mattb's Forum Posts

  • Proxymity you could try http://www.indiegamejams.com/ & you can enter anything for 1HGJ, even if it doesn't fit the theme, then watch it get played on the twitch stream afterwards.

  • heyguy Thanks <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile"> I've done a lot more 1hgj's in the last year, so if you see any of my entries on the site that you want a capx for then let me know.

    http://onehourgamejam.com/ (click on authors in the sidebar to find them all)

  • R0J0hound

    I'm thinking now that the per hex thing isn't going to work with the latest idea I have:

    Originally it was going to be just the player & a patrol enemy moving around the level & some gates/keys, but now I think there could be some interesting logic puzzles with toggle switches & moving platforms. So it'd be like a railway switching/shunting puzzle where you need to plan your route, how many times you pass over toggle switches...

    Moving platforms that just turn on/off would be easier to do, but you could use that to drop enemies off the map. It'd be more interesting to move them or the player to a different place.

    I might revisit this idea later & try it in 3d instead when I get the hang of a 3d engine (using teleports & split geometry to handle the impossible shapes like Monument Valley). I really appreciate you taking a look though. By the way you helped with my multiple-gravity box movement question a while back, here's how that idea turned out:

    http://i.imgur.com/Wf74Wn1.gifv

    http://i.imgur.com/n2GlT9j.gifv (using Chipmunk here for the lasers & collision filtering)

    http://i.imgur.com/SFZWOHW.gifv

    newt

    good idea, that would be handy for doing tiles case by case since there aren't many combinations

  • R0J0hound so for movement/colls within the current hexagon the calcs would be done as with your isometric behavior, giving each block within the hexagon an xyz position etc (except using formulas that work for non- 2:1 isometric). Or did you have something simpler in mind?

  • I have an idea for a game that extends the kind of puzzles in the game Hocus, so I thought I'd try to recreate its movement system. This is proving tricky & I have a question for anyone with experience making an isometric game.

    First of all here's what Hocus looks like:

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    & here's its level editor:

    My first thought was to use graph movement, moving from node to node, having cases based on each node's connections to determine which move directions are possible, if there's an obstruction, where you stop etc.

    The cases turned out to be simple for a closed impossible figure like a penrose triangle:

    -If a node has link in the same direction as player's upvector then an obstacle is found. Player can move in direction of obstructing link or go back the way they came.

    -Else player can move along any link within their current plane (eg. if player up is +Z they can move in any XY direction from that node).

    Here's how it turned out: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... index.html

    & here's the sprites I used (I'm not posting the capx because it's embarrassingly long-winded & messy):

    The next step is to figure out how to handle various cases for crossover edges:

    My current approach of handling each node case by case is getting hard to manage, especially for player z-ordering. So my question to anyone who's made a 2d isometric game: would iso movement make the movement & obstacle testing easier, & can you think of any tricks to simplify things?

  • You'd need to modify the platform behavior itself to do this. Maybe you could ask forum user ruskul about this, they made a recent post about editing it for collision filtering.

    But if your landscape is completely orthogonal then you should just roll your own because you don't need to implement the two most difficult aspects of a platformer: slopes & moving platforms.

  • I used the first method R0J0hound mentioned for a 1-hour game jam entry:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... eMaze.capx (you'll need his Paster plugin)

    It uses a Level Bounds sprite, definining the world wrap seams, & 8 paster objects around it. In retrospect you'd only need one, looping around the 8 positions - you don't get much time to think in a 1HGJ!

  • LumensAquilae If you're still working on this I did something similar with weighted buttons where button-triggered objects could have multiple inputs & also require a minimum number of inputs before activating:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... ample.capx

    It uses families so it's easy to add new triggered objects - just add them to the family & make a new event in the triggeredLinkedUID function.

  • facecrime

    If you decide to experiment more with an npc cover system, I did this rough test last year & it might be useful:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... ystem.capx

    It shows how you can get a decent cover formation with npcs keeping their distance & getting behind different cover objects with quite few events. With a proper state-based ai setup I'm sure you could make some challenging opponents.

  • Nice work! I was expecting just a few rooms & waves of enemies, but instead got a well-paced & varied campaign.

    Some ideas - they might seem overly critical but that's only because it's interesting what you're doing in C2:

    Movement of everything could be faster, it would suit the bullet hell mechanics you've got (the slow enemy projectiles) & the player could move around more freely. Right now, the only tactic is to keep circling enemies in one direction. It'd be more fun to be able to dodge around larger fields of bullets & avoid hordes of melee enemies (think L4D sized hordes instead of just 3 or 4 at once).

    The cover obstacles don't feel intuitive. You can shoot over them, but they seem to block enemy LOS (they don't approach if you're behind cover). Maybe you could have a cover system useable by both player & npcs, which forces the character to duck if they're next to cover (tested by overlap or distance) & stand if they're shooting.

    Rage mode didn't seem to do anything. Something that works well in shooters is to build up an adrenaline meter (typically based on combo scoring) then you can activate slow-motion for a short period - this is great in bullet hell shooters where you tactically use it to get out of chaotic situations.

    There could be a bigger difference between being on foot & inside a mech - movement speed, special abilties like charging forwards, new weapons like rockets/grenade launchers, being able to move or crash through scenery.

    Flamer-thrower boss was awesome, maybe there could be smaller mini-bosses like that to keep you on your toes.

    Look forward to seeing more of this

  • [quote:kffr6u7g]These cells create a single microorganism having the force of movement ONLY FROM the original CELL.

    If you simplify the particle attraction forces to only point towards the main cell, you can get decent performance while keeping inter-particle collisions turned on (nice idea though R0J0hound having no collisons & only forces keeping them apart, performance seems good that way). Here's a fun experiment that looks like a radioactive fried egg <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy"> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... tTest.capx

  • Paramonov

    I don't think chipmunk is going to be fast enough for any kind of fluid simulation with particle attraction forces. I had a go & couldn't get anything to work with decent frame rates - here's my best attempt:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... nTest.capx

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  • This is great, really good use of audio too. I don't have the level of concentration needed to ever beat your score though

  • This is great, exactly the kind of elegant solution I was hoping to do, thanks!

    The simultaneous example is very helpful & not something i would have thought of. I've always been unsure about where to use while loops. I did a stress test with both your examples (although I won't be using more than 10 or 20 boxes at a time) & interestingly the simultanous movement had the best performance. 300+ boxes 60fps, i think that should do it <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy">

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... tress.capx

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... tress.capx

  • I've got some simple mechanics that I thought would be doable with custom movement, but I've got no clue how to use it. Here's what I want the boxes to do:

    I've got this to work with a platform behavior on each box & some events locking their movement axis, & even got it working with raycast collisions in chipmunk. But I'd like to do it with custom movement just out of curiosity since I've never used it before.

    Here's how far I got <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy">

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/523 ... Boxes.capx