Snowman "reloaded"

[Ziz]

Edit:

Release version: http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=snowman-reloaded

Hi, as mentioned in this thread I will finally release the new version of snowman.

These are the changes I did / will do

• New enemy sprites instead of rotating shapes (done)
• Porting to sparrow3d (done)
• New clouds (done)
• New snowman graphics (done)
• Better pause menu (done)
• New font (done)
• Map for better overview (done)
• Redesign of the levels (13 of 20 levels done)
• Normal and Hard game mode (10 of 20 done)
• C4A compatibility
• New help / better tutorial

As you can see lots of changes happened and will happen the next months.Maybe you wonder, why I added two game modes and where they differ. While remaking the game I realized, that I balanced the levels, so that they are quite hard for me. However I am the programmer, so I thought most people will be very frustrated very soon and created an easier mode (called "normal mode") with more snow. That is the only difference: You have more snow. The level and the count of enemies are the same.

Furthermore I started adding C4A support. You will have two highscores, one for the normal and one for the hard mode. Your highscore is the sum of your times needed for all levels. If you didn't passed a level yet the time will be set to 5 minutes. So you have to be better than 5 minutes per level in any case. As you can see smaller scores are better (like in a race). Unfortunately C4A doesn't support reverse ordering at the moment, so maybe I will create the inverse, so that the ordering works again.

The enemies shall be natural enemies of a snowman like the sun, glowing coal, water drops, rabbits (carrot nose you know...) and similar. As my art skills are very basic, I should add explanations about them, too. ^^'

If you don't know it yet, this is an old video of the changes I did. Not everything, what I already implemented is shown, but most stuff is. If my work proceeds I will add more videos.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KF_oPosQ5mQ?feature=oembed
greetings,

Ziz

 

[Ziz]

Oh, btw.: I think the category I participate in is obvious, I think.

 

[EvilDragon]

I love that minimap

 

[bzar]

Loved this the first time around. Glad to see it making a return!

 

[EvilDragon]

Some music would be good, as it always increases the gameplay value of a game a lot

 

[PokeParadox]

Nice!

 

[Monkfish]

This is what i hoped you'd be working on, great game for christmas!

 

[Ziz]

Some music would be good, as it always increases the gameplay value of a game a lot

There is music. But my screen capturing tool fails at recording it. I will make some videos with music with my camera on my gcw, when some new stuff is added.

 

[foxblock]

All hail the evil hair dryer overlords.

 

[rohezal]

For the music:

jamendo, http://freesound.org/ or maybe soundcloud?

 

[Ziz]

I use royal free music by incompetech. However, maybe I should think about different music for every kind of levels.... I will put it on the ToDo.

 

[ingoreis]

Hey cool Game and make fun.

Maybe you can build in Items like double Air Jump or a Jump Spin Attack like Sonic.

Or you can shot the Snowballs with the same Key pressing Combination

like Street Fighters Kens Kayoken

Or a Shield Item or more Weapons.

Your Game has much Possibilities and very Nice Grafics from you

 

[milkshake]

Looks nice, you could use the Pandora button icons that are in pnd manager instead of those squares with letters in.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[Ziz]

Hey cool Game and make fun.

Maybe you can build in Items like double Air Jump or a Jump Spin Attack like Sonic.

No. The game principle will not change anymore, but thanks for your input.

Or you can shot the Snowballs with the same Key pressing Combination like Street Fighters Kens Kayoken

Why should I do this?

Or a Shield Item or more Weapons.

Keep in mind, Snowman don't use weapons! Snowman throw with snow. Everything else is ridiculous.

Your Game has much Possibilities and very Nice Grafics from you

Thanks

Looks nice, you could use the Pandora button icons that are in pnd manager instead of those squares with letters in.

What is the license of these buttons? If I change the button renderer in sparrow3d every of my games and all platforms should profit.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Looks nice, you could use the Pandora button icons that are in pnd manager instead of those squares with letters in.

What is the license of these buttons? If I change the button renderer in sparrow3d every of my games and all platforms should profit.

It's CC BY-SA 3.0, but the license is not supposed to be a show stopper. Would you prefer a different license?
In any case, the latest version of guihints01 (guihints for Pandora) is always available via the guihints for Pandora - release announcements thread over at gp32x.de .

Sent from my Keyboard using Fingers

 

[foxblock]

@Christoph.Krn, Are they on the wiki yet? I think it makes sense to create a page for them to give them a bit more publicity (few people probably even know they exists). Does not need to be anything fancy for the moment, a screenshot (I remember your "how to write Ångström with the Pandora" example), a short description (what are they for, license, etc.) and the download link should suffice.

 

[Ziz]

I took a look at the gui hints.

They are quite cool, but unfortunately not useful for me. With my sparrowText implementation I run in some problems:

• The buttons are pandora specific. If a system don't use A,B,X and Y, I can't use it. Furthermore on some systems buttons are called "Help I" or similar.
• Even badder: The position of the buttons is fixed in the graphics. But on most system (A) is not left
• These are static images. Great for the pandora, but in fact I want to be independent from static pixel art and define as much as possible as vector graphic
• Furthermore I try to avoid adding extra media to sparrow3d. The only media you need atm is the virtual keyboard, which optional. I like to render the buttons on the fly

However, thanks for the offer, especially in the license way.In one thing you are right: My button renderer sucks. I will have to improve it (e.g. you don't have axis buttons at the moment), which I sure will before the release of Snowman. Maybe I copy some of your guihints ideas in the button design (e.g. the button position marking).

greetings, Ziz

 

[Christoph.Krn]

I don't possess (or otherwise have access to) any other of the open "gaming" systems, only the Pandora. Neither am I personally interested in making guihints for any of these other devices at the time. However, I had taken seriously your previous comment on guihints, which you appear to have forgotten about by now(?!?). Here is the relevant excerpt of the feedback that you shared on 2012-01-24:

Sometime I have the feeling the pandora board forgets, that there are other open consoles, too. So for me it is important, that I can use the concept [of guihints, remark] on other handhelds, too - or even on a PC.

In that case it would be cool, if the great "engines" like glBasic or Penjin would have something like "[[A]]" (or similar) and depending on the system you are compiling for, the [[A]] gets replaced with (A) (on GP2X, Pandora, etc.) or (Y) (on Dingoo) or with something else for the PC or any other console.

Source: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/6812-guihints-preview01-02/?p=120396/URL]
...and here is the relevant excerpt of my reply:

You have a good point. I can create an additional, stripped-down, and more generic set of hints for use with other devices if people want that. A single set of unified hints would go against the goal of guihints, though:

Like with many other handhelds, every single Pandora unit has /about/ the same characteristics as others: the same input methods at the same places, the same screens with the same resolution, and about the same power. As you probably know, if one knows what hardware exactly the user possesses, one can comparatively accurately tailor works to that hardware. This is also true for "standardized" hint graphics, which can benefit from accurate tailoring.

Example: Hints for the Wiz, for instance, wouldn't require differentiation between D-Pad, left nub, and right nub. At the same time, the screen resolution is much lower on the Wiz in comparison to the Pandora. Therefore, with the Wiz (to stay in the example), it would make a lot of sense to completely re-create hints, and at a smaller size. I don't possess a Wiz, but I guess that its OLED screen probably also has much better contrast and a higher color gamut compared to the Pandora's screen, therefore hints probably wouldn't have to be as restricted to stark contrasts either. With other handhelds, the situation is similar, and the PC is quite a special case, too.

Source: http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/6812-guihints-preview01-02/?p=121316/URL]
Since then, I have renamed guihints for Pandora "guihints01", and in doing so I reserved the name "guihints00" for a potential generic set of guihints. It appears that you are rather regularly using several of the open "gaming" handhelds, do you think that making such a generic set of button graphics would be a feasible endeavour that you think you could do? (Note that I'm unsure though whether it would actually make sense to implement it as a set of one-size-fits-all vector graphics, see an archived version of "Icon Design: Bitmap vs Vector" from 2013-04-25.)

@Christoph.Krn, Are they on the wiki yet? I think it makes sense to create a page for them to give them a bit more publicity (few people probably even know they exists). Does not need to be anything fancy for the moment, a screenshot (I remember your "how to write Ångström with the Pandora" example), a short description (what are they for, license, etc.) and the download link should suffice.

Not that I'd know.
That matter is exclusively about guihints though, and doesn't really have anything to do with Snowman. I don't want to hijack this thread and make it about guihints. I think it would make more sense to discuss the matter in a new thread, or in one of the dedicated discussion threads over at gp32x.de , or via PM, and invite anyone to do so.

 

[Ziz]

I don't possess (or otherwise have access to) any other of the open "gaming" systems, only the Pandora. Neither am I personally interested in making guihints for any of these other devices at the time. However, I had taken seriously your previous comment on guihints, which you appear to have forgotten about by now(?!?).

Of course I have. It seems to be two years old!

[...]

Since then, I have renamed guihints for Pandora "guihints01", and in doing so I reserved the name "guihints00" for a potential generic set of guihints. It appears that you are rather regularly using several of the open "gaming" handhelds, do you think that making such a generic set of button graphics would be a feasible endeavour that you think you could do? (Note that I'm unsure though whether it would actually make sense to implement it as a set of one-size-fits-all vector graphics, see an archived version of "Icon Design: Bitmap vs Vector" from 2013-04-25.)

I don't own much open handhelds. I own two (since a week?). However, in fact I don't really know, what we discuss here. Or why. I like guihints. But I don't think, that they are useful for my multi platform engine sparrow3d (so in fact this discussion belongs in the sparrow3d thread ^^).

And when I spoke about vector graphics, I don't mean svg. I meant doing the drawing at runtime in sparrow3d. In that case your mentioned disadvantages don't count.

And thank you for trying not to hijacking this thread (seriously).

 

[Ziz]

Hey guys,

some of you may wonder, whether I will really finish this project, because I was quite quiet the whole time.

The reason is, I had other projects on the go. Unfortunately not quite useful for pandora users. But if you are interested, I made a text editor and a package manager for the GCW. Pretty nice handheld...

However. Back to topic. I think I will finish snowman. Keep in mind, the first version, with which I participated in a competition, too, was made in one week - including writing a 3D software renderer. But to be fair: I did nothing else in that week. Girlfriend was around 2500km away and I had a LOT of spare time...

The last days I improved the look of the buttons in Sparrow3D and so in snowman, too. They look now like this:



Furthermore you may see, that I improved the handling. I run into the problem, that I lost my whole big belly, if I accidentally pressed the bottom button. So I put the big belly attack to the right shoulder button, a always available help to the left shoulder button and to the now free bottom button a new triple shoot instead. Quite useful at some points. I also changed the font - again. Just looked awful on low resolutions like of the gcw.

At last I added different background music for the four different kinds of level sets.

Next thing will be implementation of C4A and the newest enemy kind and then "just" making the missing levels + harder versions for real (wo)men.

I think, I will get this done.

greetings,

Ziz