My game's approaching the point where I want to open it up to a sort of early beta phase in order to get a good mix of people playing it, then use their feedback to inform the rest of the development. Hard to judge these things, but I'd say it'll be about 30%-40% complete by the time I do this. Has anyone done anything like this before and have you any advice about it before I do?

I've thought of using a closed Facebook group, but would something like Newgrounds be better? Does Newgrounds let you restrict who can play/see your stuff? It'll mostly just be friends of mine, but if anyone here's interested in getting involved shoot me a message and I'll add you to the list

Looking very cool and Shovel Knight/Rogue Legacyish, look forward to seeing where it goes from here!

If you set angle to Shotgun.angle+random(-30,30) instead, it should work.

Sprite1.X-(Sprite1.X-Sprite2.X)?

BOOM. I'm an idiot thanks!

That's a lot neater, but still not sure I've got it. Here's the problem I'm having:

The Up and Left directions work fine all the time, Down and Right only work sometimes. Pretty sure know why it isn't working - half the time the wrong absolute value is being subtracted, it should always be the smaller one subtracted from the greater one. I just can't figure out a (simple) way to do it.

If I could just replace the values in those abs events with with "difference (EnemyZombie.X,EnemyZombieDetector.X)" I'm pretty sure it'd work fine.

Nice - that works, but I still seem to need 8 events rather than 4. Eg for "WalkRight", I need to test twice - one for when Sprite.Y > Destination.Y, and one for when Sprite.Y < Destination.Y, as it changes the order of the subtractions. Might be my crappy logic though! Is there a way to do it in 4 nice neat events?

Is there an easy way to just test the difference between 2 values? I'm making my own directional animation events which should say something like:

If (Sprite.X < Destination.X)

and (difference (Sprite.Y,Destination.Y) < difference (Sprite.X,Destination.X))

Set animation "WalkRight"

If (Sprite.Y < Destination.Y)

and (difference (Sprite.Y,Destination.Y) > difference (Sprite.X,Destination.X))

Set animation "WalkDown"

... and so on for all the other directions. I know I can do it manually by subtracting one value from another, but all the Cartesian positive/negative stuff's twisting my head a bit Is there an easier way to do what I'm trying to do?

+1 to global booleans, God yes. I know it's easy enough to just use zeroes and ones, but it feels 'messy' somehow...

Also some sort of folder or other organisational system for global variables would be nice, I can end up with extremely long lists to wade through every time I need to change one. The option to switch to a text-based editor and do "Find and replace"-type actions would also be amazing.

Built-in extensions and improvements to existing behaviours would be nice too. Just making semi-decent AI can be quite a hassle: I know doing it yourself gives you more control, but there are certain AI behaviours (eg flocking, wandering, swarming, avoiding obstacles without glitching/popping around everywhere) that are common to a lot of games and it would be handy to have built-in. Some sort of MoveTo+ (super fast dynamic pathfinding edition) would be a dream come true for me.

Basically put R0J0hound and RexRainbow on the payroll, you won't regret it

To be a really good (solo) game developer you have to be good at so many things. A good head for logic is a great start and will minimise the amount of time you waste making bad code, but you also need an eye for graphics, an ear for sound, a game-player's sense for what's working and what isn't, the ability to organise a project and plan ahead, a lot of self-discipline... and that's just the basics really

So no, better IQ doesn't mean better games. Having a genuine love for games (not just videogames), and a burning desire to make one yourself, will take you much further IMO.

EDIT- Crazy triple post, sorry

EDIT- Crazy triple post, sorry