I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

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I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:22 pm

Hi!

EIGHT-LEGGED THINGS have been shuffling around the village, along with GIANT BLACK ORMS crawling on the fields. As a self-proclaimed hero of the village, it's your chance to put things right. What you said last night at the tavern to get the barmaids' attention was not just boasting, wasn't it? Now, it's morning and you feel painfully sober.

This game will be html-exported is and is playable on smartphones, iPhone inclulded. I hope to finish the game by Christmas, we'll see how it goes.

Last week was spent on pondering the options and gameplay. Html export is rather limited in features. I decided to go for it in any case. The gameplay will be a mixed bag of old BASIC games and point and click adventure games, with pseudorandom things happening based on player actions. Maybe. I'll tell more about this later when I get it sorted out in my head.

To speed things up, I'll be using Playmobil characters, with some white/gray/black bacgrounds made out of cardboard and ink. And of any odd items I might have around. Like the miniature snakes and spiders from the Halloween decorations. The camera will be a Nintendo DSi XL. I'll be using Flipnote Studio for the stop-motion animations, mixing imported photos with hand drawn stuff. Animation is something I have never done before, but I'd like to learn how to do it.

Here are some tests, you'll get the idea. The output is tiny, because the Flipnote Studio output resolution is really that small. Luckily, the output looks reasonably good on smartphone screens. And the black and white gif animations load pretty fast.

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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby reneuend » Tue Nov 19, 2013 12:52 am

Nice, Gumbro. I like the artsy feel to it. Is this going into the contest? If so, I get to play it as a judge! :-)
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Tue Nov 19, 2013 9:57 am

For the competition, yes! It's also a christmas present for a friend.
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Sun Dec 01, 2013 8:43 pm

A little update, partically no progress last week as I was travelling abroad.

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Instead of paper, I'll be using Exin Castles bricks for the dungeon rooms. These bricks were made in the -70's, and they are meant for building castles, or dungeons ;)

There is only one puzzle, the dungeon itself, with a big bad guy in the end. If you are familiar with Hunt the Wumpus, this is going to be a bit like it. I have a list of things to do, and at the moment it looks like I can complete the game by Christmas. The first version will be a bit sparse, with a single character and a single level of difficulty, but I can expand the game later.

More updates will follow, so watch this space!
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby reneuend » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:47 am

Expanding the game is a good idea! You might even get some new ideas for puzzles.
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Simon » Tue Dec 03, 2013 3:00 pm

I really like the artistic touch :)
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Wed Dec 04, 2013 8:38 pm

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Walking animation test, a bit too wobbly perhaps, but who cares... I started to make the game and found out that I has made a miscalculation with the number of rooms needed, the amount is closer to 600. Free version only supports 150. I ended up reducing the game to just 100 rooms or so. The problem is that one needs to have a "room" for each animation, and there are going to be different animations for entries, exits, if the character is carrying item(s) and for surprises, too.

The good news is that now I can finish the game even faster :)
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Sun Dec 08, 2013 8:01 pm

Great progress this week! 36 animations completed, everything done except game intro and game over screens. If you make a wrong turn, bad things can happen:

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:wink:
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby reneuend » Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:09 pm

LOL! I like the animation with the spider attack! Good Job getting so much done!
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Simon » Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:49 pm

That must be a lot of work to create these animations... Are you doing it in stop motion with legos ?
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Tue Dec 10, 2013 5:29 pm

It's Exin castles bricks, Playmobil and cheap plastic spiders and snakes I picked up from a Halloween sale. The animations have taken 7 hours so far, not too bad.
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Re: I hate snakes, spiders too! [WIP]

Postby Gumbro » Sun Dec 22, 2013 7:03 pm

I'm having trouble with gif timing :evil:

You see, a gif animation has certain length, and there is an option to time an exit out of a room. For transition animations, the animation length and the timer should match. While it's fairly easy to match the length of the animation and the exit timer, some odd behaviour is showing up when the same gif animation is being used for the second time. It starts from a wrong frame, if at all.

I have not been able to find a workaround for this in AM. The real solution will probably mean modifications to the html export javascript, and I lack the skills to do it. What would be needed is an exit after the gif animation has played out. No timers. If and if GM continues the html export side of things, this would be my item on the wish list.

As I do not want to release a buggy game, I may have to drop out of the competition (and to find another Christmas present for a friend, luckily there is still time ;)).

In any case, click the link below to test drive the issue. If you click on an exit, the little guy walks out of the room and comes in from the other way. The timings are a bit off, but for example if you klick the north exit two times in a row (wait for the animations to finish first), you should experience the timer issue.

http://www.roguelantern.com/am/snakes_002/
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