Game Maker .. Anyone Interested?


skeezix

skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
Messages
8,070
Website
www.codejedi.com
Hey'all..

I know some of you are curious as to whats been going on for the last few months, so I thoguht I'd let you know a little. (Okay, most of my life is eaten up by work to pay the bills, but what can you do ;)

I've been building a little game engine for the purpose of making 2 or 3 games I've been wanting to assemble; however, its a general purpose engine where most of it is defined in script and config files -- it was explicitly made with the idea of allowing people to make their own levels or games with it.

I've built it so it runs on (you guessed it) GP32, Palm OS (including Zodiac), Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux. I intend on making a shareware release for Palm OS and Zodiac, but as usual, I'm intending on making it freeware for GP32. (ie: You'd likely use Windows one to work on config files, and then copy them to GP32 to run play them once they solidify.. editting them on desktop is far faster than fusking with the link cable every time you change something :p)

The engine is designed mostly around game slike Gauntlet, Time Bandits (form the Atari ST, Amiga, Coco, etc), and other sprite-on-tilemaps type games. It could do something like Bomberman or Breakout likely as well really since its reasonably general.

Its not easy to build little games with it mind you.. you can't be a total newb, and heres no fancy Windows game-builder interface.. you edit ASCII files and put filenames and scripts in them, and then you see what happens.. so you have to use you brain creatively to come up with how you wish to accomplish something and wat you want, and you have to draw your own artwork.. (ie: I suck at drawing ;)

But if theres a few motivated people .. someone to draw pics, someone to make configs, etc.. could be fun.

The engine now is architecturally complete more or less, but it lacks a lot of necessary things, but thats why I need peopel hacking aay at it.. to give me ideas to flesh in.

For example, it has the concepts of watching for a set of criteria to come true, and it has the coincept of actoins to take when they are met. (ie: When playe reaches hi piint, with this item, do these things). However, the list of actoins the engine can take is low, and the number of things it can be told to wtach for is low..

So if you're intereste din making little games, let me know; you woudl be resonsible for making your own games, and for asking me if oyu cna have this or that trigger or action or feature or optoin, and I could build them into the engine as tinme permits.

So it is good at making what I call "Action puzzles" or simple-RPGs, etc.

Since I have no artistic talent whatsoever, this screenshot looks like shit.. but it runs on all those platforms, and its script driven, and would look better if it had nice artwork.

My time is limited, but I wanted to see if there was any interest in this sort of engine. ie: IS there 0 people who want to make little games, or a handufll, or several dozen? Is scripting up your own little adventures a fun thing to do, or no one cares?

jeff

Ugliest screenshot ever follows:
http://www.codejedi.com/zot/screenshots/zotwin1.gif

(but notice the real time alpha blending .. I'm proud of it, even if its old news :)
 
Hmmm, Sounds interesting.

Not a coder myself, I repair pc's, not program them, but this may be just what the gp is waiting for, someone do a gp32 gauntlet remake. :p
 
Hello Skeezix, looks very promising mate, i'm in crunch time at the moment, but as soon as we hit aplha it should cool off and allow me to fiddle with this :)
 
Sounds perfect. I still wait for perl on the gp32 though. :)

But the gp32 people are strange. First all the kiddies cry out they want to program something. Then when given the virtual novel system, there is nobody really using it. Lets see wether it will be different this time.

Anyway, Im interested, even though i will most definitely only toy around with it, request enhancements and maybe can report bugs.
 
If I had a big selection of bgs, a story, and sme characters, not to mention time, I'd probably do a virtual novel. As it is, I don't. Thank-you those that do :)
 
I have a story that's suitable for making an RPG game :)
 
I would offer up the graphics from Kit's ABC adventure (to skeezix) if this would help you. I made the graphics for it to show up on a 320x240 screen (except the tiles I believe). I'd love to see (or if time permits - make) a version of Kit's ABC Adventure for GP32.

If you are wondering - it's a small game I made for PC and Mac with the intention of helping my little niece with learning letters and simple spelling. I do plan on making another game with Kit for a slightly more mature audience in the future.

Download the game from the games section on my site: http://www.sinthesisent.com

Skeezix email me if you'd like them. Also, if at a later date you can make a sidescroller engine that would rock! I'm a huge fan of sidescrollers.
 
Shaking Spirit posted on Mar 12 2004 at 03:32 PM said:
A little off topic, but you know you can press Alt+PrintScreen to take a shot of the active window only ;)
Click to expand...
yeahyeah, I just got told that about 30 times ;)

jeff
 
Last edited by a moderator:
OKay, to be a little more serious..

Which of you would jump on the option to do things like this:

sprite baba # name of sprite for later use
name baba # display name of sprite if we ever display it
order 1 # spr. order is 1..3 (start at 1, 3 is drawn last)
speed 3
# AI details
ai mob_wander # the AI to use
ainear mob_robotron # the AI to use when player is "near"
near 3 # 7 tiles away is "near"
# dimensions; artwork dimensions and sprite body dimensions!
image_width 16
image_height 16
width 16
height 16
#
# while standing still
anim_statedef still # if engine needs a missing state, first state used
anim_steps 5 # 7 artworks in pcx file
anim_offset_x 25 # artwork is 25px offset from last step
anim_image pointyplus # use this image for animating this state
#
sprite end

(Thats a simple sprite definition)

A game needs someone to make artwork, and someone (could be same person) to make the configs that are very much like the above.. where you write config details for every object in the game, every square on the maps, etc.. lots of work.

If you have a game idea, and you are motivated enough to actually go through with something.. post here and let me know :)

If theres a few people interested, I'll get the GP32 veroisn working enough to zip up and set up a mailing list and all that goodness :)

jeff
 
As there is no BBC emulator for the GP32, do you think it would be feasible to use your game-maker to recreate some of the games on it?

Can the sprites be rotated?

Cheers
 
I'd sure give it a go! I have been using Multimedia Fusion (sequel to The Games Factory and Klik & Play) for years now, making tons of stuff, 'cause I can't be bothered to learn to program properly (I'm trying to learn now, though, bought a book). And that is relatively hard to learn how to make an actually good game. So a game maker type thing for GP32 would be wonderful!
 
I think it looks understandable, maybe several help files and tutorials would be useful :)
 
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