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5 (26.3%)

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Total Members Voted: 19

Voting closed: August 08, 2008, 02:35:19 am

[Theforeshadower]

Theforeshadower

CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Sword ...

POKEMON BLUE  ~  4Sword

No information given.

Controls:
Arrow keys to move.

Seems to only be a walking demo.



Download Link:  http://metalgearvapor.coders-tavern.com/Pokeblue.zip

• 

[4Sword]

4Sword

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Well technically there is more than what would otherwise be considered a "walking demo".  There is a ledge jump, animated water tiles, and entering buildings too.  I was too busy working on perfecting all of the little things meh, lol.  Anyway, to whoever reads this, vote low, this isn't worthy of winning or placing by my own standards; I can do more.  The progress of my project can be tracked by looking at the link in my signature though. 

[Mamoruanime]

Mamoruanime

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

I actually really liked this one. For the most part, it actually felt like I was playing Pokemon Red/Blue

[Cassyblanca]

Cassyblanca

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

The game's screen size is very small, and there's no way to at least scale it. There's no information given on what is possible, either, and the area viewed in the demo is incredibly low. You could also do with being more confident in yourself. The ledge jump feature that you mention isn't testable, anywhere I seen. Entering buildings could be improved, such as how doors are handled. As well, work on the stairs. I don't remember if that's how the original gameboy did it (putting the player directly on the stair tile), but it could be improved, regardless. It has potential, but only if you stop sweating the small stuff and start working on the big stuff. Sweat the small stuff when you've got a lot of features of the game built and ready. When you're actually ready to start the game's polishing coat, start polishing it. Until then, there will be dents, scuffs, and loose ends.

Again, be more confident in your work. Even if you release a project with low quality, never tell people to vote low, don't tell them that it isn't worth winning or placing. Everybody can always do more. That's part of learning.

There's such a double standard about religion in the modern world. Catholics can gather, wear white robes, and say "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti" and be considered normal.

But if my friends and I gather, wear black robes, and say  "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", we're considered cultists.

• 

[4Sword]

4Sword

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Like I mentioned in Feedback, the room transitions are too quick; the built-in function in Game Maker to my knowledge is default set at 80 which if set any lower to the effect of how it is on the Game Boy, the transition is too quick to show.  Anyway, I corrected something in the code today after I sent in my submission.  When you walk off of a ledge, the "delay" is one; the delay in itself is just a "blank" run of the step event - where nothing happens during a step.  I changed it so that the "delay" is two and the delay itself is not based on the presence of the shadow which is useful later because things like surfing do not involve drawing a shadow.  The new code is more efficient in the step event too due to taking out a redundancy.

The game's screen size is very small, and there's no way to at least scale it. There's no information given on what is possible, either, and the area viewed in the demo is incredibly low. You could also do with being more confident in yourself. The ledge jump feature that you mention isn't testable, anywhere I seen. Entering buildings could be improved, such as how doors are handled. As well, work on the stairs. I don't remember if that's how the original gameboy did it (putting the player directly on the stair tile), but it could be improved, regardless. It has potential, but only if you stop sweating the small stuff and start working on the big stuff. Sweat the small stuff when you've got a lot of features of the game built and ready. When you're actually ready to start the game's polishing coat, start polishing it. Until then, there will be dents, scuffs, and loose ends.

Again, be more confident in your work. Even if you release a project with low quality, never tell people to vote low, don't tell them that it isn't worth winning or placing. Everybody can always do more. That's part of learning.

You could always press F4, that makes the screen bigger.  I was going to make the resolution 320 x 288 but Game Maker was giving me !@#$% when it drew.  I know that there is a way to get past that since in one of my earlier games I encountered the same problem and overcame it, but meh.  As for the ledge jump, I do not know what you mean, but yeah I only included a down ledge just to show the capability.  As for the doors, yeah, that was rushed.  Entering the buildings is almost copied well, but leaving buildings, you are not supposed to go past the floor mat into the darkness.  I like to work on the little things in anticipation for the larger things; the overworld doesn't have that many features, but like I mentioned above with the delay count and the shadow, I was thinking ahead for things like surfing. 

I don't look at it as an issue of confidence so much as it is an issue of pride.  I am proud that I can make something work really well with minimal code and I like perfecting my techniques.  With Pokemon Blue though, getting the simplicity right is what I was thinking to get done first, to avoid overthinking it; it took me a while to figure out the animation itself, lol, with stepping out with one foot and then stepping out with the other after you stop. 

I actually really liked this one. For the most part, it actually felt like I was playing Pokemon Red/Blue

Thanks.  Like I said, it's not the limit of what I can do by no means.

[wildex999]

wildex999

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

As an enhanced walking engine, I would say you have done a good job, and that you have been working on the small things show.  I like how the jumping works, and how it actually feels like the old Pokemon game with the small screen and the black and white colors(ah, the memories from when i first played Pokemon blue) =)

But since there wasn't much more in it, and from the time you have had to work on this, I'm sorry to say that this doesn't get more than a 5 from me =(
Had it had an actual battle engine, or even talking/NPC's, it might have been a 6 or 7. Had it been the whole first area, I would definitively given it a 8 or maybe even a 9.
Good luck if you ever continue on this tho =)

Working on my Masters Degree in Computer Science.
Hey look, Zelda Coop....later.
Proud user of C++ for 9 years, and counting!

[4Sword]

4Sword

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

The jumping actually upon further inspection after the release of that has gotten better; I think that the landing delay is not significant enough.  If you are on a grid space and you push down, since the ledge is a solid object and the place is not free it checks to see if place meeting is object ledge, and if it is it draws the shadow/sets a fake down key/sets delay to 4.  If the delay is 3 it increments the xy position based on the fake key press, otherwise it will subtract one from the delay count (all of the code in this only checks when you are on grid space and your place is free).

The battle engine shouldn't be that hard to implement as it would just be a room with figures in it really.  I could have even rushed it kind of with the limited text engine I have now, but I decided not to since the text engine cannot correctly do more than two lines; i.e. if there is a third line sometimes, an arrow will be drawn, a key will wait to be pressed, and then the lines will scroll up.  Also, I did not have all the time in the world to work on this, there were days when I had to bale straw, so I was out for the whole day on those days, meh.  It's kind of funny, I actually had the whole first area tiled in an earlier version, but the thing I had against that was the lack of ledges. 

Anyway, thanks for your interest.  I am keeping progress of what is happening with this project in my signature.

[wildex999]

wildex999

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

A battle engine is about the hardest thing in a Pokemon fan-game. Think about all the algorithms you have to use, power/defense/dexterity/type etc... all these needs to be balanced. Of course, emulating a few battles from the beginning of blue would have been easy, but making a fully function dynamic battle engine, that will take quite some time.

If this game had a fully functional, or even partly functional battle engine, I would have given it a 10 without a second thought.

Working on my Masters Degree in Computer Science.
Hey look, Zelda Coop....later.
Proud user of C++ for 9 years, and counting!

[4Sword]

4Sword

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Well yeah, I get that.  It looks complicated, but at the heart of it, it is probably really simple; the various Pokemon just make it look confusing, like you said, everything really just revolves around the algorithms.  Oh, and I thought this was funny.  When you are walking through the tall grass, here is the previous code for checking to draw an overlay between the top and bottom halves of the "Ash" character:

Code: [Select]

if (image_shado = 0)
{
  if (place_snapped(16,16))
  {
    if (place_meeting(x,y,obj_grass))
    {
      draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,x,y);
    }
  }
  else if (!place_snapped(16,16))
  {
    if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap,obj_grass))
    {
      draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap);
    }
 
    if (y < grid_ysnap)
    {
      if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap - 16,obj_grass))
      {
        draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap - 16);
      }
    }
    else if (y > grid_ysnap)
    {
      if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap + 16,obj_grass))
      {
        draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap + 16);
      }
    }
    else if (x < grid_xsnap)
    {
      if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap - 16,grid_ysnap,obj_grass))
      {
        draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap - 16,grid_ysnap);
      }
    }
    else if (x > grid_xsnap)
    {
      if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap + 16,grid_ysnap,obj_grass))
      {
        draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap + 16,grid_ysnap);
      }
    }
  }
}

Here is the new code after I put in a new variable to simplify things:

if (place_meeting(grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap,obj_grass))
{
  draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xsnap,grid_ysnap);
}

if (place_meeting(grid_xnext,grid_ynext,obj_grass))
{
  draw_sprite(spr_ash_e,0,grid_xnext,grid_ynext);
}

Having the grid_xnext and grid_ynext variables actually led to being better able to handle upcoming surfing actions; I reworked the "Ash" code a bit and plan on having a "Surf" character that has "Ash" as its parent so that I do not have to go into "Ash" and over-complicate it with code that will obviously have no chance of being checked on land. 

More about the menu system, I could have put one in that had stock images set up, but doing this draws too much on store resources and is inefficient.  Rather than doing that, I would rather figure out the workings of doing it right first.

lol, yeah, once the menu,text, and item inventory engines are done, the battle engine will be pretty simple besides the aforementioned algorithms. 

[wildex999]

wildex999

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Well, when you get to the battle part, you might want to take a look here:
http://www.serebii.net/games/damage.shtml
They have some nice stuff figured out. If you look at other pages there, they show how you can calculate Individual Values(HP, INT etc.)

Oh, and: You might end up over complicating your code by trying to simplify it Watch out

Working on my Masters Degree in Computer Science.
Hey look, Zelda Coop....later.
Proud user of C++ for 9 years, and counting!

[4Sword]

4Sword

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Thanks for that, it will help out later.  You are right, simplification does make this harder sometimes, especially considering having a text engine; a registered version of Game Maker can make it so you can add fonts which gets rid of a lot of sprite calculation over what letter to draw.  About the "Surf" and "Bike" objects I am adding later, the way in which you access them via the menu takes out a lot of complication as with "Surf" it can only be accessed if you are facing a water object otherwise there will be a message for Professor Oak telling you it is not the time to do that.  I am probably going to run into issues with that later with the collisions or place meetings to determine when to change the objects (if the next grid space is free and you are the "Surf" object, it should immediately change you back into "Ash", but then I have to figure out how all of that works out in terms of "Ash"'s image animation index and position).  lol.

[Kylink]

Kylink

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

Overall, I think it was a pretty good demo. It didn't show much, but as you have previously stated, you put a lot of effort into the small things. The small things are what make this demo good, because the walking is perfect and you really seem to have nailed the gameboy style. I give it a 7/10. You clearly put a lot of effort in, even if you didn't get the "bigger" things done.

Grimace is the demiurge, the creator. From him all things in McDonaldland have sprung. He is not a sin, he's not a menu item, he's just Grimace. He exists. He rolls his lidless eyes and flaps his lipless mouth, formless and terrible, a protean idiot thing from the depths of pre-history.

[Soulrivers]

Soulrivers

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

I like this, it felt very authentic and true to the original. The only thing that felt a little awkward was the door transition when exiting. The original game didn't allow you to walk past the doorpost. Good job on the walking an jumping.

[Ricky]

Ricky

Re: CONTEST #6 Submission : Pokemon Blue ~ 4Swo...

I think it's a nice reprodution of that game.
It's good, but could have more material on it.
I'll give it a 8.
Thank you for entering.