Author Topic: A thing I am making (Read 6871 times)

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **on:** November 27, 2010, 06:29:23 AM »

So, what with one thing and another, my mom and stepdad have encouraged me to actually get to work on games, something which I've pretty much wanted to do for ten years. To that end, I've started working on a danmaku thing in Game Maker. Controls are the same as Touhou, except I haven't done bombs yet. There is even a pause-screen, which was going to blur out the background like Touhou does, but the "blur" script which someone made like last year isn't working on the latest version of Game Maker. Also, notwithstanding the dearth of "reaonable benchmark" considering the bullets don't do anything and there's no real background, the current incarnation runs perfectly fine on my crappy laptop, very rarely dropping more than two frames. Resources are mostly taken from this "how to make a shmup" tutorial and stuff that came with Game Maker.

AJS · « **Reply #1 on:** November 27, 2010, 06:43:16 AM »

I shot at the enemies for about 30 seconds until I realized they were indestructible. I dodged the danmaku for probably about 3 minutes until I discovered that I was invulnerable. :derp: (should've read your post more carefully xD)

Definitely a step in the right direction. You got a little something started up at least, now all you gotta do is fill in the details and build on them from here. (Don't ask me what to do, though. I have NO IDEA how to program games).

I know you said that there's "no real background", but I do hope you change it eventually in the development process, cuz yellow on blue hurts my eyes @_@

Iryan · « **Reply #2 on:** November 27, 2010, 10:28:24 AM »

At first I thought that I could not shoot, then I noticed that unlike with the actual touhou games the keyboard doesn't default to japanese for the application (and why would it?) so I had to shoot with what for you is the y button. :V

So far, it doesn't look too bad, although I assume you didn't make those sprites yourself.

I have to say, though...
Just throwing out there that while it is certainly possible to make fun touhou shmups with Game Maker, afaik it can be pretty asinine about certain things, so you might want to rethink your choice. It might be alot easier in the beginning, but it is probably going to bite you sometime later on.

Then again, danmakufu has a lot of flaws as well, but it is still better suited to that type of game. :derp:

Anyways, good luck with your project, am eager to see more.

WriggleNightbug · « **Reply #3 on:** November 27, 2010, 06:13:16 PM »

Quote from: KimikoMuffin on November 27, 2010, 06:29:23 AM

So, what with one thing and another, my mom and stepdad have encouraged me to actually get to work on games, something which I've pretty much wanted to do for ten years. To that end, I've started working on a danmaku thing in Game Maker. Controls are the same as Touhou, except I haven't done bombs yet. There is even a pause-screen, which was going to blur out the background like Touhou does, but the "blur" script which someone made like last year isn't working on the latest version of Game Maker. Also, notwithstanding the dearth of "reaonable benchmark" considering the bullets don't do anything and there's no real background, the current incarnation runs perfectly fine on my crappy laptop, very rarely dropping more than two frames. Resources are mostly taken from this "how to make a shmup" tutorial and stuff that came with Game Maker.

I think the only real problem you may encounter as you progress is the framerate, danmaku with complex codes and functions might tug at your framerate because of the way Game Maker handles instances, I ended up dropping my project on game maker because I wanted my game to be coded alot like danmakufu, which is to say I wanted the bullets to be fully controllable, which required a lot of code, it didnt help that 3D backgrounds in game maker tends to be slow...

I guess it depends on the complexity of the project, I have seen some pretty fun danmaku projects done on game maker so it can be done.

Paper Conan · « **Reply #4 on:** November 27, 2010, 07:15:40 PM »

Well, If you use Game Maker (pro version though), your games will seem more official compared to Danmakufu. Just be careful~ I've heard that sometimes when you buy pro version, they don't deliver you the code. :ohdear:

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #5 on:** November 27, 2010, 09:59:08 PM »

Oh, I got the pro version. And yeah, I've been warned about Game Maker before. I mostly started with that because I already had it and because it's one of the ones that can make EXE files ...

I dunno what kind of keyboard Iryan has, for me it is the Z button you press to fire.

As for the background, yeah, I'm definitely going to use different bullets and different background-colors.

EDIT: Also I am now ~~downloading DarkBasic just to see what happens.~~ just shopping around for other possibilities besides GameMaker. (Mostly I want to make games without worrying about shit like making windows appear or graphics APIs and shit.)

Bitz · « **Reply #6 on:** November 27, 2010, 10:56:49 PM »

The player moves faster when moving diagonally than orthogonally. :3

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #7 on:** November 28, 2010, 06:24:33 AM »

... why, so it does!

Fixed, insofar as it's hard to tell the difference between 3 and "square root of 8" in the course of normal gameplay. Also, I have implemented a generic bullet function (imaginatively named "CreateShotA" in the code), and also made health and dying, which also clears the screen of all bullets, but I'm not gonna upload another version until I've also implemented enemies and them dying. (I have also, incidentally, set up the movement and firing commands so as to be slightly more conducive to replays, should I get that far.)

I have no fricking clue how I'm going to implement lasers.

Aba Matindesu! · « **Reply #8 on:** November 28, 2010, 12:30:55 PM »

Spoiler:

Cool, I was actually thinking of making a shmup; if I learned the codes on my own, I could just ask three or four friends to do different aspects of the interface (character convo art, bgs, menus, and sprites). Where did you buy GM and how much did it cost?

Looking forward to see what you've been working on~!

bennelsey · « **Reply #9 on:** November 28, 2010, 01:27:40 PM »

I can use GM and already made that weird danmaku spin-off game with Yuyuko and Mystia, can help with some stuff related to bullets and GM in general :3
(you already know where to look for me)

click here to see if the GM danmaku game i made runs at a decent fps on your comp (60fps)
(because if it doesn't, then i can't help with anything xD)

Bitz · « **Reply #10 on:** November 28, 2010, 06:19:25 PM »

Lasers are... really, really complicated. They're a series of connected points that use line-point collision detection (as opposed to rectangle-point or point-point) and have difficult-to-program drawing code. And each of the different styles of laser (curvy, straight, extending-ray) in Touhou requires its own update code, afaik.

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #11 on:** November 29, 2010, 01:43:13 AM »

Yeah, I'm really not gonna bother with curvy-lasers. I may make the other types as really long bullets, or bullet-segments seamlessly (yeah right) attached end to end.

That said, here is the latest version, which has actual gameness, insofar as you can shoot enemies and stuff. I didn't try to recreate the same danmaku pattern of the previous version, because I wanted to try out

I think that the next update I do will ... look rather diferent, let's say. I'm-a try to implement menus, and multiple player characters ...

bennelsey · « **Reply #12 on:** November 29, 2010, 11:31:34 AM »

i downloaded both versions and the newer one did feel more of a game (and the pattern isn't bad)
though it looks like beautiful patterns will take a while

btw is this supposed to run at 30fps? (this comp can only handle 29 fps on GM games even those that have empty rooms so i wouldn't know)

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #13 on:** November 29, 2010, 07:54:16 PM »

Ah, I set it to run at 60 FPS. I know my only other benchmark was my older laptop, which ran at full speed even on the other one ... How does Touhou itself run?

bennelsey · « **Reply #14 on:** November 30, 2010, 12:37:12 AM »

For some reason my comp got faster even though nothing should've changed
normally it could only play all games before MOF at 60fps, now all Touhou games run that fast \o/

oh, and GM games, even without objects and just an empty room run at 40fps

mew77 · « **Reply #15 on:** November 30, 2010, 03:30:29 AM »

My multiplayer danmaku game is made in gamemaker. While it does have it's limitations, it is still functional for what I'm trying to accomplish

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #16 on:** December 01, 2010, 07:20:04 AM »

Yeah ... Whatever else you can say about it, this particular game is going to be just a "proof of concept" kinda thing. Most likely, I'll have to find ... some other means of making "real games."

bennelsey · « **Reply #17 on:** December 01, 2010, 10:07:41 AM »

proof of what concept? the concept that you can make a game :3
if you can't make it in GM, you can't make it anywhere else
Because seriously, it's very VERY convenient. 5 mins to get something that can react to keyboard input means GM places the rapid in rapid game prototyping

While danmakufu is better than GM for Touhou clones, it's a great start for every other kind of game out there (probably)

mew77 · « **Reply #18 on:** December 01, 2010, 04:08:06 PM »

GM is the best tool for just prototyping your game and testing out ideas. I made a basic mouse movement danmaku game to test that out before I started making my game in game maker. You really don't need that many bullets to make interesting patterns, upwards of 200ish are enough for most.

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #19 on:** December 04, 2010, 06:39:53 AM »

Also, project is going to Take A While Longer.

mew77 · « **Reply #20 on:** December 08, 2010, 12:55:08 AM »

A danmaku game can be done with only hundreds of bullets as opposed to thousands.

I experience no lag with my game. Just fire the bullets using for loops and code dankmaku behavior with the drag and drop interface.

Quote from: bennelsey on December 01, 2010, 10:07:41 AM

proof of what concept? the concept that you can make a game :3
if you can't make it in GM, you can't make it anywhere else
Because seriously, it's very VERY convenient. 5 mins to get something that can react to keyboard input means GM places the rapid in rapid game prototyping

While danmakufu is better than GM for Touhou clones, it's a great start for every other kind of game out there (probably)

I agree with you completely on all of those. The danmaku engine for my game Way of the Cascade was made in an afternoon. No lag up to hundreds of bullets. I haven't tried thousands yet.

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #21 on:** December 12, 2010, 04:34:20 AM »

Look! An empty frame with a scrolling cloud-background!

bennelsey · « **Reply #22 on:** December 12, 2010, 07:43:46 AM »

tried and failed most likely because i don't have the XNA redistributable thingy
(do people normally have that to begin with? i know it's only 6mb but i don't think i want to get it lol)

Dizzy H. "Muffin" Muffin · « **Reply #23 on:** December 12, 2010, 07:24:42 PM »

No, it's not something people "normally" have ... Any particular reason you don't want to get it?