Platform Masters development (Nov 26, 2009) - Carnivalesta and special effects

[MarkQP]

good luck with your game man

[ulillillia]

Since this video, PM has numerous improvements and tons more progress. It's now starting to become playable and in the recent video, I'm getting collision detection working (though I've solved 2 of the bugs the video covers).

[LemurJooze]

I really like all the scenery. The city in the background and the night sky are so awesome!

[ulillillia]

The night sky has actually been improved (I forgot the square root in the gradient's formula) and the hills and mountains have been darkened (I didn't have the grass texture at the time I made them). The ground texture has also been improved as well so it has finer motion and a smoother gradient with the texture going out further. A lot of progress has been made since this video, almost all of it involves graphics though - worlds 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, and 10 are essentially done.

[SeparateEntity]

Why does it update at 960 times per second? Why not 1,000 times per second, so the game will update every exact millisecond?

[ulillillia]

It needs to a multiple of 60 because there are 60 draws per frame. Fractional values would require special adjustments. There are 16 cycles per draw for movement and 4 cycles per draw for keyboard input. Being a power of 2, 16 is the best since it's easy to program the sub-frame delays (17, prime, won't allow this though it'll be the closest multiple of 60 to 1000) and 960 is close enough to 1000. 18 is the next best.

[baumgarn]

The never ending rollercoaster in the background is also a great detail! Dude, I am so much looking forward to play this game!

[jesustoastlol]

too bad he never made a ridiculous 1000 hour long RPG

[ulillillia]

I do have an RPG in the works, a 2D one. It's only expected to take about 40 hours to complete, for a story-focused player.

[JackiePaquito]

Cool! I want to know more about your RPG.

[TheRealAntroid]

The cloud and fog effects are really great, i like them a lot, even if they are as simple as you say.

[ulillillia]

The clouds are the only "advanced" element in this game. Fog is easy, almost effortless - see my "fog formula" for details. If it's an easy and quick-to-do effect that has a considerably enhancement to quality, I add it.

[TheRealAntroid]

It's still a very atmospheric (ho-ho!) touch, nice job! And keep up the good work.

[LastExyle]

I'm a bit confused. What's the point of running the game at 960 frames per second when computer monitors can only display 60 to 120 frames per second?

[ulillillia]

The drawing is done 60 times per section. The motion (and thus collision detection) are done 960 times a second. Since scoring uses the millisecond for the clock (5 points for every millisecond left over), milliseconds make a difference. In addition, by falling faster than about 240 to 624 mph (depending on the action used (i.e. falling, bouncing, etc.)), you'd actually fall through platforms. By having 960 frames per second, this increases to 3840 to 9984 mph, of which is very hard to get.

[HK47Beta]

Ulillillia is the best.

[corrodesthefilm]

Idea for carnival food stand: Funnel cakes!

[1nspirator]

These platforms in the Carnivalesto part should be easier to see

[ulillillia]

Unless you're very high above the ground, the platforms are bright and easy to see. High above, the platforms (and everything else you see) are dark. It's a special effect, of which is easy to do.

[Ditch2012]

You should replace the lollipop vendor with a cotton candy stand.

[ulillillia]

I already have a cotton candy stand. It's in the front, closest to the scene (ignoring the ground).

[jamespancake]

Instead of lollipops you might go with candy apples - which are fairly common at carnivals.

[ArctosHyuga]

Platform Masters has made great progress! Great job, Ulillillia!

[Bleeep]

Platformer Masters really is looking great! It's nice to see the progress you are making. I look forward to playing this one day.

[pockyless]

Your worlds look very impressive in motion! I am looking forward to the demo.

[lonebard]

Love the detail on the night sky. We all know you do excellent paralax and backgrounds.

I do find it odd that the carnival stands are 200 feet apart from each other, with the Hero Wheel and Roller Coaster being even farther. I think there must be a way for you to add some sort of detail between them at least? Maybe thats planned but you do a lot of great detail on vertical scrolling and the horizontal always suffers. Just my honest opinion. I'm still looking forward to the game!

[ulillillia]

Graphics are not the focus of this game. The graphics are to be reasonable, but not top notch. TSO 3 is the one where these roles are traded - TSO 3 focuses much more on graphics rather than game play. While I could have another band of light poles, flags, and stands halfway between (making them 100 feet apart), I ran out of ideas before attempting this.

[Maldunn]

The carnival looks great! I especially love the night sky. Pretzels, funnel cake, and turkey legs are some other carnival food if you're still trying to think of some.

[ulillillia]

Pretzels - I forgot about that one and I know they have it because I've been to a carnival before and considered buying one of those gigantic-sized ones. I love the night sky too.

[anonymous732]

Keep up the good work and most importantly stay motivated! 960 FPS, wow.

[MrAmishfarmer]

Every time I watch this video I get more scared of asphalt, can you make the ground something less scary? I think blue water is way more friendly!

I don't know how I'm going to walk to my car anymore :(

[zexarious]

That asphalt really is ominously menacing and kind of 'impersonal'. I think it should be painted a friendlier color, maybe something violet.

[MrAmishfarmer]

I think violet would be way better, because then it would be like a carpet. But hopefully I wont get afraid of it by playing this game :(

Still hanging onto that 1% chance this game will be 3.5D

[ulillillia]

There's a 0% chance this game will be 3.5D because there is no such thing. A future sequel has a likely chance of being 3D, but certainly not anything higher. What's bad about the asphalt anyway? Water, technically, is not blue, rather, it's a medium-light gray.

[ulillillia]

Asphalt is supposed to be grayish in color.

[MrAmishfarmer]

But can't you make the asphalt violet? That way it's softer and doesn't hurt as much. Is there any chance of getting the asphalt color changed?

[ulillillia]

It's a natural color for asphalt - gray, so it's going to stay.

[zexarious]

The asphalt just seems uninviting to me, not a 'warm' color. You know how colors have seasons? This isn't even a season color, not a summer for sure, not even winter. When I pop a game in, I want to be taken to a happy world (or a mean world like with doom) but not into a clinical and unorganic world full of scary concrete, but that's not the worst part, the worst part is that everything is 2D! My world is 3D. 2D is unintuitive!!!

[Yerningeleven]

I can't wait to see how this game plays! Beautiful parallax scrolling. I love it. Thanks for the update.

[MrAmishfarmer]

ulillillia, are you going to make this game 3D? It really should be 3D or even 3.5D

[zexarious]

Is this being ported to 3D yet?

[MrAmishfarmer]

thats funny zexarious, we said the same thing at the same time - don't you think 3.5D would be sweet? There's a 98.6 percent chance I would play this game if it was 3.5D

[zexarious]

Making it in anything other than 3+D would be a crime against humanity.

[ulillillia]

There's no such thing as a 3.5D game. There is 2.5D (for a game that plays like a 2D game but is rendered in 3D), however, along with 2D and 3D. I've had thoughts of doing this with TSO 3.x, but it's too advanced for me right now, considering I don't have a modeling program (and I'm not going to use Gamestudio any more).

[zexarious]

I played a 3.5D game released by some germans. It's very hush-hush right now because they're using technology that is unpatented/unlicensed and they don't want it stolen. Once you play 3.5d any 2d platform just seems like a nokia 1100 snake game.

Take my piece of advice, go 3+D.

[ulillillia]

There is a 3D version that is lightly planned for, more likely a sequel to this game, but you won't find this available for years down the road.  PM is meant to be 2D and it will stay as 2D.

[MrAmishfarmer]

A nokia snake game would be totally sweet if it was in 3.5D because you would get to adventure through space AND half of time!

ulillillia, you should make a snake game in 3.5D!

[ulillillia]

There is no such thing as 3.5D. There's 2D, 2.5D, and 3D. I never heard of 1D games existing, however. I've already said it several times - PM is going to be 2D with over a 99% chance. If you don't like it, then don't buy it. You may be missing out too but that's your choice.

[zexarious]

What is the probability that we can settle on 3.25D?

[ulillillia]

There's no such thing as 3.25D so there's a 0% chance of it.

[zexarious]

Uhm, yes there is, if you use a isotropic field vector triangulation (easy accomplished even with C89 and any post-2000 GPU, provided you have access to the mem registers) you can easily get 'true' 3.5D and emulate with about an 80% degree of accuracy anything up to 3.9999D, of course at that point you're going through teraflops of data and need to seriously upgrade your bus, pcix just won't cut it. No-one has done it to my knowledge. But 3.5D has been done by the germans and it's an experience!

[MrAmishfarmer]

He already said there was only a 99% chance that it was going to be 2D, it sounds to me like there's a pretty good chance that it will be 3.5D but he doesn't want to tell us because the design is still classified!

[bongoman82]

I signed an NDA with this german company so I can't really say much but I can confirm that a 3.5D game is in development.

[ulillillia]

I don't believe you. Do you know what dimensions are? Today's games are almost always 3D. Key phrase: "almost always". The few oddballs are either 2D or 2.5D.

[zexarious]

You don't have to be offensive and call people liars. Wow, just wow, really bad form. Totally making our gaming community and game developers look like it's made up of 96% jerks. I agree, games are "almost always" 3D. Guess what, 20 years ago they were ALWAYS 2D and people like you said 3D was impossible. Now you're saying 3+D is impossible and are calling the pioneers who actually PLAYED 3.5D games LIARS. What's wrong with you!

[ulillillia]

The universe, as we perceive it, is 3D.  Dimensions beyond 3 is pointless.

[zexarious]

I agree (to an extent) and this is a great argument for why the making a game in 2D is pointless. Since the universe is 3D.

But, with technology, it is possible to experience 3+D and trust me, once you do, you'll never want to go back to anything else.

[ulillillia]

Enough already. PM will be 2D and that's that.

[zexarious]

You need to release the source of this game under a non-restrictive license, maybe the GPL. That way others can pick up the torch and liberate this game from its tortured 2D constraints.

You can upload the source to an FTP and give me a link, or set up a subversion server or something so I can pull your latest changes. Hope your code is commented well.

[ulillillia]

There's a 0% chance of making this game GPL.  Just because it's a 2D game doesn't mean it's bad. Please stop already.

[zexarious]

Please release the game under the GPL that way the community can work together to make it better. Restricting people from seeing the source and being draconian about it is GREEDY. I will make your game 3d, all you have to do is release the source and make it free (free as in speech).

[ulillillia]

I refuse to release the source of PM. I intend on selling PM and there are several users who are very interested in it. The price is currently unknown and won't be until the game nears completion.

[zexarious]

You can still set it, releasing the source doesn't mean you can't sell it. Just liberates it. What if you die tomorrow? Then the legacy of this game dies with you. Release the source! Let's make it 3D together!

[ulillillia]

I've got backups both on DVD's and my external hard drive. Still, I'm not going to release the source code for this game. The same applies with TSO.

[zexarious]

What license are you going to go with when you release the source for this game? GPL is a pretty good choice.

[ulillillia]

Undefined. The source is not going to be released. The game will be licensed as proprietary. It's not freeware either, you'll have to pay for it. However, there is going to be a free demo. Read the other comments and you'll see that there several who want to play this game even though it's 2D. 2D is easy to develop for. 3D isn't since it requires some modelling program (of which I lack) and knowledge of DirectX (of which I also lack).

[zexarious]

Need to make it 3D and release it under the GPL.

[ulillillia]

There's a 0% chance of each so stop asking - it won't happen.

[zexarious]

Is this because of my race? You need to stop being racist.

[ulillillia]

Race has nothing to do with it. Everyone will need to pay for the full game if they want it. Everyone will be able to play the demo, the same demo, and in the same way.

[zexarious]

What about a 3D and GPL version for the people who want it? Stop discriminating against them.

[ulillillia]

I already told you. PM will not be 3D, it's sequel years down the road will be. Neither PM nor its sequel will ever be GPL. A game doesn't have to be GPL in order to play it or have fun with it. Just read the other comments and you'll see how others are with the game as it is. Read the comments of other PM development videos and you'll see more interest in the game, even though it's 2D and proprietary and still not even playable yet.

[ulillillia]

FF12, low motive, and PM are the causes to the lack of Web site updates, outside the development history of PM screenshots section.

[gauchebag]

what the hell is wrong with your people

[MagikGimp]

Looks good man, I hope you're making lots of regular backups of this.

[3131222]

How about a level where once you reach a certain altitude, the background shows Kefka or Sephiroth's final forms from Final Fantasy? That'd be a wacky little easter egg

[ulillillia]

Can't for two reasons - copyright (this is the primary one) and the fact I don't have the actual images.

[TheLimperTBC]

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO PLAY IT?!

[ulillillia]

Playing it will be the next stage of development. However, I also have those FF12 videos I still need to get rid of. I've had them for about a month now. Get those out of the way and I can focus much more on PM's development, if something else doesn't get in the way.

[kamkasil]

I this based on that top favorite dream you had or whatever? With the carnival at night, and I think mud was involved?

[ulillillia]

This isn't even close to that dream. The dream has buildings in 4 feet or so of crystal-clear water under a moon-lit sky with one section being mud. The carnival is at night since, afterall, the colorful lights used with carnivals are best at night and on top of that, it's also how the game's story comes out (speaking of which, there's another roughly 20 or so levels to make (the beginning, ending, and the 18 related to the worlds). Fortunately, these levels don't require in depth testing....

[XXXMASTERISEXXX]

Whoa, this looks great! A lot greater than I expected it would turn out at this current time. Can't wait to see the character in gameplay! Keep it up! 5/5

[sympathy3k21]

Looking tight Uli! Keep up the good work!

[vinzayro]

Looks fun!

[fraudcakes]

That is some beautiful parallax, man. There is a preposterous level of detail and care that went into that and it's hugely inspiring. 5 stars, faved. <3 <3 <3 Ulilillia.

[ulillillia]

The parallax scrolling is done with a formula so simple, it's amazing: "Pixels*Scaling=CU". Determining the drawing position is done with the directly related "Pixels = CU/Scaling" (directly as it's the result of solving for the "Pixels" variable). The clouds are a bit more advanced, but the same basic formula is used.

[motherroot]

it depletes: oh my! yes

[baphomet58]

I'm sooo playing this over Modern Warfare 2.

[baphomet58]

Rainbow interface?...

ha....ha...

[ulillillia]

If you look closely at the edges, especially those in the corners, the text seems to have a 3D effect.

[warpio]

this game looks freaking cool. I like all the artistic little details you are putting into it.

what kind of enemies are you going to use? I would think a lot of flying enemies like birds dropping bombs and crows diving at you would fit in well.

will there be levels that take you all the way up into the clouds? maybe even space?

[ulillillia]

A hint of one is present in the icon for the current world. It's hard to make out a 1/8 scale object though, but it's supposed to be a spider. They just follow along the walls of platforms, speeding up suddenly when near them. They're actually a fairly common enemy. Beyond this, the rest of the details are classified (but, like the world focused in the video, they'll eventually be declassified over time).

[Ketsui]

Keep up the good work.

Funnel cakes are another carnival food.

Maybe you can add something more to the sky, like air ships or something.

[ulillillia]

You have to factor in speed, size, and distance. A 120 mph Cessna, for example, is fast and small. At a scaling of 8, where the Ferris wheel is, the plane would be a tiny 20x8 pixels pixels going 150 pixels per second - it's just too fast. Besides, for the plane to be visible, you'd have to play the jumbo or supersize levels (or figure out how to reach the roughly 7000 CU needed). It's just not feasible. Besides, graphics are not the focus point. I never heard of funnel cakes though....

[downwithutube]

Funnel cakes are lovely! You take batter, load it into a funnel-shaped device and squirt it into hot oil. It fries quickly. You remove it and add powdered sugar. So good!

[ulillillia]

3D is not the intention of this game. The sole intention is 2D. The 3D effects come from a relatively simple formula that I use frequently in my artwork: "Pixels*Scaling=CU".

[ulillillia]

I don't know any 3D-related programming so 3D is out of the question. In addition, my plans call for a 2D game, both for TSO and PM, although it is to mimic 3D. I'll continue developing this game in 2D as that's how it's intended to be.

[zexarious]

I urge you to reconsider continuing forth with making it in 2D. That would be a travesty, a blemish on the modern game-scape. Do you want to insult the memory of every game maker? Those brave programmer souls who made our atari and c64 classics? If they were alive today, they would want to see games utilize the technologies available to them, they'd want to see game makers squeeze every mhz and every frame out of a vid card. Please, make this game in the spirit of GAME MAKING. Make it 3d.

[yourstapler]

Nothing is wrong with 2D games. In fact, my bro and cuz and I were just playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii. There's plenty of life in well-designed 2D gameplay.

Ulillillia's 2D game will turn out fine, and show how much fun can be had with 2D.

[zexarious]

The game needs to be 3d, it's an insult otherwise to game programmers everywhere. Our glorious game programming culture has always embraced new technologies and new paradigms. Pushing the envelope is what we do. To make a 2D game is to stagnate and to spit in the face of every game programmer ever.

[EDorb]

Adding a 3rd dimension does not automatically equate to the game being better. Ulillillia has said his plans required the game to be 2D, so it's best to respect what he wants to do. He's the one making the game, after all.

[zexarious]

The game must be 3D. Period.

[ulillillia]

A game could have bad graphics but be loads of fun. It's game play, not graphics, that makes a game worthy. While, yes, graphics do have an effect, it's no where near as strong as game play. The point of PM is to land on the goal platform before time runs out. It's a simple concept, but it's the obstacles and hazards that add to the difficulty of accomplishing this. And hey, this game may very well be addictive. I get some 3D by making use of parallax (haven't you seen the clouds yet?).

[yourstapler]

New Super Mario Bros. Wii is fun because it's a well-designed 2D game. Not all things need to be 3D to be fun. In fact, the platforming in NSMBW would be less fun if it weren't in 2D.

[Doom2Guy]

You shut your mouth

There are plenty of fantastic modern games that feature 2D gameplay, games like Trine, Braid and New Super Mario Bros Wii

[rivetbullet]

Thank you ulillillia! You made me thankful this Thanksgiving!

[Ditch2012]

I recognize that ferris wheel from the gif section of your site.

Looks fantastic so far, keep at it.

[GMRDUI]

That's really cool, I love all the detail put into the levels :3

[ulillillia]

The only level I have is this test level, nothing special. The background scenery of each world, however, is a different subject. I'm not focused on graphics, but I still want them to be fairly decent. I have a huge attention to detail - even the most minute things catch my attention and whenever I find such a thing, I attempt reproduction then, if I can do that, fix it.

[TheBrokenSaint]

woo thanks for the update :)

[drpibbxtra]

What libraries are you using?

[ulillillia]

Windows GDI ones, particularly the one that works with AlphaBlend.

[JonLeibow]

I give thanks for Ulillillia

[EDorb]

Really impressive stuff here, Uli, even at 35% it's looking very slick. Looking forward to seeing some gameplay in the future, I'm sure it'll be great.

[yourstapler]

If you found a way to sell this game off of Steam, I'd buy it. Maybe you should e-mail the folks at Steam and see if you can get them to sell it? They sell a lot of independent games, including games made by single individuals. They might be willing to distribute your game as well.

[ulillillia]

I never heard of "Steam". I've long intended on using Regnow, of which is where TSO 2.4 is available (I advise you don't buy it - it's not really worth it and it's not even guaranteed to work correctly - Gamestudio's limitations has the bulk of this). PM has much, much better game play intended and it even has a story, unlike TSO.

[yourstapler]

Steam's probably the most popular game distribution service, so it might get you the biggest possible audience if you sold on there. Individuals who don't watch or videos or haven't seen your site will end up seeing the game added to the list, and buy it.

Plus, Steam's been pretty good to a lot of independent developers.

What's TSO?

[ulillillia]

TSO is "The Supernatural Olympics". The 2.4 version, made with Gamestudio, is horrible due mostly to Gamestudio's limitations. I have a start on a remake of it, but my focus is leaning much more toward PM than TSO because PM has much more potential to it.

[yourstapler]

Yeah, this game seems to be coming along nicely. I can't wait to see some footage of it in action. You already have lots of levels in it, so I think it'll be a good idea to focus all your game-making energy on this one.

Definitely look into Steam as a form of distribution. I guarantee you'll get your biggest possible audience that way.

[ulillillia]

I only have one level, a small, simple test level. I, however, have 3 complete worlds with another 4 or so almost complete due to reusing scenery from other worlds. World 11's scenery is used in 10 and 13, for example. World 8's waves are used in worlds 2, 5, 7, and one other one. In a sense, despite 18 worlds' worth of scenery, about half of it is done even though only 3 worlds are truly complete. I need to make nearly 300 levels and currently, 0 are done. I need the character first.

[shiidii]

I can't wait! Looks great!

[benzo12]

Setting you frame rate so high is very nice and all, but I would think that it would make it increasingly difficult to create a working sprite sheet for the player character, how do you plan to implement this?

[ulillillia]

Whether 60 fps or 20,000 fps, for the motion, the method is just as easy. I already use it for the Ferris wheel (although this is constant which makes it unusually easy). The character, which has dynamic frame change delays, is really no different, provided you use the right formula, of which, with my 70-page design document (yes, it's that massive - size 10 too). There are other features of this game, currently classified, that also has a positive effect on my motive for game completion.

[benzo12]

Thank your for your response, I wish you the best in your future development of this game, and I eagerly look forward to the finished product.

[ZELDABOY12]

This is really neat to finally see this game. Any chance it'll be done within the next year or so? Also as someone else asked how will you distribute it?

[ulillillia]

There is no guarantee of any release date. It could be done by May of this year, it could be clear into early 2012, there's no guarantee.

[nowais]

This is really cool Ulillillia. How are you planning on distributing the game?

[ulillillia]

The chance of distribution is over 99%, if posted on Regnow. For retail stores, this is unknown though, depending on sales, could be even 80%. For consoles, it's down in the dumps - under 1%.

[lolwatches]

Happy Thanksgiving, Uli.

[jamesters]

This looks really awesome, good work!

[MarioMastar]

Awesome! Platform Masters!

Wow, and what an interesting coincedence as I was listening to my own Carnival theme when I clicked this video.

Wow, seems like everything's comming together, is the next stop gameplay?

[ulillillia]

The next stage is either more scenery (this is about 25% complete overall) or more getting the character added (which will eventually lead to game play). See my reply below (to "KoRL12") for the specifics. With the water waves done, several worlds, such as 5 and 8, already have considerable completion. This is because worlds often reuse other world's scenery, though each world always has something unique.

[MarioMastar]

Ah, yeah. That's my plan for music too. I have many songs, but I might re use songs for different games where they would fit well.

Ah yeah, I read your reply to the comment. I understand now. I'm looking forward greatly as these videos really inpire me to work on my own games. The ironic thing is that since I'm using gamemaker, I'm focusing on the character before graphics, so basically, I have the movement and everything yet the level is just a 2-D plane with easy tiles.

[ulillillia]

You just gotta love the formula "Pixels*Scaling = CU". It works wonders for the rich 3D effects my 2D game has. The clouds alone speak volumes of 140 dB (in a sense). If you want a specific field of view, then the formula is more advanced, since you have a tangent or arctangent involved, but I have that formula too. Just think of each scaling unit as 100 feet of distance, to get the kind of field of view used with games, around 70 degrees.

[MarioMastar]

Ah, so using scaling would allow me to achieve such an effect in my own games? That would be very cool looking and very useful. I'm just getting the basics down for now, but in time, I would love to apply such details to my game. Hm...would it be alright if I could study the basic code formula that you used or do you have a walkthrough that I could study? I know I use Gamemaker, but I'd love to do what I can to make my game more advanced looking. I'm even in a Java class.

[ulillillia]

I don't know anything about Gamemaker or its limitations, but all you need to know is "Pixels*Scaling=CU". If you can get Gamemaker to move 2D objects at relative speeds rather than all at once, then you can certainly do this. I'm completely unfamiliar with Java though so I can't help you there.

[MarioMastar]

Ah, Yes, I'm beginnig to understand what I must do to obtain that effect now. Utilize layering and relative movement

(i.e. cloud_2.speed = (cloud_1.speed)/2 Something like that...) and with layering and looping the placement of the object...I think I know how to get the effect now.

Thank you so much. I know what I have to do now.

[ulillillia]

I use the X and Y positions of the screen to determine the drawing position rather than speed. Speed, however, is used to change the X and Y positions (there's an X speed and a Y speed). I have a tutorial on how I make my animated GIFs (which is a bit dated) that explains how I use scaling.  My animated GIFs from 2003 even use this principal so it's nothing new to me and I know animations from 2002 also have it, but I can't find those AVI videos.

[MarioMastar]

Ah, yeah. So I could do something like

Well, Gamemaker has a "Jump to" feature so basically I'd do:

"Jump to" x = relative x + (twice the value of the closer object).

Relative makes it so the object's new x is relative to the old x, rather than the orgin of the x,y grid.

Game maker is simpler, but I think can accomplish this actually. I might be able to get the clouds to flatten as I get higher but I'll have to use a multiplication function to slow the clouds movement as I rise.

[MarioMastar]

Basically, for the horizontal, a simple single speed would do as the cloud's speed will be based on the movement of the character, but for the vertical, I would have to vary the speed based on how high or low the character is

[KoRL12]

When are you going to show us some gameplay?

[ulillillia]

The character is the next stage in development, aside from making the background scenery. Making this world is the first step. All I need to do now is get the character's movement going and once that's working, adding in the collision detection followed by adding behaviors to the game objects. Once that's done, I'll be able to start playing levels (and creating the level creator so I can more quickly make levels). This game is probably about 35% complete by now so it's getting there.

[KoRL12]

alright, thanks for the fast reply

[ulillillia]

As a side note, I've also updated the character some - the "look down" and "look up" states are different (I like "look down" the best of these). Once I release a video, I quickly and frequently check for comments which is why the fast replies happen. It happens with every video and it's not unusual to see a reply within an hour (even 10 minutes) immediately upon posting your comment within 2 hours of releasing a new video. After this, it's only part of my daily check.

[Brendan1989]

can't wait to play! Why doesn't the ferris wheel spin though?

[ulillillia]

This is mostly a limitation from my memory management system, my alternative to malloc, of which I've given up on (it's caused a delay in programming progress lasting almost a whole year!). If I made it spin, I'd need more frames which means more memory. Unless another single scenery object uses more than about 2.5 MB, it's pointless. Another reason is that I'm not highly focused on graphics. Game play is my focus (TSO is my graphics focus one).

[valcaron]

You shouldn't need to animate and draw rotations by hand this day and age -- simple matrix transformations pulled from a linear algebra textbook should do the trick.

Think of those spinning wooden wheels in some of those Super Mario World mini-boss battles with those Reznor dinosaurs -- same concept.

[ulillillia]

The CPU usage, doing that, goes up too much. Something much simpler on my Pentium 4 system like "while (LoopCount < 3000000) {ImageData[LoopCount] = 0; }" is very CPU intensive (70% - it's why I eventually wound up using AlphaBlend - it's fast to draw, but slow in the initial execution (which means I need to watch the draw count). The Renzor dinosaur wheel is easy to do, but the Ferris wheel, which has several parts, is nowhere near that easy. Remember, graphics are not the focus.

[frostytheaussie]

960 fps? whats the point if your monitor cannot display it :x

[ulillillia]

The drawing is based on 60 fps, of which any monitor can handle. The motion, collision detection, etc. is based on 960 fps. A Pentium 4 processor could handle that quite well. If you looked closely (it's hard to tell in this video), but platforms appear to, within 1 drawing frame, make a slight movement, after a stop, then a series of full movements. Since milliseconds count for scoring, I decided to go with the 960 fps method. I'm questioning on 1080 fps (it has to be a multiple of 60).

[killervacuum]

aw yeaa this game gonna be sweet