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Warning: Game Creation Rambling Ahead
Aug. 30th, 2008 02:50 amI haven't been working on the code for Vector so much as kept busy by trying different games just long enough to run out of new things to do. For some games, this is very short.
And most of the code work has been organizing things I should have done a while back.
Game Maker is a toy, but it is a toy that I desperately need. Its principles are simpler than any modern game engine, mostly because modern game engines are built under the assumption that you know all the little organizational conventions borne of working with raw code. Game Maker lets you do anything you want--upon which you make the conventions out of convenience.
Let me give a simple example. Game Maker is event-driven by design. Every object you make has events attached to it which drive various behaviors, from "press 'w' to move up" to "if the monster reaches 0 HP, destroy it". For a simple game, you can add every event to every object that requires it, and you'll do okay.
For more complex games, however, this doesn't cut it. If you press 'ENTER' are you typing in a character's name? Are you selecting an attack? Are you inspecting an object? If you make all objects call the 'press ENTER key' event you have a clusterfuck.
The easiest way to sort everyone out is to have an event handler (built into most game engines on some level) which passes control from your character, to your menu, to the limited control you have over a cutscene. But Game Maker doesn't ever give you one; you have to design it yourself. It's things like this that make me think about just what it is I'm doing.
And I think I have an answer. One of my previously unstated goals concerning Vector is to make CRPG CTB-style1 combat interesting. That means getting rid of just about everything else--at least for an initial release. One interesting game I played recently took the approach of dividing itself into segments--essentially separate games with the same character and gameplay. But each new segment added depth to the combat system, making it look like a platformer at first, and gaining elements of an RPG (your "super attack" that required charging became "magic" that you could customize) as it went on. I should probably copy the philosophy if not the result. Well, it's a start.
1 - CTB stands for Conditional Turn Based. Basically it means that after every character's turn, that character's new initiative number is calculated from that point, based on speed and the action type. FFX is the most famous example (FFT had a primitive version); Shadow Hearts 2 and other RPGs followed suit. It's simple elegant, it's miles ahead of the and Squeenix can burn for ditching it in FFXI and FFXII and replacing it with half-assed attempts at "real-time-but-not-really-ha-ha."
And most of the code work has been organizing things I should have done a while back.
Game Maker is a toy, but it is a toy that I desperately need. Its principles are simpler than any modern game engine, mostly because modern game engines are built under the assumption that you know all the little organizational conventions borne of working with raw code. Game Maker lets you do anything you want--upon which you make the conventions out of convenience.
Let me give a simple example. Game Maker is event-driven by design. Every object you make has events attached to it which drive various behaviors, from "press 'w' to move up" to "if the monster reaches 0 HP, destroy it". For a simple game, you can add every event to every object that requires it, and you'll do okay.
For more complex games, however, this doesn't cut it. If you press 'ENTER' are you typing in a character's name? Are you selecting an attack? Are you inspecting an object? If you make all objects call the 'press ENTER key' event you have a clusterfuck.
The easiest way to sort everyone out is to have an event handler (built into most game engines on some level) which passes control from your character, to your menu, to the limited control you have over a cutscene. But Game Maker doesn't ever give you one; you have to design it yourself. It's things like this that make me think about just what it is I'm doing.
And I think I have an answer. One of my previously unstated goals concerning Vector is to make CRPG CTB-style1 combat interesting. That means getting rid of just about everything else--at least for an initial release. One interesting game I played recently took the approach of dividing itself into segments--essentially separate games with the same character and gameplay. But each new segment added depth to the combat system, making it look like a platformer at first, and gaining elements of an RPG (your "super attack" that required charging became "magic" that you could customize) as it went on. I should probably copy the philosophy if not the result. Well, it's a start.
1 - CTB stands for Conditional Turn Based. Basically it means that after every character's turn, that character's new initiative number is calculated from that point, based on speed and the action type. FFX is the most famous example (FFT had a primitive version); Shadow Hearts 2 and other RPGs followed suit. It's simple elegant, it's miles ahead of the and Squeenix can burn for ditching it in FFXI and FFXII and replacing it with half-assed attempts at "real-time-but-not-really-ha-ha."
