[FANGAME][IN DEVELOPMENT][SCRAPPED] Revenge: An homage to the old school Megaman

[ClashPDG]

Hey everybody. I'm working on a project called Revenge. As the title of the post explains, it's an homage to the older style Megaman games, particularly Megaman 2. I do not intend to profit from this game in any way shape or form except by including it in a portfolio. At the completion of the project, this game will be made publicly available.

A Little about me and why I started this:
I've been programming for about 5 years now, but I've never really mastered C++ although I'm more than proficient on Java and Python. Because of this, I wanted to program the game mostly in C++ using SDL. Revenge is going to be my first full-featured game that will adhere to some sense of quality control .

While I know that ANOTHER programmer starting ANOTHER megaman project is nothing to get excited about, especially with amazing games like corrupted just on the horizon, I did want to start a thread to be able to post my progress.

The Game:
I don't want to give too much information about the game away. First off, it will be something of a parody in the sense that all the names will be changed to a certain extent. Instead of Dr. Wily, there will be Professor sneaky, instead of Mega Man, there will be Okkusenman (yes, I know it means 110million).

Also, To give credit where it's due, One sprite that has already made the cut is
Yellow Devil - NO Body
The moment I saw this guy, it was love. Also, my avatar will be making an appearance as Okkusenman. He's simply a rip of the old megaman with recoloring and some minor changes to the helmet.

While there is a big difference between the resolution of Okkusenman and Yellow Devil I think it will fit with my game. I'm not an artist, so by relying on what's already out there, things are bound to not match. I think if I play my cards right, it will work just fine.

Because it's so early in the project, I'm not going to ask for any sprites or assistance in any way for this. Honestly, at this point, the most I could ask for is to have a few dialogues with someone like JKB GAMES. Anywho, please try to keep your eye on this. Believe in me!

---

Currently:

I'm working on trying to take sprite sheets and get this to look proper in-game. I know it seems trivial, but it's actually proving to be challenging for me. I can make them appear on screen, and they look fine standing still, but when they run... there's some ugly in there. One suggestion I received was to use GraphicsGale. I haven't had the opportunity to try to use it yet, so I'm excited to see if it will make this easier. Any other programmers with experience utilizing premade sprite sheets are definitely welcome to give their input!

My game engine still has significant work left to go.

[Tea]

All seems good, apart from unmatching sprite styles.

[ClashPDG]

I know. If I had the artistic abilities to make my own sprites, it'd be different.

[lucas92]

Good luck for making this with SDL and C++. You seem to forget about an essential part, the level editor, unless you're going to make you levels from text files. XD

As I've made some small games with SDL, I can tell you some tips:

- Always convert your surfaces to the screen surface format with SDL_DisplayFormat(SDL_Surface *surface). You will see that your program will run faster.
- Make a SurfaceManager class that will make your drawing much more easier and load all resources at the beginning of the program, before the main loop.
- Use SDL_mixer instead or SDL_Audio of Fmod, because it's open source and more high level.
- Don't forget to free surfaces when you don't need them, or else you will see a memory leak!

Good luck on this project.

[Mallacxo]

I'll be glad too help yah out.

[ClashPDG]

Thanks for the support. I haven't forgotten the level editor. I see it looming over the horizon, i fully comprehend the world of hurt I will be entering. Any advice you can give me on level editing would be greatly appreciated.

My main resources have been moosaders guide on YouTube and lazy foo's guides, they gave me a lot of similar advice.

Right now, you could say I'm reinventing the wheel. I'm designing my sprite class from scratch. This may seem like a bad move, but I'm using this as an opportunity to master C++, so I want to build it largely by scratch. In the last few days I've managed to optimize it significantly. For right now, I'm happy with the sprite class, so I need to move on to more important things. Admittedly, I'm not sure what to work on now. NPC's? Projectiles? Map editing? Collision detection? I don't know!!

I think the biggest priority should be the map editor. I know there are map editors out there, but I'd like to build my own. A few questions I've been mulling over about that are:
how do I differentiate between a collideable object and scenery (a simple Boolean)? What sort of format do people commonly save the levels in? I know tile based is an option, are there others?

Thanks for any help, and thanks for the input and encouragement I've received thus far!!

P.P.S . Aside from flash and things like game maker, what would you guys use for such a project? I've never played with directx or opengl but I don't think tools like that would be necessary for a simple project like this one.

[Sengir]

how do I differentiate between a collideable object and scenery ( a simple Boolean )?

Well, I'm working on a map editor for Fate's Mirror in C#, and I use an enumerator. Say you want to make a one-way platform, a simple bool wouldn't cut it. So you could do something like this:

Code:

public enum TileCollisions
{
    NonSolid,
    Solid,
    OneWay,
    (whatever else you might need, like water you can swim in, springboards, spikes...)
}

e: Though Kaikimi also has a map editor in the works, so he probably has something to say, too.

[ClashPDG]

You're right, an enum is definitely the way to go, I hadn't thought about texture, i'd want to be able to make ice and sand that might slow a player down or make him slide.

Despite being an homage to the old megaman, i do want at least 1 level to utilize parallax scrolling. I think that'll be possible with almost any editor though.

[lucas92]

I would say that you would need to know what image you would have to load for that level background, foreground, and maybe enemies sprites if you know you won't be going to use every enemies in one level. That way you would see speed gain, which is very important to save when using software acceleration.

How about a double array of tiles that would store your data for that level? I've done that for my "level editor" in my little car game.

struct tile
{
int clipx,clipy,type;
//clip would make you know where to clip in the image file
//type would be similar to what SengirDev suggested
};

And you would make that double array with a pointer on a pointer or using a vector...
**tile a_tile;

But you should def make an editor... Unless you're going to type a thousands of random numbers in a text file. XD

[ClashPDG]

Ok, Rachel Morris of Moosader, is my hero. She has a tutorial on creating a map editor. Let's all take a moment to recognize her greatness.

http://moosader.com/tutorials.html#mapeditor

[Codestar]

well i have everything split up.

I've got a layer for tiles which can't be interacted with.

A layer for collisions which is just one object being created with different properties each time. (solid, passthrough, slope, etc.)

a layer for entities(which includes players, npc's, scenery objects, doors, etc.)

and a layer for backgrounds.


you basically just need to figure out how to load and save each one of those to their own accord.

[ClashPDG]

What's the difference between "tiles which can't be interacted with" and "a layer for backgrounds"? What might you ut in the first layer that you wouldn't put in the second?

That's intteresting that you're putting the npc's into the map editor. I'd really like it if we could talk more about how you'd do that.

[Codestar]

Tiles that can't be interacted with are things you would have in a tile sheet, backgrounds would be huge parallax backgrounds behind all that.

I'm not really putting them "in it" you could say. What i have is just an object to represent a npc. In the editor you can edit it's variables to determine what npc is is and if it should call any scripts and whatnot. All of this is stored externally in a file, which can be read by the main engine to create an npc with the specific values you put into that file.

[ClashPDG]

Gotcha. I guess I was thinking that the tilesheets would have transparent tiles and that the backgrounds would be placed behind them. I think your way makes more sense though.

[ClashPDG]

Would anyone be willing to talk with me over aim/skype/email/whatHaveYou about level editors? It's driving me up a wall, granted I haven't had much time to work on it with midterms.

#EDIT
It occurs to me that I have failed to provide any visual evidence that there is a game in progress. Guess I'll need to get a video or something fairly soon. Because I have no map editor as of yet, I have no maps . So, don't be surprised when there's no backdrop or npc's at this point.