Pixely Adventure-thing

[Mads]

Hey there!

EDIT: You can try out a super early and buggy version of the game.
CLICK HERE TO DO JUST THAT!

I'll show you something I've been programming. I even took the liberty to comment it, live. Be nice.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/RoUgjPEtzyA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/RoUgjPEtzyA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

The game was made using Slick2D, and Oryx sprites. It's very far from done, but hey..  

[Z-Man]

That looks really good! It puts the adventury game I've been sporadically working on with Oryx's sprites to shame. I'm excited to see how it turns out. I really like the effect of pushing around the frozen mob

[Mads]

That looks really good! It puts the adventury game I've been sporadically working on with Oryx's sprites to shame. I'm excited to see how it turns out. I really like the effect of pushing around the frozen mob

Thank you! I thought it was hilarious, so why the heck not.  

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[HeroesGraveDev]

This looks nice.

How much has it got so far?

[Giovanni]

Looks pretty promising. You should make some triggers that can only be activated by frozen bears.

[matheus23]

That attack you did to the bear really looked like one of the attacks from magicka

I love magicka... looks promising I'd go into the direction of magicka in terms of the combat system.

[Mads]

That attack you did to the bear really looked like one of the attacks from magicka

I love magicka... looks promising I'd go into the direction of magicka in terms of the combat system.

I have never played Magicka, but I'll sure take a look at it now.

My original idea was that the protagonist shouldn't be able to outright attack anyone. No wailing on enemies and wait for them to die.
Instead, I give the player some tools to circumvent enemies more easily, such as freezing them or running faster for a short while.
Freezing might be a bit overpowered, though.  

This looks nice.

How much has it got so far?

A few enemies and citizens, dialogue, some spells, a tiny map editor and code that supports all kinds of fun things - like pushing around frozen bears. 

[Alan_W]

+1 on triggers for frozen bears.  You could have doors opened by pressure plates.  Maybe the bears unfreeze after a while.
Maybe use the frozen bear as a shield against arrows being fired at you.  Frozen bears as stepping stones across a river.
Maybe there are other monsters that eat frozen bears.  Actually I need to go shopping, out of food and frozen bear suddenly sounds quite appetising.

Now what about burning bears.  That would make a mess of the corn.  Mmm corn. 

[Mads]

I updated the OP to contain a download link. Please remember that it is very early, and it doesn't reflect actual gameplay, yadda-yadda-yadda bim bam boom.
I'm aware of a few bugs, though if you find one please let me know.  

Download

+1 on triggers for frozen bears.  You could have doors opened by pressure plates.  Maybe the bears unfreeze after a while.
Maybe use the frozen bear as a shield against arrows being fired at you.  Frozen bears as stepping stones across a river.
Maybe there are other monsters that eat frozen bears.  Actually I need to go shopping, out of food and frozen bear suddenly sounds quite appetising.

Now what about burning bears.  That would make a mess of the corn.  Mmm corn.  

Those are all cool ideas. At least one of those is definitely going to make it into the finished product.

[cubemaster21]

This looks really good. I tried the demo, and that corn field-bear chase is ridiculous! Is there any way you could direct me to a tutorial on how to do the smooth scrolling like you have? I'm not sure how to implement it on a tile map.

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[HeroesGraveDev]

This looks really good. I tried the demo, and that corn field-bear chase is ridiculous! Is there any way you could direct me to a tutorial on how to do the smooth scrolling like you have? I'm not sure how to implement it on a tile map.

Say the player moves every 20 ticks, and the camera updates every tick.
Give the camera a speed variable of 1/20 (assuming the size of a tile is 1), a target position, and it's current position.
When the player moves, move the camera towards the target at the speed of the camera (1/20).
Then you just translate by the camera position.

That's how I did it for my own roguelike game.

[Agro]

For smooth scrolling, I just refer to the concept shown here:

http://www.lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/lesson21/index.php

Don't need to do any translating, just some ezpz logic

[Z-Man]

This looks really good. I tried the demo, and that corn field-bear chase is ridiculous! Is there any way you could direct me to a tutorial on how to do the smooth scrolling like you have? I'm not sure how to implement it on a tile map.

In my tile based adventury game I move the player just like any other Entity would. Then if the player's position has changed I set his new position as the target center for the map and move toward it at some speed. So say you press the right arrow key, he moves one column to the right, then the center of the screen follows him. I accomplish this with an offsets variable, which is just a point that I use to offset tiles and entities, and a targetOffsets variable. If the offset doesn't match the target offset when I update then I add the speed of the camera to the offset.

[Mads]

I won't go into too much detail here, but here's how it works in this instance:
The player has a speed at which he can move. This is a value determining how many tiles he can move per second.
The wait-period between each move is calculated accoridng to this.

I also have a camera, which is really just a set of world-coordinates. The game is always rendered so that these world-coordinates is always at the center of the screen.
Now, the camera also has a speed at which it can move - also a tiles/second value. The difference is that the cameras position is updated every frame according to this.

Therefore, the camera and the player moves at exactly the same speed.

I previously tried to have the camera move much faster, but it ruined the game feel, because it stopped to wait on the player every move. If the camera stops, the game feels like it's not flowing right anymore - even if the player can move wicked fast.

Now, the player actually moves pretty slowly and I don't think it feels bad at all. Sure, moving is a little clunky, but it's flowing.

[loom_weaver]

I noticed that the player moves ever slightly faster than the bear.

Is there any turn-based mechanism or is this pretty much real-time only?

[HeroesGraveDev]

Don't need to do any translating, just some ezpz logic

If you aren't translating, then the screen view won't move.

[Mads]

Don't need to do any translating, just some ezpz logic

If you aren't translating, then the screen view won't move.

Depends how you view it. The soft libs, like Slick2D lets you specify rendering coordinates, so it doesn't feel like you're translating.