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Messages - FarFromHomeFish

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 7
1
Discussion / Re: Post a Screenshot [Possible 56k warning?]
« on: September 03, 2008, 06:13:45 pm »
No, but the icons you see on the puzzle pieces have something to do with my lack of artistic ability. ;)

2
Discussion / Re: Post a Screenshot [Possible 56k warning?]
« on: September 03, 2008, 05:51:28 pm »
The screenshots of the games in this thread look awesome. Keep it up!

This is from my game:
[imgzoom]http://home.comcast.net/~mithrandel/pix/testout.jpg[/imgzoom]
This is the battle half of the RPG engine I'm programming. I'm using Golden Sun's sprites as placeholders. The game mechanic for the puzzle you see on the left side of the screen is pretty much the same as Tetris Attack for the SNES. What you can't see in the screenshot is the way that the sprites rotate around each other and the way the background zooms in and out, which I tried to make as close as I could get to Golden Sun.

I think the battle engine is about 95% done, although I'm constantly revisiting and tweaking it. I'm sure that all the programmers in this forum understand how that works. =) The walkabout (overworld) engine is probably about 50% done: graphically it's just about perfect, but I'm still working on the scripting (which is the hardest part!). The entire project has 9945 lines of code so far, not counting the scripts that run the battle engine.

To be completely honest, I could have done with fewer screenshots of code. But I'm still interested in seeing what your games end up looking like. =)

3
Other Discussion / Re: Curious: can GM access custom data files?
« on: April 10, 2007, 06:33:19 am »
Thanks for the replies. I think it's great that GM can do these sort of things using its 'binary functions'. =)

However, I get the impression that it wouldn't really help GM users at all if I distributed my diablo 2 resources here, due to GM's inability to quickly create textures pixel by pixel. That's too bad - I'm not using them and I spent so much time coding up the utilities that ripped out the graphics to my file format, I'd hate to see them go to waste. =/

Do you think anyone would be interested in the files regardless?

... here's a new question: let's say the files could be read with a C++ DLL. Can you pass a texture from GM to a C++ DLL, and have the DLL write directly to that texture?

4
Other Discussion / Curious: can GM access custom data files?
« on: April 08, 2007, 08:24:36 am »
I've never been very good at creating game art, so when I want to make a game, I try to find a game whose 'look' matches what I'm after, find out the format of that game's files, and then rip that game's art out to my own custom file format that I can easily access.

Accessing these files in most languages would be easy as long as you knew the layout of the format. But could a program written in GM6/GM7 access these files?

For example, let's say I've encoded all the paladin animations from D2 in a file. To read out a frame of animation, you would need to:

1. Read in a global 256-color palette.
2. Read in the frame header, which includes information like 'size of compressed frame data' and 'offset to compressed frame data'.
3. Read in the compressed frame data from the correct place in the file.
4. The frame data is compressed in LLE format (similar to RLE), so you would need to uncompress the data using a simple algorithm.
5. The frame uncompresses as an 8bit/pixel image, so if you're not in 8bit graphics mode, you would need to generate the frame by iterating through the uncompressed frame data and drawing the frame, pixel by pixel, using the palette look-up data.

Is all of this possible in GM?

5
Other Discussion / Garageband-alike for Windows?
« on: August 03, 2006, 11:32:06 pm »
Dilema! I'd desperately like to fool around with Garageband, but I don't want to buy a mac (my life is already cluttered as it is). Is there a similar product for Windows? I'm looking for ease of use, a variety of included loops, and the ability to insert midi and recorded audio.

Thanks fer yer help. =)

6
Other Discussion / Re: What the f... HOW MANY MAILS PLEASE!?
« on: August 03, 2006, 07:40:52 pm »
Quote
A byte can contain more than 255. It's all about the way you choose to read it. But anyway, now let's say it's an octet, you can say it can only contain 256 different values. If these are between 0 and 255 or 20000 and 20255 can only be told by the programmer. Heck, s/he could even make the 256 different values go to random numbers.
Woah now. Sure, you could use the byte as an address, or an index, or preform mathmatical operations on it to transform it into a bigger value, but the input byte itself is still a byte. It can only store 256 different values, because its a byte.

Besides, where are you going to store the results of your above-mentioned operation? You can't store the results in a byte, because those numbers you mentioned wouldn't fit in 8 bits. You need a larger data type.
Code: [Select]
short iResult; //16bit long to hold result
iResult = nByteValue + 20000;

So, let's clear this up: yes, you can use a byte as an address. You can use it as an index. You can use it as input for a program which will output a number which could not be held by a byte. But that byte is still a byte, and the maximum value you can store in 8 bits is 255.

PS: back on topic! Fox, since you speak german, is this guy saying the same things? Then there's this other translation, which is doubtless wrong, but still hilarious! =D Fox, you're a genius. =)

7
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 03, 2006, 06:45:07 pm »
GM is a little different to most professional things, Fish.
Woah, I didn't know how different it was. It's not neccesarily bad different, just way different different.

Sorry for missing your comment, piers. Since I didn't know how GM handled things, I misunderstood you.

8
Other Discussion / Re: I hate to bring religion into ZFGC but...
« on: August 03, 2006, 05:53:46 am »
Ah, christianity is full of sects. Some believe jesus was more mortal than god, some believe that jesus was god's personification on earth. Really, I've always been of the mind that as long as you believed, repented, and carried your cross daily, you qualified for heaven. Whatever jesus was, I'm sure he'll sit down and explain it all to you once you get there.

One thing is sure, though. Jesus pwnt noobs.

9
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 03, 2006, 05:40:02 am »
Fish, that wouldn't work. You would need to change it alot for it to be suitable for Game Maker.
Are you saying that GM can't do arrays of sprites? Can't load sprites at runtime? Or that you can't think a way around your language of choice's limits?

Unless GML is severely crippled, I'm sure you can think of a way to make work what I gave you. Or, alternatively, you could feign ignorance and make me do your work for you. Here you go:

If GM can't do arrays of sprites, then you should do it this way:

1. Preload all the sprites. iconBomb, iconNet, iconBow, etc. Also have an iconClear, for no item. And you'll need a SPECIAL AWESOME SPRITE, which we'll call hudCurrentIcon.
2. When you select an item in the menu screen, set hudCurrentIcon equal to the correct sprite. So, if you select the bow, then
Code: [Select]
set hudCurrentIcon = iconBowThen, in the main hud drawing routine, instead of all that if...elseif... cr*p, do this:

Code: [Select]
draw_sprite(hudCurrentIcon,-1, view_xview[0]+144,view_yview[0]+4)
Woah, devilishly simple! A few facts to finish up this example.

Fact 1. I am awesome.
Fact 2. You bore me.
Fact 3. ....?
Fact 4. Profit!!!


10
Other Discussion / Re: What the f... HOW MANY MAILS PLEASE!?
« on: August 03, 2006, 05:02:53 am »
255 = maximum value that can be held by a single byte.

Hot dayum, that movie was <3ly. Fake, yes, probably, but so entertaining!

11
Other Discussion / Re: What OS do you currently use?
« on: August 03, 2006, 04:14:00 am »
Quote
Linux is also NOT Unix. Linux = Linux Is Not Unix
You're confusing this with GNU, which is an acronym. Linux is not an acronym. Linux is named after the person who developed it, Linus Torvalds.

Quote
Why can't people learn it is called GNU/Linux, and not Linux.

Quoting Linus himself:
Quote
...It's justified if you actually make a GNU distribution of Linux ... the same way that I think that "Red Hat Linux" is fine, or "SuSE Linux" or "Debian Linux," because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing, but calling Linux in general "GNU Linux" I think is just ridiculous.

But don't let me discourage you! Keep on calling it "guh-N??-slash-Linux" or "guh-N??-plus-Linux". Me, I'll stick to saying "linux" because I've got stuff to do.

12
Feedback / Re: Image-size-restrictions.
« on: August 03, 2006, 02:41:37 am »
Horizontal scroll box? Two reasons why that's silly:

(a) It is better to see the entire image at once, even poorly scaled, than to see half of it at the proper resolution. What if there's something REALLY interesting in the right half, but thanks to someone's small resolution, they don't see it, and thus pass it by. Here, I'll give you an example:

Mod Edit- Pic Removed. Next time use a more appropriate example, kthx.

Thanks to your BRILLIANT idea, some forum noob might miss the best part of that picture you were trying to show them.


(b) To implement what you're talking about - horizontal scroll bars on images too wide to fit - would take a fundamental understanding of javascript and the document model, a good amount of time to write that script, and would also take a fair amount of trouble shooting to make sure that script worked across the cacaphony of browsers out there. I'm sure the admins here have better things to do.

While they could upgrade the size to 800px, I don't really see the need. So what if a bunch of pictures are poorly scaled? If you're interested in seeing what the picture looks like at the proper resolution, take two seconds and open it in a new tab/new window. It's silly to complain about those two seconds for every picture that you think is interesting enough to look at.

PS: dude, that's sick.

13
Feedback / Re: Image-size-restrictions.
« on: August 03, 2006, 12:33:02 am »
Vote keep. resize down to 600px is great. That way, I can pick and choose which pics I want to view full size, rather than having to scroll past all of them.

Would be nice if the scaled-down automagically resized to full when you clicked on them, though... and then scaled back down on a second click. Not sure if that's possible. <3

14
Other Discussion / Re: I'm in love...
« on: August 03, 2006, 12:26:33 am »
I realy Don't know what to do :'(

I know I should just forget her and find another girl , but I just can't do that with this guy around...
And I love her realy much, so forgetting her will be a problem -_-!
And my stomach feels like a rollercouster -_-! and it won't stop  :-X

just tell me what you think, any coment or advice will be good...
Right, obviously you're confused. Girls are confusing. That's life. You've got to take it all in stride and move on as quickly as possible. The best cure for heartache is to get reattached asap. It's called a rebound, and it's awesome.

Alternatively, start playing for the other team. Don't worry, I won't tell.

[edit]
Woah, she's going out with you? ha, excellent. Good luck. Don't get too attached just yet, but give it all you have regardless. =)

15
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 02, 2006, 08:23:32 pm »
Ben, you are right. Now that I think of it, my method is completely unsuitable for a zelda-style game.

Here's a better way for a zelda game, that would totally get rid of that mess of item-select-draw-icon code. Now, I don't know GML, so this will be in pseudo code, but I'm sure you'll be able to handle it.

First, set it up:
Code: [Select]
//define the item indexes...
define item_bomb = 0
define item_bow = 1
define item_boomerang = 2
define item_maxitems = 3

//create the item icon array
dim item_icons(0 to item_maxitems) as sprite

//load the icon sprites
set item_icons(item_bomb) = loadsprite("bombicon.bmp")
set item_icons(item_bow) = loadsprite("bowicon.bmp")
set item_icons(item_boomerang) = loadsprite("boomerangicon.bmp")
And then, in your draw routine, instead of doing if...elseif...elseif... ad infinitum, you could simply do this:
Code: [Select]
draw_sprite(item_icons(global.selecteditem)),-1, view_xview[0]+144,view_yview[0]+4)

16
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 02, 2006, 07:54:54 pm »
Surely not!

Imagine, for example, world of warcraft. Here's a screenshot so you don't have to tax your imagination too hard:


Note the cr*pload of icons dancing up the bottom and right side of the screen. For each one of those icons, you have to determine the correct texture to draw, then retrieve the index of that texture, then tell the graphics card to render that texture. Now, do that forty times in a row. Wow, took a bit of time, didn't it?

So, as an alternative, render all these textures to simple 'block textures'. You'll need one for each major segment of the gui; in this case, one down at the bottom of the screen and one on the right side. Now, instead of drawing each one of those individual textures (neccesiting a cpu hit for each icon), you just render the blocks.

Yes, you will end up overdrawing a wee bit, but a reasonably modern graphics card is not going to be slowed down by drawing a simple square texture (actually, for a 3D game you'll need to split the blocks up into blocks of the power of two, so instead of having a 500x90pixel block, you'll need a 512x128 pixel block).

Overdrawing pixels with hardware acceleration is cheap, cheap, cheap!

PS: still hate you. >:(

17
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 02, 2006, 07:24:53 pm »
Fish, if he doesn't know how to use switch case he won't know how to use GM's surface functions.
Who said I was talking about GM? This is a technique that would work well in every reasonable graphics API out there. =) Eventually, he'll figure it all out, and we'll all bow down to him as a programming god. Or not. Either way, at least now he knows a good way to speed up drawing his GUI. =)

(Don't hate me.)
I hate you. >:( Not for any reason, just because. >:( Please die in a fire. >:(

18
Discussion / Re: How do you speed up executables?
« on: August 02, 2006, 06:50:13 pm »
Here's a little secret that sped up my game 400%:

Instead of rendering the hud every frame, render the hud once to another surface, and then draw that one surface instead. Then, whenever you need to update the hud, redraw it just once to that seperate surface.

19
Other Discussion / Re: What OS do you currently use?
« on: August 02, 2006, 03:59:36 pm »
XP, with 2K and OSX 10.4 set up as virtual machines.

Linux is nice, but I don't have a use for it. I'm really familiar with windows, and Linux just doesn't offer anything to make me install it.

20
Graphics / Re: huzzah! More fish!
« on: August 01, 2006, 06:48:39 pm »
It looks like both of those front fins are facing the viewer. Only weird mutant fish have two fins on one side and none on the other.

...

God I love the facial expression on the !@#$%. He wants me to have a spectacular, magical day. <3. =)

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