Weapon Alpha

[Valo]

Hello, VGresource! Today I would like to share a project of mine with you. It is a platform game in the same vein as Megaman and Metroid and the like, we call it Weapon Alpha. The story is set in the year 2525, in an era where man and machine work side by side. These robots that have independent thought and reasoning, and a lot of them are tired of being pushed around. Enter a mysterious robot named Alpha, promising them freedom if they fight on his side. The age of man is over! You take the role of Valo, a young mechanic caught in the middle of the initial rebellion who goes after each of Alpha's Commanders and his human allies before squaring off against Alpha himself.

The game is being made in game maker 8.0. Levels are a bit open ended, meaning there is only one exit but there a multiple paths to get to that exit as well as find hidden power up points and other goodies. Your main attack is an overclocked welding laser. Holding the fire button emits a continuous beam that stretches the length of the camera view. It cannot go through most enemies or any walls, and it will over heat if you fire it for too long. Should that happen you won't be able to shoot until the beam cools down again. You also will be able to activate a super run for backtracking faster and being able to jump over larger gaps by double tapping left or right. Hidden throughout the levels are battery cores, collecting them will let you allocate one more point to powerup section of your choice; Power(deal more damage per second), Shield(take less damage), Cooling(overheat the beam less quickly and cool-down from total overheat faster).coughalsoyoucandoublejumpcough

Unfortunately, I'm not far enough along to give you an outright demo exe, but i do have a few development gifs, and I'm trying to have frequent updates to show, so please check back regularly!

Spoiler

Spoiler

this one was more of a tile test

Spoiler

This one was an early enemy pathfinding test, I'm still refining it, don't worry!

Spoiler

Not a gif but just a line up of the planned boss robot designs 

Spoiler

the beam coding isnt perfect, but this demonstrates it reacting to the environment. the earlier tile test was meant as a newer version of the tiles in this one

I'll be posting more updates as they come. Currently, I'm pushing to get the movement and beam code in working order, and ill release a little break the targets game as a demonstration of that. If you would like to contribute tiles, sprites, coding help(this one is a big one ;-; ) or anything really, i would greatly appreciate it. If anything feedback as i update would be extremely helpful as well. Thank you guys for your time, I'll have an update soon! If you have any comments or concerns, feel free to ask.

[TheShyGuy]

Nice! I'm not a GM coder, but I'll try to offer coding help whenever you have any problems.

[Valo]

Thank you, any help is greatly appreciated!

[Bombshell93]

ditto here, I've not used Game Maker since 6.1, but feel free to ask,
you've got quite a sexy set of sprites and screens there, I will definitely be following this!

[Kelvin]

Ooh, I've used GM8 recently. If you need help debugging, I'd be glad to help.

[Silversea]

I thought I was the only one using Game Maker 8 these days. I've been using it practically every day for the past however many days its been since it came from after GM 7.

[Valo]

I thought I was the only one using Game Maker 8 these days. I've been using it practically every day for the past however many days its been since it came from after GM 7.

I honestly prefer 8.0 to the newer ones. I tried using 8.1, but the room editor changes just made it awkward to use, and by the time studio became affordable(by which i mean free XD), I was too far along, and importing it into studio caused a bunch of errors.

[Valo]

Sorry to double post but I have hit a slight bump. I'm trying to get enemies to display a small health bar above themselves. Problem is I can't seem to get them to display their hud and their own graphics at the same time. The health depleting code is working fine, but i cant seem to get the visual running.
/

The current way I'm doing it uses the draw event "draw_rectangle(x,y-8,x+mydisplayhealthvar,y-5,0)". I've attempted to get it to draw its own sprites as well, but the draw_sprite function doesn't seem to allow me to keep the sprite animated. If you guys could suggest an alternate method or a way to fix this one, I'd greatly appreciate it.

EDIT: Someone on Sprites Inc helped me fix it.  "draw_spritxt(sprite_index,image_index,x,y,image_xscale,image_yscale,image_angle,image_blend,image_alpha)"

The draw event was overriding all other sprite actions. this code makes it render itself through the draw event, so it wont be overridden while still drawing the health bar.So thanks to Drax. I think he goes by terminal devastation here.

Side-note: While playing a test room I noticed something about the beam mechanics. Given that the beam requires continuous contact to do any damage, if you try to turn away to maneuver  out of an enemy's or attack's way, you stop focusing on what you were aiming at.Should I attempt to add in a lock focus or moonwalk(from super metroid) type button so you can move back while still facing an enemy?

[Kitsu]

the draw_sprite method has a parameter where you can put the frame index to draw
put image_index there to have it draw whatever frame the animation is currently on
so "draw_sprite(x,y, sprite_index, image_index);" (or whatever the exact order was)

[Valo]

the draw_sprite method has a parameter where you can put the frame index to draw
put image_index there to have it draw whatever frame the animation is currently on
so "draw_sprite(x,y, sprite_index, image_index);" (or whatever the exact order was)

Is it sprite_index=xspritename ? or just sprite index? i tried both ways and it gives me "non-existent sprite error". Am i doing something wrong?

[Kitsu]

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiosp...index.html
sprite_index is the number representing the sprite the object has assigned to it currently, so having just sprite_index there should have it just draw whatever sprite you have the thing set to
unless you're not using game maker's built-in sprite assignments I guess

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiosp...prite.html
oh sorry also the order is "draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x,y);"

[Valo]

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiosp...index.html
sprite_index is the number representing the sprite the object has assigned to it currently, so having just sprite_index there should have it just draw whatever sprite you have the thing set to
unless you're not using game maker's built-in sprite assignments I guess

http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiosp...prite.html
oh sorry also the order is "draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x,y);"

It always renders the sprite static using this method though. This is in the draw event. Also when i tried this time it misreads sprite_target and uses sprite_valo instead which i cannot explain

Spoiler

[Kitsu]

oh don't put "sprite_index = spr_target" in there
and also don't put "image_index = 1" there

just put sprite_index and image_index by themselves

literally just "draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x,y);"

[Valo]

oh don't put "sprite_index = spr_target" in there
and also don't put "image_index = 1" there
just put sprite_index and image_index by themselves

literally just "draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x,y);"

Oh. My mistake then, sorry. Did you have an opinion on the other problem too?

[Kitsu]

Side-note: While playing a test room I noticed something about the beam mechanics. Given that the beam requires continuous contact to do any damage, if you try to turn away to maneuver  out of an enemy's or attack's way, you stop focusing on what you were aiming at.Should I attempt to add in a lock focus or moonwalk(from super metroid) type button so you can move back while still facing an enemy?

This? It kinda depends on what exactly you're looking to do with your game. If it has a big focus on combat and dodging while maintaining DPS, then I can definitely understand having such a feature. But you might instead want the player to have to manage their DPS more, then not having the feature could be good, too. There are probably more arguments for and against it that you'll have to tackle on your own, at least until you're able to get some feedback from people who've actually played it.

Oh btw, welcome to TVGR~
Hopefully you'll receive some helpful experiences, and sorry if my previous posts came across as somewhat rough.

From the pictures in the OP, I can definitely say your game seems to be shaping up pretty well and is fairly polished.