Magicville
Community Forums/Showcase/Magicville
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| Been busy working on my 14th Blitz game (2nd in Blitzmax) for the last few months. Had loads of input from a few people in other forums; namely syntaxbomb and indiegamer. Its going to be a lot more than a match three game. Match three is a genre I don't particularly like but the crux of the matter is, they sell. The situation being as it is, I have to work on products that will sell. The match three bit is pretty much done, but its just part of a bigger story which will be revealed in time. I have some good ideas but logistically it could all add an unacceptable amount to development time. We'll see. I'm doing all the graphics by myself, as I did with Buzzword - much quicker than waiting for artists who think that "urgent" means "anytime before the next ice age". The textures were also created by me based on photos I took at a nearby church. Guess I'll post more when I've got it. Although I'm usually knocking about more on syntaxbomb lately.  |
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| This looks graphically good. |
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| Yeah really nice screenie. |
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| Looks really good. Is this using your match 3 code? Is the Match 3 Code for sale? :) Back on topic, yeah it looks professional. If I were to say one thing though it would be that the colours look a little washed out. |
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| Looks nice. Something you may want to try is take the background image and try to blur things that are further from the screen (such as the floor, the back walls, the door) so they're out of focus for the player and they focus more easily on the game board. |
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| Amon: Yep, its my infamous match three code that I was on about months ago, and no, its not for sale. ;) The colours do look a lil more pale in the screenshot but in-game its fine and everything is much clearer and sharper. Can only put it down to JPEG compression whereas all the graphics for the game are PNG format. Unless you've mucked up your monitor's brightness/contrast/gamma. Looks OK on all my monitors but they're all calibrated properly for photo work. Cower: Everything other than the table (and everything on it) will be blurred slightly to give it a better sense of depth. This screenshot should have had that, but I forgot. :/ |
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| talking of match threes, has anyone made a match-none yet? or, the combinatorial rules of the game Set, applied to a match-3 grid? (I have no opinion about this game. I suppose it looks pretty...) |
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| Looks better than when I saw it over at SB. Good work! |
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| I hate these types of games too, but it looks nice GFK =] I also find the palet a little bit dull, but that may be because you went with the church theme.. May I ask why you use a church theme? |
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| Well its more of a 'middle earth' scenario than being set in a church. Unfortunately, church textures are all I could get. There's no buses that run from Barnsley to middle earth this time of year. |
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| I'm glad your found someone to do your graphics :o) Everything looks really good. I think the candle looks out of place slightly, but i imagine that's because it animates as time runs out. |
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| Out of place??? What's up with it? Is it the color? I sampled that from an actual candle because I'm colourblind and utterly hopeless at copying real world colors. The candle is a 3d mesh in the entire scene, but I render it separately to everything else simply because as you said, it burns down as the time runs out. |
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| [picky] There's something slightly strange about the area where the candle joins the candle stick. I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly. Maybe it's just because the candle is thicker than the neck of the candle stick? Perhaps it's just me? The flame's halo is definitely too low though. It should be centred on the middle of the flame, not it's base. [/picky] Apart from that (and the DOF that's already been mentioned), it's looking good! |
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| [picky] Hmm... its as wide as the widest point of the candlestick.... I'll narrow it a bit.There's something slightly strange about the area where the candle joins the candle stick. I can't quite put my finger on what it is exactly. Maybe it's just because the candle is thicker than the neck of the candle stick? The flame's halo is definitely too low though. It should be centred on the middle of the flame, not it's base. Really? I'll fix that. |
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| All I have to suggest is that I think that the candlestick holder needs to be a darker shade of brown. It looks out of place as it is. |
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| I Like the grafix... Good effort GFK ;). |
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| Yeah, the candle and holder look odd, mainly because they're too big. Compared to the glasses on the table which are too small. Also the skinny neck of the candle holder makes the chubby candle look even odder, maybe just make the candle smaller and glasses bigger. Nice gfx, I like the slightly muted colors. |
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| Looks very nice and clean, like the round edges to the tile set - it adds a touch of alchemy in my mind - don't know why, love the colouring too. Good luck with it Gfk. IPete2. |
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| Yeah actually the candle is huge compared to the glasses (if you want to infer it's on the same table and not superimposed), so why not make it loads smaller and have it just in the corner and use the freed up HUD space for more HUD items or just a bigger level grid. I think the candle is too yellow and could do with being paler (more like the colour it is at the top where the halo is on it). My 0.02$ :-) |
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| Its probably because its rendered in three stages. The background is rendered normally. The table and contents are rendered with an orthographic camera. The background and foreground are then put together in Photoshop and stored as a single background image. The candle is also rendered with an orthographic camera, but its drawn separately in Blitzmax so that I can change its size as it burns. Anyhow, the size of the candle has been reduced, as has the candlestick. The candle is now as wide as the narrowest bit at the top of the candlestick, and I've also darkened the wood texture slightly. Haven't done anything with the glasses yet as I'm not sure if they're staying or not. |
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| Updated pic. The candle is still quite large, and will remain so since having it any smaller renders it next to useless as a game timer. However, the candle is now in proportion with the candlestick (which is darker now) and a slightly paler color. The glasses are a bit bigger, and the background is now blurred out slightly too. That's got to be re-rendered later anyway as I'm not done adding stuff yet. Oh, and the candle's halo is centred on the flame now instead of being on its base.  |
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| Looks great! Just curious -- what's the rectangular item in the lower left and lower right hand corners of the grid? |
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| Dave, nice stuff!! |
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| Just curious -- what's the rectangular item in the lower left and lower right hand corners of the grid? Its a tarot card - Death.Its instantly recognisable to people "in the know", but I'm not sure how many will be, so I'll probably ditch it to be honest. |
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| Looks good. I suppose the screen shot is reduced in size so the tarot card will be easier to see when it's larger. |
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| Well, yeah, and its a fairly heavily compressed JPEG also. But I've seen it 'in the flesh' and even I'm not convinced. I think that rather than try to persuade myself that I'll get used to it, I'll just get shut of it. |
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| It looks pretty good but I think people have missed what's wrong with the candle which is essentially that it's perspective doesn't match the background. The eye-level in the background scene is exactly halfway up the picture so the area where the candle meets the holder should be seen from the front, not from above, and should appear as a very 'flat' ellipse - almost a horizontal line. You should render the candle using the same perspective as the background or it is bound to look odd. |
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oh yeah, good point: |
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Lil update with perspective fixed and the tarot card gone. |
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| looks good |
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| Looks great! |
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| you've made the game tiles smaller too yeah? Probably can make better level layouts now. |
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| you've made the game tiles smaller too yeah? Did you see the stress test a few months back?I can load any width/height layout and it'll dynamically scale to fit onto the screen. This level is 10x10 whereas the last one was 8x8 - that's why they're slightly smaller. |
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| Oh OK, that's cool. An aside, have you looked at the back of a Sugar Puffs packet recently (probably not) but anyway there is a honeycomb word search on the back of them. Made me think of your game and also if there could be some opportunity for you to contact them and see if they want a reskinned version of your game (with the Honey Monster) as a CD-ROM or downloadable freebie to educate kids...You'd of course get a big lump sum for the work. |
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| I'm more of a Rice Crispies man, but I might just take a look. ;) |
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| oh that's a lot better! really nice. |
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| Very very nice indeed.... IPete2. |
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| Looks pretty cool GfK. I will say that it needs more vivid colors imo. My game Bauble is a bit reminiscent of your set up. I'm using 50x50 size tiles, what do you happen to be using? |
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| 64x64. 50x50 would get internally scaled up to that anyway. |
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| haha, I once had a game called "Baubled", it turned into Xmas Bonus. |
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| It's coming along. Here are my suggestions. The candle base started out being too narrow which made the candle look too big. Now the candle and candle basea are both too narrow, it looks like it will fall over. I suggest having a thicker candle base and reverting to the original candle, or closer to it. Your candle wick needs to be a light, not a piece of yellow fuzz. You need to give it a realtime glow, a flicker, and animate it. It needs to look light a bright light, not a totally unemissive patch of yellow. Your candle base does not have the right contrast compared to the rest of the scene and makes it look washed out. The darks are not dark enough and the wood color is unnatural - looks like you colorized it and added too much saturation or something. The perspective of your candle base and other objects provide the sense of perspective of the scene and this contradicts the perspective of the floor in the background which, as a result, looks like it is sloping upwards into the distance. The back wall of the room should be seated about half as far up the screen, based on the table's perspective. You need more color in your game board objects. Purple and yellow do complement each other but there's too much of it. The game border needs more shape - add some fancy corners or texture or something, and there's too much green to it. Your coins also look dull and too green - would prefer a more goldy orangey shiny yellow. Also because your room and table are lit and shadowed and your game board has no lighting or shadowing, it makes it look relatively unlit and thus dull. It could do with a spotlight or better specular highlights on the cell edges or something. It is too uniform, makes it look like there is only ambient light and no directional light, which contradicts the room and the shading of the objects. At the moment the warm orange of your candle base overpowers all of the colors on the game board - reds make things appear to come closer to you. It pushes the game board back and makes it seem lifeless. I also think that perhaps the icons on each tile are too small. You are trying to go with detail by having them be 3d rendered but that's not a good idea if the user has to focus hard to see what the details are. I think there's too much blank space between objects. Also this might be a personal thing but if a scene does not have a good reference of what `white` is in terms of levels of brightness, and similarly for black, then it seems to lack contrast overall and seems dull. I like to see a well balanced palette with good saturation. Your little green potion bottles are such a washed out color. The pages of your books are dull and not white enough - they probably compete with the white bowls. I think the hourglass timers are too detailed and the emblem on the coins looks satanic. No offence ;-) I'm also puzzled by the sunglasses near the bottom of the screen, they look way too contemporary and modern, which seems odd in the otherwise old-age kind of atmosphere. I think you also need somewhere on the screen some kind of word - maybe the title of the game, or of the part of the game you're playing, or something. People like to see numbers and letters. A logo? Compared to something like Inca Quest, visually, it's not quite up to par. The pages on the book on the table are a strange attempt to make them look aged, the color tone is too even across the pages. They should probably look like more of a light tan, whitish, with dirt or whatever, perhaps a bit better textured. All in all though it's pretty good. Keep up the good work. |
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| Just one reply. You need to give it a realtime glow, a flicker, and animate it. From looking at a screenshot, how do you know it doesn't do any of that?(I ask, because it does). Oh, and one more thing: I think the hourglass timers are too detailed and the emblem on the coins looks satanic An hourglass is an hourglass. I don't know how you can make it too detailed or too simple. The hourglass I made is about as simple as they get.There is nothing satanic about a pentagram. If it was an inverted pentagram with an image of Baphomet (goat's head) in the centre, then it'd be the symbol of the Church of Satan. But it isn't that. Your comment is kind of like me using an image of a crucifix, then saying it looks satanic - or it would do if it was upside down and on fire. I guess I'll just put that down to misinformation. ;) |
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| I think it looks much better. Except from the table. I know it's really picky, but the table looks too plain. Considering the glasses, book, candle stick and hour glass have textured detail to them, as does the backround, i think the scene would benefit from some additional detail on the table surface. Some wood grain maybe? Not too much as to distract from the game though :o) |
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| The texture used to be wood and I agree it looked a lot better, but as a table model it was crap. Its not obvious from the screenshot but its been replaced with an altar-style thing... and tbh I'm not completely sure what they're supposed to be made of. Woodgrain didn't look right any more. |
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| Hey, I wasn't having a go. My first impression with the star symbol is that it represents/symbolizes something and the first thing that comes to mind is that I don't really know what it symbolizes and therefore it could be something scary. I think many other people might interpret it the same way if they're playing a casual game. As to the hourglass I just felt that there is too much detail in too small a space. Maybe it doesn't help that your screenshot is rather small on my screen because of the different resolution and maybe the size is fine on a 640x480 screen mode. |
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| yeah, the perspective was/is a big problem. To me the second pic looks best, the perpective in the third pic looks wrong to me, now everything on the table is too flat. It should look like something would sitting on your desk. Something like you had before but just a little flatter. Also, the candle and candlestick (in the third pic) seem just a tiny bit too small, and the table isn't covering enough of the screen, showing how ugly those floor tiles are. Also, the golden pentagram item looks out of place somehow, it's not alchemical enough. Have you got a little bag item? That would be better. Off-topic: Did you change the name of Bizzy's Spelling Bee to Buzzword? What site is it selling on now? |
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| Gfx... you and grey make me sick... all the success you have... j/k Was wondering what graphic tools you use to make your graphics. |
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| Looks good to me! ;) I think you could nail that perspective issue by simply 'lowering' the flooring (and the walls of course!) behind the table. Or if you're using Photoshop, have a play about with the Perspective Transform. Looking forward to having a go of this one, keep it up! :) |
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| Lil video of the candle 'doing its thing'. Been fiddling with the perspective again and done a few other bits but I can't be bothered grabbing screenshots right now. CLICK |
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| looking good Gfk, much respect to people who finish stuff, and you seem to have made it into double figures! I like how your graphics seem easy on the eye. Your latest screenie looks like you've benefited from this forums suggestions. Brilliant community this if I say so myself. |
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| Um, yea, I think this one is #14. [edit] Quick screenshot that I couldn't be bothered doing last night:  |
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| Looks great now man :o) Only complaint would be the candle has too much brightness on it. It looks different. Not enough contrast on the candle i think. The animation is great! |
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| You couldn't complain about the perpective now. I also like what you've done to the book and the table and the floor is better too. I don't see the golden pentagram either. Looks great now. :) |
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Hmm... the candle is still off. I think the problem comes from the shadows. If you notice the hour glass. The parts receiving the shadows, indicate the light is coming from the left of the scene. However, the shadows on the candle stick are far less pronounced. |
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| Probably too much of an effect there. My crummy version of photoshop has some sort of gamma increase on everything it shows, but i'm sure you get the idea. |
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| I didn't notice the shadows. According to the glasses the light should be from just above and slightly to the viewer's left. According to the book the light again should be just above and slightly to the left. According to the hourglass the light again should be just above and slightly away from the viewer. So no, the shadow cast by the candlestick doesn't look quite right, it should be pointing down a bit rather than just going off to the right and the base should be creating a bit of a shadow. |
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| Blimey, and I thought *I* was being picky. 8oD If players are bored enough to be scrutinising the background, there's more important things to fix in the game than a slightly wonky shadow! It's looks fine, move on. ;o) |
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| Screenshots look great! |
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| Why have things that could easily be improved, left as they are. It wouldn't take much time either :o) We're all here to help! |
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I think the table is a little on the bright side. Kinda draws your eye away from the board... |
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| I now say: "Get on with the rest of the game and come back to this later". You'll probably have a ton MORE things to evaluate later and not enough time to do them all anyway so can prioritise them accordingly. |
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| > I think the table is a little on the bright side. Says the guy who produces games so dark they're practically invisible. |
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| Well, i agree Grey :o) But, it's good to put these ideas out, whilst Gfk is still working on the game. Gives everyone a chance to put forward their suggestions. Then when Gfk is done, he'll have a ton of suggestions for improving the visuals. I thing it's only the candle that needs work ;o) |
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| > Says the guy who produces games so dark they're practically invisible. I blame my cheap monitor :( |
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| > I think the table is a little on the bright side. Get your monitor sorted. Table brightness is spot on - I'd lose the glasses though. While the graphics have definitely improved, I think it's time to move on and work on other parts of the game and come back to this if you have time. |
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| I think it looks great graphically, certainly better than most match-3 titles, with a more distinctive use of themed tiles. Personally, I'd like to see bolder use of colours to indicate different tiles (i.e. a much stronger use of colour saturation - red, green, blue, yellow - primary colours) to make the player use not just about shapes, but colour also. I also feel the candle should burn out of wax fully to indicate time out. I would find it very difficult to gauge a 'game over' if any wax was still on the candle at 0:00 time left. Anyway keep it up GfK - I reckon this is a winner. |
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| I also feel the candle should burn out of wax fully to indicate time out. It does, now. ;)As for the colours, I'm working on changing those but I'm colourblind so its difficult. I need to find time to get the g/f to help me. |
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| Sorry, but I like the color scheme as it is. I think it's a question of preference, rather than there being anything wrong with the way it is now. |
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| You can't boost colour saturation with the realistic texture design currently used - this isn't a brightly coloured Nintendo/Disney game. Nothing wrong in those styles, but it wouldn't fit with the current style of this game (which I really like btw). |
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Couple more: Alchemy sub-game:  There's currently four sub-games - the other two aren't ready to show but I'll write I think six more before I'm done, so still lots to do. Probably be finished in two or three million years. :/ |
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| I like the look of the tubes game. |
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| Looks nice. Keep going. |
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| Looks fantastic. Very Harry Potter. |
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| Very nice. Looks a bit like the hacking sub-game from bio-shock. Nice. The overall scene graphics fit better together now too. What did you use to render the hraphics anyway? 3d package? Or 2d artwork? |
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| Yeah, looking great but then I've already seen the vid of this in action. ;) Small crit re: background render. The pestle looks tiny compared to the book, hourglass and clock/compass. I would also consider making it fatter as I originally thought it was a baseball bat when I first saw it. |
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| I would also consider making it fatter as I originally thought it was a baseball bat when I first saw it. Hah it most certainly does look like a bat..Pestle should be like the radius of the bowl? |
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| Agreed pestle should be bigger (better for crushing) although google image search reveals varying sizes: http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=pestle+and+mortar&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2 |
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| Hah it most certainly does look like a bat.. Well, they just do. How would you suggest drawing one that *doesn't* look like a bat? Pestle should be like the radius of the bowl? It was modelled on this one. As was was said above, sizes vary, but a quick google reveals none that are as big as you suggest. Anyway, if everybody's being this pedantic, I guess I should be happy. :) |
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| 640x480? |
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| 640x480? Just for screenshot purposes, yes. The game itself works in any res. Had it running in 1600x1200 on my dev PC. |
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| Looking great Gfk, looking forward to playing this (and hearing your Barnsley accent, I havent heard one in years now! ;-) With the pestle, that's the first one I've seen with a wooden handle... I've only seen them like this:  Do you think its worth doing 2 more sub-games? Would it be worth the extra work vs the amount of sales etc? |
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| Double post... my trigger finger is quick this morning... |
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| Excellent GFK... I too have worked on a match 3 game from scratch, I know what you have put into this! Nice work. |
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| With the pestle, that's the first one I've seen with a wooden handle... Well... I do think the porcelain ones look bland. That's why I opted for something with a bit more 'texture' to it. Do you think its worth doing 2 more sub-games? Would it be worth the extra work vs the amount of sales etc? Don't know, really. But I'd hate to leave it 'as is' then wish I'd added something, because it'll be too late then. I've spent six years with Blitz, rushing through projects to get them done in a stupidly short amount of time, so I'm damned if I'm going to cut corners when I *don't* have any particular deadline to meet. I initially wanted it done by August, but that ship has sailed. I currently have about two weeks left until I become a dad, so who knows after that?Anyhoo... The subgames so far have been pretty easy to write (apart from one). One of the games I haven't yet shown, was finished in two days. So they aren't all hugely complex things that detract me from what I'm meant to be doing. They're more like brief interludes, if you like. Its good for me, too. It doesn't feel like I'm writing one huge game - its more like a bunch of simple games. The monotony of it all hasn't set in yet. The entire game is scripted, so once I've written the engine for each sub-game, all I have to do is make a scriptfile for that level - no recompiling or fannying about required. Once I've made the engines, I reckon I can have all 140 levels up and running in under a week. |
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| What's the internal resolution of the game? That 640x480 screen looks very good btw. |
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| The logic runs at 800x600, but at that res, all the graphics are scaled down since they're made to cater for higher resolutions and it's all still nice and sharp at 1600x1200. Taskmanager shows around 48MB of resources being used at the moment. My test system is a P3-733MHz, 256MB RAM, 64MB graphics (GF2MX400), plus I've tested on the same system using its 8MB on-board graphics at 1280x1024 and it all works fine. Frame rate is a bit slower on the 8MB graphics chip but my timing code compensates for that nicely. Still have to add sound but I don't foresee any problems. |
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| Won't the sound add a good extra MB's to your RAM requirements? I have no idea how blitzmax handles sounds though. Good luck with the dad thing too. |
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| Won't the sound add a good extra MB's to your RAM requirements? Yep but not to the extent where I'm using six-figure kilobytes. |
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| Looking very polished Gfk. And I agree with you, don't release it until you're completely happy with it. |
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| And I agree with you, don't release it until you're completely happy with it Danger Will Robinson! I'm detecting a game that may never get released if this advice is followed ;-) |
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| Danger Will Robinson! I'm detecting a game that may never get released if this advice is followed ;-) It may not anyway. I'm not prepared to make any commitment right now whether it will or it won't. I'll see how it goes and if it gets far enough that I think its any good, I'll release it. If I get fed up or can't find the time for it, it'll probably just fizzle out like most of everything else. :)Obviously I'd like to finish it. I've only ever *not* finished one game before and it bugs me to this day. I've managed to do it on a budget of £0.00 so far, but there's going to come a time when I need to source some music. I don't have any music software, and rather than buy something and spend time trying to get to grips with it, it'd probably make more sense to pay somebody else who already knows what they're doing. The requirement for capital investment could well be the undoing of it. |
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| Congrats on the whole - becoming a dad thing (soon) - thing. :) Ive been one of those for 7ish months now..erg - you might want to hurry up with that game m8...them little buggers eat your time up ;) The game looks great - not awesome - but considering your not an artist, im very impressed :) - not my kind game tho, so dont really no if im in a position to crit it from that perspective... looks good :) have you approached the portals yet? - or are you going to try n sell + promote it yourself? anyway - goodluck :) |
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| have you approached the portals yet? - or are you going to try n sell + Haven't really decided yet. I'm a bit non-plussed with the whole portal thing, tbh. I'll worry about that when/if the time comes. promote it yourself? |
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| I think that those "Match-3" style games are cool and addictive... This game should do very well, good luck GFK ;). |
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| "I've managed to do it on a budget of £0.00 so far.." ? You've been working on this for quite a while, don't you consider your time part of your budget? |
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| ? You've been working on this for quite a while, don't you consider your time part of your budget? With graphics as good as that... Bloomin' well hope so. ;) |
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| You've been working on this for quite a while, don't you consider your time part of your budget? No, I'm talking about financial investment.Can't pay my bills with 'time' :) |
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| I reckon it will sell quite well. I will probably be one of the first to make a purchase. That game is going to really stand out in the crowd. P.S... How did you learn to draw as good as that ?, have you got any tips on how to draw that good ?. ;) |
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| Everything, right down to the match three objects, the GUI elements and even the lensflare effects and the candle flame, is modelled and rendered in 3DS Max. |
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| "No, I'm talking about financial investment." One developer made me realize something a while back. He asked if the money I made from the development time would at least equal the income made from a typical fast food job in the same amount of time. I added up all the hours spent on the game and the answer was I would have made more money serving fries. :) lol.. Ofcourse this doesn't relate to your game, but I do think at some point you have to consider time as a financial investment. Especially on long term projects. ;) "The logic runs at 800x600, but at that res, all the graphics are scaled down since they're made to cater for higher resolutions and it's all still nice and sharp at 1600x1200. Taskmanager shows around 48MB of resources being used at the moment. My test system is a P3-733MHz, 256MB RAM, 64MB graphics (GF2MX400), plus I've tested on the same system using its 8MB on-board graphics at 1280x1024 and it all works fine. Frame rate is a bit slower on the 8MB graphics chip but my timing code compensates for that nicely." What frame rate are you getting on that 8mb on board card at 1280x1024? I can't imagine a useable frame rate at 1280x1024 on a 8mb gpu? Just to setup the double buffered page flipping in vram would be more than 8mb? |
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| I don't have any code implemented that measures the frame rate but I'd estimate 15-20FPS. |
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| hmm... if you're up to it, I'd like to see a render test using your game engine. At 1280x1024 on my intel box, I can't even get past 10fps when there's minimal rendering activity. |
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| Hey, I feel like picking up on the financial dilemmas for a moment. I firmly believe that that's the last thing anyone should ever think about, when wanting to make a game! It somehow always comes through what the motive of the game creator has been and it certainly kills a large part of the truely needed motivation to make anything aimed at pleasure delightful, particularely when it's about a game. Depending on your age, you should either completely ignore any financial concerns in regards to your "work", as long as your still at school or have sufficient means to get by. Once you have reached an age where you need money to survive, you have to make a few choices that seem less ideal, but should still fall into the realm of your honest passions, if that's at all viable. Come to a life that would allow you to be completely ecstatic when it's about creating a piece of fun for you and others. Should you happen to have had the chance of becoming a professional game developer... fantastic... but in any other case, free yourself or at least your game developing exploration from stupid obligations and sources of pressure that only contaminate your genuinity and make you go for your assumptions about others as opposed to listening to yourself. You are your first judge. Your skill is to be as objective as possible, but trust your own measuring and don't make money the units to measure by! Nowadays it's very likely that a successful title in terms of popularity will find some producer to pick it up and make money a bonus aspect to your endeavors. All the more a reason to focus on genuine brilliance and you can't get it by looking elsewhere, but at your own game infront of you. And don't let MGE depress you! HAHAHAHA! 8)))) Nah, he's the second to last judge you should face before the masses, because he seems to know very well what he's doing and that's extremely valuable! And, just so you know, everyone under 25 within a society that allows you to work on your computer all day and all night should deeply celebrate and take advantage of his or her privilege to do so by not concerning yourself with anything but your original passion for what you are doing! |
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| I know he'll tell you himself, but GFK's (oft-stated) motivation is to use his ability to make games to feed his family, not his ego. With that in mind, his choices have tended to be for things he (or a publisher) think will sell, not which (necessarily) give him a warm fuzzy feeling inside (although they're not mutually exclusive concepts). That's a personally valid motivation, if a lil sad (imho). That being said, here I am chained to a desk for 9 hours a day, so who am I to judge? :o) |
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| @Taron..LOL! :) GFK has alot more experience in game design/publishing than I have! I just need to trash my intel box once and for all and get a "real" system. lol... |
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| A TOAST TO THAT! 8))) |
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| My feeling on the financial side is that if it's your first or second game then sure don't think about the money you AREN'T making, just think about making the game so that you get it done and your new career has actually got started. Then once you've got the hang of it, definitely start thinking about how to maximise the income whilst still enjoying the project, otherwise your career is just a dodo... |
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| There's currently four sub-games - the other two aren't ready to show but I'll write I think six more before I'm done Looks very nice, and I love the idea of 10 sub-games (it is 10, right, or have I misunderstood?), and that would make me purchase this rather than the myriad of other match-whatever games available. Maybe you could have it so that you had to somehow earn (unlock) a few of the sub-games, by achieving something special in the main game? |
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| hmm... if you're up to it, I'd like to see a render test using your game engine. At 1280x1024 on my intel box, I can't even get past 10fps when there's minimal rendering activity. Can't really do that without making a demo and I'm not in a position to [want to] do that right now. Many features are still missing. and I love the idea of 10 sub-games (it is 10, right, or have I misunderstood?) 10 sub-games, yep. Maybe more, depends how fast I can write them. They'll be part of the game's natural progress, although I've considered the possibility of having some hidden levels/areas. Jury's out, though. |
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| Very Impressive Game GFK! You might say that you are not an artist, but your graphics certainly make it seem like you are ^_^ Do you have a website that I might go to, to check out\buy your other games? WERDNA |
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| The only other game I have is Buzzword, which is on Reflexive. I'm not that eager for anybody to buy it right now from there until I get their silly new tax rules sorted out (that's why my site's offline, too). If you want a look, get it via BMT. *LINK*. |
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| Enough with this! Get the helicopter game started you talked about ages ago. |
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| Enough with this! Get the helicopter game started you talked about ages ago. The helicopter game I finished in 2003? o.O |
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| No, i mind you talking about it on IRC a while back, maybe 2006 :o) |
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| Oh. I may have been considering such a thing at one point but I've gone all 2D now. |
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| Been adding sound yesterday and today. Ended up using OpenAL since FreeAudio remains knackered in Vista, and I'm not sure whether DirectSound is 'safe' or not. Its amazing what a difference a bit of noise can make! I'm hoping I *might* get a demo out this side of Christmas (2008!) |
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| :O Cool. |
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| I think this game suits a release date that's the same as the new Harry Potter movie :-). |
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| I think this game suits a release date that's the same as the new Harry Potter movie :-). Well, Magicville was supposed to have been finished by now but I'm way behind. Then all of a sudden, the new Harry Potter movie is inexplicably delayed. Tell me, who's following who? :)But srsly, when's it out? [edit] Ah, 17th July 2009. That's doable. |
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| I *think* it's delayed until next summer. |
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| Haha. Seriously though! |
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| In anticipation of a Christmas demo, here's a teaser video of the alchemy minigame (with a lil bit of the new front-end, too). No sound on the front-end yet, and no music throughout. Idea of this subgame is to get the liquids into the correct colored flasks (I altered the tubes at 00:51 to show what happens if you get it wrong). The test level only has two flasks but I can put in as many as I want. Anyway, here's the vid; a shade under 4MB, WMV format: *CLICK*. |
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| Nice. Your frontend is looking great. I like the gurgling liquid sound FX - how did you do them? Or, did you source them from somewhere? |
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| They mostly came from Soundsnap, but they've been chopped up and modified quite a bit to fit with what I need. |
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| For the good of my sanity, Magicville's been shelved. I just can't find the time for coding at the moment so I'm going to wait a bit until things settle down at home, then maybe review the situation at some point in the future. I've been trying to plod onwards but 30 minutes here and 20 minutes there is doing nothing other than peeing me off and getting me frustrated with myself. So, um... there it is. Don't watch this space. :/ |
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| bummer dude, but you are probably needed as a dad right now. |
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| well shite! I was looking forward to this game. I say take a break for a few days or weeks, enjoy the Holidays and come back refreshed. When I'm focused even those short 30min coding sessions can really put a dent in the design document. ;) |
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| Thats a shame Gfk... Im with MGE, I was really looking forward to this. Any chance of releasing a demo to see what we are really missing? If not, thats cool... just wanted to play it - it looks ace! |
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| Maybe find a coder to finish your job :) I'm sure a lot of coder would be happy to do it. |
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| Any chance of releasing a demo to see what we are really missing? I could, but its a little disjointed. There's a front-end, a map screen, and four minigames (I still have to write six more). Everything links through to the minigames, but they dont link back when the levels are completed (or not). Also there's still a load of sounds missing, and no music. With that in mind I'd rather not release a demo with it as it stands. Maybe find a coder to finish your job :) Its mine, though. Wouldn't trust anybody else to do it. :) I'm sure a lot of coder would be happy to do it. |
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| Wow! This went right under my radar..looks slick! |
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| GfK: I wouldn't sweat it, too much. Your gal just had a little one and that is probably going to keep you super busy for several months. Even if you have some free time, a baby is so mentally taxing. You need a clear head for programming. |
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| Hey GFK, are you the "gfk" that wrote Hole in One? |
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| 'fraid so. |
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| Oh...My...God...just wanted to tell you that i've always wanted to meet you, say how much I learned from that open source version that came with an old BlitzBasic freeware. Man, I looked up so much to that game, the structure, file encryption, random events, whole lotta functions; it was my first contact (and the only one, if I recall correctly) to a professional game that was open source. So I'd like to thank you for your generosity into releasing that with BlitzBasic, for you being so smart, and I wish you keep doing that because there is a LOT people can learn from you, like I did. Best of luck in your life! |
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| Oh, now look what you've done! His head will be the same size as his belly... :P |
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| Oh, now look what you've done! His head will be the same size as his belly... :P ;)Kryzon; um, thanks. :*) Hole in One was my first Blitzbasic game so you could probably learn a lot of bad habits from it, too. It did the job but it was way off perfect. A lot of people seemed to like it, though. Pity it isn't on sale any more but it had a good run. It was on sale for about six years, I think. By the way - its successor was Par FORE. (So desperately sorry about the box art - nothing to do with me). :( |
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| open source version that came with an old BlitzBasic Is this still available anywhere? |
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| Is this still available anywhere? I got this freeware BlitzBasic (only 2D) version in a CD from a magazine here in Brazil. It was what introduced me to Blitz world. Must have been what, 7 or 8 years ago. I mean, I have the files, if that's what you're asking. But I don't know...wouldn't dare to upload that against GFK's will (meaning, let's see what he answers). PS: Sorry for the off-topic, OP. |
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| I'd give permission but I don't own the rights to the source code any more so its not my place. :/ |
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