I'm going to make a list of all the sprites we need. Feel free to add your own additions:
Gameplay
Player Sprite
"Notes to collect" sprites: maybe whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes?
Various musical marking sprites (in fancy/italic/anti-aliased font)
Scenery
Tiles for terrain generation. I'm thinking of 24 x 24 pixel squares. Check out the diagram with all the different shapes (those were stolen from N Game).
Here's the picture. (I can't embed images...?)
In addition to this scenery, we may need a background, decorations, particle effects, etc.
Anyway, tell me what you think.
Last edited by amcerbu (2012-02-13 21:29:02)
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I like the time-bonus. Can I make the scenery grassy on the top and forest-like? Can you tell me how many pixels those tiles are apart? Because I can make a tileset and export it into a free program called Tiled. from there, I can easily make levels and make a quick scratch project to translate the level into a simple list. I kinda want 1s1s. Do you want lava... or spikes... or what? I learn a lot from making my app.
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I was thinking you could get "ties" and you would use the tie on a large note on one side of a wall, and transport to the note on the other sisdo of the wall. Could we have ladders? I like ladders. Do you want the notes to look like coind or jewels or anything or do you want me to make different kinds and then show you? Do you want chests? I want chests? Do you want to be named Happlebu, or what?
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The image I posted was only a model for the different shapes of terrain. The actual tiles should be 24 x 24 pixels, and can have whatever design you want. In the context of the program, I would like the game to render the field at the beginning of each level, rather than having pre-loaded images. But if you could make terrain images in those shapes, that would be great (by the way, if you're considering using grass, or something like that, you might want to make the ceiling blocks have a different surface. In the image I posted, light gray is empty space, and dark grey is filled).
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amcerbu wrote:
The image I posted was only a model for the different shapes of terrain. The actual tiles should be 24 x 24 pixels, and can have whatever design you want. In the context of the program, I would like the game to render the field at the beginning of each level, rather than having pre-loaded images. But if you could make terrain images in those shapes, that would be great (by the way, if you're considering using grass, or something like that, you might want to make the ceiling blocks have a different surface. In the image I posted, light gray is empty space, and dark grey is filled).
Actually, I was thinking of doing it more like Pac-Man (ie, you look down on the level). That would be easier as far as level design and coding goes.
Oh, and this is nitpicky, but when collected, notes should swoop off the screen, then back on in another place with another color and tone. And, to make note sound good when layed, the tone should be the tonic of current chord (I'll make the soundtrack a 12-bar blues).
when gf clicked// in sprite music-controller forever set [bar-chord v] to (pick random between (0) and (2)) if <(bar-chord)=(0)> play sound [C-bar v] end if <(bar-chord)=(1)> play sound [F-bar v] end if <(bar-chord)=(2)> play sound [G-bar v] end when i receive [playsound v]//in a note if <(bar-chord)=(0)> play note (60) for (0.5) beats end if <(bar-chord)=(1)> play note (65) for (0.5) beats end if <(bar-chord)=(2)> play note (67) for (0.5) beats end
Last edited by Hardmath123 (2012-02-14 06:58:08)
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Oh. I was thinking of a platformer, but if you guys want to do top-down, I'd be fine with that.
EDIT: In response to your image: We can always add in "mystery" powerups, which the player can collect or not collect.
Last edited by amcerbu (2012-02-14 12:19:31)
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I vote platformer. I was thinking that you could have crecendo and decrecendo that you could use more than onece to become bigger and smaller, but depending on your size (like size p becomes mp or f becomes ff of mp becomes mf. The powerups could be hidden, but you could have sort of puzzles to go different places if they were shown. coins would be nice (maybe grace notes) It would be nice to add a level editor. What do you play hardmath?
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applejack wrote:
I vote platformer. I was thinking that you could have crecendo and decrecendo that you could use more than onece to become bigger and smaller, but depending on your size (like size p becomes mp or f becomes ff of mp becomes mf. The powerups could be hidden, but you could have sort of puzzles to go different places if they were shown. coins would be nice (maybe grace notes) It would be nice to add a level editor. What do you play hardmath?
I play piano . applejack, we need to submit a draft by March 11. I think we should start with something simple. I have faith in amcerbu that he can convert a top-down to a platformer (just add gravity) really quickly, so we can always switch later. I also vote for mystery power-ups and power-downs which show a description of the music term on top (players might even learn something!). Some PU and PDs are:
•rit. — slower
•f — bigger
•p — smaller
•accelerando/crescendo — faster
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Crescendo might make the player bigger (and make sounds play louder) like the mushroom in Super Mario Bros.
Anyway:
@applejack: If you could make those ground tile images, I could get started on the physics programming. I might have to modify your images (I hope that's all right) to deal with pesky physics scripts.
In general: Do you guys like the idea of making an "8-bit style" game with slightly pixelated sprites?
Last edited by amcerbu (2012-02-14 22:54:03)
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Pixelated or retro style? (retro is like nitrome) Do you want top down or gravity? It really depends on you because hardmath and me are against eachother on that. I like retro, but pixelated means harder to program.
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amcerbu wrote:
I'm aiming at retro + platformer, but I'm flexible. As Hardmath said, I can write the scripts for top-down + accurate physics and then add gravity if needed later after we've played around with it.
Well, it's 2-on-1 on gravity, so I guess we'll stick with gravity. I don't have any clue what pixellated would look like with our current theme, but go ahead and try. About the tiles, I thought we were pre-designing levels with Scratch paint or something. "Tiles" sound like spontaneous creation, which may complicate stuff too much (how do you control level difficulty? how do you avoid impossible levels?). Also, how about for powerups, we have two sprites, a red and a green, with question marks. The red chases you, the green runs from you; the red has a power-down, the green has a power-up.
@applejack, what's rainbowgeddon?
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Rainbowgeddon is a top-down retro-style game with powerups. Tiles are squares (usually) of the game, and the game uses a matrix or something to draw them out on a screen. This means I can use tiled to lay out the levels, and turn them into a format we can easily use. meh.
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@Hardmath:
The main reason I want to use tile-based platforming is for the sake of the physics programming. I'm thinking that we will store the levels in lists. Each list holds a collection of integers, which correspond to the terrain shapes. That way, we don't have to rely on color-sensing (my "Slopes" project, which is the basis for the physics, requires a numerical slope). This also facilitates a level editor.
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EXACTLY what I was trying to say. the integers correspond to a tile as well, so we are happy programmers. I have 74 basic tiles for my app, but I hope this will be much easier. List-based sensing seems to be more reliable than color based.
amcerbu wrote:
@Hardmath:
The main reason I want to use tile-based platforming is for the sake of the physics programming. I'm thinking that we will store the levels in lists. Each list holds a collection of integers, which correspond to the terrain shapes. That way, we don't have to rely on color-sensing (my "Slopes" project, which is the basis for the physics, requires a numerical slope). This also facilitates a level editor.
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@Applejack- There are 34 different tiles: 4 for each slant type, of which there are 8, plus a filled and an empty tile.
Here's a better version of that picture I posted earlier, to show you where the gridlines are. Only one type of tile can occupy each 24x24 pixel square (so, no combining shapes).
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Yeah, sounds good; I didn't get what you meant originally. How about you (amcerbu) start programming the basic engine using your own (primitive ) tiles, while applejack works on the tiles. If you want, I can start on some music. I was thinking of 2 different tracks, 2 measures each, for each chord: tonic, dominant, and subdominant and a 2 measure intro in tonic, so that we can set the chord progression beforehand in a list.
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Great! I'll get started on the engine. I should have something by the end of this weekend. And I like your idea for music (although you probably want to go tonic, sub-dominant, dominant, tonic). If you're getting started on music, can you put all the music scripts inside one sprite? The structure (control flow) of the program is like this:
There's one "central control" sprite that broadcasts an "Initialize" at the beginning, an "Update" constantly, and a "Draw" 30 times per second. The broadcasts have those names, so if you could shape your music scripts around those broadcasts, it makes my job easier.
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