty good - increases the replay value  ;)
And I had a quick browse through the "Platform_Game_Example_Update" game - the level is created by the game itself, based on two text files where the level is defined. It can be so simple  ::)

[thaaks]

I'm currently coding a little tool using FlexiGUI to extract and play back some animations from BlinkOk's graphics files (I'll email it to you Blink, as soon as it's done). It shall help me to generate config files that describe the animation frames which I will then load and use in the game.

I have some simple FlexiGUI questions that hopefully someone here can answer:

• How do I set the background color of a window?
• Currently my dialog window is not refreshed on application start, only when I click inside it. How can I set some simple automatic refresh?
• It seems there are only labels, input fields, buttons, check boxes and sliders available. What about radio buttons, list boxes and a file selector?
• Is there some documentation for FlexiGUI available? I just found one sample project which shows several tricks like double buffering, own refresh routines and such stuff but no simple "How to get started?"...

I think FlexiGUI is nice to implement some tools - I'd just need more docs  ::)

Thanks in advance,
Tommy

[kevin]

 Flexi is WIP... There's no doc's

Wip Thread has some tidbits.

[thaaks]

Aah, thanks. Will read a bit  ;)

[thaaks]

Just to show you a screenshot of my Flexi helper tool.
It's some PB animation mapper where you can specify rectangles on your base image and make animation frames from them.
Frame sequences can be given comma separated or in ranges with a minus sign.
So a frame sequence "1,3,4-7,9" would contain the frames 1,3,4,5,6,7,9.

It's nearly done and I only need to save the animation infos to some file that can be loaded back in later in the game.

Should help BlinkOk to verify his images and me to load them for the real game  ;)

[BlinkOk]

wow! that looks awesome tommy. very handy for me

[Green7]

glad you're making some progress. looks good! this way it feels far more like a compo. :) gives me some extra motivation...

[thaaks]

@BlinkOk: Will send it to you end of the week I guess. Lots of private life ahead...

@Green7: I am sure there are some lurkers working in closed cabinets on their secret project...be prepared for more competition  ;)

Cheers,
Tommy

[thaaks]

The PB AnimMapper is in some usable beta state. Have a look or a download here.

Hope it helps some people.

I'll provide some PB loader source code to get a useful image array from the generated UFF files in the next days as soon as time permits  on the tool's page ::)

I just have to mention: the FlexiGUI and the PBDialogs stuff was really helpful and pretty easy and straightforward to use. Thanks, Kevin! I really do appreciate all your efforts more and more  8)

Cheers,
Tommy

[thaaks]

The UFF file loading for levels is basically finished. Just need to copy parts now for new level elements and add the appropriate ingame creation function.

Now for the player and the monsters and some behavior and game play  :P

And only four weeks left - sigh.

For the fun of it: the UFF file for the shown level screenshot:

Code Select Expand


<map>
<background>
image=gfx\docks\bg.png
</background>
<platform>
image=gfx\mountain\platform.png
</platform>
<images>
nr=3
<image1>
idchar=L
x=238
y=60
w=40
h=20
fx=false
afx=false
</image1>
<image2>
idchar=M
x=278
y=60
w=40
h=20
fx=false
afx=false
</image2>
<image3>
idchar=R
x=318
y=60
w=40
h=20
fx=false
afx=false
</image3>
</images>
<mapdata1>
type=platform
imagesequence=LMMMMR  LMR
x=10
y=450
depth=50
</mapdata1>
<mapdata2>
type=platform
imagesequence=L M R
x=100
y=250
depth=50
</mapdata2>
</map>


Cheers,
Tommy

[BlinkOk]

looks good tommy. :)

[thaaks]

looks good tommy. :)

Of course it does - it's your graphics :)

The overall progress of the game itself is too slow for me. But real life always strikes first ;)