RPG System Iteration 7 Complete

March 8th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

After launching Save a Mole I finally have some time to work on the old (but loved) RPG system :) In this iteration I added several things

  1. The classic "dancing"  flowers.
  2. Static NPCs 
    Right now they just stand still ^-^U
  3. Basic portal detection (with houses)
    By this I mean that I can detect when the player enters a door. In later iterations I'll be doing something when that happens.
  4.  Floor Items ( the classic pokeball)
:) Now my little system actually resembles a game right?. In the next iteration I'll handle basic dialog.

By the way :S I was supposed to have this iteration ready by yesterday...but I miscalculated how to add the static NPCs (the policeman an the old man) and It took me another day to finish this...anyway...here is the video:

My first game -- Save a Mole -- Introduction

March 5th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in Flash Games - (0 Comments)
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series My first game -- Save a Mole

Ok in this series of post I'll be talking about the development of my first (and right now only) flash game. The game is called Save a Mole and if you haven't played it you should play it NOW! even if it's just check my work :p. I launched the game a few weeks ago  (26/February/2012) but I have been so busy with the distribution of the game that until now I haven't had time to write about this.

In this post I'll talk about how the idea of the game came to be..it actually wasn't a straight forward process as you may think...

The Initial Dilemma

It all started right about...this post...I was working in 2 games with 2 different artists (a mini-game and a platformer if you are curious)  and after a while ("a short while" if I may add)  the designers couldn't keep working on the games.

I understand that they had college papers/projects to worry about (so did I by the way and  back then I was also working part-time). But more importantly  I also understand that making games maybe wasn't their goal in life, their raison d'être. And while I accept that at the time I was really mad about all this...I'm ok now ^-^

A little image that I have of one prototype

But making games is my raison d'être and suddenly I was left with 2 incomplete prototypes...I had to do something about that...

(more...)

Doki Games 1.0 is ready!

February 20th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in Doki Games - (0 Comments)

You may remember that I decided to start my own flash game portal in order to complement my flash games :)....well the site us up and running as we speak (and by speak I mean you read). The portal's name is Doki Games I have a few thoghts that I want to share about the development of the site...let's start!

Doki Games Current State

Doki Games Current State

About the games on Doki Games

Since the "conception" of the site I wanted  to have quality over quantity,  I had to play hundreds of games to pick the +-50 that I have right now.  I  think that I forgot just how many bad flash games are out there :S. Just that experience will help me a lot when taking criticism for my own games :p.

Anyway most of the games are from mochi media, that is mainly  because the parser that I made  only works with mochi games (right now...more sources to come). I also added some other games "by hand" that I know are great :) like Bubble Tanks Tower  Defense  O__O I REALLY LOVE that GAME!.

I noticed that the update rate of the mochi streams is kind of slow...so I'll be adding lot's of "custom" games in the near future :) and I'll try to add some more sources to my parser too.

About the development process

I'm using Server Groove to host the portal, and I think that it's the best hosting for my current needs :) THE BEST. If anyone needs quality PHP web hosting I would recommend Server Groove.  Besides the hosting, I think that I managed to make the site very fast, the website was done in less that a month, that in itself is a proof that I'm not the same developer...I might be a little better now :p

The small development time also could be explained by my launching approach....right now instead of launching a "complete" site I'm just launching a minimum viable product.The current Doki Games has just enough  features to be launched :S NO MORE. It doesn't even have game pagination...but it  doesn't need all that right now :). In a few weeks I'll be launching Doki Games 1.1 with some features to improve 1.0.

(more...)

RPG System Iteration 6 Complete

February 12th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)


Ok. the sixth iteration is over. In this one I added some "solid" objects to the map and manage the collisions between the player and the map. Since the collisions are tile based this iteration ended way easier than I initially thought. Here is a small description of what I did:

In my last post I mentioned that most of the logic of the Pokemon maps is tile based instead of continuum. This is exactly why is so easy to use "look ahead points" to manage the collisions instead of going for a "pixel perfect" approach. I basically started doing this:

Instead of checking the whole avatar to see if it's colliding with some "solid tile" I just check the pink points n_n. Also I don't always check the four points. I just check the ones that are relevant to the direction of the player.

Later I noticed that having only one point per direction could lead to some wacky collisions don't being recognized...>_<. So I added two more relevant points.

And It was perfect ^_^...there is still room for improvement though. Here is a short list of things that COULD be done, but I wont now. (I'll probably do them in my first "complete" RPG)

  • I think that the middle collision point isn't THAT useful now that I have 3 per side. It could be removed. But It must be tested
  • Also, I noticed some bumps with the camera system when the player is colliding with a solid tile. Right now the camera want to ALWAYS have the avatar sprite at it's center.
    I could try to add a "smooth" value. So that the camera only moves when the player is actually moving.

That's all for now...the next iteration will focus on animated tiles. I don't really know how many iterations will take to finish the system...BUT there are only have 7 main features left :D so it MAY be 7-10 iterations :)

,

RPG System Iteration 5 Complete

January 27th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

Ok. The fifth iteration is complete and after writing this post I'll start to work in the next one (which by the way will feature "obstacles" and collision detection in the map :)). As I said before...this iteration only deals with the animation of the player's avatar.

I'll just post the video...then I'll talk about something "interesting" that I noticed while programming.

So, logically I'm using Pokemon Fire Red as a "model" of the map system. Usually when I'm programming/designing something I play Pokemon and try to "reverse-engineer" the logic of the game and use that as a base for my own system.

After I finished the movement of the avatar I noticed that I couldn't exactly reproduce the "Pokemon movement". I basically walked over pallet town for about 15 minutes just trying to figure why. Want to know why? after the break n_O.

(more...)

A flash portal? Oh God why?

January 25th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in Projects - (0 Comments)

So...I promissed to write a post about the reasoning behind the flash games portal. Here is it:

You see what I did here?. If you do you are awesome ;)

Even though right now I'm on the verge of launching my first flash game, my "global" plan involves launching A LOT more. Obviously I'm thinking about getting some kind of sponsorship for my games. But being as much of a perfectionist as I am, I really don't think that my first games will be "sponsorship worthy"...so, right now sponsorship is not an option.

<nerd parenthesis>
Surely you don't know about this, but one of my favorite games of all time is Starcraft, right now I'm a Zerg Starcraft 2 player (HELL yeah! zerg rush kekeke). Starcraft is a strategy game (you don't say o_O) and a lot of the initial game plan relies on building structures. 

Usually it's important to try to make your build order in a way that every building helps you to accomplish something specific, and IF a building helps you to accomplish more than one thing you will surely get an advantage over your opponent.
</nerd parenthesis>

With the "starcraft 2 build order strategy" in mind I begun to ask myself  "What can I do with this flash game so that launching the game helps me to accomplish MORE than just launching a simple flash game".

It's clear that I'm not the  first one to think that it is a valid strategy to create a flash portal (even with the monsters that are out there like kongregate) and that coupling your flash portal with flash games is a great strategy. And just like that...my flash arcade idea was born. BUT! am I doing this JUST because there are two random guys over the internet doing the same?....well maybe...I mean NO U_U. I'm different, keep reading to know why ;)
(more...)

Status Update -- What's in my mind?

January 23rd, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in Just Talking - (0 Comments)

Ok :) My first flash game is COMPLETE :D. Right now I'm just beta-testing the gameplay. I think that I ended doing a very complete and professional game :) (at least for a first timer). You'll be seeing the game soon, but not too soon..you know why?....because.....:

I'm making a Flash Game Portal O__O

And I want to launch the flash game portal alongside the flash game :)...so....I won't be giving away too much information right now. I'll explain my reasoning behind this later. But don't despair :D, right now the portal is around 50% done ;).  Soon you'll be seeing it.

Finally, the RPG System. Since SFML doesn't have a class that can be used for animations. I created one from scratch. The class is complete right now :). And I'll start the next iteration next week :). Well....that's all for now :). I'll explain the reasoning behind the flash portal later :).