Prototyping Moon Patrol Inspired Game in GLBasic

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GarBenjamin

#30
Quote from: erico on 2015-Aug-25
...and then, a super feature just creep in mind and it has to be implemented, and another... :P
Looking nice, I specially enjoyed the particles on the enemy´s explosions.

Ha ha. Isn't that the truth. These things can drag on forever because there is always something else to add or an existing something that could be improved! Just have to say enough is enough and call it done at some point.

And...

NOTE: I UPDATED THIS POST TO REMOVE THE LINK BECAUSE I HAVEN'T HAD MY OLD WEBSITE FOR SEVERAL YEARS NOW.

Of course, it only has two stages and that was my goal. At this point it'd be easy to increase it to 5 to 6 levels and even add in a new enemy or two. But I am not going to do that.

Before this I spent 3 hours in GLBasic developing the TiledMapLoader and TileMapRenderer.
Then I spent 25 hours in GLBasic programming this game and 3 hours on graphics and an hour designing the stages.
I don't consider the TileMap stuff as really part of it because that is something that was just needed and is needed in about all 2D games.
That kind of thing should just "be there" I think which is why I threw my source out on the forum.

Anyway, man it is good to have it done! :)

I will put a download up for the game sometime within the next few days.

Ian Price

A very good blog, but it really would be unfair to base any language on the speed it takes to write the same game in. As you said, you did a lot of the hard work while using GLB that will probably save a lot time in other languages. I do hope your comparison between each language willl be based on their positive and negative aspects rather than the time used to create something.

It'll be interesting to see your other blogs - do keep us posted. :)
I came. I saw. I played.

erico

Nice, congratulations! 2 things:

- Just like Ian said, but on an extra note, I see that you are comparing for "fast" and "easy" within your own knowledge. Wouldn´t that be a very subjective thing for others to understand? It does help that you described your background and prior experience though.

- About the final art/place holder discussion you mention on the blog, ye, some people will always extreme value gfx yesterday, today and tomorrow. You should not bother. Specially on the likes of unity, which imports 3d stuff extremely flawlessly. So imagine all those 3d artists that are now able to create simple but beautiful games...they sure will want to push the sardine to their side. :D Did anyone on that discussion mentioned sound and music? Is it ok to use placeholders for that? I have seen a lot of pretty games with fully crap sound lately so that discussion could go this way too.

I might not be a good example to quote but I have been doing games from the time you could only draw with letters so I´m not impressed with super gfx when the game itself is crap. The art of making computer games (hypermedia) is strictly in the hands of the coder, he is the artist here, the rest just plugs along. The coder can do a game without the other artists/staff while a musician or a painter can never do the same within their field.

We can´t argue that GTA5 gfx´s is great, they truly are (the music too), but GTA5 imho is an advanced version of Dragon´s Lair...all media, sucky scripted gameplay with a pinch of a broken fake sandbox.

edit: and yeah, being on ok artist myself, I know gfx take a monstrous amount of time...the reason my next couple games will be low res and B/W. :)

Slydog

Re @Eriko: "So imagine all those 3d artists that are now able to create simple but beautiful games"

Especially when they use one of the visual 'scripting' tool available for Unity.  They hide the code from them, and they just drag nodes around and set behaviors and such.  There are a few packages for sale that do this, such as PlayMaker from http://www.hutonggames.com/.
It is getting quite elaborate and people can create fairly full games this way.

I've never tried it, as I like to see my code and know exactly what's going on, but hey, different strokes.
My current project (WIP) :: TwistedMaze <<  [Updated: 2015-11-25]

GarBenjamin

#34
Quote from: Ian Price on 2015-Aug-28
A very good blog, but it really would be unfair to base any language on the speed it takes to write the same game in. As you said, you did a lot of the hard work while using GLB that will probably save a lot time in other languages. I do hope your comparison between each language willl be based on their positive and negative aspects rather than the time used to create something.

It'll be interesting to see your other blogs - do keep us posted. :)

Yeah I definitely realize I already worked out the game framework, systems and so forth, design and even art assets in the GLBasic version. I intentionally noted that on the blog as a reason I expect the other versions will not take as long.

On the dev speed thing... that is the whole reason for me doing the experiment. I can do 2D games in Unity yet I've had a nagging question in the back of my mind for a long time now wondering if Unity is making dev harder and slower or easier and quicker.

While prototyping my latest Unity game project to make a "better" shmup...

...I finally just stopped work on it deciding to see what alternatives are available and then test each one.

For me personally all I care about is development speed. Their positive aspects will likely have a positive effect on dev speed and their negative aspects will likely have a negative aspect on dev speed.

Development speed is so important to me because the faster I can develop the more (and better still the more ambitious larger scope) games I can develop. I only do this stuff very part-time generally averaging about 90 minutes per night. If it takes 3 hours less time in one framework than it does to make this simple 2-stage game than it does in the others well... that is 2 days of additional time I have to spend. Whether I spend it polishing the game or starting a new one. It is all about time. If I had an extra 8 hours per day that would help too. ;)

I suppose people might think if I only care about development speed... getting things done... why not just use GameMaker or something like PlayMaker? Because that kind of stuff just doesn't click with me. I am a programmer. I am used to just designing and coding everything. The GUI stuff is what I am trying to get away from. All of my Unity work I spend as little time in the Editor as possible and just code everything up. I use that approach no matter what I am using. Unity however just has certain requirements to go into the Editor for certain things such as sprite slicing, creating prefabs and so forth.

GarBenjamin

Quote from: erico on 2015-Aug-28Just like Ian said, but on an extra note, I see that you are comparing for "fast" and "easy" within your own knowledge. Wouldn´t that be a very subjective thing for others to understand? It does help that you described your background and prior experience though.

It definitely is primarily just what ends up best for me. However, it should also apply to other programmer code-oriented people as well. My signature on the Unity forums says this: For a programmer, what is the fastest "kit" available to make 2D games? Let's find out! and that leads to my main page doing the comparison and includes my background and so forth.


Quote from: erico on 2015-Aug-28I might not be a good example to quote but I have been doing games from the time you could only draw with letters so I´m not impressed with super gfx when the game itself is crap. The art of making computer games (hypermedia) is strictly in the hands of the coder, he is the artist here, the rest just plugs along.edit: and yeah, being on ok artist myself, I know gfx take a monstrous amount of time...the reason my next couple games will be low res and B/W. :)

I am the same way. Been programming a long time and playing games a long time. While I can ooh and ahh over superb graphics and definitely appreciate them when it comes to games I do not need that stuff to enjoy the game. In fact, I'd say that when people play games they only notice the graphics in the very beginning. When playing a game your mind is in that feedback loop mode where you are reacting to the messages the game sends to you and watching how the game reacts to your actions. Graphics and sounds are simple the means the game uses to communicate with the player. At its core that is it.

erico

oh, I now understand better what you meant by ´fast´.
Since you are approaching those packages on a code level, I suppose they all benefit from recycling code and functions for future games, and thus save more time, is that the case?
Within those packages, did you ever experienced newer versions that rendered those code/functions useless by changing/updating its core functions?
Just some bits that popped on my mind.

I see you did some AMOS back in the days, did you use to visit amos factory?
cheers.

GarBenjamin

#37
Quote from: erico on 2015-Aug-28Since you are approaching those packages on a code level, I suppose they all benefit from recycling code and functions for future games, and thus save more time, is that the case?
Within those packages, did you ever experienced newer versions that rendered those code/functions useless by changing/updating its core functions?

I see you did some AMOS back in the days, did you use to visit amos factory?

I try to stick to the same basic structure regardless of what I am developing in so I can rely on past experience. At the same time I am always dabbling trying to improve the way I approach game development.

Basically, I use the same patterns in everything and try to improve on them each time. Mainly just to get a cleaner "better" structure that is easier to maintain and build on.

So, in that sense sure it saves time because no matter what I am developing in I just take a look at what I have to work with and how I can apply it to my development style. And like with the GLBasic version of Mars Explorer much of that should easily map over to Unity, Monkey X and HaxeFlixel.

What determines the increased or decreased speed as far as programming time basically comes down to the kind of support the game-oriented API offers. I try to minimize those requirements greatly by basically only using the fundamentals: loading assets, drawing images, playing sounds, managing frame-rate those kind of things. I don't use any built-in stuff for physics and so forth. I just don't see the need for such things anyway and don't want to get "locked" into any one game dev environment by relying on such things. Because we never know how long they will be around such as AMOS and XNA for example. This also makes it so updates to those APIs almost never affect me because I am not using any of that higher level stuff anyway.

I heard of AMOS Factory many times but never knew what it actually was. I did a search for AMOS one day a few months ago (just out of curiosity if there were any sites around covering it still) and found a site mentioning AMOS Factory. There was actually a new cross platform version of AMOS being developed a few years ago that I found on a forum there: http://www.ultimateamiga.co.uk/index.php/topic,9499.msg44951.html



spacefractal

#38
Amos was a nice language for Amiga computers. Im have done one game with it, and that game got turned into Genius Greedy Mouse.

About dev speed, Im have not bother with that, but more im have do more thinking how much a game might take to create. CatchOut was property that game, that took shortest time. Greedy Mouse and Karma Miwa took quite long time. Im property sure im will not done a Greedy Mouse and Karma Miwa length again, but want to do smaller games in this language (like CatchOut and Spot Race).

PS. The final game seens to been very great and do the job. The only issue is the music can been annoying after a while. But its a prototype :-).
Genius.Greedy Mouse - Karma Miwa - Spot Race - CatchOut - PowerUp Elevation - The beagle Jam - Cave Heroes 2023 - https://spacefractal.itch.io/

GarBenjamin

Quote from: spacefractal on 2015-Aug-29
Amos was a nice language for Amiga computers. Im have done one game with it, and that game got turned into Genius Greedy Mouse.

About dev speed, Im have not bother with that, but more im have do more thinking how much a game might take to create. CatchOut was property that game, that took shortest time. Greedy Mouse and Karma Miwa took quite long time. Im property sure im will not done a Greedy Mouse and Karma Miwa length again, but want to do smaller games in this language (like CatchOut and Spot Race).

PS. The final game seens to been very great and do the job. The only issue is the music can been annoying after a while. But its a prototype :-).

AMOS was very good. It made it easy to access the capabilities of the Amiga and was the first programming language I used on the Amiga. Then I switched to Blitz Basic for its increased speed and a couple other things. Then switched to C & Gamesmith and dabbled in 68000 Assembler.

Have you heard about the new RetroVGS system? I hope this one finally makes it. It would be awesome if all of the retro gamers & developers supported one console such as this. Currently, I feel the market is way too fragmented across the GPX2, Caanoo, UzeBox, GCW-Zero, Dingoo, WIZ, Zodiac and others. Plus the desktop retro games. Mobile retro games. Even the latest gen consoles have some retro style games. Anyway, I hope it does well.

Greedy Mouse looks very cool. The clay-based graphics reminds me of the BB game Platypus. I imagine your Greedy Mouse did take a lot of effort and time. Game dev in general just takes a lot of time which is a good reason for people to team up on such projects, find the fastest thing to use for developing them and build up a library of code, dev tools and perhaps even assets that can be reused.

spacefractal

#40
The only problem, the system seen closed and even its a cool idea, im dont sure how good succes ii is. Im hope they using Linux or Android system, other its can been hard to get succes on that platform. also Selling on cartridge can give risk to dev as well....

GlBasic do supports some of the named minor Platforms.

About Greedy Mouse, the inspiration was from the adventure game, Neverhood. Her also used Real clay. Recently im Got hit with the 4096k texture issue.
Genius.Greedy Mouse - Karma Miwa - Spot Race - CatchOut - PowerUp Elevation - The beagle Jam - Cave Heroes 2023 - https://spacefractal.itch.io/

GarBenjamin

#41
Just a quick update to let you know I completed Mars Explorer in Monkey X last week.

The game is playable on my NOTE: I UPDATED THIS POST BECAUSE I NO LONGER HAVE THE WEBSITE I HAD 6 YEARS AGO! SO I REMOVED THE URL!.

Also the full source is available for download.

Not sure if anyone has any interest here but since some of you were following the project I wanted to let you know.

Ian Price

I'm definitely interested, but at work at the mo :(

I had a play with the monkey X demo, but found it severly lacking compared to Blitz or even Blitz Max, so didn't pursue it for long. I've seen some great things done with it. Jayenkai (A Game A Week guy) over at socoder bangs out loads of great little games with it for pc, Android and iOS.

Keep us informed - just because we use GLB primarily doesn't mean we aren't interested in other languages :)

BTW I'll have a look at your blog later.
I came. I saw. I played.

erico

Quote from: Ian Price on 2015-Sep-25
...
Keep us informed - just because we use GLB primarily doesn't mean we aren't interested in other languages :)
...
Exactly.

Quote from: GarBenjamin on 2015-Sep-25
Just a quick update to let you know I completed Mars Explorer in Monkey X last week.
...
Just gave a go, the web output is really great and things move really smooth!

GarBenjamin

Thanks for trying it out. I am very happy with Monkey X. I wish GLBasic supported web game development. Maybe in a future version it will.