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Maxiecole

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Norway

Joined on 8/8/10

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Maxiecole's News

Posted by Maxiecole - June 15th, 2017


Been done with my exams, now I've been working on my game!

I've been working on the general look and feel of the game, adding more things to the world to make it feel more alive.

Before:

3460017_149752607211_old.png

After:

3460017_149752617973_newerking.png

 

3460017_149752625763_newerking2.png

 

Other things I've added:
A tutorial that reveals first the inventory, the quests and then the stats menu, so the player donesn't get overwhelmed.

A bunch of items and details to the world such as cartwheels, mushrooms, birds flying up in the trees that fly away when you hit that tree, bunnies that steal the carrots on the ground, hedgehogs that do hedgehog stuff, etc.

Item stacking, now items can stack to a certain amount depending on what type of item (yay)

Magic wand that autofires magic missiles.

New dialog UI

3460017_149752670063_ui.png

 

Next: I will continue fleshing out the world, make much more interesting quests, items and abilities.


Posted by Maxiecole - January 22nd, 2017


Autumn semester been busy, this semester not so busy, got time to work on this.

I dropped the multiplayer because I will not be able to make it actually work right now. I'd rather make a decent singleplayer game than a crap multiplayer one, and if I follow good practices I will be able to easily convert it to multiplayer again.

 

3460017_148512208642_1.png

I've been real busy with working out the nit-bits of each little mechanic of the user experience when it comes to interacting with items and stuff in the world.

3460017_148512211753_2.png

To craft you can either drag an item on another, or right click, select use, and the click on another item, or right click on the other item and select the crafting option.

3460017_148512214382_3.png

Smoothed out the combat, feels pretty good now.

 

3460017_148512219843_4.png

 

I think I am close with finishing the core game mechanics for this iteration. Then I will add content, add the menus and figure out saving data, add achievements integrated with Newgrounds and then do the art and graphical design.

I will release a simplistic version of the game for general feedback, etc. And then I will re-release the games multiple times with more contents.


Posted by Maxiecole - September 10th, 2016


Been a little uninspired to make a progress post due to my computer broke down and I haven't been able to make a lot of progress as I'd like. But regardless:

I went with a whole different world design... players can move up and down, left and right as they please.

Skills, gaining exp, leveling up.

You can equip any item as of now. Cuz why not.

New items to interact with: Anvil, furnace, different types of ore.

Attackable NPC. Players can also fight eachother. Players drop items at death.

Adding furnace recipes and anvil recipes is done via inspector in Unity. Everything is handled automatic. What took 10 minutes in flash takes 1 minute in Unity.

Doing the ground work takes longer in Unity, but it will be possible to make a lot of content, fast, when I'm done.

This is how I edit the world, I have made a custom inspector that visually displays the spawn range of each item. The spawn range is also the area where the NPC spawned is to wander.

3460017_147354974323_Screenshot_5.png

etc screenies:

3460017_147354899292_Screenshot_3.png

 

3460017_147354936082_scr2.png3460017_147354948081_Screenshot_4.png


Posted by Maxiecole - July 24th, 2016


Yeah doing weekly updates.

3460017_146937914073_Screenshot_23.png

So far: Mutliplayer is going good and is more or less non-buggy now. Players can chat, run, crouch, change colors of their heads... all working good and dandy. Seems like making the game for MP was a doable challenge. However, the main challenge will be to make the game handle big servers and actual MP problems like cheating. I will need to figure out how to split up the servers. So maybe I will have to rent a couple servers that can hold like 100 people. Another challenge in front of me is optimize the game so the client only retrieves information from the server that it actually needs. (things in a certain proximity.)

I'm aiming for a highly-scalable game. In comparison to Kingslayer which was holding barely by a thin thread. Which brings up a dilemma in game design... 

I have made the camera follow the player horizontally, so the "area" is much bigger. However, I can't seem to figure out how to handle the world itself. If I were to do it like I have in Kingslayer1, I would want to design a system in Unity that allows me to make areas much easier, like:

3460017_146937980271_creatingrooms.png

This would be the most complicated approach. And it would be hard to make the world look artistically beautiful. However, despite the hard work of setting it up, creating and managing the game would be easier. By splitting areas like this it's obvious to know what information is relevant. (client/server)

Another approach would be to have the entire world as a stretched out in one area. And to make transportation not amazingly boring, I would have quick-travel points around the world. This is slightly more "realistic" than the method above. And it makes more sense of a "physical world."

3460017_146938001483_worldsolution1.png

 

Lastly, scrap the original Kingslayer1 world design and have the player move up and down as well, and travel to another cave layer. This gives a perfectly realistic sense of the physical world. Maybe use Minecraft's chunk system to manage resources. By using Unity's new sprite drawing tools I can make the world pretty easily. Adding enemy spawns, adjusting their spawn range and walking range, and much more, in a visible scene!

3460017_146938013953_Screenshot_24.png

+overground2, overground3 ... etc, for second floor places in houses for example.

The problem by doing this, however, is I would re-think graphics. I would need to spend much more time on animations such, if for example, rooms in houses were physical space instead of a new "area." 

With so much time spent going directly up and down, I feel I must draw animations for going up and down. And this crashes with the gameobject-hiarcy-animation system I have. And I would be forced to use sprite animations. But that doesn't compliment the way I want do handle equipment and character customzing. I could go 3D mode and have it a isometric game, but I want to stick with 2D on this project.

3460017_146938209821_62dd1110f746429fa512db947d7026e1.png

So what I can do instead, is limit players to walk on paths, and avoid the paths being directly up and down IN LONG DISTANCES ... that way I can get away with not having up and down animation.3460017_146938212733_e98e71917a764e65b62626bf98cb5d33.png

Houses would be sorta funky... I guess I will have to live with that. I would also need do some pathfinding. Hopefully Unity has some prepared goodies for me to do that :/

 

3460017_146938298992_Screenshot_25.png

So, a way to deal with buildings is to have different views on clients, depending whether you are inside or outside the building. The player walking inside the house would still be at the position in the world of the actual house, but the view is different. This could actually work, but the main problem is that it's a funky hack. On Client 1: the space of the house on the Y axis is walkable floor, like the rest of the game. But on Client 2 the space of the house on the Y axis is HEIGHT ... so, the Y-axis have two different meanings depending on whehter you're inside or outside. I don't know if I like that.


Posted by Maxiecole - July 17th, 2016


Weekly progress!

3460017_146879658613_Screenshot_18.png

Things done:

Adding items to the game is very easy at the moment. All to do is create a new item prefab, add any sprite and type in an ID.

All items has the same sprite size, and will resize automatically. So any sprite with any size fits. Todo: IDs will be assigned automatically in the future.

I have created an inventory and crafting system.

Items will behave like I originally wanted to in Kingslayer1, but couldn't, due to techical incompetence. Each item picked up is it's own slot in the inventory, instead of the same type of item is stacked up at one slot.

Items can be freely dragged around and can be dragged on each other to craft.

Creating crafting recipes is very simple now. No code required.

Items can also be dropped, by dragging the item outside the inventory.

I have been experiementing with multiplayer! It's kind of buggy right if join multiple games in one session, but right now, after a lot of headaches, It's very functional. Players sync up properly and items are synced up.

It will be exciting to see if I'm going to continue to make this for online. It's definately a challenge, but it's a childhood dream of mine to create an online game!


Posted by Maxiecole - July 10th, 2016


3460017_146817898732_Screenshot_13.png

I have completed my first year taking a game programming bachelor.

I have now a greater understanding on object orientated programming, as well as some knowledge about Unity.

I will now re-make Kingslayer in Unity.

Looking back at the way I did it in AS2, I now cringe on how hard I made it for myself to add new content.

If I wanted to make a new weapon, for instance, I would have to:

  • Draw the sprite (duh)
  • Edit the main code in like eight different places, which are scattered over 5000 lines of code
  • Edit code in the smithing code. 
  • Manually adjust an icon for the item
  • Add a new button in the smithing menu
  • ... and like sixteen other annoying things.

Making the Mithril armor/weapon set took an entire day and more.

If I do it correctly in Unity, all I would have to do is:

  • Draw the sprite
  • Create a new Item prefab and set all the propertiers in the inspector panel
  • Create a new Anvil-Recipe prefab and set the propertiers in the inspector panel

With this system, making a new armor/weapon set would be a matter of quick copy pasta and the only labor would be editing the names and the recipes and requirements in the inspector panel. If I'm fast that would take less than an hour.

The Unity version will be made with a fast resizeable and expandable approach right from the get-go. It will probably end up having much more content than the Flash version. 

I will make an update blog in a month.


Posted by Maxiecole - November 12th, 2015


Fixed LOT's of bugs.

Improved tutorial. Now with guiding arrows.

Press 'Q' to select previous item

New music!

Purchase different type of pickaxes!

Inventory on death is kept. The penalty is now loss of combat exp.

Choose a random character.

Faster combat and mining.

New fighting/combat animations.

Emotions: Laugh, jump and nod.


Posted by Maxiecole - September 19th, 2015


First update of Kingslayer.

Fixed some bugs and totally revamped the artstyle!

Next update will fix everything players have had problems with gameplay-wise!


Posted by Maxiecole - August 6th, 2015


New game Kingslayer is out within a week.

Where it all started: http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/8dd54acddd1f4a48c0153d0430cbadb1


Posted by Maxiecole - July 15th, 2015


Don't you love it when your .fla gets corrupted?

Don't you love flash?