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- Ghosts added.
- Added the fireball upgrade as described earlier. Looks awesome and it's way too powerful right now. So I'll need to give enemies more hp (not just one shot kills) and introduce a mana bar (big spells cost big mana) to balance things out.
- Level 2 is mostly finished now. Needs trees and background and little details.
- Added some tiles so I can make caves and tunnels.
- Tweaked player movement a bit.

Might start on the black hole warp thing tomorrow. Youtube update later this week.

  Haven't decided on the pointer yet. I've considered a pentacle, sparkley stars with a trail, or a staff. It should be something magical and clear. My favourite idea is the sparkle trail, except the wiz already has one so it'd be kind of confusing and not very unique.

Started work on level 2. Looking good so far. Didn't have much time today (only a bit this evening) so that's about it. Gonna work a little more on gfx for keys, locked doors, and the viking ghost before I go to bed.

Cool! The transparent rays of light in the foreground weren't there either the last time, were they?

Nope. Well, not in the way they are now anyway.

Every video you release I like this more and more.

Just wait, I've got some nifty new things coming up. 

r0ber7, could you please post some source code regarding the cool warping effect?!

I will. I'll probably make a seperate proof-of-concept program, and I'll put the entire code up here once finished. It's a big idea though, so give me a week or two.

Wow, this is really a great game you started there. You're a very talented artist, too.

Thanks! Although I wouldn't call myself an artist, heh. I just doodle stuff. And, (based on forum posts) assuming you're the guy behind GLBasic: THANK YOU SO MUCH! 

Ok, I warned you. Doodles coming up!



Testing out a dragon idea.



Idea for an upgrade for the fireball spell: additional fireballs that appear to swirl around the first one, like planets in rotation, in a sinewave motion.




Rough idea of level 2.




Viking chicken endboss & viking ghost.




Their digital counterparts, waiting to be refined, repixeled, and animated.

This is the first time I've turned a sketch into a digital image. I dare say it's looking good. Sprites will be much smaller than these ones, but for detail they're good to work with. Animation is also very easy with this, because there are several layers to each image which I can move independently. Tomorrow I have little time to work on the game, but after that I'll have a somewhat free day (one hour shift) so I might start on the warp thing & the fireball upgrade on wednesday.

Alright you guys, I've made another vid.
New in this video:

- Magor the wizard that gives you advice. (Someone on TIGSource told me Magor means idiot in Czech, even better. )
- Flying enemies (lil dragons, I love the sound they make when you shoot them. Skip to 1:10 in the vid to see them die.)
- Background ambient sound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPyFYSnJmYw&hd=1

I'll be gone for a few days on vacation, so no updates after this one for a while. I'll be taking my sketchbook with me, so expect to be spammed with doodles of level designs and endbosses in the near future!

Cheers.   

Alright, turns out I have some time left before my small vacation, so I came up with a new idea: black hole spell.

I haven't got time to work it out in the code, but I'll post my thoughts here for future reference.

The idea is to have a spell that conjures up a black hole. The surroundings nearby would be warped, and all enemies nearby would be sucked into the hole.

For warping the surroundings I'm thinking of doing something like this:



This is a basic sinewave and its relation to a circle. If I start with a circle drawn by using a sine function, and I decrease the amplitude of the sinewave, that should create a spiral. I would know the x and y of every position on the spiral, throw those in an array. I could then adjust the x and y of the polygons of the surrounding grid based on their relative distance to the spiral. If my thoughts are correct, that would create a spiral warp in the grid. In addition I could throw some nice gfx on top, like one of these:



Enemies would be sucked into the black hole following the x and y of the spiral, increasing in speed and decreasing in size, creating the idea of them being sucked away into nothingness.

This means I have to change all landscape drawing into POLYVECTORs, but I was planning to do that anyway, since I might be able to create shadow/light effects with that as well. 

1. BALANCESOUND(channgel%, pan#, volume#) <- you can't do that with PLAYSOUND(), since its start from beginning every time.

Ancient thread revival, sorry. But I'd like to know if there is such a thing as BALANCESOUND now, and if not, please please please consider it. 
My current workaround is splitting the soundfile up into tiny fragments and adjusting the pan every time PLAYSOUND gets called with the next bit, but that's still kinda jaggy.

Cool. As with anything, the more you do it, the better you get.
Here's some useful links on pixeling.

A forum full of pixelers.
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php

A pretty good tutorial on shading and sprites.
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=218

I've got a few GLB related questions, considering sound.

1. Why do I only hear sound when using PLAYSOUND with a volume of 0.9 or higher? I thought the range was 0 - 1 but anything below 0.9 seems to be silenced? Edit: I think that was just because of the Windows volume...

2. Is there a way to adjust the pan and volume of a channel while a sound is playing? I would like to have ambient sounds, like a campfire, adjust their pan and volume relative to the player's position. When you'd get close to a campfire for example, volume would increase & panning would go more to the center. I can also achieve this effect by using PLAYSOUND with really tiny soundbites (like I do now), but that makes it sound not so good. The pan & volume changes are now quite abrupt and the sfx sounds too much like a loop of a short file, which it is.

Thanks for the info Hatonastick and Slydog. Will check up on POLYVECTOR tomorrow.

Quick update:

Introducing Magor (wizard who aids you on your journey):



And the magic shop now has a chminey:



In addition, I changed the hue of the moonlight (still a bigass transparent png), and edited the code somewhat so that the shield spell doesn't overlap with the ground.

Finally remembered the name of the game this reminds me a little of: Warlock's Quest on the Atari ST.

This one?
Oddly enough, most wizard platform games have blue wizards. 

Anyway, I've been wondering about lighting. I haven't yet bought GLBasic, but I was thinking, if I did, could I used the 3D lighting effects on 2D graphics? Right now my light effects are just png's with an alphamode of -.1 or something. For example, a woodfire would have a red/yellow ish light which would light up the entire area around it, and so on. I could also just use the png method, but that wouldn't allow for shadows, and it would be a very static approach anyway.

Three day coding and pixeling jam?  I wish I had enough time to do that, but an annoying thing called work gets in the way.

Just watched a bit of the video, looks great. 

"Oomph, Oomph"  LOL.

Yeah, my job is very irregular. Sometimes I work all week, other times I have only a few four hour shifts.

Now I can't help but be reminded of Cauldron when looking at this game.
Which only makes it more awesome, by the way.

Edit: by the way, have you thought about a font for the in-game messages and displays?

I never played Cauldron, but it fits the Halloween spirit. I see the resemblance. Been postponing the font. I was thinking of choosing a nice one in the fontmaker tool, then adjusting it in my favourite pixel program.

So I finished my three day coding & pixeling jam yesterday, but I spent the entire evening trying to figure out how to upload an HD video to Youtube. Figured it out now, so here I am, back to bring you the latest update on Red Wizard Island. I've been able to add and change many things.

Added since last video:

- viking chiefs can now throw axes

- text system for information, story telling, etc.

- basic shop system to buy spells n stuff with the coins you gather

- extra background and foreground layers

- new background gfx

- some new sfx

- shield spell fully working







Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS9BsXOvfCU&hd=1

Hmm, that does look better, although it should be on its highest point when the wings are all the way down. Nonetheless, thanks. 



Here's a dragon version. Ok, I'll stop posting now until I've made these two look spiffy.

Trying to make a flying bird. Something's off but I can't put my finger on it.

This looks really good! 

Thank you. 

I just added information spheres to the game. (The kind that gives you information about controls, etc.) Now I've got a text system set up which can be used for story telling also. Also updated the level editor for this, and I added cleaning up functions for left-over enemies and projectiles that are no longer needed in memory.

In addition, I've set up a development blog on my own server: http://psyview.nl/blog/index.php?blogId=1

I will continue to post on forums, but it's nice to have everything in one place on your own server.

First day of a three-day jam. Quick update.

Viking chiefs throwing axes: check.
Shield fully operational: check.

The axes are a new TYPE which can be extended to include other movements. Right now it's a physics-based curve (like a ball you throw) but I'm thinking of sinewave motions, straight motions, perhaps spirals too. Not that I'd want axes to be thrown in any other way, but perhaps an enemy wizard would cast a moving spiral of energy or something. We'll see where it goes.

At the end of these three days I'll make another youtube video.