Josh's Adventure

[1ce]

A bit more work today.

I continue to chug away at the second boss level. Thankfully this level is not nearly as complex or big as the first, so it's just more tedious work than difficult. The transitions between certain platforms is what I'm working on next. You jump to a new platform, and the evil Thunderhoof finds ways to keep up with you, and that's primarily what I'm doing now. It's nearly finished.

Come to think of it, the entire demo will be finished very soon. I don't think it'd be unrealistic to say the demo could be finished within a week. It slighty disappoints me that I'll have a completed demo sitting in storage for nearly a month waiting for Magcon though.

I do think, however, that I need another motivational boost. Working on the game is becoming a bit more difficult, and I think I'm just getting eager to see some reactions to what I've been doing.

So, here's some information for the demo version:

There's 2 worlds, 2 bosses and 8 levels.
(I can't remember the level names off the top of my head. May be subject to change.)

World 1: Monster Beach
1-1: Dive
1-2: Sandy Beach
1-3: Bridges
1-4: BB Gun
Boss: Captain Calcium

World 2: Kentucky Bluegrasslands
2-1: March
2-2: Wild Green
2-3: Risk
2-4: Trial
Boss: Thunderhoof

In the game is a machine that you can trade tokens for special items. In the demo you can unlock special features by collecting more than 60 tokens. You can reset a special Josh's Adventure graphic display, you can get a special item, or unlock the normally locked tutorial level.

There are some items you can collect that have no real value; points can be earned for bragging rights, and death counts add up so you can track how many times you've died in the game.

Oh, and there will also be a man in a tux that meows; he'll give you the item that allows you to access World 2, without having to finish World 1 first.

Right now the game doesn't have a save point in the hubworld either...I'm beginning to wonder if the demo needs one? Couldn't hurt to add it, I guess.

I'm out for now! More progress next time!

[1ce]

So the coding on the second boss is nearly complete. Most of the coding is complete, there's only a small portion of coding left to do, some playtesting to make sure it all works, and the demo will be ready way ahead of schedule.

I'm pumped!

Actually, come to think of it, there have been fewer responses from other members lately....am I scaring you guys off? Intimidating? Or do you not have anything to respond to? Am I ignoring you? I wanna hear some voices! Someone out there has to be excited for this...other than me, anyway. Hopefully these little progress updates aren't boring.

[1ce]

Big work done today and a big update. The demo, as far as I can see, is complete!

I went through and finished all the coding I didn't already have down phat. And, realizing I was basically finished with the demo, I playtested and added a few new features.

It still has everything I mentioned in a previous post, and some extras.

After beating the second world, some people will say different things, such as the meowing tux guy. I've also added a save feature to the hubworld (at last). I've made a custom graphic for the carrot you can pick up in World 2.

One of the coolest features of this demo (and a hidden one), can be found by checking the bottom-left of the hubworld after completing the second world. You can view unused levels! I still have levels that I made but aren't being used in the game's memory, and I figured I might as well let the player view them, and see what Josh's Adventure looked like in beta form. I plan to delete the levels pretty soon, so the demo will be the only way to check out these levels.

So, I plan to send out the demo pretty soon to get ready for Magcon, and you can look forward to playing this after that event. I'm thinking I'd like to upload it the day after the Josh's Adventure video goes up. I absolutely cant wait....I'd like to upload this now, to be quite honest! But I'll try and be patient, and I'll ask you to be as well. Now that the demo version is complete, I'm going to start working right away on the third World, where the game will be split apart into seperate memory cards for the first time! Get psyched!

[1ce]

What's so lovely about being ahead of schedule? You have time to improve your stuff. Tonight I went back and re-did some sprites. If you look at my current sig, the letters aren't sized properly, and the edges are a little pointy on most letters. Today I formatted them all to fit an equal size. So now they all look much better together, and I also finished some last minute bugs.

Now that the demo is complete, I'll move on to new material from here on.

[1ce]

Very small update. I'm mostly trying to take a break from the project until it's unveiled as a demo, and I'm getting interested in other activities. Most of that is new stuff, like new games and anime. But I've also been trying to write for a bit, and have a small series planned out for writing. Nothing commerical, just for myself. But, back to the issue at hand.

I've split the game into two cards now starting today. Altogether I have 15 blocks of information, so it was much needed at this point. I had to actually stop for a while just so everything could fit into one card for the demo. I've again started working on more anime maker sprites, this time working on a death animation for Josh when he runs out of lives. Unfortunately this wasn't going to fit on the demo, even though some sprites can still be found on the demo. In any case, they're all dran up and soon I'll be playtesting to see if it works like I have planned. I also have started working on World 3......well, the entrance to it anyway.

And that's it for now. Only about a month away from the public demo!

EDIT: Oh, and I better mention this before it's too late. Back when I first started making this, I wanted the game completely finish by February 2010. I know predictions are always somewhat inaccurate, but man, was I completely off the mark. Well, at least I got two worlds and a finished demo done, so that counts for something....right?

[1ce]

So, no actual work today. Just chatting and thinking. I gotta make sure I stay fresh in everyone's minds!

Speaking of thinking, I'm having second thoughts on the rocky mountain level. It just seems so....blah. Bland, boring, (insert other words that start with the letter "b"). I think I'll try thinking up a new idea sometime in the next few days.

Yeah....no progress. I figure, however, that I'm talking a bit too much about the facts and am not talking about how the game will be though. I think I tend to ramble about how much progress I've made. What do you think? Post your thoughts.

It's really hard to get motivated to work after a completed demo, but I'll try and get something done within the next few days. The WIKI page is always being updated, so check that out in my sig.

EDIT: And could someone tell me WHY this topic has so many visitors? I can't think of any other topic that I've made over a thousand views!

[1ce]

A bit more progress today. I was chatting in the Mag chat room, so I had some motivation to work.

I'm working on a new level, 3-1 Cliffs. It's a level with lots of highs and lows. It's also the first level to have a hidden level available for the Normal difficulty! I designed the entire level and got all the jumps functional.

Unfortunately, I worked and chatted a little too much, because I have to get to bed. Bedtimes suck! But alas, I'll be back to report more as it develops.

[1ce]

Well, I hit a roadblock with my progress on World 3. I don't know what sort of 'theme' I want to go with. I had planned a rocky mountain, but to be honest, I hate it. It's the color, really, or the lack of it. It's all brown and monotone. I tried making a diverse level, but it didn't come together that well, so I deleted it. So, I'll need to figure out a redirect around this roadblock pretty soon.

Anyway, I did get some work done. I had all the elements and custom graphics set up, and today I made a complete 'death animation'. It's not terribly complicated, but I think it's a unique idea, and it's really good for getting around my limitation of not being able to draw very well.

Originally I had the idea of doing what fufu did, and if you're not familiar with how that works, I'll explain. Basically when Fufu the acid trip bunny dies, he moves back and forth, then disappears into sparkles. I was going to do something similiar, but manipulating a graphic that's so complicated is no easy task. So, I got the bright idea of altering the color scheme. By adjusting the color, I could make Josh look red in the face, and his hair turn from yellow to green, like he suddenly looks really sick. I then made several graphics to make it look progressive. So, at first he doesn't look that bad, but then the redness gradually increases and he looks pretty bad. Then he's warped to the hubworld looking ready for another playthrough.

I love it. It's something creative, different, and original. I'm still rather disappointed I couldn't get this in the demo, but I didn't have enough room. I tested this and refined it in a test room, and now I'm ready to start copying and pasting this to every enemy in the game insofar. The first boss and it's 100 plus enemies wont be fun. But alas! It must be done.

On a completely different note, it looks like the game is currently using two cards of memory. Depending on how many worlds I go, I don't see the game going any more than 4 cards if I stick with four or so worlds. But we'll see.

If you've been keeping up with these little progress updates, thanks for sticking around. Hopefully I'll be able to up the ante pretty soon, and get some more serious work done.

[1ce]

More work! Woohoo!

Actually, it's just me copying and pasting the new death animation to the first world. I got it all done! I intergrated some more unique ideas into it as I went along. Dying at a regular level will send you back to the hubworld with Josh saying something like "Drat, I lost! Better try again.", while dying at a boss will give you a different response.

I also managed to do all 100ish events in the first boss level. Since they're all unique, it's quite boring going through all the events to bring them up to standard. It goes like this; Paste the new code into the event, delete the old stuff, and then copy the new stuff and move on. You gotta copy the new stuff, otherwise when you paste you'll paste what you cut. Pain in the ass? Oh yeah. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to touch the events in this particular level.

A big surprise awaited me as I worked though. I noticed in the boss level that the new code took slighty less memory than the old stuff, even though there was more code to the new stuff. It wasn't a huge difference, mind you, but after it was all said and done, I shaved 200 blocks of scenario data from that level. Perhaps some day someone will determine how much memory individual event commands take up. I totally see someone doing that in the next couple of years.

And as for the new level? I think I have an idea of what I'd like to do. The third world will be based on a tropical island with an active volcano, and the fourth will be in space. Depending on how much scenario and system memory I have left, I'll see if I can squeeze in a co-op mode like I've been wanting to.

The gravy train is starting to roll again, so be prepared for new updates!

[1ce]

Yesterday I worked on the title, and today I plan to do a bit more work.

While half of the work yesterday went to copying and pasting the new death animation in the 2nd world, the other half was developing the third world! I still have no idea what to call it, but I'm probably going to stick with the tropical island theme, with an active volcano thrown in for good measure. I made a new level, 3-1 called Shoreline. As you can guess, it mostly takes place on the shoreline, as you cross the sandy beach and make your way into the volcano for the next level. There are ropes tethered to some trees you have to utilize as well. It's a short level, but there are many enemies. It's nearly done. Monster placement is the only thing I really need for it now, and I can move on.

Oh, and I may have found a huge oversight in the game. On the level 2-4, when putting in the death animations, I realized the enemies didn't do any damage. In fact, their event pages were blank. So they move around, but don't hurt you at all. Quite the mistake. To be honest, I can't remember if I fixed that or not, but I think there's a high possibility that particular mistake is in the demo.

Whoops.

Well, it's not game-breaking at the very least. It has been fixed, needless to say. But then the question: Will you fix it for the demo? Probably not. Like I said, it's not breaking the game, and I don't particulary feel like sending anything more to Lantis for the Magcon; I've done that enough already, trust me.

Something else I've been thinking about is when to upload the public demo. How many days after it appears on the Magcon? One? Two, three, more? I still haven't figured that out. I think the rough idea I've had in my head is two. Tell me what you think.

*ala F-Zero GX*

And that's it everyone! We'll see you at the next progress update!

Quixotic TV.....

Thanks for playing!

[1ce]

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]

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

[1ce]

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]

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]

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]

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]

certainly is an odd game.

[1ce]

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

[1ce]

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]

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.