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Messages - 4Sword

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41
Entertainment / Re: Super Smash Bros DLC Fighter Ballot!
« on: April 09, 2015, 09:05:29 pm »
Ray Mk 01 from Custom Robo - former assist trophy which would fit in with games customization options, varied shooter/range fighter
Issac from Golden Sun - former assist trophy that would not be another Fire Emblem swordfighter
Inkling from Splatoon - upcoming colorful Nintendo IP that could use a push to make it a cult-hit

42
Updates / Re: Resources Link
« on: March 18, 2015, 02:18:18 pm »
Not sure if it's intended or not, but the link is only visible on the forum
The forum navigation bar and the site navigation bar, while similar in appearance, have their links built from different sources.

43
HOT DOGS ARE NOW BEING THROWN ONTO THE FIGHTING ARENA GUYS.

MG-ZERO VS VASH
OH MY GOD WHAT IN THE FAGGOTRY IS THIS?! ARE THEY LITERALLY HAVING GAY SEX IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHTING AREA? AND WHAT THE HELL? SUDDENLY USER METALLICA42982384293 RUNS OUT ON TO THE ARENA. OH MY GOD WHAT REALLY IS GOING ON HERE?! HE'S TAKING HIS PANTS OFF! HOLY CRAP. OH NO. OH NO NO NO NO NO NO. THEY ARE MAKING A TRIFORCE OF GAY. THREE MEN IN A FORMATION OF A TRIANGLE, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ARENA. LET'S SWITCH BACK OVER TO SEE HOW WALLY IS DOING.

>> crowd somehow throwing available hotdogs
>> Vash somehow not having bum-stuffed them beforehand to satisfy phallicical cravings

44
Other Projects / Re: [Released] Magma Pig for Android!
« on: December 03, 2014, 11:05:01 pm »
 I have been playing the game a little bit and I like the concept but for me the most challenging aspect is the control scheme; i.e., with the pig on the left side of the screen, the left side of the screen handling jumping, and needing to often put platforms right in front of the pig - both of my thumbs crowd the left side of the screen and make it difficult to see what I'm doing.

It's like if the jump action was on the bottom-right side of the screen, visibility would improve. Maybe have an update where the controls are inverted from their current layout? (if that isn't in already and I missed it)

Sorry if that sounds nit-picky, but otherwise like I said I enjoyed the concept.

45
Entertainment / Re: Majora's Mask 3DS
« on: November 06, 2014, 05:14:09 am »
I'm excited for this game coming out too, but I still need to get the Nintendo 3DS; I figure I'll wait until either the red or blue translucent 2DS or the New 3DS comes out in North America. But definitely, Majora's Mask is just one of those odd Zelda games that has a world you want to explore and get lost in.

46
Updates / Re: GAME JAM GAMES ARE HERE
« on: September 07, 2014, 12:10:39 am »
I played through a little bit of each of the entered games and really liked how different they were compared to each other; i.e., lots of variety, each one has features that stand out on their own. The green Goron in Goron Diggers is a beast but the concept is well done, I liked the puzzle stuff in March of the Gorons, and Link's Quest... Mamoruanime you done good, I like the platforming but haven't managed to clear much of the game yet.

47
Updates / Re: NCFC 2014 is coming!!
« on: August 26, 2014, 11:02:38 pm »
Glad to hear that the NCFC event is happening this year, it's always fun to see everyone's projects. (I moved the topic here from Community Speak to give it some more visibility too)

48
Zelda Projects / Re: [Pics + Video] TLoZ: The Cursed Mirror
« on: August 21, 2014, 02:54:30 pm »
Are you actually coding this using Game Maker 5? If so I was unaware that people still were using that. Other than that thanks for posting your project and planning to release your game in both Spanish and English.

49
Coding / Re: Can I get some help.
« on: August 07, 2014, 06:28:53 am »
I have no idea the full-scope of what a lot of you said, but in terms of inefficiency - using a for-loop to redraw the HUD every step can be implementationally wasteful and the use of targeted if-conditionals can allow you to make secondary logical assumptions which involve less calculation (as long as the code is commented properly, maintenance should not be too bad). I hope that does not sound argumentative.

The first point I am making is something I haven't taken advantage of until recently, but basically your health and rupees are not always constantly changing (for the most part the player avoids getting damage and is not swimming in boatloads of continuous rupees). Thus, in having a for-loop redraw everything when mostly nothing changes, means that for every step the HUD has to go through the calculations and conditionals to draw the stuff unnecessarily.

Solution: Use Surfaces. While in Game Maker 8, this was a paid feature, in Game Maker Studio Standard Edition, the surface functions are free to use. If your hearts/rupees don't change, you can just redraw the surface. When drawing sprites to the surface, always remember to clear out the surface if you are going to rebuild everything on it, and also to disable interpolation in the Game Options so that the sprites drawn to the surface aren't distorted.

Here is some sample code:
Code: [Select]
//build_hudSurface();
   
var i, j, k;

surface_set_target(hudSurface);

//clears/reinitializes the surface
draw_clear_alpha(c_white, 0);
   
if (heartsFull > 10) {
    if (heartsDraw > 10) {
 
        //draw 1st line of full hearts
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4,  0,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4,  8,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 16,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 24,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 32,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 40,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 48,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 56,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 64,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, 72,  0);
   
        //draw 2nd line of empty hearts
        i = (heartsFull - 10) << 3;
        for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
            draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, j, 8);
     
        //draw 2nd line of inactive full hearts
        k = ceil(heartsDraw);
        i = ((k - 10) << 3);
        for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
            draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, j, 8);
     
        //draw 2nd line's active enlarged heart
        k = (k - heartsDraw) * 4;
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, k, j - 8, 8);
    }
    else {
         
        //draw 1st line of empty hearts
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5,  0,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5,  8,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 16,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 24,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 32,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 40,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 48,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 56,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 64,  0);
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, 72,  0);
   
        //draw 2nd line of empty hearts
        i = (heartsFull - 10) << 3;
        for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
            draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, j, 8);
 
        //draw 1st line of inactive full hearts
        k = ceil(heartsDraw);
        i = (k << 3);
        for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
            draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, j, 0);
     
        //draw 1st line's active enlarged heart
        if (heartsDraw > 0) {
            k = (k - heartsDraw) * 4;
            draw_sprite(sprHearts, k, j - 8, 0);
        }
    }
}
else {

    //draw 1st line of empty hearts
    i = heartsFull << 3;
    for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 5, j, 0);
   
    //draw 1st line of inactive full hearts
    k = ceil(heartsDraw);
    i = (k << 3);
    for (j = 0; j < i; j += 8)
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, 4, j, 0);
     
    //draw 1st line's active enlarged heart
    if (heartsDraw > 0) {
        k = (k - heartsDraw) * 4;
        draw_sprite(sprHearts, k, j - 8, 0);
    }
}

draw_sprite(sprRButton, 0, 198, 2);
draw_sprite(sprABButton, 0, 197, 15);
draw_sprite(sprABButton, 1, 173, 15);

surface_reset_target();

Disclaimer 1: The way I coded the demo takes advantage of a lot of "optimizations", but it is by no means completely optimized. It might be possible, for example, to rework the variable for-loops so that they both don't start from the beginning. The fixed drawn positions to the surface and starting for-loop values could be altered so that the draw_surface function used later would require no additional offset calculation.

Disclaimer 2: If I were to change around some of the code, I could have used the surfaces better. In my example demo, any time your hearts change it will rebuild the hearts entirely. Hypothetically, if I were to draw the active heart as a sprite and not a surface - to where I only was drawing empty and inactive full hearts to the surface, I could reduce the amount of surface operations. If, for  example, I added a heart, I could just draw it over the empty heart and if I took away a heart, I could just redraw an empty heart over an inactive full heart. This would make it to where the majority of heart HUD building is just the manipulation of changing one heart instead of rebuilding everything on the surface. Huzzah!

Anyway, I attached .gmx demo which is in the .rar file attached to the post.

50
Updates / Re: ZFGC Game Jam '14 - NOW OPEN
« on: August 04, 2014, 12:10:21 am »

Grab a 40, let's get BEEFED
those graphics alone, ahh DJvenom done too good; pours one out for the fallen homies.

51
Feedback / Re: Z.Elda being replaced with Mario?
« on: July 24, 2014, 08:51:27 pm »
adding to what Starforsaken101 said, if you want to disable word censoring:
- http://zfgc.com/forum/index.php?action=profile
- (Modify Profile)-> (Look and Layout) -> check (Leave words uncensored)

52
Coding / Re: What Version of Game Maker Do You Use Most?
« on: July 21, 2014, 11:36:56 pm »
When Game Maker Studio had first come out, it seemed like it had a lot of limitations compared to the free version of Game Maker 8.1, but over a few months to a year it seems like they have eased up on that by making it a lot less to upgrade or offering the low-cost version for free. To be honest, I only found out recently that you can change the look and layout of Game Maker Studio to look like Game Maker 8.1 (the windows aren't black but old-style light gray instead).

But yeah, I am kind of where you are Koh. I have some stuff done in Game Maker 8.1 which I just found easier to keep and work on in Game Maker 8.1 - but I am slowly starting to transition to Game Maker Studio.

53
Updates / Re: new old moderator
« on: July 21, 2014, 04:13:58 pm »
For those who may not know me as 4Sword, I'd also like to indicate that for the last year or longer I had the username of Diminish.

Over the course of ZFGC's existence I have been either in site staff, moderation, or administration on and off for 3 1/2 to 5 years.

Outside of that I really like coding/programming in Game Maker and have made attempts in C/C++ using SDL and Tonc for the GBA.

I'll do whatever I can to help out around here to make ZFGC more enjoyable for everyone.

54
Coding / What Version of Game Maker Do You Use Most?
« on: July 15, 2014, 12:51:41 am »
I am curious about the version of Game Maker that people use now. I am thinking that most people here on ZFGC who use Game Maker are between Game Maker 8 and Game Maker Studio but I am not sure.

55
Feedback / Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« on: July 06, 2014, 04:16:12 pm »
Thanks for the replies. And yeah with what you and FrozenFire said earlier, the division of Coding into Beginner and Advanced would be awkward and difficult to enforce. One might have something that they deem to be advanced but done in Game Maker, or a beginner question about starting in C++ might seem weird going in an advanced board.

Other than that, the only division that could be done, I think, would be splitting Coding into Game Maker and Misc. Coding. This would allow infrequent things like web scripting languages like HTML/Javascript/etc. and observed difficult/niche languages like C/C++/C# to share a board keeping the perceived level of activity above non-existent.

I see your concerns about Audio getting drowned out. In some ways by idea is based on the current state of Audio being so low that tutorials and active, somewhat frequent development of audio works are unlikely to happen - this is to say that if Audio ever did get frequent that it would deserve its own space. However, even with Graphics in its current state, I don't think that Audio topics when put into the activity of the Graphics board would go that unnoticed.

Thanks again for your responses.

56
Feedback / Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« on: June 20, 2014, 05:52:13 am »
Thanks! Of everything I said, the Graphics/Audio and Requests/Rips boards would be the easiest to implement, providing the quickest return benefit and lowest perceived drawback. The more prominent of those possible drawbacks would be that users may perceive Graphics/Audio to be less active without rips in it - but I do not think this is a modern issue. The majority of rips for 2D games have already been done, or the ones which could be done would need to be redone so that they are developmentally-useful. The lower perceived activity level in Graphics/Audio would also be at the expense of hiding Audio's low activity level while boosting the activity level of Requests/Rips (increasing the Requests boards functionality to include Rips and other different kinds of resources).

I guess a better division of the Coding board that would make sense in terms of current board content and activity levels would actually be Game Maker versus everything else (everything else including C, C++, C#, XNA, Java, HTML, Javascript, BASIC, etc.). This is to say that Game Maker is so monolithic as to support itself in terms of activity level and that we have enough stuff that isn't Game Maker to support having its own board - that low activity board might seem small but at least it would not nearly be as barren. A simple name would be difficult but enforcing this board's division would be extremely simple.

It could look like this:
Quote
Development
 - Zelda Projects
 - Other Projects
 - Graphics/Audio
 - Discussion
 - Recruitment

Resources
 - Requests/Rips
 - Game Maker
 - Misc. Coding

57
Feedback / Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« on: June 19, 2014, 10:02:40 pm »
Meh, I thought I would just throw this idea out - why not right, brainstorming and such. Maybe we could change the layout of the Projects/Resources boards to be more intuitive/accommodating?

Quote
Development
 - Zelda Projects
 - Other Projects
 - Graphics/Audio
 - Discussion
 - Recruitment

Resources
 - Requests/Rips
 - Beginner/Simple Coding
 - Advanced/Complex Coding

Zelda Projects and Other Projects would also contain engines. A lot of the time when people have posted engines, they have posted them into either Zelda Projects or Other Projects boards. Instead of there being ambiguity as to if they should be in Coding or in Zelda Projects or Other Projects, let's encourage engine development. This would also ease up on the project rules with regard to story writing and game features; namely that if a project demo was not too great in terms of its story or game features, essentially this would make it like an ambiguous engine. Addtionally, as you can see I did not include Completed Projects - this is due to there just being fewer projects that meet this classification - and because from an active hobby forum standpoint, project development is more crucial than project completion.
 
I think Graphics/Audio should be promoted up from Resources and combined into one board, similar to Mario Fan Game Galaxy. This should not cause that much confusion given that Graphics topics outnumber Audio, it would mask the low activity of the Audio board, and it would promote creative graphic and audio works as not just being something to use in a project but being something for which creativity/effort was put into that can stand on its own right.

Things like tutorials would not need their own separate board under a scheme like this. A tutorial for a Graphics or Audio style would fit well within a development board. A tutorial for coding would essentially be coding help which would be best in a coding board. If someone had a request for a tutorial that did not exist at the current time, they could post it in Requests/Rips and if the topic is solved (meaning that a tutorial is provided), the topic could be moved to a development board accordingly.

The Requests/Rips board would allow people to still request graphics, audio, coding examples, etc. which would help them out. It would also be for rips of resources from existing games. I think that this distinction would make the board very practical and helpful to have. Additionally, and most importantly, topics in this board could be more ably managed - request topics that get completed could be locked with the solution to the request topic uploaded to the Wiki, rip topics could also be uploaded to the Wiki. There are a few benefits to this: 1) these topics are forum searchable, 2) we could keep track of commonly requested items, 3) we could promote the Wiki, 4) in promoting the Wiki, we could help upload resources to it to help avoid broken URL links.

Finally, I was thinking that Coding could be broken up into Beginner/Simple and Advanced/Complex. This might not be the most ideal division but practically it would be divided between most efforts made in Game Maker / other RAD tools, simple questions/how-tos, HTML, where to start topics --- compared to more "difficult" efforts in C/C++/etc., complicated Game Maker setup questions, etc. Well I am not too sure exactly about this but separating out C/C++/etc. efforts and/or promoting them more so they grow would be beneficial to the forum - and keeping it to where when the coding boards are more active that the simple topics didn't bog down their activity would be nice to have.

58
Feedback / Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« on: April 22, 2014, 03:13:06 pm »
I agree that not everyone should be working on the Community Project - in how if everyone was putting ideas and effort into one thing that it would be a chaotic mess going in many directions. To that extent though, and as others have alluded to, the Community Project itself should be a means that also "inspires" or helps benefit other people working on their own fan-games. While one project can have many creative aspects, multiple projects can achieve creativity in faster, more active ways. The Community Project works as a backbone and not as a whole body.

59
Feedback / Re: What Can We Do To Get More Life Here?
« on: April 20, 2014, 06:26:31 pm »
Coding Board Activity / Usable Resources

Outside of Graphics, I would like to think that the Coding board is something that most helps fuel fan-game development. When no one is coming out with new features or comprehensive engines, people then rely on existing engines which may become deprecated or are no longer in a language that they want to code in (e.g., someone knowing C/C++ who no longer wants to code in Game Maker cannot really progress because the support for doing so is not there as much). We should target and provide examples of that so that people can grow that way.

Additionally, having more Resources that can be imported into peoples' games is also useful and makes project development easier.

Featured Project <-> Wiki

The Featured Project is something that is neat to have, but the effort that goes into the Wiki entry for it is somewhat wasted due to the Wiki's poor visibility. I would suggest highlighting the Wiki entry by having the Featured Project announced in the Updates board and/or having the link to the Wiki entry in the Recent News fader - more visibility for it would be good for everyone.

Have Regular Contests/Events

There has not been any major contest/event on ZFGC for 2 years. It would not be that complicated to have a Character Contest or some holiday-based event. The NCFC Event that happened at the end of last year was good, but we need to work on getting our involvement up with that - which we could enhance by having project development-related contests/events as well.

Community Project

There hasn't been that much visible activity with the Community Project in a while. It would be nice to know where that stands to see if there is anything that can go towards it soon - when the Community Project is more active, the activity level of the forum also tends to go up. Going back to a previous idea, why not have contests/events based around the Community Project in some way? Not sure.

Unhide Community Boards from Guests

The only Community Board visible to guests currently is Entertainment. While the activity level on ZFGC has been sparse, a lot of that activity has been in Community Speak. If a guest cannot see that activity, they might perceive the forum to be even less active than it is. Making Community Speak, Tech Talk, etc. available to them might help them to see the forum as a little less dead and thus incline them to register and post here.

Remove the Site Resources Boards

These appear on the board index and have virtually nothing in them at all except for one-topic. While not related to increasing activity, getting rid of them would at least help show that the forum is "cleaned up".

60
Graphics Requests/Archive / Re: [Request]Minish Cap Game Over
« on: January 31, 2014, 11:32:37 pm »
Here is a sprite rip of the "Game Over" message that appears if you die.

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