A Few Little Things
So I made just a couple changes and fixes to the main gameplay. I fixed a few zoom problems, fixed one heck of a bug with crate collision, as well as a few other minor bugs. but along with that, I also made some nice art for the chest and vacuum!
Also here is the vacuum in action! You use it to pull the wizard closer to you, but it costs crystals you could have used to throw at the wizard. The vacuum needs to be animated, but I might just make it shake or something simple to get the point across. It will also have some wind special effect happen to help make it more clear. But that will only happen once I get to effects.
And still, if it isn't clear what's happening; you put 5 crystals in the vacuum and it turns on. When on it pulls the wizard closer (as seen in the little UI image)
The New Shop!
There's also something else I started working on. It first started as a bit of a test. I needed to create the shop, from the ground up, for the game within 3 days. I got the art created and a bit of the programming, but man was I waaaaayyy off on the time it would take! Still workin on it now! But I'm just about at the point of adding music, sounds, and special effects! I have some art I still need to make, and a few bugs to iron out, but most of the programming is done by this point.
So here it's quite similar to the old version. You move a lever and items come out (the items are all placeholder by the way). These items you can use to help you get farther in the game, or add fancy animations, or extra music! On the old version I had some bugs with it, but here I feel it works a lot better, plus I made the lever bigger! That will help with clicking on the phone.
Also with that, we have a name for our shopkeep! The people watching my twitch stream helped me come up with the name Beep. Beep the shopkeep! Or Mr. Boop if you want to be fancy about it. Beep hopes one day to quit his job as a shopkeep to go out and become a dancer! Maybe if I can find the time, I'll add a special Item you can buy at the shop that allows beep to dance for you! :D
Also with that, we have a name for our shopkeep! The people watching my twitch stream helped me come up with the name Beep. Beep the shopkeep! Or Mr. Boop if you want to be fancy about it. Beep hopes one day to quit his job as a shopkeep to go out and become a dancer! Maybe if I can find the time, I'll add a special Item you can buy at the shop that allows beep to dance for you! :D
There are a few small special effects I already added though. Things like screen shake, zooming, scaling, and window resizing.
The screen shake is a crazy simple thing that's just built into Game Maker (the software I'm using). Probably didn't take more than 5 minutes to set that part up. My plan with it is to have the screen shake when you drop items.
After learning how I should set up zooming, from the main gameplay room, it became a lot easier to set it up for the shop! Honestly I'm not entirely sure what I'll use it for, but I feel I could put it to good use at some point.
The last two things, scaling and window resizing, go hand in hand. I created a system where you can change the screen size at any point and the game will adjust all it's art to fit the new window shape! If the window gets too big or too small, it will scale everything 2, 3, 4 times as big or even more! Doing this helps to make sure it doesn't get too big or small. It can be adjusted like a browser window. It's interesting.
The screen shake is a crazy simple thing that's just built into Game Maker (the software I'm using). Probably didn't take more than 5 minutes to set that part up. My plan with it is to have the screen shake when you drop items.
After learning how I should set up zooming, from the main gameplay room, it became a lot easier to set it up for the shop! Honestly I'm not entirely sure what I'll use it for, but I feel I could put it to good use at some point.
The last two things, scaling and window resizing, go hand in hand. I created a system where you can change the screen size at any point and the game will adjust all it's art to fit the new window shape! If the window gets too big or too small, it will scale everything 2, 3, 4 times as big or even more! Doing this helps to make sure it doesn't get too big or small. It can be adjusted like a browser window. It's interesting.
Oh, I should probably explain how things work too! You grab an item you want, put it in your (Terra's) right hand, then you buy it with the other hand (explained more in the next picture). Here I show you can press the button at the top of the screen to change what type of items come out of the conveyor belt. I thought this would be a nifty way of showing multiple types of objects in a simple and clean way.
There's a couple of worries I had when setting up this shop. One was that the shop would be boring and uninteresting to use, the other would be the shop would be confusing and tough to find things, and the last is it would feel claustrophobic. I added a conveyor belt because it makes things fun! And I tried my best to lessen the number of buttons necessary on the screen and for you to click. I don't think I was perfect about it, but I hope I made the screen show all the necessary info without making things feel claustrophobic. The claustrophobic feeling changes based on the window size, but I feel like, even at it's smallest allowed size it isn't too small. I haven't yet heard anyone complain though, so that's good!
There's a couple of worries I had when setting up this shop. One was that the shop would be boring and uninteresting to use, the other would be the shop would be confusing and tough to find things, and the last is it would feel claustrophobic. I added a conveyor belt because it makes things fun! And I tried my best to lessen the number of buttons necessary on the screen and for you to click. I don't think I was perfect about it, but I hope I made the screen show all the necessary info without making things feel claustrophobic. The claustrophobic feeling changes based on the window size, but I feel like, even at it's smallest allowed size it isn't too small. I haven't yet heard anyone complain though, so that's good!
So when you drop an item down it kind of wiggles into place. A nice/interesting effect I made. I think it makes it more fun! If you look at the give above this one you can see how you can knock items out of your hand with new items! It feels nice and the held objects can go flying!
If you've put an item into your hand you can then press the purse button to buy it! A shower of coins fly out and a rolling meter rolls down to show how much money you got left. And my god did it take forever to figure out how to make those rolling numbers! Just goes to show you some programming ideas are more difficult in practice than on paper. "Just subtract the number from the total and do it a little at a time!" but my gosh lining everything up, getting the art right, and a bunch of other things made it more complex for me than expected! But now it works and I love it!
If you've put an item into your hand you can then press the purse button to buy it! A shower of coins fly out and a rolling meter rolls down to show how much money you got left. And my god did it take forever to figure out how to make those rolling numbers! Just goes to show you some programming ideas are more difficult in practice than on paper. "Just subtract the number from the total and do it a little at a time!" but my gosh lining everything up, getting the art right, and a bunch of other things made it more complex for me than expected! But now it works and I love it!
So like I said earlier, I still have a lot left to do before this shop is done, but I feel like it's close. I feel like there are 2 big things I still gotta make before I can move to music and effects is prices. I gotta figure out a way to show the prices of each object, and I gotta create the talking bubbles for beep so he can explain how to use the shop, what an item does, and to add flavor text. After that, make the art for the items, animate beep and iron out a few bugs. Then I'm on to sounds and music! It's still a bit left to do, but a lot of the bigger things are functional! It's really coming together!
Freelance Work
So I got a bit of a problem. I'm friggin broke! I've been crazy blessed from the kindness of the people who've joined into our community, but unfortunately it costs a lot just to survive, and without any other money coming in, I gotta take some freelance work.
But lucky me some just so happened to fall into my lap! Live seems to just work out for me like that.
I got an email asking if I was willing to do some animation work, and since thing I've been workin on animations! Because of that, I don't have as much time per week to work on this game. This is only temporary though. Once the freelance work is finished, I'll be back full time working on this game again. However that doesn't mean I'm not working on Save The Hero, oh no! I'm still putting hours into it each day! It's just not as many hours as before. So the next few weeks might be a little less productive, and I might not have as much to show, but I'll see what I can still do.
But lucky me some just so happened to fall into my lap! Live seems to just work out for me like that.
I got an email asking if I was willing to do some animation work, and since thing I've been workin on animations! Because of that, I don't have as much time per week to work on this game. This is only temporary though. Once the freelance work is finished, I'll be back full time working on this game again. However that doesn't mean I'm not working on Save The Hero, oh no! I'm still putting hours into it each day! It's just not as many hours as before. So the next few weeks might be a little less productive, and I might not have as much to show, but I'll see what I can still do.
Wrap Up
So I made a tiny bit of progress working on the main gameplay, but took a short break from it to work on the shop. We made a fancy opening treasure chest, and a functioning vacuum that also has nice art with it!
Mostly though, we've been putting together this shop! It's been coming along nicely with buy-able items, coin barfing purses, and shaky screens.
But unfortunately progress on the game is going to slow down a little as I do some freelance work to make back up a little money.
So if this sounds interesting and you want to see more, you can always join in on twitch! I love answering questions about the game, game dev, art, music, or anything creative! Or if you want to meet the awesome people of our community, we have a link to our discord as well. I hope you're all having a good day.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab
Discord: https://discord.gg/rTyHaMD
Mostly though, we've been putting together this shop! It's been coming along nicely with buy-able items, coin barfing purses, and shaky screens.
But unfortunately progress on the game is going to slow down a little as I do some freelance work to make back up a little money.
So if this sounds interesting and you want to see more, you can always join in on twitch! I love answering questions about the game, game dev, art, music, or anything creative! Or if you want to meet the awesome people of our community, we have a link to our discord as well. I hope you're all having a good day.
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab
Discord: https://discord.gg/rTyHaMD