Coffeebreak animorphs game

[Blazing Angel]

This is coming together. Text input would be awesome, but difficult.

[tigri]

Another update: http://bigcathq.nl/animorphs/
And the previous version: http://bigcathq.nl/animorphs_previous/
Don't forget to hit the refresh button, else you might be playing the previous version.

I've put these links along with the last update date in my first post, so I don't have to repost these links again.

So what's new:
- smooth camera is gone, it's simply not worth the cost of game speed
- animation system completely redone, all sprite animation frames are now in a single image
- NPCs redone, now all moving entities (playable and non-playable) are actors
- any actor can get scripted behaviour. The actor will follow this behaviour with and without the player present (see "wild bear" in game)
- all actors have a line-of-sight (LOS), which shows the direction the actor is looking at and can convey emotion/intention by changing colour

About those missing images which several people have experienced. Before this version, I used separate images for the animation frames. Which means reloading every single frame in the animation for every animation. For this version, I came to my senses and put all animation frames for a single sprite in a single image. I now only show a part of the image, and move the image round quickly enough so that the sprite seems animated. This is what game developers (especially of RPG games) have been doing since the 1980's, and now I know why. Missing images should no longer be a problem. Aquillai and pyrrhian, could you let me know if this problem still occurs? *fingers crossed*

What's next:
- faster drawing routines, hopefully
- actors can have variable line-of-sights
- actors should only react to other actors when they are in their line of sight
- actors could react to sounds caused by other actors (for example: hork-bajir have a bad line-of-sight, but excellent hearing)
- select playable actor by clicking on actor (suggestion from aquilai)
- arrow always pointing to the next goal (so you don't get lost in the level)
- combat, actors should be able to defend and attack and the player should have controls to override any default actor behaviour
- death and checkpoints (perhaps none of the animorphs may die, when one does the game goes back to the last checkpoint instantly)

Other ideas:
- a day / night cycle? (should affect the line of sight)
- dialog trees for expanded conversation
- the whole acquire morph idea

There's still plenty to do. I'm re-reading all the feedback I've received so far, to see if I've missed or misjudged any ideas. I'm also working on my pixel art skills. It is fun, but it also takes up a lot of time during which I can't work on the game itself. At some point if I want to recreate a scene from the book, I do need custom graphics. So I do need to do graphics at some point.

NateSean: adding Google AdSense
I have no intention to commercialise this game in any way, even if it turns into a real game. Mostly because I'm already using other people their ideas and graphics, and perhaps in the near future other people's level designs and storyboards as well.

[Blazing Angel]

This is really cool. Nice work. 

[yunyun]

Cool!  What does the bear do? And he isn't scared of Ax?

[Aquilai]

Visuals
LOS over water occluded until you switch characters. When you switch characters the LOS of the bear seems to appear like a visual artefact. On Chrome, the bear's LOS cone appears when you switch to Ax. On Firefox, Ax's LOS cone can be seen on top of Tobias's. Regardless, nice work with the LOS so far. The colour change seems to work very nicely. If you alternate switching characters then the LOS cones start overlapping more. I think this overlay problem might also extend to speech too (I switched windows back to the game and above Ax I read "<Hi Rachel>" when Tobias was not in the same area currently.

Visible text or thoughtspeech could do with it's own background? Maybe a speech/thought bubble. Depending on the background the font colours could be hard to read. I can see that currently you're not using resizeable images (cone reshape being difficult). This relates to the thought/speech bubble too because it's difficult to use an image that reshapes with variable length text. Maybe set a string length limit that is the maximum text you can put in 1 speech box at a single time?

Some non-english speakers may think the text changing/disappearing might go too quickly. Could there be a shortcut or option so that you can click/press a button to change to the next line? This would also tie in with the fixed maximum length string speech box idea. (I might have written this thought in a confusing way ) Players can click to see the continuation of the speech.

Something else to think about is whether players can go back to re-read texts or not. If you're going with this thought/speech box/bubble idea you could create arrows for previous text and next text. Quite a few games do this. Maybe if you want to be difficult, you could make it so that people actually have to use their brains and remember what they just read (ie no backward/forward on speech/thought bubbles)

Gameplay/AI
Nice touch having the real bear following Ax. It's afraid of Rachel? These will be useful things to have when following a storyline. I noticed that the bear will run from Rachel only after she demorphs fully whereas the bear will act normally even if Rachel has just started morphing. Should be aware of this so you can write a function for easier story writing. For example "Should an animal NPC react with pre-morph OR pre-demorphs?" or "Would a controller NPC attack/be alerted pre-morph AND pre-demorph?" This gives the story writer a bit more control.

How good is the NPC pathfinder? I can see that the bear can be easily trapped by Rachel in a corner. If you have different path finding algorithms then it could be a deliberate tactic for the player. Using one character to delay/stop an NPC animal/controller whilst others escape/acquire the morph whilst some more clever NPCs (eg smarter controllers) will walk around and still pursue the Animorphs etc

Performance
Firefox doesn't run that well with your game, like you said. It seems to think you're asking a lot of it! My CPU usage went to 50% (1 core max'd out, I use a dual core). The morphing seems to disappear suddenly. It's not as bad as that any more I think. My CPU does increase (30% maybe?) when the characters move but the morphing doesn't disappear any more. Although the disappearing morphs may be related to getting the image from the server again or something rather than CPU.

On Chrome things run a lot smoother. In particular the morphing animations work properly. It's about the same on Firefox and Chrome now. Something that crossed my mind is whether or not people have GPU acceleration. Newer browsers have this activated but not all computers have decent or gaming level graphics cards so this might be a deciding factor. It's not something that you program in yourself, it's just how the web browser is set up.

Hmm I think that's it (or all that I can remember of what I wrote before). You can PM me (or email) if there are other things. I seem to create a text wall whenever I post here!

[spoiler=Off topic]Gah!

The following error or errors occurred while posting this message:
Your session timed out while posting. Please try to re-submit your message.

Luckily this time, I took precautions! ^^
[/spoiler]

[tigri]

In another thread I mentioned that if you ever want to finish a hobby project, you'll have to be able to finish it by yourself. I thought I could, but turns out I can't.

To make a game, I need to cover three areas:
Design - making it fun
Artwork - making it look good
Programming - making it work

At the start of the project, amazingly, I had all three areas covered which enabled me to make progress immediately. I can program, you helped out with design and with the available artwork from DinosaurNothlit I had artwork covered as well.

The situation right now is that I still have programming and design covered. I can still program and you still help me out with design ideas. But I'm lacking the artwork to visualize some of the new features I want to implement, like other environments suitable for the animorphs, and items/objects to create an inventory and making the items interact with the objects. I thought I could cover artwork by working on my pixel art skills, but as it turns out I just don't enjoy creating pixel art. It takes more time for me to create a single good-looking sprite than to program a new feature into the game and I rather spend my time programming because that is something I do enjoy.

Anyways, just wanted to say that I'm still here and as far as I'm concerned this project is not dead. Just on hold mainly because of the artwork area. I saw some other game ideas on this forum. If one of those ideas make more progress, maybe I can help out with some programming there. Or if someone feels like helping out with art, I can make progress here.

[Blazing Angel]

I really want to see this breakthrough. I'm no artist, but I think pixel art might be something I can do. If theirs a program or something I can use to make sprites and give them to you, I'd be willing to give it a shot.

[Underseen]

Pixel Art is simple Blaze. I would use MSpaint for 2D sprites and DXripper for ripping 3D sprites.

[yunyun]

I could try doing some pixel art too, but if its 3D and you need to pay for the program, then i can't

[tigri]

If anyone would like to give pixel art a try, you can do it in Microsoft Paint.

Other free alternatives are:
Paint.NET: http://www.getpaint.net/
Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/

Here's a link to the RAF School tutorial on pixel art:
http://animorphsforum.com/index.php?topic=7610.0

If art doesn't work out, I could also try out something text-based.

[Underseen]

What do you mean something text based

[Blazing Angel]

Text based adventure style game?

[tigri]

Well, sure. Whether using graphics or text, programming game mechanics remain exactly the same. It doesn't have to be a classic text adventure with "look" and "walk" verbs. It could be something more exotic.

Two examples:
1) a more traditional interactive fiction: http://pr-if.org/play/anchorhead/
2) an action game made with text: http://doom.chaosforge.org/

Both visuals and audio can still be included to enhance the mood, once we have those resources available. But the core game shouldn't require them. The game could be top-down like example 2, only it would look a bit unusual. Or more like an interactive fiction adventure (or simulation) like example 1. And unlike both examples, the game could still be real-time, no reason why we couldn't create a living breathing world instead of a static world that waits for the player's input to react.

I just noticed they added graphics to the second game example this year. Check out the 2011 version or earlier for a text example.

[The Spectre]

if anyone could make an only-text interactive fiction for animorphs (or find one for me) hed be my hero till kindom come

[tigri]

Two years since my last post? Those two years went by pretty fast then!

The top-down game isn't going to work and I don't feel like doing that anymore. I'm not a graphics artist, so all graphics would have to be commissioned or bought. For a spare time game, that's not really worth it.

For creating a game in spare time, I can to help out with an interactive fiction Animorphs game if anyone's interested. If someone can provide a script with a story, scene descriptions, choices and outcomes, I can turn that into a real interactive fiction game. Just let me know.