Monday, March 31, 2014

360 Dodge Ball: Day 1

What Am I Thinking

My Plan

I am basing this off of Lessmilk's game Run! I figure this is a good start as it covers the super basics of movement, rules of the player object, and the enemy object, and some gold old fashion point adding for a changing variable. There is the added bump of some kind of graphical sprite based fun, as well as maybe even some sound. I also home to possibly add features not included int Lessmilk's as I think Construct2's ease of use may allow for more time in the end.

My Goal

I need to re-learn some basics I covered while building my GISHWHES project. I also want to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Construct 2's engine. I want to make this stuff so basic that I can do these basic setup's without much thought, or back-tracking.

What I Did?

I am using HabitRPG to build up a quick checklist of the building blocks needed to build the game. Objects needed, control input, on-contact rules, etc. I did not want to build a full on design document for this game, any of these Game A Week projects. Too simple a build to burn that kind of time.

I've created the level, the player, and ball objects, and have applied properties, and events. As it stands right now I have a moving player, and randomly spawning balls coming at the player from the edge of the screen. The player is confined to the board, but that is it for now.

What I Got Wrong

It took several tries to get the view-able board to sync up with the layout, even longer to figure out how to keep they player object from just moving off the board. I've decided to abandon object contact rules, and just limited the player to the board (as opposed to creating "walls" stopping the player.

I also forgot that instead of having an instance of the player on the board, and creating a new instance (following my rules for confining player to the layout) had me creating twin instances of the player object. One created in the intended spawn point, and one that auto-snapped from off layout, to on layout. Once I figured that out I just had the player start off layout, and then move to the spawn point once the layout started running.

Thanks for reading this crazy journey I am going on. Feel free to contact me on any questions, rantings, encouragement you may have for me.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Prelude

This is my first post as it relates to Glamborous Games. Gotta start that branding early.

Ever since I heard of it, I've had it in my head to make a game a week. Nothing amazing, more like learning to crawl before I walk and what have you. I've used Construct 2 (free edition) in the past to create this masterpiece

That was 7 day's worth of work, with only a little polish at the end to make it user friendly. Early use of some of the samples that comes with the software, along with Google skills, and cunning on my part allowed me to build the game. Art from a friend, and copyright-free music allowed me to make something silly, and fun, and most importantly, COMPLETE!

I look online, and I see all these fun indy web games, and I even look on Scirra's Arcade, and I want to learn how to do it all. Really push the limit.

Inspired by that, and the Game Jam's I see all over the place. I want to see if I can make something that I would want to play in only 7 days. I want to be able to build from scratch, the things I've already made. I want to learn the in's and out's of Construct 2, not so I can build fun little browser games, but so I can prototype the games I want to make, and understand how to accomplish that in Unity, UDK, or even the more proprietary stuff I want to eat up the user-unfriendly parts, and spit out something wholly unique.

All I need now is a guide, funny enough there is none. You never know what you don't know, and I needed a guide to at least face me in the right direction.

Google comes through again, apparently I'm not the first one to want to do this as a training exercise. So I will begin with the games build over at Lessmilk

My plan is to recreate the projects that have been released on the page. One a week. I believe that I will get through the first few with retaliative ease. I'm excited to see where I can go!

The Plan:


  • Week1: 360 Dodgeball
  • Week2: SPRSINVRDERS
  • Week3: Zee Bawks Jump
  • Week4: Dodging Stomping and Coins