Josh's Adventure (Released!)

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

These are my goals for Josh's Adventure:

-To expand on the creative blueprint I left with Donkey Kong, and expand existing ideas into a fuller, bigger game.

-To make a title that's both difficult and never cheap. I want to develop a title where you are never killed by accident; I want a game where if you die, it's your fault, never the game's.

-To present a game that displays creativity and thoughtful design into one package.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Progress is halted, thanks to Pokemon SoulSilver. Will be back later. If ever.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Alright, so maybe it wouldn't hold me back for long. More progress.

I went in and completed 3-1 Shoreline. It only had two different enemies, and the level is pretty dang short, so it's not really surprising I'm done with the level already.

I also went back and played with more death code. Turns out some of the 2nd boss level code wasn't correctly changed when I copied it from the first boss, so that was fixed. I also redid some custom graphic touch-ups, noticably the V and S sharp point problem that bugged me. All's good.

Honestly though? I'm getting tired of working on this thing. I need another, longer break. Maybe it's just because of my crappy mood, I don't know. I just keep getting this feeling nobody will play it, even if that's utterly ridiculous. If you're looking forward to playing this, please speak up!

The Magcon and public demo can't come any sooner.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

So despite the need-a-break attitude of the last post and the general restlessness I usually have, I went ahead and worked on the game. I figure if I'm not working on some creative endeavor, then life just starts to become meaningless to me. I need to better myself or create something to keep myself occupied and productive. So with that in mind, 3-2 Ascent began.

It's a level inside the volcano. There are general jumps and enemies to avoid, and now lava which can't be stepped in. There's also a hidden area that's deceptively hinted at...look at the walls. I also included text in case the player decides to check the dirt or rocks scattered across the level. It never does anything, but I thought it would be a nice touch. I've got the jumps, lava and text coded, now I need to place enemies inside. This will be a level with random movement enemies, so that should make things a bit harder.

I've also been fortunate enough to have the next three levels planned out. This world starts at the base of a volcano, and weaves in and out of it till a final showdown inside the volcano. But, I'll post that later. After all, there's still so much more to work on.~~

More progress will happen at some point. When that happens, I'll be here to report it.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Off the wall time!

Here's some random information I ran into today!

There was, at some point, a game being made called Josh's Story. Check it out:
http://www.rpgmmag.com/issues/issue_5/cover_story.html

The only good link I could find to the game's creator is Taichi, who made this topic:
http://www.rpgmmag.com/forums/viewto...223&hilit=josh

Is that Josh's Story? Personally I don't think so, since his post history doesn't have anything more to say about that particular game idea he posted. Not even going to the old yuku forums helped in the search. It will probably always remain a mystery....

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Wow.

So after waiting with incredible impatience for the whole day, the Magcon demo of Josh's Adventure finally went live. It's a big gamble trying something like this, but I took a shot at it.

I'll give my thoughts below, if you'd like to watch the videos first, here they are:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/RPGMM/videos/12/
http://www.viddler.com/explore/RPGMM/videos/13/




Ok, so after watching them, you see that things really start screwing up after 2-3. Having only seen the probloem and not going in myself to check it, I can only surmise what happened. The problem stems from replaying that particular set of levels. But you say they only played it once, right? Nope, because according to the game, when they touched the meowing tux guy, they "beat" the game. That wasn't what I had originally intended. Apparently I had left in a glitch with the meowing tux guy, and he caused the levels to go haywire. Those levels all work perfectly on one playthrough, but somehow all the switches in those levels activated, which completely confuses me.

I think I made a rather big oversight by not having anyone playtest it before the Magcon, which might have caught these problems. Try to avoid the meowing tux guy, and maybe the problems won't occur. I'll look into this ASAP, because I'm not even sure completely what happened.

Oh yes, and the public demo will be delayed because of this, obviously.

[Valkysas]

Re: Josh's Adventure

certainly is an odd game.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

I've heard that more than a couple of times.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Alrighty, I figured out the problem.

It's not actually the meowing tux guy that causes the problem, although I didn't intend him to give away the victory to the second world. The main problem lies in the intro event. There's an event that turns off most switches, but one of them turned a lot of them on, which caused a huge amount of problems.

The reason I didn't catch this is because the game uses a different intro event page. So if you head straight into world 2, you'll have no problems playing through the game. But warp back to the hubworld, and it goes haywire.

I finished playtesting this, so I'm sure that's where the problem lies.

I'm also taking this opportunity to fix some other things that bothered me, like how enemies don't hurt you in 2-4, and now they do. There's a person who appears at the bottom left of the hubworld to take you to the conceptual levels, which will get cut in the final release. And there are other, smaller nitpicks.

But other than some major bug fixing, I haven't changed that much. It's still mostly the same. I'll sort through all the suggestions I've gotten and try and figure out how to make the game better.

I'm also releasing the demo today. It's a bit of a surprise jump, I know, but I figure I need to make up for the mistake I made at the Magcon. Even if this updated version doesn't get to Magcon in time, at least I can sleep happy knowing I fixed the problem.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

It was rather random, wasn't it? Weird and random certainly wasn't what I had in mind when making this game (actually...I may be lying), but I guess those are pretty accurate words for this game.

So after Magcon and the public demo, it's time to get back into gear with this. 3-1 Shoreline and 3-2 is nearly finished, so I went and designed 3-3 and 3-4.

3-3 will have more open areas. I planned it this way because the Magcon guys were saying how it was too easy, so I wanted to make more open areas for such a purpose. After all, if designed incorrectly, random enemies might block passages and make the game more frustrating. This level will also feature random bad guys and (!) enemies that follow you. Aside from some rather cool jumping over hills and wall jumping, the level seems a little bland. I'll try and spruce it up with more exciting things.

Something I've noticed is the fourth level of any given world is usually the longest, most complicated, and toughest of the previous three. 3-4 continues this trend. Right at the beginning you spot the ending, guarded by three enemies that don't move. Travelling higher in the level, you discover rocks that you can drop on the enemies to get rid of them. The last rock puts a little twist on the level; not only do you have to find oil and light a big burner to destroy an enemy leading to the 3rd rock, but that particular rock destroys the enemy, AND the bridge connecting the ending to the walkway. You'll need to travel a bit lower to throw a new bridge into a stream and drop it into the correct spot to finish the level.

Once particulary persisent problem I'm running into is the variety of enemy placement. Sure, I could just make a walkway, have an enemy move back and forth and be done with it. But trying to find creative new ways to place enemies and keep both difficult and variety is difficult. I'm trying my best to come up with new ideas, and it's becoming more challenging one-upping myself. So there's no doubt in my mind that this will be the last platformer I make for RPGM1. There aren't enough new things to warrant one, since I'm using everything I've got for this one.

I also went back and changed some things that were presented in the Magcon. The lady before Captain Calcium now warns you against stepping on the steam vents (the brown ground), and you're limited to carrying one shield at a time.That's something I never thought about during my playthroughs, so it was good to get some feedback and have someone try something different.

Other improvements I'd like to make are little text intros in each level, making more custom graphics for various reasons, and get the white table at the top left of the hubworld working.

If you saw the Magcon demo or played it, lemme know what you think. And if you haven't, I'd love to hear your input on it.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Here's something I wrote at the Mag I thought I'd share with all of you:

So, the Magcon has come and gone. I admit I wasn't interested in it since I had no intention of going, but I saw an opportunity to slip a demo of Josh's Adventure in there, and took my chances. After hooking up with Ixzion and Lantis, it was set in stone. In January it was announced to be playable at the Magcon and publicly shortly thereafter, February I had it finished and sent off, and March they finally played it. It was certainly a split second decision to get the game in the convention. So how'd it fare?

Well, when the game was doing well, it was doing EXTREMELY well. But when it fared poorly, it did EXTREMELY poorly. There were a couple of fatal glitches in the copy I sent out, titled 1.6. Since then, I've released an updated demo called 1.65 that fixes all the glitches that the Magcon version has. The demo was released on March 28th, and download wise, the Pavilion leads with 10 downloads versus 2 downloads at the Mag.

I'd love for anyone to play it and give me their impressions on it.

In other news, I have ordered a PS3 save adaptor online. And with my friends PS3, I hope to covert the JA demo to PS3 to give the game the widest available audience. What I'd really like to do, though, is start converting all the games that I've made over to the PS3 format, and with any luck, I'd like to have Josh's Adventure available in both dexdrive and ps3 formats on launch day. Exciting news, isn't it? Well, I'm excited anyway.

Not sure how to close this particular post, so.....peace.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

Kupid's coming out soon. I'm really excited for this and will definitely be ordering one from Thutmose.

Unfortunately, Josh's Adventure won't benefit so much from this, because the game doesn't have large amounts of text. D'oh!

No progress lately. Just thought I'd talk about the game some more.

Why'd I go with an original game?

Well, originally I was going to stay safe and make Donkey Kong Jr. But it was Syn/SF/whoever that kinda pushed me to make something original. It wasn't safe, and definitely was going to be tougher to make. I'm kinda glad that I decided to go this route, though.It is a hell of a lot tougher, but it's more in-line with what I wanted to do, taking the DK foundation and improving it. And judging by the reactions of the JA demo, it was a move that paid off, which is a huge relief.

Maybe more progress next time.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

So I haven't touched the game in awhile. I suppose the disappointment of the Magcon demo and the expectations set for the game are getting to me.

I need to remember that I'm making this game for myself, first and foremost. I don't know how I forgot this simple little detail, but it's something I still need to keep in mind. It helps motivate me to continue working on the game.

I decided to pick up the controller again today, and try and work out what I liked and what I didn't. I like the first and fourth levels I made, but didn't really like either the second or third. So I'm trying to revise the world into something I like. The new result is World 3, called Ash Island. It's a tropical, volcanic island that will hopefully have some new tricks and surprises in store for the player, as well as some new challenges.

Level 3-1, Shoreline, is finished, and I'm working on level 3-2, which I think will be called See The Saw. When you pop up in this level, you'll fall to a platform. However, a nasty monster will always push you off it! And he's blocking the end of the level, of course. So what do you do? As you've probably guessed from the level name, you'll head over to the other side of the level, where you'll find a seesaw! Climb up high enough, and land on that seesaw to send the rock on the other side over the mountain ridge and take out that baddie!

I'm currently trying to work out the level design. It's not so easy trying to make unique levels that are challenging in new ways after the last two levels. I'll try and figure out something though.

I've played both Nano-bot and Fufu...I think it may be time to try playing Jester's Hunt for some inspiration. I haven't played it since I first got here at the Mag.

So, things are going along, even if one baby step at a time.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

So, finding the motivation to work on the title has been a little hard. With a little help from the Mag chartroom and some gusto, I pushed on with progress.

All my work as been for 3-2. I have been doing more planning for this level simply because I haven't had time to work on it, and I plan it out during my downtime at work. It's been very productive; the whole level design is finished, and the scripting for enemies and other events is coming along nicely.

The level is littered with holes.....on purpose, of course. This will provide an obstacle for the player to avoid, lest they fall and have to start over. It's not a huge game advancement, but it's a little new feature that adds a little depth to the game.

Despite all the planning for this particular level, I'm still not completely happy with it, because it's a little too easy. I tried to mix it up with enemies that hunt you down and more random enemies, but it's still something of a cakewalk. At least this particular level has some original design to it and some new ideas, I'm just not sure it flows completely together. Maybe it's something I'll get back to. Right now my motivation is kinda low, even if the title is making some good progress. I've also started to question if I'll make the winter release I've set for myself. I might have to push the title back. It's a little early to say, but it's something to think about.

I've also got the Wiki page updated to reflect changes in the game and the demo reactions.

Hope you guys will keep reading these little progress updates as I continue working. Thanks for reading, and look forward to the next update.

[1ce]

Re: Josh's Adventure

So, here's my newest update.

There's good news and bad. The good news is I have been tapping into my creative spirit and am thinking up new and exciting levels and ideas all the time. With this many new ideas I won't have a problem fleshing out the remaining levels I need to have four worlds. The bad news is my work schedule has been very haywire for some time now, and even getting any time to work on the title is limited, and having any motivation to do so is even rarer. The first couple of weeks of this wasn't much of a problem, but four weeks in with no end in sight, it's getting tiring.

I have managed to get a bit of work done on 3-2. The events are almost complete. I need to add some more and playtest what's already there. I'm eager to move on to other levels.

Hopefully my life will stop being so jumbled and crazy and I can get my head straight enough to keep it up. I just gotta keep working on it a little bit, and not let it slip into some infinite timewarp where it's neither cancelled or complete; that's what scares me most about the production of this game. It's much larger than what I'm used to making, and if it starts getting too big, I may not be able to complete it. I've struck a really good balance with this game before, and I hope I can keep it.

--

Oh, and one other note for you guys here at the Pav. Hate to say it, but I've cut my plans for my biography contest entry, Find the Needle in the Haystack: Super Pavilion Contest Valkysas Edition. And up until a few days ago, I was gun-ho for the idea. But the major problem keeping it grounded is that my life has been rather chaotic and my time off has dwindled. So I need to manage my time properly, and the more important project I'm working on is Josh's Adventure. The way I tend to work on RPGMaker projects is to cut out things that hold me back or don't work so the important stuff continues to get made and things don't sit forever.

Just want to say sorry to the Pavilionities that I contacted regarding the contest.