i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

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Jill
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i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Jill (?) » Sun Dec 30, 2018 1:33 am

and i'm giving it a thread now that a substantial chunk of things are planned and worked out

What is it?

The game is called Missy, after its main character. You could simply describe it as a "metroidvania" where you play as a robot, but it's a bit more complex than that.

What sets it apart from games like it?

Missy has a fairly specific genre balance to it that I don't think many games have gone for. It's designed around a much less combative play style than you typically see in a "metroidvania" game. The game still has its "enemies", and it has a whole health/hazard/death system in place, but they're to be treated more as platforming mechanics than combat mechanics. At the same time, the game is not so much about platforming as it is about exploring and solving puzzles. Some of said puzzles may be related to discovering the least hazardous method of traversing any given area, but brute strength takes a back seat to agility which takes a back seat to sharp thinking.

Ultimately I've just been planning the game out under a simple philosophy: Enemies do not exist merely to be gotten rid of, upgrades do not exist merely to unlock doors, and Missy does not exist for combat.

Other than that, I've got a bunch of really interesting abilities for Missy in mind and really want to explore the possibilities. :-P

What's it about?

Missy takes place in a modern-day setting with a sprinkling of fantasy/sci-fi here and there. The story primarily wrestles with two concepts: religious faith and self-identification. Don't expect to be met with anything very cinematic though; the story will just begin from a certain place in the timeline, and after the first series of dialogue boxes it's mostly just gameplay from then on.

To be more specific though, the game is about a robot girl who is found in a crater and awakened by a man of the cloth. The girl claims to not remember who she is despite retaining plenty of general knowledge about the Earth and its inhabitants. The priest's main concern is what might happen if the general public found out about her. The two of them agree it would be best to buy themselves some time to think by retreating to the most remote location they have available: A modest vacation home between lake and mountain, a property which the priest had inherited from his late father. Once they reach their destination, the events of the game ensue.

How's it look?
Image
If you want the technical stuff: I went for a graphical style with very simple limitations: 1-bit images, 1 background layer, and 1 sprite layer. 1-bit means that every tile or sprite consists of 2 possible color values: black or white. Black regions are considered transparent and do not overwrite existing pixels on the screen*, whereas white regions are drawn according to one of the 256 palette nodes seen in the lower left here:
Image
(this is what my level editor currently looks like, by the way)

I call them nodes in this case because they are not limited to single colors; each palette node can be made to choose its color via calculation based on ever-changing variables. This means anything rendered using that node might cycle through colors, flash, flicker, and so on. (For instance: In the above screenshot, you can see four shades of red lined up on the third row. These four nodes actually cycle through 9 hues, but I would need an animated GIF to actually show that. :effort:)

*Palette node 5 still allows the white region of a tile/sprite to be rendered in black. But I'm probably only going to use that node for the rectangles used to draw text boxes and stuff.

With this in mind, most objects are rendered in a single color. The only exception I have made so far is the player character, which is actually 4 different sprites drawn in tandem. The different parts of Missy's frame change color according to the state of her acquired upgrades and remaining HP. The following image shows every theoretical possibility for the upgrades I have planned as of this writing:
Image
(i am specifically planning it out so that collecting every upgrade results in Missy's "canon" color scheme, seen in the far bottom right)

Sound???

I feel the need to preface this section with a bit of a disclaimer: Making this game's music is going to be a learning experience for me. I have no real prior experience composing music, nor am I looking for anyone to make it for me.

With that said, I'm using Bfxr for most sound effects like I tend to do. The game's music is being made with Little Sound Dj, a music workstation that produces authentic Game Boy sound by way of being a literal Game Boy application.

So far I have made two little tunes that may or may not make it into the actual game:
(SoundCloud won't loop these seamlessly, but the game will.)

Just Business is a pretty basic 2-minute loop. I was still re-familiarizing myself with LSDJ so I played it very safe by having one melody repeat itself in various ways.


This one's only a 10-second loop, intended to sound very alien and unnerving, and only played during a few story sequences. You could say that eerie music glitches were the inspiration for it.

Welp, I'm out of Big Bold Questions.

I will keep this thread posted with new developments and maybe some weird ramblings based on said developments.

AMA and stuff

Jill
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Re: i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Jill (?) » Wed Jan 02, 2019 8:18 am



Right now I am mostly designing the first map and figuring out how I want the game's overall progression to be laid out. I'm not terribly worried about how story-related places are bridged together, but there are two major progression archetypes that interest me:

First there's the Hero Core/BotW archetype, where the very beginning and the very end aren't far from each other, but you would have a much harder time finishing out the game with fewer upgrades. I imagine this would be difficult thing to make work in a game that isn't combat-oriented, because I'd have to be able to make the final stretch consist of obstacles that are somehow just beatable with a bare minimum mobility while still allowing each and every upgrade to help out in some way. And I'd want to avoid just having That One Ability that ensures an easy trip unless it happens to be one of the final upgrades you can get.

Then you have the Rabi-Ribi archetype, which is sort of a variation on Super Mario 64 or an evolution of Super Metroid: Once you move on from the prologue to "Chapter 1" proper, the story advances by having defeated a minimum number of the game's bosses, then returning to a central location and talking to an NPC. You're then transported to a small, linear story map, and completing whatever there is to do on that map brings you back to the main world and begins the next chapter. Essentially you need to "recruit" like 10 of the game's 20-something major bosses to open the path to the finale, and the rest of them are only required to finish the post-game subplot.

I guess it ultimately depends on how many story events I end up with, and how many of those I deem "mandatory" as opposed to world-building or subplot events. Both of the aforementioned formats sorta require me to have a few magnitudes of optional events over the mandatory ones, and admittedly my writing style has a certain wordiness to it where characters already follow plot-relevant dialogue up with whatever tangentially-related derail would typically spark up in casual conversation.

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Re: i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Jill (?) » Sat Jan 05, 2019 1:36 pm



and since i haven't posted one yet, here's my current todo list:

Code: Select all

	GAME:
>>>		-add a few mechanics
			-tiletypes:
				-conveyors
				-perhaps some stationary hazards to alleviate enemy usage
				-consider ceiling slopes
				-consider tiles that can only be traversed by ballogram or by grappling to the other side
				-water in general probably warrants more unique properties
>>>			-upgrades:
				-potential for "augment" upgrades that can be collected independently of main advancements & don't change missy's color
				-ballogram:
					-explode
					-swap
					-bouncy?
					-steerable anti-grav/flight?
				arms:
					-lift and throw, compatible with some enemies (only ballogram carries between screens)
					-grappling hook, immediately snatches objects from a distance or pulls player to (specific?) terrain (on-screen only)
						-perhaps it can even be fired upwards??
					-tractor beam, press-and-hold version of grapple, incrementally pulls in nearest frontal object or pulls player to terrain (on-screen only)
				ball:
					-split dash into ground dash -> ground-and-air dash?
					-possibly some upgrade tiers for: hovering/slowfall, swimming
>>>			-title screen
>>>			-pause/inventory menu
>>>			-full map view
			-save file
		-handle entities
			-generic/hardcoded entities which can be spawned by the player, NPCs, or enemies (projectiles, pickups, etc)
			-NPC scripting
				-message boxes may need to be improved
				-conditionals to check if a specific item, enemy, or other NPC is still present
				-conditionals that measure the total amount of the aforementioned objects still present
				-ways to manipulate the aforementioned objects by ID, as well as the player and ballogram
				-movement functions like >Jump could be a thing
>>>		-more enemies
			-like, way more enemies
			-some generic methods for enemies affected by gravity, collisions, etc.
		-randomizer, only needs to generate a list of overrides without actually touching any map data
			-e.g. lists are generated from seed when a randomizer file is started/resumed
			-the game loads any given room as it normally would
			-the randomizer code immediately follows, swapping all present enemies and/or items with those in the same location on the randomizer's list
	
	EDITOR:
		-various things still can't be placed or modified
			-screen edge warp data
			-enemy parameter editor may warrant different modes for parameters that aren't strictly numeric, such as booleans and ID selections
			-BGM
		-warps may need to be revised to be part of randomizer, but they probably shouldn't be
		-allow maps, rooms, and individual item locations to be tagged with their requirements to prevent impossible randomizer seeds
			
	BOTH:
		-several tiles and sprites
			-potentially some animation framework
		-keep separate IDs for duplicate upgrades. may not be necessary but would simplify randomizer
		-reminder that palette colors aren't single colors & can easily be made to flash, glow, flicker, etc.
(excuse the tabs; they do a much better job within my actual source code)

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Re: i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Gloomy Rube (?) » Thu Jan 17, 2019 7:03 pm

That flow chart of upgrades looks rad, I am excited for this game
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Jill
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Re: i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Jill (?) » Sun Sep 08, 2019 11:40 am

hey this game isn't dead i'm still trying to write some music



this started as an attempt to make a much more relaxed song but the composition i had my head didn't stick around so i just played around and made another mess

there is probably something salvageable here but the wave bits starting 25 seconds in have to go. i was getting sick of playing with the synth and its composition so what's there right now is basically filler

if nothing else, i learned how to use a few things that aren't the wave channel in making this :-I

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Re: i've got another M'F'N' game in the works

Post by Vivianinatoga (?) » Sun Sep 08, 2019 3:12 pm

Jill wrote:
Sun Sep 08, 2019 11:40 am
hey this game isn't dead i'm still trying to write some music



this started as an attempt to make a much more relaxed song but the composition i had my head didn't stick around so i just played around and made another mess

there is probably something salvageable here but the wave bits starting 25 seconds in have to go. i was getting sick of playing with the synth and its composition so what's there right now is basically filler

if nothing else, i learned how to use a few things that aren't the wave channel in making this :-I
this is harrowing in a "trying to keep your shit together and constantly fumbling" kind of way
Image
ImageImageImage

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