demolam's Recent Forum Activity

  • Nice game, I really enjoyed it, eventhough I haven't finished it yet. I got stuck on the underwater spikes and just lost my patiance. But I think I'll play it through later. Good music as well, I take it that you were inspired by the Metroid series, or am I completly wrong then?

    I have no real complaints this far, just some minor things that I personally prefer, even though I'm aware that there are people who would say the opposite. For example I think I would like a little slower platformmovement with lower acc. and dec. I also would, as someone mentioned, like more savepoints. But these are just my personal opions, and I really think the game is fine the way it is, especially since you changed the jump key. Greate game!

  • The new graphics look great mate!

    Awesome!

    ~Sol

    I couldn't agree more. The new ground graphics looks great I think, and even more so compared to the old ones.

  • megatronx: Well, I actually think that most people with a lot of practice and some luck can write a good song. However, of course this depends on how you define a good song. If you mean popular, like a radio hit or something, then I�m absolutely sure that anyone can write such a song, since the foundations for these are basically the same chords and concepts. But, on the other hand, it is very unlikely that they would be able to produce it on their own. And writing an original song, that is something like no one has done before, which at the same time is good is more difficult.

    dkdoom: Thank you very much for your kind words. Tough, I haven�t heard of "The Raven's Spiral Guide To Music Theory". I will probably look it up so I�m not making the exact same thing as someone else.

  • Step 1 � About Creating Music and the Very Basic Theory

    This was originally intended for the TIGS-forums, but I thought I would post it here first just because I'm that nice (and because I want some feedback which people seems great at around here). Therefore all feedback is welcome. Even if you don't read it all, please let me know because then my english is probably not good enough yet for these kind of longer texts. Enjoy!

    What this guide is not:

    This guide will not teach you how to play any instrument. It will neither try to tech you some program to make or record music in and nor will it teach you any music history. What I will try is to teach you the very basics of music theory. By no means everything, but just about enough for you to learn how to take compositions apart and analyze them and slowly start to learn how to create a song of your own.

    About me:

    My musical experience goes back to when I was nine and I started to play the piano after school once every week. It was also during this time I first came in contact with musical theory. After I quite taking lectures I had a pretty long rest from music until about three years ago, when I first picked up the guitar and practically practiced every day for over two years. Today I play in a rock band on my spare time, a band which practice once every week at most, without a singer and no gig in sight (yet). But still, I think my musical experience is a lot bigger than most people here, and I do create the parts I play on my guitar on my own.

    Since I play in a rock band, and since I generally listen to and make that kind of music, there will be a small focus on that, however, we will also look into some examples from games and the stuff I will be covering will be useful no matter what you are planning on making.

    Games have I been playing since I, on my 7th birthday, received a Sega Mega Drive with Sonic 2. After that I have owned (and still owns) a Game boy, Game boy color, Playstation, PS2, Gamecube and Game boy Advance. I first came in contact with indiegames when I was looking for sites with freeware games and stumbled upon Gamehippo. Back then I remember it really opened my eyes to the fact that I, as many others apparently out there, could make my own games and let thousands, maybe millions download and play them. After a time Free Lunch Design released it�s amazing Icy Tower (which I played the entire Christmas that year) and through their website I first came in contact with TIGsource.

    Finally, before we start:

    I really want to point out that music is, by no means and no matter what you believe, some kind of �mystical art� or something like that. You don�t need any talent. Talent is the excuse of music corporations for failing to market an artist, or of your lousy music teacher who didn�t have enough patient or the right teaching abilities. Any one can write a song. In fact, any one can write a descent song, with a little patience. I would even say most people, with enough work and determination will be able to make a song that can become quite popular, at least with a little luck. All you need to do is read this five steps guide, and soon your songs will write themselves, and they will be good or even great and you will become famous!

    But seriously, writing songs can be though at times, and writing classics is hard, very hard. Like shitting out a baseball hard. But what fun would there be if everything came easy, right? (except sex!).

    Besides the music theory, everything I write here should just be considered as recommendations and hints which have worked well for me. That doesn�t mean that it will suit you the best, you might even find out that you must tackle the problems completely different. Always remember, there is never THE way to create music. Just as with games everyone goes different about some of these things.

    I would finally like to recommend you, and I really mean this, to learn how to play an instrument. Sure, if you want to you can create all you�re music in a program on the computer, but I personally think that it will be much more difficult. As we will talk about later, if you want to create old 60�s inspired rock, the best way to learn how to do this is simply by playing lots of those classic songs and then, eventually, you will start to make such music. However, and this is important, to create good songs you will generally either have to learn music theory, or, like Jimi Hendrix, play and wait until the rules comes naturally to you anyway. Do I have to say which way that is the fastest and simplest?

    Music takes time, so let it do so:

    I think that rule number one with music, no matter what you are after, is that there is no shortcuts. There are better ways of learning things, but certainly no shortcuts. If you are trying to learn how to play the guitar you can always force yourself to play faster than you are actually capable of, but the result in the end will be that you will have to go back and learn the precision that you previously missed and if you are not careful you can even get injured. Maybe that will not happen if you try to make a song, but the point stands. If you want to make a descent song, you can�t force yourself to create, it will eventually come natural. When you are ready, my child.

    With that said, don�t be afraid to start experimenting with what you learn here. Perhaps you shouldn�t have the ambition to turn it into an entire song at the beginning, but just try to find some nice riffs or melodies to play around with which later might form the foundation for something.

    What is music?

    As you might (or might not) know sound is created by vibrations of different frequencies which travel through the air and hit our ears. These vibrations can be differently strong (loud), but they can also vibrate at different speeds. This is what determines if a note has a high pitch (like a fork on a plate) or a low pitch (the bas in your pimpmobile) and it is the way we recognizes different tones. But using all possible frequencies in music wouldn�t work since it would be too complex. Some of the notes would even be out of the frequencies we can hear (as humans)!

    That�s why we all need to thank the monks of the 11th century (or something like that) who constructed the foundations of our western musical system as of today. The most fascinating thing about this is that it consists of only 7 whole tones (and some half, but we will cover that soon). These tones are each named by the roman letters from A to G. The best way to understand how the notes are systemized is probably by looking at the fret-board of a piano:

    As you can see, all the white tangents are the A to G notes, while the black ones are the in-between (or half) ones. Also, maybe I should point out that F# is pronounced F-sharp and is given its name by the tone of the white key to the left of it. So the black key to the right of C is hence? C# (C-sharp), very good! You should also know that these �black� tones have two names. Since they are always surrounded by two white keys you can take the name from either the right or the left. If you take the name from the left you ad # and calls it sharp, if you prefer the name on the right you ad b and it is then called a flat. Hence Db (D-flat) and C# (C-sharp) is the same note. Easy, right?

    If you are trying to learn how to play the guitar you will not have the help of black and white in the same way, but it is still the same notes. Now, if you look at your average piano/keyboard you will find that this pattern, as seen above, with two and three blacks, is repeated all over the fret-board. What does this tell us? That�s right, that those are the same notes, just a bit lower to the left, and higher to the right. I can�t explain exactly how this works, but if you press down the central C key and then the next C key further to the right, you will find that they sound really similar, just that one of them is a bit higher. As I said, I don�t know exactly the way this works, and by god you don�t need to know it either, but it has something to do with the frequencies. That�s all I can tell you.

    The Rhythm:

    Above we have talked about music, and that it consists of different tones. However, the pitch of the tone is not the only thing that matters when we are creating a melody, we do also care about the rhythm and the fact that we can make the tones last differently long. The length of the tone is usually referred to with respect to the measure. And what is a measure, you may wonder? It�s basically a way to structure music to keep track of and making the different lengths of the tones come together, forming a steady flow with the rhythm. Or as wikipedia puts it; �In musical notation, a bar (or measure) is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration�. But unless you are planning on becoming a drummer or want to make music notation you really don�t need to know much more than that.

    In the quotation from Wikipedia above they mention number of beats when discussing the measure. The beat, in this case, is the tempo of the song. All songs goes in a steady beat, which may or may not change during the song, and that beat tells us how fast or slow we should play. Most of the time you want to play on the beat, that is at the same time as the beat occurs, and not slightly before or after. Generally we talks about how many beats per minute, or bpm, there is in a song. For example, Paradise City (

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    ) by Guns & Roses begins in 110 bpm, and then around 2/3 through (5:20 in the video) the tempo is doubled to 220 bpm! As you can see in the video, when the drummer starts to increase the tempo, everyone else must follow. This means that they all have to play in the same beat and that, for example, the bass player can�t suddenly start to play in 190 bpm.

    As stated above, the beats per minute tells us how long a measure should last. However, even though we must stick to the at the moment given tempo in a song, this doesn�t mean that all the tones must have the same length. If that were the case, all music would be very boring to listen to. The most basic note length, by which all other ones are measured, is the whole note. Basically it is when you hold out a note for an entire measure, that is the tone begins when the measure begins and ends when the measure ends. Simple. As mentioned all other notes are related to this basic note. If we play a note half as long as the whole note, that is a half measure, we get a half note. If we play a note half as long as the half note, � of a measure, we get the most common on; a quarter note. And so on and so forth. We can continue to half the length of the notes for all eternity, but there will be little purpose of doing so since they will be to fast for our ears after a while. The most used note lengths are the ones between the whole note and the 1/16th note.

    Does this seem confusing to you? It is probably a bit overwhelming to take in all of this which we have covered at once, but it is essential for our progression. Now you should have the basic tools to talk about music which in turn means that we can move on and actually talk about the creation of songs. Also, if you find the part about the rhythm a bit confusing, don�t worry. As long as you are anything like me, this will come naturally to you as soon as you start to make some basic tunes of your own and then, suddenly one day you realize that you have learnt it all.

    If anything is the least unclear to you, please just ask me. I have a tendency to sometimes explain stuff as if everyone already knows what I�m talking about. Oh, and all feedback is very welcome. The next lesson we will be covering scales and how to make a simple tune. Until then, make sure to practice your instrument/program of choice and try to learn the names of the tones that you play.

    Step 2 � Scales

    Step 3 � Chords

    Step 4 � Song parts and picking a song apart

    Step 5 � Creating a song of our own

  • ok, cool, thanks.

    Is there anything you would like me to imporve or add in the game?

    I actually liked the older version better than the new one, just because it seemed more polished and almost like a complete level. The new enemies are great, I really like that spike-shooting hedgehog, and I also liked the falling and moving platforms, however I found the drop in FPS to be quite annoying. Even after I changed the window-size it still didn�t feel as fluid as the older version. I also thought that the old background with the clouds looked better than the new one, primarily I guess because there was more of a pixel feeling over them.

    One other problem I had with the new version was that when I was hit by an enemy I just kept on flashing for at least five seconds before it stopped, were as in the old one it was over after maybe a second. I don�t know if you changed anything or if it is something else that�s messing it up, but flashing for such a long time just annoyed me. To me it was also slightly unclear what I was loosing from a hit, but maybe that�s because I played the old version. Or it could be just me.

    I would say that you have a good foundation for your game, now you just need to add some more content. More enemies, more levels, more challenges and maybe some power-ups or something would be nice. And try solving the minor issues that people has mentioned because they are important for the first impression.

    When I recently didn�t know how to improve my game, I sat down and played Super Mario Bros. 3, just to see what made that game great and mine just dull and boring (neither good nor bad). It actually gave me some ideas, so maybe that could be a hint if you want some inspiration about what to add. Just play some games that you like, but think about what you find entertaining in them.

    I also have a question; How did you make your sprites 400 % bigger? It would be nice to now, as an alternative solution to a problem in my game.

  • New orl alpha engine 2 test

    cap http://www.box.net/shared/bg9kx83kkp

    altho i will have to suspned this cap ( cons beta die! cons 1.0 live!) couse one of cons bugs is cousing crash everytime i`m trying to edit event sheets. Anyway, start test with RUN ALL.

    PS. layout 'LVL1_a2' is holding water behavior for player. you can check it out if you want - run it by RUN LAYOUT.

    I couldn't get this new version to work. I don't know why, but every time I try to run it it just chrashes and says that consrtuct has encountered a problem.

  • I cant get past the green worm at the end of the cave level

    Um the platformming variables could use some tweaking. He accelerates and decerates pretty slow, making it hard to jump on platforms etc. If he accelerated and decelerated faster, it would be more fun

    If you shoot the worm 20 times, or something like that, in the eye he dies and leavs a diving equipment. Maybe I should make a hint about that, it's just so obvious to me (perhaps since it's my game). You then have to back-track to the water in the second level.

    The idea was to give the player a sort of a heavy feel, but I guess the platforming requires too much precision at the moment to have such low acceleration and decceleration. I'll try to fix that, along with the other complaints.

    I also think that I need some more shortterm rewards. At the moment, there's simply to little stuff for you to collect in the levels (such as the coins and mushrooms in super mario) so I thought that maybe the enemies could drop some money or something.

    Anyway, thanks for the help everyone.

  • I really enjoyed this game actually. Nice controls I think, but then again I used to play Soldat some years ago. If anything, I thought it was to easy to reach the high score. I played it once without a mouse (on a laptop) and off course died pretty soon, but it made me plug in my usb-mouse and try it out. And that time I got something like 6800 without too much of an effort. As mentioned, it would be nice with a fullscreen option so you don�t accidentally click outside the window. You might also consider awarding more points for hitting the flying enemies, since they are more difficult to hit.

    I don�t really like the graphics of the player, the enemies or the ground, however I do find the explosions and those other effects great! As for the sound, I actually think it fits the game pretty good. You won�t win a Grammy for it, but with the weird graphics those odd sounds you call music really match quite well. The music also helps setting the intensity of the gameplay I think.

    Edit: I don't know what I did that second time I played your game, but now I stuggle to get more than 3500, so the difficult level is probably fine as it is.

  • Thanks for the feed back deadeye and Highimpact!

    Deadeye: I�m sorry to hear that. I�ve tried to run the game in windowed mode and I know it�s really not playable. I guess I put it in so that the game did not just crash at the beginning, and that I was hoping that everyone would be able to run it in fullscreen in the end. I will try to make some workaround to provide something between the fullscreen and windowed versions. Also, I think you are right about the colours. I�ll alter them a bit to increase the contrast and make everything more visible.

    About the sounds however I don�t know, it works fine here, but if it isn�t working for all of you I guess I messed up somewhere. Anyway, it�s just some random sounds that I created in SFXR so that it would not be completely quiet.

    Highimpact: The problem with the player sprite is that I drew him first, at a point where I didn�t know much about how to create sprites, hence his dull looks. Maybe I will change it, it depends on how motivated I will feel about this in a couple of days. I guess I will throw in a check-point in the 2nd level, however there is one in the cave, but I guess you never made it that far. There could also maybe be that the rewards of continuing are to small when you have to go back. But I�ll try the checkpoint thing first.

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  • Whops, sorry for that. Fixed it now so it�s just a simple exe.

  • A short demo of a platformer I have been working on for some time. It�s supposed to be somewhere between Wonder Boy and Metroid in gameplay, and like an early Mega Drive/Genesis game when it comes to the graphics.

    <img src="http://willhostforfood.com/users/D/demolam/screen1.PNG">

    <img src="http://willhostforfood.com/users/D/demolam/screen2.PNG">

    Features:

    • Next gen resolution! (320x200)
    • Sound effects that will make you go ahh!
    • A boss battle that is like nothing you�ve seen

    Planned features:

    • At least three more levels
    • Two more bosses
    • At least one more ability
    • Better graphics and sound
    • Music

    Since this is the first really anything that I�ve released all feedback is more than welcome, however I would especially appreciate if you mentioned something about the graphics, the controls or the general gameplay (is it fun at all?).

    Controls:

    Arrow-keys � move

    Z � jump

    X � shoot

    Shift � scan objects

    Space � delete message

    The demo: http://willhostforfood.com/users/D/demolam/demo.exe

  • I'm actually trying to make a very basic music theory/composing tutorial right now. It was intended for the Tigsource forum, but I can post it here too. However, at the moment I have lost all inspiration so we'll see if it ever happens.

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demolam

Member since 30 Nov, 2008

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