Super Bouncy Cat [finished]

[NICKtendo DS]

Screenshots

INTRODUCING: SUPER BOUNCY CAT!

Neko and Princess return and team up with Bouncy Cat Mao to find and rescue the Moon Princess! Jump, bounce and propel yourself across 5 worlds to unravel a story 2 deep 4 u (it's a tad deeper than beat that guy, 'cause evil).
The controls are taken from Bouncy Cat Mao and improved upon. You still use just the mouse and a single mouse button! Hold it low to walk and run depending on the distance between the player and the crosshair, hold it high and release to jump, or go for MAX charge and perform a Jump Attack!

There's secret stuff too. Can you find them all?

Download the game >>> nya <<<

I wanted to upload this to sandbox.yoyogames.com, but it has become apparant (as I had to download GM8.1 from a third party as well) that YoYoGames hates hobbyist game makers.

[NICKtendo DS]

Okay, this makes me fucking sick to my stomach. I just tried the executable. A big fucking ass watermark? Really?
There's the "Made with Game Maker" shit while the game loads, the "upgrade to full version" shit when the game ends, but we just had to deface the half a year of work I did with a big fucking ass fucking watermark. Fuck you Mark and fuck you YoYoGames!

Bug note: Loading a saved game is a little bugged, but your save is not lost. Somehow saving the game just ignores setting visible to 1 for unlocked stages. Simply play stage one and exit it to trigger the event that makes them visible. I'll be damned to put in the effort to fix this.

[Bombshell93]

GameMaker is a product, YoYoGames don't develop it for free, so they water mark work to encourage a purchase,
Quite frankly I've only ever seen GameMaker as an educational platform due to its limited feature set and re-distributable issues,
while this is no help to the current project, I used GameMaker as a base and branched out to learn other engines and programming languages,
worth a try for any future projects (a bit of bias but javascript is quite nice to play with, fast, simple, feature rich, portable)

On to the Game! control is unconventional but I love it, perhaps don't have it go fullscreen straight away, have it as an option in a menu instead, the way the sprites scale is a bit weird and gamemakers full screen is a bit buggy, world map is a tad vague, perhaps bigger path dots with a circle around them, I didn't see them at first I was lost on the map clicking like a madman XD

[NICKtendo DS]

GameMaker is a product, YoYoGames don't develop it for free, so they water mark work to encourage a purchase,

I've been using a free version of Game Maker all my life and this is the first time it happened. Or it happened to Princess Fantasy Catventure too, but I never noticed or simply forgot, since this is the first project I finished in 2-3 years I think. All they had then was the tag on the top-left when the game loads, which should be enough for serious game developers to buy the full version so the game looks more professional. Now they're just inconveniencing those who make games as a hobby and release it for free more and more.
They could've at least been a bit more subtle with the watermark. It never showed up in the editor or testing, so it's quite a kick in the balls to see it after half a year of work in the finished product.

Maybe one day I'll understand, but right now I'm really fucking annoyed and am discouraged from making future games in Game Maker.

[puggsoy]

Nice game! I have agree with the map screen, the level markers aren't extremely clear and it took me a while to find the first level. A more noticeable colour or just a bigger marker would help. I like the controls though, it's a really neat idea that I think would be nice to try and utilise in a mobile game. The art is great as well

One thing that got me was that I wasn't always sure where I would end up or whether a normal jump would get me to a certain height. I would suggest is having a sort of dotted line which shows your trajectory, similar to Gunpoint (you can watch the trailer to see what I mean). Seeing as you're jumping most of the time, I think it would be a justified improvement.

I also think adding wide-screen support would be nice if possible. It would generally look nicer, and I don't see much of a reason to not have it (you could probably extend the menu and map screen, or just add some kind of tiled background to fill in the sides). The levels just seem a bit cramped since a good portion of my screen isn't being used.

The whole Game Maker this is certainly a pain, I managed to ignore the watermark most of the time though. Like Bombshell said I would suggest using more of a "proper" programming language in the future, I'm gonna be biased as well and suggest Haxe, although there's obviously an entire plethora of languages and methods to choose from.

This is all just suggestions though, it's perfectly playable and fun as it is and I can totally understand if you're done with it. Definitely an awesome effort, a nice bit of platforming fun and I think I'll be able to sink a good couple of hours into it

[NICKtendo DS]

Yeah, I'm pretty much done.
I can't program for shit though. Game Maker's drag and drop thing is what makes it doable for me to work with, since I just can't wrap my head around pure code or script. It's like my French: I suck at it, but I can roughly understand what is said if said slowly and simplified.
The resolution was done on purpose, because I wanted a SNES resolution. I don't know if I did that right. Even if I wanted to add wide screen support, I don't know how without fucking up everything that relies on the standard resolution.
I'll keep the map thing in mind though. I noticed the same problems, but I somehow didn't think that needed fixing.

Edit: I was thinking about the trajectory line thingy too, but couldn't be bothered to figure that one out.

[puggsoy]

Programming can look daunting, but a lot of the time it's not really that bad. It's like mathematics, you start out with the basics and then build up from there, and later on the really complex stuff is just is still just the basics, but put together in different ways. It does take time but if you have the patience then it's not too bad. You also need to make sure you start out with something relatively high-level, beginning with something like C is much less friendly than something like Java or ActionScript.

Then again I managed to get into it fairly quickly, and the maths analogy works with me because I'm rather comfortable with maths too. I suppose it just clicks more with some people than others, and that's understandable.

And yeah, those other points make sense, so that's cool.

[NICKtendo DS]

I used to be great at math in middleschool, but I started to get rusty fairly fast. In college, when presented with slightly easier math of the same level, I had trouble. I was still good, but far from good as I used to be. I've applied bits and pieces I still know to a fair amount of stuff in this game, like circular movement without paths and a fake 3D building in one of the later levels that works similar to the background clocktower from Castlevania Aria of Sorrow.
But my lack of patience is probably more to blame. Just getting a game to function is too big of a step for me to get motivated. I am glad I got shit working in one of the earliest builds of Super Bouncy Cat to get me motivated to work on it. I get different mechanics ideas based on what I am or should be capable of as I go along. I had scrapped a couple of things, because I got better ideas later on. Eiswald the Tree was cut in favor of a different boss character that meshed better with the different backstories and had potential for a better boss mechanic, since Eiswald's battle wasn't very intuitive.

[Bombshell93]

you've put more work into this project than I've put into any of mine, with this kind of determination programming would prove no obstacle, if it helps heres a run down of the popular languages I know and possibly where you can start off,

some run downs on programming languages

Javascript - easy, fast to use, large set of helpers and tools, no compile needed, runs natively in any modern browser, has the benefit of integrating HTML (I use it for UI elements) and allows you to insert code and fixes on the fly (fast and easy debugging) - Three.js is very popular, alternatively you can use just plain Javascript and WebGl, a lot of the syntax of which carry over into other languages.
Java - I'd argue obsolete, after all javascript now near meets it in power with the advent of HTML 5 and provides better support, but java is still a useful tool, its got a larger tool kit and an easier starting point, magnificent networking capabilities and one of the more enjoyable programming experiences - java is java, I advise you use java with java to java while you java, but I do believe it has some form of openGl available to it, for the sake of more graphically intensive programs (see minecraft)
C# - a powerful easy to learn language with a MAHOOSIVE tool set (the .net framework), it follows a similar syntax to many other programming languages, most notably the C and C++ it was based on - XNA is a good place to start, its where I started learning bigger things outside of game maker, alternatively there are very many engines, frameworks, independent libraries that can help you put together whatever kind of game you wish.
C++ - the industry standard, I won't sugar coat it, C++ is medium to learn very very hard to master, but it comes with outstanding perks, such vast expandability and used by more engines and frameworks than anyone would be insane enough to count, its performance can be next to none, you have the power, all of it, no hand holding, but likewise, no holding back - if you decide to go with C++ I'd advise you start from scratch, typically if you go for C++ your going for the real deal and you should probably get all the knowledge you can out of that, but if you want to start with an engine, Unreal 4 is now free open source and does some lovely tricks with C++

[NICKtendo DS]

I'll keep that in mind, especially C#.

[puggsoy]

I don't want to sound nagging but I'd like to add Haxe to Bombshell's list of languages. Despite the link I'm gonna go on a little medium kinda big rant about it, if you wish to skip that I completely understand

Unintentionally advertisement-like rant

It's a high-level language which means that a lot of the dirty low-level stuff is taken care of. The OpenFl framework gives you the actual visual stuff, and allows you to do it in the way that Flash does - personally I find this a really nice way, although I started out with Flash so I suppose that's natural. Game engines like HaxePunk and HaxeFlixel are also good and do a lot of game-related things for you (like handling states, simplifying animation, etc). Despite all of this help it's still pretty flexible.
One big thing is also that it can compile to a range of platforms, natively. For desktop platforms you can only compile for the OS you're running (Windows to Windows, Linux to Linux, etc), but you can also compile to Android and iOS, as well as HTML5 and Flash. There's also Neko, which is kind of weird and it's not really obvious what it is, it's basically a target that runs in a virtual machine but compiles quickly and is similar to native desktop applications (usually you can also compile it to an .exe that runs without the virtual machine, although it does need some DLLs). Technically what Haxe it does is convert the code to whatever language (Objective C for iOS, Java for Android, etc) and then compile that, so you do need to download the SDKs or compilers for whatever you compile to (although it also helps you set this up).

There are a number of downsides. It is open-source and completely community-based, which means that things aren't really as stable and funded as, say, .NET languages. This also damages documentation; it can often be a bit hard to find any concrete answers to something that might not be clear, refined Googling skills are sometimes required. It's also relatively new, compared to stuff like C++ or Java, so again this affects stability and reliability. It's also not completely user-friendly to set up. I mean, the base language does have an installer, but the library handler, haxelib, is fully command-line, and any setup of libraries (like OpenFl and Flixel) are also done through the command-line. The actual compilation and stuff is also technically done through a console, but luckily FlashDevelop is an (unfortunately Windows-only) IDE that's pretty great and does help automate compilation. It's also just great for editing.

So yeah. If you wanna do some uncommon projects or whatnot things can get kinda messy (like trying to import external SWFs or make a 100% standalone Neko .exe) but if you just set everything up and start making games with something like HaxePunk or HaxeFlixel, you can usually ignore any nitty-gritty stuff. The language itself is, in my opinion, very nice to work with, it was developed by programmers for programmers and I can see that it was designed in that way. Plus, games seem to be the most supported type of project, so the road to making them is relatively smooth.

tl;dr I like it and I think it's worth checking out if you ever think of getting into coding

[DarkGrievous7145]

Yes, yoyo SUCKS...

Did you happen to hear about their failed DRM?
Despite the fails, they wish to continue with it...
Or at least, that's the last i read...

And THAT impacts pretty much, everyone (except the pirates)

Only reason I still have my copies of game maker is to test very basic concepts, or to mess around with tiles and sprites... I've given-up ENTIRELY on getting anything useful out of it. As I get better at my preferred tools, and hone any REAL programming skills, i undoubtedly will throw it in the rejects pile, except for maybe, opening a gmk project file, should one come across.

Anyways, some advice I'd like to give:

study others' code if the program is open-source, or if you can de-compile something even slightly read-able out of it. Some of the tools I've requested, or things I've been developing on and off were based on code obtained from google searches and/or decompiling a binary file. One of the more useful things resulting from my de-compiling of a game was a flash program my friend wrote that can convert the map files in Spongebob Invasion of the Lava King from their base64-encoded undecipherable gibberish, to their true, XML format.

Another piece of advice, just take the plunge. This does come with risks, but...just try something. For example, I wanted a library to read/write MS INI files (which I firmly believe are not totally obsolete) . I literally used some of my pre-existing knowledge of javascript, and a quick lookup on the INI format. I still plan to revise it, but: https://github.com/Brian151/INI.js
Pure Javascript, 100% from scratch
I got this whole thing put-together in a few days, iirc, despite some persistent and confusing errors.
However, it took me weeks due to schedule delays, in actual time, to have it "Ready" enough for submission... It was originally coded on JSFiddle. Anyways, i don't advise it for a MASSIVE project, but it does sometimes help to just try something. Even a fail will usually teach you something valuable. A more recent experiment taught me HTML5 Canvas is somewhat nitpicky about pattern/texture fills. I had to work-around this by creating a new texture every time I render a texture, because as it turns out, any fill pattern saved as an object attribute, or within one = NOPE!

Also, C++ ... Just because it's the "industry standard" doesn't mean you SHOULD use it... I had my friend make me a very simple program to generate encryption tables for me... he used C++ , and we soon both regretted it. He had to re-compile that thing several times. I can't remember if he even just gave-up and did it in VB. Now, why would this happen? compatibility... All the computers at my house are Windows XP or older.... As it turns-out, C++ kinda hates that... There's a lot of stuff one must do to compile to specific platforms, OS, and OS versions, even... The earlier post about its challenge is no joke!

That's all I have to say, good luck, and the game sounds cool, definitely going to check it out!
Also, do you have all the resources saved as their own files?
You could always try re-making the game from scratch if game maker dissatisfies you.
But obviously, you need the asset files to do that.