DAY 65

[COURSE SUMMARY | PART 2]

Our scope for the game was aimed waaaay too high and we all agreed on that. I sort of thought that 30 main missions was extremely out of our reach, and I guess I was right. One problem with having the "full game" on one computer, is that the other people can't really do the small stuff to fix bugs, and add small things to the code and such. Other than that we had a pretty good system going; sending most of the files through skype to the the main computer and implementing it there. I am not sure what is going to happen with the game after the course ends, and not sure what Ty will do with it, but I would like to maybe continue with it and make it a full game as it is currently a demo. If we do end up continuing the game after the semester ends, I hope to fulfill all of the objectives set at the beginning. All in all, it was a really fun and educating experience working with Ty and David throughout the semester, and I plan to take this course next year.

DAY 64

[COURSE SUMMARY | PART 1]

It is nearing the end of this course and I was told to write an overall review/summary of what I did over the course and the obstacles, so here it is. I took this same course last year and it was nothing like what I did this year. This year it wasn't just me individually working on a game, it was me and two other people, which was different but definitely better and more fun. The first thing I did in this course was create a platformer game by myself, which actually went quite well. Though the majority of this course was spent towards the game created by Ty, David, and I. When we started we planned all of these objectives to complete by the end of the course, most of which we did. Though an objective on the list was "at least 15 side missions", or something like that. We ended up not even completing one main mission, which is sort of sad. The reason for that is that even up to the point we are now, we've been working on the mechanics mainly. I thought that It would take only a couple months for the mechanics, though we ended up adding more and more making it even better. 

DAY 63

Today I was sort of stumped on trying to find out what else I could do or add to the game. I was thinking about maybe starting on another game, which I would have to create within a week due to the semester ending, and this class ending. I couldn't really come up with any ideas for another game today, so I began working on Ty's house sprite to see if I could improve upon it or add anything. I changed the colours of the roof, wall, and did some very minor changes. I realized then that I didn't have the fully updated sprite from Ty, with added shadows and things. I am going to try and figure out a simple game that I could make before this class ends, hopefully starting on it tomorrow.

DAY 62

Today Ty and I did the presentation thing on the game in our AVID class. Our teacher video taped the whole thing and has it on her phone apparently. Basically we explained the stuff we did to create the game and the things we each did. Obviously David wasn't there but we told them what he did and such. Since the "trial/demo" of our game is pretty much finished, I wasn't really sure what else I could do. Ty gave me a copy of the demo version of the game and I played it for like 20 minutes just going around trying to find any glitches or bugs in the game. It was actually really enjoyable to play because of the sleek controls. Anyway, there was a bug involving the sprites of the player and Sam's sprite. It was sort of odd, basically there was part of Sam's sprite (The NPC) and the players sprite just in a square at the end of the road in the game, though Ty seemed to fix it. Overall, we've come quite far (not as far as we thought we could) with the game, and I sort of want to continue it after the semester is over, and start making it an actual full game in which we could maybe end up selling, who knows. For some reason whenever I try to launch the demo, it tells me to install it, so the .exe is actually an installer for some reason.

DAY 61

Today I continued to work on the icon logo thing for the game in photoshop. I started off by re-aligning and compressing all of the things in the document so that I could make room for a circle border. I wanted to make a circle border because it looks cooler and is more clean and professional as to a square box. I used the ruler tool thing by pressing CTRL-R, and aligned both lines to the middle so that I could make a symmetrical circle. I used the ellipse tool and dragged from the middle, pressed CTRL-ALT to make the circle a proper circle that is aligned in the middle. I then erased all of the excess stuff outside of the circle, and made another circle to make the border thicker. I changed the colour a bit because it seemed to look better. The icon below is the one I'm going with for the icon when you click to launch the game.

DAY 60

Today I continued working on the creation of the game's icon. I sort of helped Ty with the implementation of my potion, and getting it to work correctly. It actually does work and we changed some code to make it increase the health by 20, the max being 100, and it doesn't over-heal. Anyway, I'm almost finished with the game icon but I just need to add a few more things and make it look a little better. I'm not quite sure if I do like the lens flare in the top left corner, I might just readjust it to look right. Below is the icon that I left off today with. I plan to be finished with it next class.

DAY 59

Today I was going to do a custom loading screen for the game, so I searched up a few videos, but they were only for game maker, the free version. I realized then after that the game only takes like 2 seconds to load, and the custom loading screen would just make it slower, and a bigger file. So I then wanted to create an icon or sort of logo for the game in photoshop. I got a few files from Ty such as the player sprites, and put them all into photoshop to put together an icon. I plan to spend another full day to finish this at least, as it is obviously not done. All I did was put a few pictures into the project, and haven't started on creating it yet. Below is what I left the day off with.

DAY 58

Today I created a potion sprite for the potion object I also made. I got the correct code from Ty's computer for how the health and stamina etc. is  created. It is very basic due to it being drag and drop. All I did was create a potion object and added the potion sprite to it, then I made it so when the player object is touching the potion, it destroys, and sends a variable to increase the hp to +20. This was actually quite easy, and didn't take me too long. Below is the potion sprite I created.

DAY 57

Today I was sort of stumped on finding what to do next so I asked Ty and he didn't have any ideas. Since Ty has all of the specific code and such on his computer, I can't really do any small things to help, since his code is pretty much all different to mine. After that I just started playing around in Game Maker trying to find out anything else to do. I was thinking about creating an experience orb that boosts the player's health, and/or stamina. I started with the potion as the placeholder sprite for this. I have it so that when the enemy is clicked, it turns into the potion sprite, and then moves to the player and when touching the player, it instance_destroy();. This is pretty much like the XP orbs in minecraft which is what I was going for.

DAY 56

After working on texturizing the house Ty made for the past few days, I was told that Ty didn't want it texturized anymore, so that was quite a waste of time. Anyhow, Ty took it over and apparently he wants shadows added instead. After that I wasn't quite sure what to do besides having another go at the song, and once again I didn't really have much progress due to my lack of skills in the music-making category. I then decided to think of some extra tiles that could add more environment to the game. I started working on a sand tile, but it didn't really look right, so I scrapped it.

DAY 55

Today I continued working on adding textures to Ty's house he made. I decided that I don't really like the door wood texture so I went and found one on Google images without the planks, just a plain texture. I applied it to the door and found that it looks better. At this point I needed to also get a sort of paint texture for the outside of the house. I found a decent looking one and applied it. Most of my time spent this class was cutting the images to fit their areas and not overlap over the black lines. Below is what I left off with this class. I still need to get a glass, and some other textures.

DAY 54

Today I worked on the action sequence song a little bit but then realized I was getting nowhere with it. I then asked for some suggestions, and Ty apparently needed his house sprite textured. So I went over to Google and searched up: Concrete, wood, and shingles textures. I added all the items to Photoshop, and applied them to the areas, decreased opacity, and sort of pixelized each texture. Below is where I left off with, but I am not finished. I still need a sort of paint texture, and I also want the roof more pixelly. The door does look a bit odd too, so I want to fix that.

Day 53

So I worked on trying to make an action song for the game so it can be used in a boss battle or anything really. I sort of had to play with it for a long time before it sounded like an actual song. Though one problem is that I'm not sure how to end it off, I'm thinking of making it so it can be looped infinitely which would be better.

DAY 52

Today I decided to look up ways to add to the environment to the game, and I watched multiple you tube videos on the subject. It wasn't really going as planned because the you tube examples had different game mechanics than ours, so it wouldn't work out. Ty recently found a cool website that can allows you to create music, which is pretty cool. I messed around with it and then started creating an action sequence song. It isn't very good so far but I like the beginning. I am going to make it sound better, and add a beat or something. You can listen to the test song HERE.

DAY 51

So this is my first day back from break and since I'm done with the water, and all the tiles that we pretty much need, I'm not quite sure what else to do. I searched through google trying to find a way to create a 2D game into 3D in gamemaker, but there were no tutorial videos or anything on that. It would be cool, but not necessary to make it 3D. I then moved on to trying to make the water object interact-able in a sense that when the player touches it, maybe it slows them down or pushes them in the direction of the flow of the water. I would also have to make it seem like the player is actually in the water visually.